Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
This story is also disturbingly resonant with the times in which we live. It’s not so hard to see ourselves caught up in a cosmic struggle of good and evil. The deceiver of the world—the one we call variously Lucifer, Satan, the Devil, and the Father of Lies—is actively at work among us. We see the evidence of his presence in the division, violence, and chaos that threaten to undo us.
We live a world that increasingly prizes dishonesty for the sake of selfish gain. I’m sure I don’t have to provide you with examples. Orwell’s concept of double-speak, which once seemed a twisted fantasy, has become shockingly, violently real. There are malevolent forces in our world that twist language in order to erode any shared reality we might still possess. This erosion is intentional and calculated to sow hatred and fear among us so that we will remain divided.
I’m put in mind of the First Letter of John, by the same author as the Revelation, “As you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come.” We are surrounded by a chorus of antichrists, peddling their lies and claiming to speak in the name of God. When the dragon was thrown down to the earth, he multiplied and remains among us. But the hated, division, and venom they sow is not of God—it is a child of the Father of Lies.
There is a scene in The Lord of the Rings, the epic fantasy novel J.R.R. Tolkien wrote after, and in some ways as a response to, the horrors of the Second World War. Frodo, who has been charged with carrying the One Ring to destroy it, and thereby defeat the evil tyrant Sauron, says “I wish it need not have happened in my time.” Gandalf, the wisdom figure in the story, says “So do I, and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
We may well wish to run from this time of lies, or, if we are privileged, as I know many of us are, to busy ourselves with other things until this moment, too, has passed us by. But we Christians have a responsibility to live in the truth. After all, Jesus told us that he is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. He is the Word of God made flesh among us, a word sharper than any two-edged sword dividing soul and spirit. We are to live in the light of his Truth, which dispels the darkness of the lies that threaten and surround us.
More than that, we are called to embody the Truth of Jesus Christ, which is that God loves every single person on this earth. We are all connected both to God and to one another through that love. There is no such thing as us and them. There is only we. United in the love of Christ, we need not let fear or hatred take root within us. If we cling to the Truth, the Truth will make us free.
Holding tight to Jesus, we must become living examples of the truth that God’s answer is always more life and that Love always wins.
I don’t mean to suggest that this path is an easy one. Far from it. If we cling to the Truth, it will cost us everything. This morning’s story from Revelation tells us that “[the saints] have conquered [Satan] by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they did not cling to life even in the face of death.” That phrase “the word of their testimony” can also be translated as “the logic of their martyrdom.” For they did not cling to life, even in the face of death.
In a sermon in January 2017, just after another fateful presidential inauguration, Br. Roy Parker preached on this verse from Revelation. He said, “Jesus’ death and resurrection reveal a logic inextricably woven into the fabric of the universe. In that divine logic unjust and uncompassionate powers have reached their limits when crosses and shotguns have done their worst. They can go no further than death. But the meaning of Jesus’ resurrection is that God can.”
He continues, “When a servant of God does not cling to life in the face of a cross or a shotgun, the logic of oppressive empires and racist cultures has run its course; their power and its weapons have done all they can do. But God’s logic persists; God’s powerless weakness—whose weapons are justice and compassionate solidarity and love—continues its patient, persistent, non-violent subversion of oppressive empires and racist cultures. Jesus does not conquer Rome, but Jesus outlasts Rome.”
Michael and his angels, like all the saints who have gone before us, show us the way to imitate Jesus in his life, but also in his death. The Truth of Jesus that we are to embody—to make flesh here and now—is not only that Love is the final answer, but that the oppressive logic of today’s antichrists can never stand up against the logic of self-sacrificing love. When we cling to Jesus, we bear witness—even with our bodies—that though the tyrants of this world may kill the body, they cannot touch the soul. That is how Love wins—by spoiling the spoiler of his prey.
There is, too, a deeper message for us in today’s feast. We celebrate St. Michael and All Angels. All of them, which is to say we also celebrate Satan and his angels, too. How can that be, when we have been talking about the great cosmic battle of good and evil?
As much as I love epic fantasy, if Love is God’s final answer, then at some point, we have to stop telling stories of battles and conquering and start weaving tales of healing and reconciliation. As cathartic as it may be to imagine Michael throwing Satan down, ultimately, it is not for us to defeat or vanquish evil. Such violent impulses are a part of evil’s grip on us. In bearing witness to the Truth of Jesus, we bear witness to the one who can heal and integrate evil, who can transform and convert evil into good, so that, at the end, even Lucifer will bear God’s light again.
As James Stephens puts in his poem “The Fullness of Time,”
On a rusty iron throne
Past the furthest star of space
I saw Satan sit alone,
Old and haggard was his face;
For his work was done and he
Rested in eternity.
And to him from out the sun
Came his father and his friend
Saying, now the work is done
Enmity is at an end:
And he guided Satan to
Paradises that he knew.
Gabriel without a frown,
Uriel without a spear,
Raphael came singing down
Welcoming their ancient peer,
And they seated him beside
One who had been crucified.
There is nothing and no one who does not, ultimately, belong to God. There is no part of us, individually or collectively, that is beyond the reach of God’s healing and reconciling love. And if we are in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, we are called all the more to shine like stars in the night sky, pointing the way home to the wayward and the lost. We are called to cling solely to the one who is Truth itself and whose truth and love and merciful justice will outlast the lies that threaten and surround us. In the end, Love will win. Even better than that—Love will put an end to winning and losing, and we will all be reconciled one to another, held tight in the arms of the one who has been crucified.
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