Today’s Scripture Reading (December
23, 2013): Isaiah 51
Kings die
and empires die. It is simply a fact of life. I have to admit that sometimes I
wonder why kings do not ask themselves one simple question – how will I be
remembered when I am gone? What is the lasting legacy that I will leave to my
people – and to my family, the ones that carry my name? But instead of asking
that question, the more common question that seems to be asked is how do I get
what I want out of this life? And it is not just emperors that are asking the
question – that is the question that is on our lips as well.
I admit that
there are things that I have done during my life time that have hurt my legacy.
It would seem that even I am not immune to the deficit of simply wanting what I
want. Sometimes, as Christians, we need to be reminded that the beginnings of
our faith were humble ones. A baby born in a manger, a people who only seemed
to only want to serve the culture in which it lived. In the very beginning,
Christianity was the anti-empire, it had no way to achieve power, and in the
beginning no ambition to be in power. Christians were aliens – strangers in a
strange land. Christians were persecuted, but that did not seem to change their
outlook – after all, their founder had been executed on a cross. For Aristotle,
to die in battle in defense of the king and empire was the greatest example of
courage and honor. For the early Christian, to die in non-violent service to
Christ the King – to be executed because of the Jesus message was the path of real
courage and honor. And in the early days of our faith, many Christians ended
their lives on precisely that path. But with the rise of Constantine to Emperor
in the Rome, all of that changed. The strangers living in a strange land became
the chosen and honored residents – and in a strange twist of history, the
persecuted became the persecutors. In that moment, we lost the legacy that we
had been intended for (and many would argue we lost our soul as well). And it
may be that the Christian church has never regained the legacy that we lost
back in the early moments of the fourth century.
And that
might be one of the reasons that Jesus was born in a manger instead of in a
warm room in the inn - to serve as a reminder of what our legacy was always
intended to be. We are aliens – strangers in a strange land. We were never
intended to be the law makers, we follow the law of Christ which makes us
servants to those around us. We are salt and light, members of the anti-empire
or ant-kingdom, a countercultural force in the darkness of this world. We
recognize that the only thing of permanence is our God. Kings and empires will
always rise and fall (as much as some of us do not want to believe it that
would include the Christian Empire which rose in the fourth century and has
been slowly diminishing for the last few generations.) All the things of man
are like grass, they are here today and gone tomorrow. But the Christ, born in
a manger and executed on a cross, rising again on the third day, is the only
thing of permanence that we have. And if he is for us, “then who can be against us”
(Romans 8:31)?
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Luke 1
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