Of Naked Emperors

Of Naked Emperors--March 16, 2017

"For whatever is born of God conquers the world.  And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith. Who is it that conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?" [1 John 5:4-5]

Come on, John.  Really?  Can we be serious and realistic for a moment here?  The thing that conquers the world is our faith--really? The one who conquers the world is the one who believes in Jesus?  That just seems either patently false or hopelessly, quaintly and quixotically out of touch.  Saying that faith conquers the world seems like the sort of thing you can do only with your eyes closed and the windows shut--especially for John, living in the first century AD.  All he has to do is open his eyes and look out the front door to see the presence of the Romans everywhere--they sure look the part of world conquerors.  The Romans ruled the known world in John's day--at least the world that John lived in.  The Romans had established their conquest and built it on military victories over decades.  And to the ordinary man-on-the-street in the 1st century territory of the empire, it was obvious that "the one who conquers the world" was none other than Caesar, the emperor, the man at the top of the whole Roman war machine.  If you would have asked John's rhetorical question, "Who is it that conquers the world?" to an actual person at random in the first century, their first response would likely have been, "The Emperor, of course!"

Now, I am going to go out on a limb for a moment and make an assumption--that our author here, John, was not a stupid man.  Even bracketing out for a moment the inspiration of the Holy Spirit underlying the New Testament writers, John himself seems like a bright enough guy to know that the Empire was all around them.  And he doesn't seem to be so thick-headed as to miss the presence of centurions marching through the streets carrying their banners with the Roman motto and images of Caesar to remind everybody just who it was that called the shots. 

So for John to say, so matter-of-factly, that obviously it is "our faith" that conquers the world, it's not that he's temporarily forgotten about the Empire.  If you whispered politely to John, "Pssst--what about Caesar?  Isn't he the one who has conquered the world?" he wouldn't blush and say, "Oh, dear, well, I'd forgotten about him--obviously he's really the one who has conquered the world."  No, John makes his statement in full view of the Emperor and all of his soldiers, with his eyes open and the curtains on the windows pulled back wide.  And John says, anyway, with a certain holy defiance, as a detachment of soldiers walks by out past his front porch, "Nope--it's not them or their swords and spears that conquer the world.  Nope--it's not the man with the crown whose face in on all the coins who calls the shots.  It's Jesus, and because it's Jesus who conquers the world, so do all those who are marked and claimed by King Jesus."

John says this plainly, like it's the most obvious thing in the world to him, knowing that to any bystander he must sound like he's crazy. "Nope, it's not the armies outside the door who run the show.  It's Jesus, and it's by the strange power of faith that we share his victory, too," he says. "Jesus is our victory, and the emperor who thinks he is the conqueror of the world is naked."

We are dared to do the same--to find our victory in Jesus' cross, and to expose the truth (no pun intended... well, maybe a little) that the emperors of our world are naked, too, despite their insistence that they are the winners, the victors, and the bearers of divine favor.

Christians believe (or at least, we should, if we believe half of what we say every Sunday morning) that Jesus really is victorious over all the other powers around and has conquered the world already in his death and resurrection.

Part of saying that Jesus is the real victor is also saying that the emperor--of any time or place--is NOT the be-all, end-all.  Part of confessing Jesus the crucified homeless rabbi as victorious Lord is also then that we dare to say that Caesar is NOT Lord. That means saying we do NOT believe that the one with the biggest stockpile of weapons wins the day, or that the one with the most gold or net worth makes the rules.  Our allegiance doesn't go to Caesar in the end, and our victory does not come from him.

We do not belong, in the end, to this country or this society.  Our "home team" that we cheer for is ultimately not the U.S.A., but rather the Reign of God.  And we have been given the assurance that Jesus has already overcome the other forces in the world that rage against him--and he has done it, not by marching armies in anywhere, but through the self-giving suffering love of a cross and the surprising power of the resurrection.  He overcomes the world by dying for it--that is our victory.

That's the message we announce to the world, knowing full well ahead of time that it will sound absurd to many around who can only see the centurions and images of Caesar around us.  We are people who live as though the whole world has been reclaimed by its Creator, and that the Creator has done in through the execution (albeit, an ultimately unsuccessful one) of an unarmed rabbi at the hands of the ones who pretended that they really ruled the world. 

He is the one we cling to, and the grip by which we hold on to him and share in his victory is called faith.  That's what it means for us to be victorious, despite all the other forces out there, over the world by faith in Jesus, the Son of God.

Lord Jesus, let us trust that you do really reign, even when it doesn't look like it in the eyes of the surrounding world.  And let us be willing to stake our lives on that reign, and so share in the victory that is already yours.