L.
R. Tarsitano—Saint Andrew’s Church,
The Twenty-first Sunday after Trinity—October 31, 2004
Stand Against the Status Quo
“Yea, truth faileth; and he that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey: and the LORD saw it, and it displeased him that there was no judgment. And he saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor: therefore his arm brought salvation unto him; and his righteousness, it sustained him. For he put on righteousness as a breastplate, and an helmet of salvation upon his head; and he put on the garments of vengeance for clothing, and was clad with zeal as a cloke” (Isaiah 59:15-17).
The term “status quo” has been around, literally, for ages. It is a Latin phrase, adopted into the English language, which means “the existing state of affairs” (Merriam-Webster On Line). Furthermore, the idea of the status quo, the notion that “the way things are” is simply one of the unavoidable givens of life, is older still and more universal than even the ancient Romans and their Latin language.
At some point in their existence, all human societies seem to heave a great sigh and to surrender themselves to the opinion that the corruptions, disorders, evils, and injustices of this world are too numerous and too powerful to resist, let alone to overcome. In general, human beings absolve themselves of any responsibility for the status quo by telling themselves that they are powerless to change it, and then they call their failure even to try to change the status quo “being realistic.”
These are the same human beings, of course, and the same human race that boasts so often of its “free will” and of its “power to choose”—of its power to choose right and wrong for itself, or of its power to choose its own God. For all of this claimed human power of choosing, however, it is remarkable how often the vast majority of the human race chooses to do nothing at all about a status quo that it knows, beyond any reasonable doubt, to be evil.
The words with which we began, from the Prophet Isaiah, were first written in regards to one such evil status quo. The Israelites, divided into their two kingdoms, although they were the Chosen People of God, were not living a godly life. Moral and political corruption were so common, in fact, that anyone who dared to identify the corruption of the People of God as corruption, or even more heroically who attempted to resist and to reform that corruption, made himself an outcast and invited violence against himself for troubling the status quo.
Thus, Isaiah writes, “He that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey.” And we ought not to think that Isaiah means simply “a prey of those who rule the status quo.” He means, as well, that those who seek to depart from evil have to guard themselves against their supposed “friends” and “neighbors,” against the resentment of the supposedly “good” people whose inaction preserves an evil status quo. Furthermore, it is a sad fact of fallen human nature, but necessary to face, that those same “good” people can quickly move beyond mere inaction and passivity to the ferocious protection of the status quo, as they cling to whatever small material benefits that they personally derive from it, even at the cost of their souls.
Isaiah, however, was not just writing about the events of his own time. He was writing in the Name of God for the ages, and he was writing about all those times when the status quo becomes so oppressive that we and our society and our institutions are subject to the just judgment of God that the truth is failing among us; that we have lost our moral capacity to judge right from wrong; that there is no one standing up, no matter what it costs, for the truth and the righteousness of the God who made us; and that there is no one who has risen up as our “intercessor,” as a man of faith who will force us to admit that our sin is “sin” and call us to repentance before the Lord our God.
This judgment of God is an awful and a terrible judgment, and it would be the curse of all curses if this judgment were God’s final word. But it is not. What the worshippers of the status quo, and the sustainers of the status quo, and the slaves of the status quo always forget is that there will be a reckoning. What things God judges to be evil, God removes and destroys. What persons God judges to be evil, God removes and imprisons in hell.
No judgment of God is either idle or incomplete because God himself is the enforcer of his own great judgments. Isaiah writes, “Therefore [God’s] arm brought salvation unto him; and his righteousness, it sustained him.” God himself saves whomever and whatever he chooses to save, by his own strength, called here his “arm.” God himself establishes righteousness, no matter how powerful the status quo may appear, offering mercy to the faithful and the penitent, and working perfect, absolute justice upon those who resist or deny him.
God goes to war: “For he [puts] on righteousness as a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation upon his head; and he [puts] on the garments of vengeance for clothing, and [is] clad with zeal as a cloke.” God will not be defeated, and this spiritual armor, described here by Isaiah, is absolutely essential to our understanding and prosecuting the Gospel. It is absolutely necessary to the life of every human being who is to be saved.
In the ancient world, one of the highest honors that could be given to a warrior was the invitation from his king to wear the king’s own armor into battle. This invitation declared to the entire kingdom and to the entire world that this fighter was no slave or minion, but the king’s own honorable companion—one whose will, might, and heart were as one with the will, might, and heart of the king, so that his battles were the king’s battles, and the king’s battles were his own battles.
Consider, then, this invitation made to every faithful Christian, through St. Paul, in today’s Epistle: “Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil” and “Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness; And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (Ephesians 6: 11, 14-17).
The Christian is invited to wear the armor of his king in the battle against every evil status quo, with two exceptions. The Christian is not offered “the garments of vengeance” or the “cloak of zeal,” for the right of ultimate punishment and the zeal of perfect personal righteousness belong to God alone. The faithful Christian serves God’s judgments; he does not make them. The faithful Christian lives by his zeal for God’s righteousness, and not for any human zeal or righteousness of his own.
God goes to war, and the faithful in Christ are expected to follow God into that conflict—a conflict that will end, once and for all, when the Man and Intercessor that God has raised up, his Incarnate Son Jesus Christ, returns on the Last Day to complete all the warfare of his Father. And then there will be eternal peace, but not yet. Now we are not entitled to the peace that will come in God’s own good time. Now we are entitled only to join God and his Christ in their victorious subjection and cleansing of the world.
Two more of
God’s battles, really only incidents in his one great work of salvation, come
to mind this weekend. The first is the Reformation of the
And we remember this morning another battle that will be fought this Tuesday, on the election day of our country. The calling of Christian citizens and electors is not to choose this human party over that human party. The call of the companions of God, dressed in his armor, is to judge between good and evil—to choose, as far as it is in us and as God gives us the grace, those candidates and those propositions that serve our heavenly King.
It must be said that much of the status quo of our society is evil. Too many of our fellow citizens are ruled by greed and self-interest. Too many are willing to practice the human sacrifice of the lives of children, whether in abortion or in so-called “scientific research,” for their own gain and benefit. Too many are seeking to redefine marriage into a travesty of God’s gift of holy matrimony. Too many are trying to shirk our national duty to resist terror and evil, not just for the sake of our own survival as a nation, but for the sake of the survival of civilization itself.
Whatever the outcome on Tuesday, good or bad, God will be the judge, and there will be a reckoning. God will judge each of us on the basis of how we each cast our ballots, and God will judge our nation by the candidates and laws that we choose to govern us. God expects us to resist the evil status quo, even if that resistance makes us “a prey” to the supporters of the status quo in the short-run of events. In the final judgment, however, there will only be those who stood with God and those who stood against him, so let us pray in the coming days that we will stand with our King and prove ourselves worthy of his invitation to wear his armor and to join him in the warfare of righteousness. We owe everything to God. We owe nothing to the status quo.