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S.Epiphany 2.26 Isaiah 49:1-7; John 1:29-42a

“He made my mouth like a sharp sword; in the shadow of his hand he hid me; he made me a polished arrow; in his quiver he hid me away…”

So; what’s this whole Christian thing about? What is Jesus after? Well, it’s not like a schoolmarm telling us to be good for goodness sake, giving us a set of rules to follow that will help us achieve our heart’s desires if we apply them to our daily lives with rigor. I know that’s the general gist of modern Christendom’s take on Jesus, but it’s completely wrong…(!)

This verse from Isaiah—who saw Jesus clearly, who he is and what he’s after, 750 years before he was born in Bethlehem—gets to the point (you’ll see what I did there in a sec 😉 Jesus’ mouth is a sharp sword; he HIMSELF is a polished arrow, hidden in God’s quiver… In short; Jesus is a WEAPON OF WAR against our hostile world!

And you’re like, “No! Pastor; everyone knows Jesus is luuuv!, a Pacifist who just shows us how to love everybody and to be all schmarmy and nice to everyone, like he was.” But, mmm… no! No, that’s not the story the scriptures tell. That’s what people who’ve never read the scriptures (frequently and carefully 😉 say.

If you’ve read the scriptures frequently and carefully, as I have for my whole adult life, you will see they talk constantly—literally from the first pages of Genesis, of an Evil One, the devil who tricked our parents into joining his rebellion against God in the very beginning of the Story. And God is at war with that snake, [“snakes; why’d it have to be snakes?”] promising he’ll come in our flesh, Eve’s own seed, to crush the devil’s head (who’ll bite his heel) rescuing us hostages from Satan…

But the rescue is tricky, because we’ve been hostages so long, we all have Stockholm Syndrome—we’ve come to think our kidnapper is our rescuer, and the real rescuer is the enemy.

C.S. Lewis—almost alone in the 20th century, gets this right when he says in “Mere Christianity”…

“One of the things that surprised me when I first read the New Testament seriously was that it talked so much about a Dark Power in the universe—a mighty evil spirit who was held to be the Power behind death and disease, and sin… Christianity thinks this Dark Power was created by God, and was good when he was created, and went wrong. Christianity agrees with Dualism that this universe is at war. But it does not think this is a war between independent powers. It thinks it is a civil war, a rebellion, and that we are living in a part of the universe occupied by the rebel.

“Enemy-occupied territory—that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us to take part in a great campaign of sabotage. When you go to church you are really listening-in to the secret wireless from our friends: that is why the enemy is so anxious to prevent us from going…”

Honestly, it was reading that in grad school that made me want to start going to church again! A secret campaign of sabotage against a Dark Power? “Like… Star Wars?” Count me in!

The problem was: the churches I’d been at recently weren’t anything like that, weren’t saboteurs and Rebel Alliance leaders. They featured smooth-talking family therapists prancing around the chancel in church-logoed pastel polo shirts with mics, like talk show hosts, with boomer-led praise bands thumping along to soft-rock ditties about how we should just luuuv everybody. It made me sick to my stomach…

Fortunately, I fell in with a Rebel Alliance commando squad of holy insurrectionists at Yale’s Div school (of all places!) who hated all that BS as much as I did and had known Lewis, personally! They helped me learn to read the scriptures and to get the Story straight. And they told me that if I wanted to be in a commando squad on a campaign of sabotage of the Devil’s Machine, I would have to become a pastor and become a squad leader, myself…

And here we are, 40 years later…

Isaiah goes on to report Jesus’ words: “and he [God the Father] said to me, ‘You are my servant Israel, in whom I will be glorified’.” It’s important to understand that the Hebrew word “Israel” is not a proper name like Jacob or Jesus, but is a title like ‘Christ’ or ‘King’. Literally, it is ‘Prince of God’. Israel as the seed of Abraham was collectively “Prince of God” the Rebel Alliance against the Devil’s Evil Empire. But Israel had Stockholm Syndrome real bad, and was constantly switching back to the Devil’s side.

So if you want it done right, you gotta do it yourself!!! So, God himself came down here in disguise, took on our flesh, and the Real Prince of God set to work to free us.

But the weapons of his warfare are, as St. Paul says, spiritual, not carnal. Basically, God’s plan was to appear weak, and vulnerable so the Devil would devour him (the devil is basically a zombie feeding on other sinful beings). But chomping down on Jesus on the cross, swallowing him up into death and hell, he’d taken in the ultimate Trojan Horse!

Being fully man, like us, yet not using the divine powers hidden in him, Jesus’ death could land him in hell, but; his divine life destroyed sin, death, and hell, busted it wide open and freed the captives. And it is by sharing this suffering and dying of Jesus, by taking in his word and sacrament through our ears and mouths and having it wash over our heads that sin and death is broken in us, and we walk free out of Satan’s prison…

Because the sin and death Jesus has to kill is in us! It is a civil war in the most literal way, a war that goes on in you between the new Adam Christ puts in you, and your old friend of the devil’s. You see the real enemy every morning in the mirror!

Every good campaign of sabotage against the Empire starts with a few rag-tag friends like Obi-Wan, Han, Luke, and Leia…

And that’s what our Gospel shows us this morning!—how John and Andrew are shoved along after Jesus by Obi-wan, er… John the Baptist, “Jesus-curious”, you might say. “Where are you staying?” they ask like freshmen at a frat party. “Come and see,” Jesus says, with a wry smile…

And they see the Messiah, God in the flesh, come to save; get caught up in his living, dying, and rising, themselves. Jesus invites you down that same rebel road, today, by his word and sacrament to come and see—to get caught up in his delightful campaign of sabotage that turns out to be largely against… ourselves!

And in this wonderful war, a new life (trials, travails dangers, adventures!) catches us up into the worship of God, into his Kingdom, where Peace, surpassing understanding, guards our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.