Last week the church calendar remembered St. George. Since 1929, Saint George has been one of the patrons of our parish when the Bishop of Missouri folded St. George’s Episcopal Church into the Church of St. Michael and All Angels. This merger resulted in one parish having two patron saints. From this vantage point, it was a good thing. We have needed them! But often, in the life of the parish, St. George gets treated like a poor stepsister.
The Church remembers that St. George was a Roman soldier born in what is now modern-day Turkey about 280 AD and died around 303 AD. There is not much known about his early life, but it is believed he was born to a wealthy Christian noble family. When he grew up, he became a soldier and became a part of the entourage of Emperor Diocletian. He was sentenced to death for refusing to deny his Christian faith.
It can seem that the only thing Christians in the West know about St. George is that he slew a dragon. In the East, there is a whole tradition of stories and miracles about St. George. The report of St. George’s end is worth remembering. In the final years of the Emperor Diocletian’s reign, the Emperor gave all his governors complete freedom to persecute Christians.
St. George, when he heard what the emperor had done, gave all his wealth to the poor, freed his slaves, and then appeared in the Roman Senate. George spoke out openly against the emperor’s campaign against Christians. He confessed himself a Christian, and he appealed to everyone to acknowledge Christ: “I am a servant of Christ, my God, and trusting in Him, I have come among you voluntarily, to bear witness concerning the Truth.”
“What is Truth?” one of the dignitaries asked, echoing the question Pontius Pilate asked of Christ. St. George replied, “Christ Himself, whom you persecuted, is Truth.”
The Truth is Jesus Christ.
In the opening verses of John’s Gospel, John proclaims that “the Word became flesh and took up residence among us, and we saw his glory, glory as of the one and only from the Father, full of grace and truth.” Jesus tells Thomas, in John's Gospel: "I am the way the truth and the life."
We live in an age that understands truth as always dependent on the historical and social context rather than being absolute and universal. In twenty-first century America, we all get to make up our own reality, our own script, our own set of facts, and everything is conditioned to where each person stands. In our world, truth is viewed as relative rather than objective, as a means to an end. When Kellyanne Conway spoke about “alternative facts”, she was in effect saying, “We’re all postmodernist relativists now.”
St. George lived in a different age but more importantly he knew that Jesus Christ was Lord. The lordship of Christ was the primary fact of his life. St. George came before the Roman Senate to tell them that there is such a thing as truth and that this Truth is this Jesus whose followers the Empire was tyrannizing.
In doing so, St. George was not arguing for one reading of the experience of Jesus of Nazareth over another as we might debate what is or isn’t true. St. George is saying that Jesus is what is true. Nowhere does Jesus say, "I have come to start a dialogue about what is true." Jesus came saying, "I am the way, the truth, and the life."
This truth is a person, personal. When Jesus is brought before the governor Pilate, Jesus tells him, “I have come into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth.”
Thinking about Pilate’s cross examination of Christ from the perspective of pagan antiquity, what would it have meant for Caesar’s appointed man, Pontius Pilate to come face to face with Jesus? Pilate had known all the advantages Rome had to offer. Caesar had given him the power over life and death. Pilate faced Jesus of Nazareth, a backwoods barbarian, of no social standing who had been beaten, and was now ridiculously robed in purple, and crowned with thorns. This improbable Jesus was now absurdly invoking an otherworldly kingdom and some incomprehensible truth. Jesus seems unaware of his own absurdity and Pilate’s eminence.
From the ancient point of view, the truth of things would seem evident. Pilate was in charge.
Yet in the light of the resurrection, the plain meaning of this scene is turned on its head. God’s reality is revealed not in the pomp and pageantry of the Empire but in the vulnerability of this man Jesus. The first has become last, the mighty are put down from their seats, the lowly exalted, the hungry are filled with good things while the rich are sent away
empty
.
More than two hundred years later, St. George tells those high and mighty Romans elites that reality is not what they think. He is telling them that they are out of touch with the warp and woof of the universe. He is telling them they have no idea what is real and what is not. From the perspective of the empty tomb, all of Imperial Rome’s prestige, prerogatives and power are illusions because the glory of the Almighty God has been made plain in a crucified Jewish peasant rabbi who burst the bonds of death.
In the midst of this twenty-first century pandemic, in Christ, we can see the face of God in the forsaken, the broken, the sick and the dying and those who care for them. In this moment, in Christ, we can see the face of God in those who are ailing or anxious, those intubated souls gasping for breath, those who are alone, or hungry and desperate and out of work; and we can see Christ in those who seek their relief. In Christ, we can see the dignity of every human being. We can see because we know that Christ is Truth, as St. George so nobly proclaimed.
As a member of this parish, I am humbled to call this great martyr George my patron, and I am humbled to be reminded, by George, that I would have no idea what the truth is were it not for Jesus who shows me a life that is true to God.
Andrew +
