Sermon Title: "Onward, Christian Soldiers!"
Date: September 7, 2008
Minister: Rev. Charles E. Ensley, Jr.

Lesson:  Matthew 10:34-39

Sermon request:  “As Christ represents peace, where did the concept of ‘Christian soldiers’ come from?”

It is possible that the writer of this request had in mind our closing hymn today, Onward, Christian Soldiers, and, further, presumed it to be a hymn for war-monging Christians anxious to do battle with some pagan forces.  The origins of the hymn reveal that nothing could be further from the truth.

Sabine Baring-Gould (1834-1924) was a priest in the Church of England, serving the church in Horbury, in Yorkshire, England at the time of the American Civil War.  It was the custom there for the children to march in procession from one village to another on Pentecost Sunday with cross and banners “going on before.”  Baring-Gould wrote this hymn so the children might sing as they marched.  It was first published in 1864, and was met with instant success.  It has remained a favorite with some; though in the past decade it has been omitted from the hymn selections in most new hymnals due to what some editors deem its militaristic overtones.  Thirty years after writing it, Baring-Gould commented:  “It was written in great haste, and I am afraid some of the rhymes are faulty.  Certainly, nothing has surprised me more than its popularity.”

When we close our worship today and we sing it, I invite you to put yourself into a child’s frame of mind, and imagine what those cross and banner-led processions across the Yorkshire countryside might have been like a century-and-a-half ago.  Don’t analyze too deeply the line in the second verse which says, “We are not divided…”, for Baring-Gould was thinking of his happily united children, and not of the church universal.

The larger question raised by today’s request is that of Christ representing peace.  I have listed two apparently diametrically opposed statements of Jesus under my sermon title in the bulletin today.  The first, from Matthew, we heard in today’s lesson:  “I have not come to bring peace [to the world], but a sword.” (10:34)  The second is the oft-heard passage from John’s Gospel which Jesus is quoted as uttering as he prepared his disciples for his impending death:  “Peace I leave with you…” (John 14:27)

There is no question that many wars have raged in the name of Christ during the twenty centuries of the Christian faith.  But was Christ leading those battles, or were they motivated by a political agenda with an eye to land acquisition or domination of a group of individuals, all in the name of religion?

The Christian Crusades of the 12th through 14th centuries were a series of nine military campaigns waged by Christian Europe, mainly against Muslims, pagan Slavs, Jews, Russian and Orthodox Christians, as well as selected political enemies of various popes.  The fire smoldered ever since the Arab conquest of Palestine in the seventh century, but the fire which began the Crusades blazed when the Arab caliph ordered the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in 1099.  Jerusalem must be recaptured for Christianity, and every enemy from another religion wiped out!

A century or two passed before the Spanish Inquisition raged between the 15th and 18th centuries.  Spanish rulers wished to maintain Catholic orthodoxy in their kingdoms, and ensure the orthodoxy of recent converts.  In the 15th century it was the Jews, many of whom had escaped to Spain to avoid persecution.  They were to convert to Christianity and remain faithful, or face death.  In the 16th century, a new enemy was found in Protestants, hundreds of which were tortured or burned for not following the Roman Catholic Church.

From the mid-16th to mid-17th century, Europe was torn apart by Catholic-Protestant strife.  We saw it again in Northern Ireland in recent decades, when belonging to one or the other of these Christian denominations was one factor in the bombings and killings which existed, all to the horror of others around the world who were asking, “This is being waged by two parties, both of whom purport to follow the supposed Prince of Peace?”

Today’s lesson, which at first reading certainly is a harsh saying of Jesus, needs to be explained to be correctly understood.  In Jesus’ saying, “I have not come to bring peace [to the world], but a sword,” the “sword” is not a political symbol, nor a weapon of war, but an eschatological one.  The Gospel is written from a post-Easter perspective which is looking to the second coming of Christ.  The text reflects a real situation in Matthew’s first century church, where people sometimes had to choose between their family and their faith.  Look at the twelve followers of Jesus.  Do you ever hear about their families?  Are we to imagine they packed up wife and children and followed Jesus, yet no mention is made of that over his three-year ministry?  No, they left their family behind, at least for that duration of time, and essentially took up their cross to follow Jesus.  Here in the text is found a claim that loyalty to Jesus has priority over even the closest human relationships and life itself.  Discipleship is represented not as adding on another worthy cause to one’s list of obligations, but a giving of self that is the ultimate self-fulfillment. 

If we assume, with today’s requester, that Jesus truly represents peace, then perhaps William Adams Brown (1865-1943), Presbyterian clergyman and seminary professor, wrote the best definition of the true peace of Christ:  “The peace of Christ is the peace of trust in the cause we serve, when service seems to fail of its end.  It is the peace of confidence in God when all the forces of the universe seem working for ends that are undivine.  It is the peace which can accept unexplained mysteries, which can bear heartbreaking sorrows, which can see natural instincts thwarted, holy aspirations unrealized, Christlike purposes broken off, and yet be unperturbed.  It is the peace of a Paul rejected by his countrymen.  It is the peace of all those who have given their lives for causes too high and sacred for immediate success and who yet have been able to believe that even their failures were being overruled by God for good.”

Even though we may never fully comprehend its meaning, this is the Christ not of Christian warlords slaughtering heretical unbelievers, but the Christ who alone can promise us:  “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.  I do not give to you as the world gives.”