Having just completed Evening Prayer on the 10th of November, the eve of one of the more solemn “National Observances” in the Western world, I thought I’d jot down a few devotional notes that sprang up from this time of prayer. There are no special psalms or Scripture lessons appointed in the 2019 Prayer Book to anticipate Veteran’s Day (here in the US; Remembrance Day in other places like the UK and Canada), and yet by happy accident there were several on-point connections that came up.
Trust in God for your deliverance. This is a timeless truth, and applies on so many different levels. Normally an evangelically-minded Christian will emphasize our deliverance from sin and death brought about by Christ’s sacrificial death and glorious resurrection. The enemy – Satan – has been vanquished and the days are numbered until death and tears will be no more. But two the Psalms of this evening (54 and 55) are strikingly particular in the way they emphasize the role of trust, and set the context and imagery of our redemption.
The arrogant have risen up against me,
and tyrants, who do not have God before their eyes, seek after my life.Behold, God is my helper;
the Lord is he who upholds my life.He shall repay the evil of my enemies.
O destroy them in your faithfulness.For he has delivered me out of all my trouble,
Psalm 54:3-5, 7
and my eye has seen the ruin of my enemies.
Give heed to me, and hear me,
for I am troubled in my prayer and tormented,Because of the cry of the enemy, and oppression by the ungodly;
for they are of a mind to do me great harm, so maliciously are they set against me.As for me, I will call upon God,
and the Lord shall save me.It is he who shall deliver my soul in peace from the battle that is against me,
for there are many who fight me.God, who endures for ever, shall hear me and bring them down;
Psalm 55:2-3, 17, 19-20
for they never change, nor do they fear God.
Battles and enemies, tyranny and torment, these are familiar images for the spiritual life and its warfare against the world, the flesh, and the devil. At least, they are familiar to those who engage with and pray the Psalms with any consistency. But on a night such as this, preparing to honor those who have served facing against flesh-and-blood enemies and physical battles, the “simpler” reading of these psalms take on an undeniable strength that many of us might otherwise miss. It helps that the Old Testament lesson this evening is Isaiah 23, one of several “oracles of judgment and woe” against the nations of the world. We are reminded of just much we need a deliverer in Christ: as the soldier cries out to God for safety in the midst of unspeakable danger, so our souls must cry out to Him.
We see elements of this, also, in the New Testament lesson. In Mark 15, Jesus is crucified. He faces an enemy, but through surrender instead of retaliation he gains the victory. He gives himself over to death so that others might be saved and live. More on that in a moment.
Lately I’ve been reading up on some of the more obscure books in and around the Books called Apocrypha and I just finished 4 Maccabees. It was a strange read, at first, seemingly over-the-top in its melodrama and verbosity. It’s a re-telling of the Story of the Martyrdom of the Seven Brothers and their Mother, better known in 2 Maccabees 7. The details and descriptions are enhanced in this lengthened treatment, but it’s set in the context of a philosophical discourse basically arguing that piety, through reason, rules the emotions. The horrific martyrdom of these young Jewish men and their mother at the hands of a Gentile tyrant, in their zeal for the Law of Moses, is presented as an inspirational case study for just how powerful the mind, reason, can be – particularly in exercising the virtue of piety. Towards the end I finally understood what this book was. It’s not a melodrama, it’s a sermon. It takes up the martyrdom story and expounds that text, calling and exhorting the reader to a life committed to the Lord, no matter what.
This, especially, paired up in my mind with what we read in Mark 15 this evening. Like the Jewish martyrs of 2 Macc. 7 (and 4 Macc.), Jesus gave himself up to his torturers. The steadfast piety of the martyrs impressed the evil tyrant, Antiochus Epiphanes, and he eventually left Judah to fight wars (and die) elsewhere. His punishment, 4 Maccabees asserts, is both in his life and continues after his death. But the martyrs, through their death, became “as it were, a ransom for the sin of our nation. And through the blood of those devout ones and their death as a propitiation, divine Providence preserved Israel that previously had been afflicted” (17:21-22). Their deaths led to the political deliverance of Judah under Maccabean leadership! To us, of course, this is a very clear “type” or foreshadowing of Jesus’ true propitiation (appeasement for sin) upon the Cross.
Thus one is prompted to remember the sacrifices of those who also fought for freedom, for security, for the victory of the just.
Thirdly, there are those who experience the loss of those sacrificed. In 4 Maccabees and its consideration of the 2 Macc. 7 story, there is a heavy emphasis at the end about the mother of those young men.
O mother of the nation, vindicator of the law and champion of religion, who carried away the prize of the contest in your heart! O more noble than males in steadfastness, and more manly than men in endurance! Just as Noah’s ark, carrying the world in the universal flood, stoutly endured the waves, so you, O guardian of the law, overwhelmed from every side by the flood of your emotions and the violent winds, the torture of your sons, endured nobly and withstood the wintry storms that assail religion.
If, then, a woman, advanced in years and mother of seven sons, endured seeing her children tortured to death, it must be admitted that devout reason is sovereign over the emotions. Thus I have demonstrated not only that men have ruled over the emotions, but also that a woman has despised the fiercest tortures. The lions surrounding Daniel were not so savage, nor was the raging fiery furnace of Mishael so intensely hot, as was her innate parental love, inflamed as she saw her seven sons tortured in such varied ways. But the mother quenched so many and such great emotions by devout reason.
…
Take courage, therefore, O holy-minded mother, maintaining firm an enduring hope in God. The moon in heaven, with the stars, does not stand so august as you, who, after lighting the way of your star-like seven sons to piety, stand in honor before God and are firmly set in heaven with them. For your children were true descendants of father Abraham.
4 Maccabees 15:29-16:4, 17:4-6
Even down to the artistic symbolism of the moon and the stars, this is strikingly similar to how Christian piety would go on to speak of the Blessed Virgin Mary. She, too, underwent the horror of the crucifixion – except instead of nails piercing her limbs, a sword would pierce through her own soul (Luke 2:35). The families of those who serve, suffer, or die (perhaps most especially their mothers), feel a fear and torment that gives them a share in the soldier’s sufferings. These pains are not the same, of course, but they are inextricably linked. As we remember, acknowledge, and thank those who have served, putting their lives on the line for the sake of others, it is prudent we offer also an acknowledgement to their families who underwent vicarious trials of their own at the same time.
And finally, I have to wrap these thoughts with a word of hope and peace. A verse in my recent read-through of 4 Maccabees that really stuck out to me was this: “They knew also that those who die for the sake of God live in God, as do Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the patriarchs” (16:25). This, again, is remarkably similar to what we read in the New Testament – that those who die in the Lord are not truly gone, but are alive in Christ (1 Cor. 15:22). Indeed, there is a sense in which the Christian has already died and been made alive (Colossians 3:3, Romans 6:11, 8:10). The promise of the resurrection of the dead is one of constant comfort to the believer – those whose earthly lives were taken away will again have them back! All who put their trust in Christ are adopted into his family, made heirs of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.
And thus we can pray for all God’s people, present and departed:
O God, the life of all who live, the light of the faithful, the strength of those who labor, and the repose of the dead: We thank you for the blessings of the day that is past, and humbly ask for your protection through the coming night. Bring us in safety to the morning hours; through him who died and rose again for us, your Son our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
A Collect for Protection, Evening Prayer, BCP 2019 page 50
Leorningcnihtes boc 