Winning
Is Not The Only Thing The young general, the one who would be Emperor had decided to march on Rome. Though not as celebrated as the moment Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon it was still a turning point in the history of the Roman Empire and the turning point in the history of the Christian Church. Of course there was no guarantee when this brash young general made his decision that he would emerge victorious. He had to have realized this move was perilous. The third century of the Roman Empire was littered with the bodies of those who would be emperor and those who, though they became emperors, were usurped in a matter of months or only a year or two. If history told this arrogant young man anything, it should have told him that his ambition to be Emperor was dangerous at best. And if history gave him no warning his immediate situation should have. He was headed into battle against a far superior force, at least it was superior in numbers, and he was up against the impossible task of putting the city of Rome to siege. A tactic that endangered the very people the young man was trying to win over. Odds were not in his favor, either was history. It was October of the year 312 CE. The young warrior general was named Constantine. As he marched on Rome there occurred an event that would literally change history. That event was that Constantine saw a vision. It was a vision that either in the moment or in retrospect made him believe that the Christian God that he had heard about was on his side. Now we cannot know how this belief effected Constantine or his troops. We can only know what happened. And what happened bordered on miraculous. On October 28th (every Christian should know this date) Constantine engaged his rival Maxentius outside of Rome. It was called the battle of Milvian Bridge. No one knows why Maxentius decided to come out of the city and fight Constantine. Perhaps it was his arrogance; Maxentius had been fairing well against Constantine and may have not feared such an engagement. Though we don’t know why he decided to engage Constantine we know that doing so was a disaster. The decision to fight in spite of all the reasons why he should have stayed inside the city, proved completely disastrous – so disastrous that the pro Constantine writers later ascribed it to divine intervention. And indeed Constantine would always maintain and always believe that the Christian God had given him that victory. It is the way many a Christian would like to understand Christian history. Because from that moment all was changed for the Christians of the Roman Empire, that is the whole civilized world. The emperor would now have allegiance to the Christian God and would later become Christian, as would the entire empire. What started out a little known sect of Judaism became the state religion of Rome barley three hundred years after is inception. There is no more success than that. What could be a greater victory? It is what God ordained for the Christians is it not? The history seems undeniable. And it was undeniable to many a Christian of the third century. But the trouble was and still is that Constantine made Christianity into the victor’s religion. And so it became something far different from the vision given to the world by a first century Jew who was put to death by the very Rome that claimed his name in 325 AD. Constantine believed that the Christian God had intervened and given him the victory, a military victory over his rival. It is possible but it is not consistent with what Jesus preached and lived. Military victory or military conflict is exactly what Jesus walked away from the last week of his life. Palm Sunday was an outpouring of enthusiasm for a man who would lead the revolution. That is what the hoped for Messiah would do. Mounted on a cloud he would avenge his people. But Jesus was clear that for him this was not the way of God. Remember his words when he was arrested, “Those who live by the sword shall perish by the sword.” (Matthew 26:52) Jesus would not be leading any revolutions. Jesus was not interested in victories. In fact if it was defeat that would overtake him, as he remained faithful to his God, then so be it. He would not go violently. It was against his vision of God and God’s kingdom. He would not even seek victory because it was in defeat that his people would find their God. I will go with Jesus on this one. I don’t believe God gave Constantine that victory. If God had wanted to parcel out victory, Rome would have been overthrown by the Jews in the first century. But God is never about giving victory because the very idea of victory includes winners and losers, the triumphant and the vanquished, the destroyers and the destroyed. And the truth is that for the most part Jesus spent his time loving and serving the very people that men like Constantine sought to vanquish. So today we do not celebrate a victory. Christianity is not about vanquishing, destroying, or even winning. None of those do justice to the one who was resurrected or resurrection itself. Today is not about victory. Today we celebrate a gift. And the gift does not look like armies or emperors or anything that might add up to victory, the gift looks much different, the gift looks like this. On Friday morning I was up early with Abbie as always. Abbie does not like to waste a moment of the day so she begins early. But admittedly it is a sweet time of the day. It is great to be up with my daughter even though I can’t see straight. Many mornings I turn on the television to catch the scores. It is a mindless activity that demands little from me and is usually void of the long list of horrendous events that usually go with the morning news. Few things are more innocuous than the baseball scores. But last Friday morning was a little different. They had a segment about a high school volleyball coach. But not just any volleyball coach. Dawn Anna was the coach at Columbine High School. In the last decade Dawn Anna has faced ovarian surgery and brain surgery and in the last year she had to face the death of the captain of her team who also happened to be her daughter, Lauren Townsend who was killed in the school library April 20, 1999. I can’t imagine the pain that she has experienced, who could know the depth of her grief? And yet listen to this. She tells the story that one week after the shootings she was at a ceremony for all the dead and there was a time when all were invited to bow there heads for a moment of silence. She says that she could not keep her head bowed and so looked up into the sky, the blue Colorado sky. And there she saw a hawk circling and circling and with that she says she knew that her future, her life would not be about looking down but rather looking up. It would not honor her daughter’s memory if she hung her head, she says. You may have heard of it. She has organized something called project HOPE. (Healing of People Everywhere) and their first task is to raise enough money to rebuild the library. The plan is to remove the second floor where the killing took place and make the library into a two story atrium with glass all around the upper part so that your eyes naturally look up into the light. Dawn Anna says this. “The world is good. The world is good. The truth is that you can take anything and move ahead positively.” Dawn Anna is someone I would refer to as a resurrection person. Not that she spews a lot of religious rhetoric. Rather, she lives a most basic truth about our existence a basic truth that we Christians say we hold as central to our entire faith. Whether you are mindful of it or not, by coming here this morning you have proclaimed yourselves to be resurrection people. And I tell you that is a wonderful thing to be, because you bring into the world an essential gift. Resurrection people are the never say die people. Resurrection people are the ones who find a way. Resurrection people are the ones who will not believe that any cause is lost. And I tell you the world needs this kind of vision, this kind of conviction, this kind of creativity. The world is desperate for it. This is the gift that the world needs far more than any victory. It seems to me Dawn Anna has
suffered nothing but defeats but she has received and has given a gift far more profound
than any victory. Her wisdom, her love, her
endurance, her positive conviction, her hope is what Jesus had in mind two thousand years
ago and it is what God has in mind for us now. All
that is left is to live it. If Dawn Anna can
do it, after all that has happened to her, you and I can do it. Let us begin today.
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