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My daily Bible reading plan this morning began with this simple question:

How do you faithfully follow Jesus in a divided world?

(See the YouVersion plan called Fighting for Unity in a Divided World)

Judging by my social media feed, this question is poignantly apropos. It’s not just “people in the world” I see at odds with each other. I see many people posting memes under the banner of Christ, getting their lobbing verbal grenade’s at “the people in the world” and fellow Christians, alike.

I confess I have difficulty not being blunt, and for that I ask for your grace when I say that the spectacle saddens me. Humans have always lived in a world dominated by rising and falling empires, but Jesus came preaching a kingdom not of this world. Almost 2000 years after Jesus died and rose again to emphasize the Good News he proclaimed, we still fly our empire banners alongside Christ.

It wasn’t always like that, though. For almost three centuries after Jesus died on the cross at the hands of the Roman Empire, his followers proclaimed the Gospel without any influence or power in the world. His followers were mocked, derided, and marginalized, and they suffered cycles of persecution culminating in the Great Persecution.

Beginning in 303, Emperor Diocletian, who established a tetrarchy with Maximian, Galerius, and Constantius (the father of Constantine), issued a series of edicts demanding that Christians comply with traditional (pagan) religious practices. (See Wikipedia) Diocletian presaged the Great Persecution when he took power in 284, purging the army of Christians and surrounding himself with public opponents to Christianity. He led an “activist government” and promoted himself as “restorer of past Roman glory”. (Ibid.) (Making Rome great again?)

Diocletian finally ordered “a general persecution” on February 23, 303. The reign of persecution was short-lived (unless you endured it, I suppose). Constantius, the father of Constantine, restored legal equality for Christians in Gaul in 306, and Maxentius usurped Maximian’s control in Italy and North Africa in the same year with a promise of religious toleration. When Licinius ousted Maximinius in 313, the persecution was formally ended.

The political ebbs and tides of the time (with implications for the church) are reminiscent of our political shifts from right to left to right in recent years. Perhaps, little has changed in that way, yet the change that followed in 313 was unprecedented, and this change set the course of the Church on a path it had never before traversed.

Eusebius, the Christian historian, wrote as a contemporary of Constantine with glowing approval of the events that changed the course of Christianity forever. Eusebius is the person who preserved the details of Constantine’s personal story of conversion to Christianity.

As the story was told by Constantine, he had a vision in 312 shortly before an imminent battle with a challenger to the throne of the Roman Empire, Maxentius, whose army outnumbered Constantine’s. Constantine saw in the sky a giant cross with the inscription, “In this sign conquer!” The vision was followed by a dream that evening in which Jesus purportedly came to him and told him to conquer in his name. Thereafter, Constantine established the cross as the standard for his army and the banner under which the Roman armies marched to battle and conquered in the name of Christ, the lamb of God who died that we might live.

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In the podcast (titled Post Christian) featuring the Australian journalist, Greg Sheridan. John Dickson commented on the approval by Eusebius of Constantine’s use of the cross as a symbol of conquering on behalf of the Roman Empire this way:

“A people used to mockery and social exclusion – and worse – were now invited into the very center of power. And perhaps most bizarrely, the Christian sign of humble self-sacrifice – a cross – was now the formal path – the very symbol – of the Roman war machine. It is so hard to get my head around when I consider what Jesus said about the cross – his cross – and its social implications.”

Juxtaposed to the image of Roman armies conquering under the sign of the cross in the name of Jesus, Dickson recalled the story of James and John, the sons of Zebedee, who asked Jesus asking to seat them on the right and the left of Jesus when Jesus rose to power. These brothers, like many First Century Jews, expected a conquering Messiah. They interpreted the prophets to predict a Jewish Messiah “who would lift Israel above Rome and crush the enemies of God.”

Jesus gave them a response they didn’t expect and likely didn’t understand at the time:

“You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said. “Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?”

Mark 10:38

The other disciples became indignant with James and John thinking, perhaps, they they deserved glory and recognition also. They, like many before and after them, may have viewed religion as a path to power and influence, and they may have been annoyed at the audacity of James and John out of jealousy. At this, Jesus brought them together and set them straight.

“You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Mark 10:41-45

The message and instructions from Jesus were honored and followed by the early church, but it took his death on the cross for it to sink in, and Jesus spent 40 days after his resurrection instructing them further. In the generation after Jesus, Paul summed up the attitude that followers of Christ should have this way:

“In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
    did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
    by taking the very nature of a servant,
    being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
    he humbled himself
    by becoming obedient to death—
        even death on a cross!”

Phiilppians 2:5-8

Paul says this of how followers of Christ should relate to one another. I admit, that some temptation exists to discount this attitude when relating to people in the world, but Jesus urges us to have a similar attitude in the way we relate to people in the world:

• “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.” (Luke 6:27-28)
• “[L]ove your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back.” (Luke 6:35)
• The parable of the Good Samaritan illustrates how we should love people we might tend to dislike. (Luke 10:25-37)
• The parable of the sheep and the goats illustrates how we should care for the least of people. (Matthew 25:31-46)
• “[G]o and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit….” (Matthew 28-19-20)
• “[Y]ou will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:8)

It is no trope to say that “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16) We should take just as seriously that these words of Jesus:

“God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”

John 3:17

Thus, we can surely say in parallel to Paul’s admonition to the Philippians in the way should relate to each other, that we should have the same attitude:

In your relationships with [the world], have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
    did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
    by taking the very nature of a servant,
    being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
    he humbled himself
    by becoming obedient to death—
        even death on a cross!
[He did this because he so loved the world that He gave himself up as a ransom for anyone who would believe in him and be saved.]

Philippians 2:5-8 paraphrased by me

The message of the cross is not the message of a conquering Christ – at least not in the nature of the kingdoms of this world. Jesus conquered by giving himself up on the cross. (Colossians 2:15) Jesus battled not against flesh and blood, but “against the powers of this world’s darkness, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms”. (Ephesians 6:12) Jesus conquers not like a Lion, but like a Lamb, and his kingdom is (currently) otherworldly.

When we fly the banner of an empire of this world together with the banner of the cross, we undermine the example Jesus gave us and his direction to us to take up our own crosses and follow him. Jesus gave us instruction in no uncertain terms to be like Him, to love each other and the world, and to make disciples of the nations.

Again, the Sons of Thunder (James and John) provide another us an example of how we should act by expressing the sentiment most people would have. When Jesus sent them out ahead of him to Samaria, the brothers came back with negative reports. They Samaritans did not welcome them. So, they asked Jesus, “Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?” And, Jesus rebuked them! (Luke 9:54-55)

Elsewhere, Jesus instructed his followers simply to “shake the dust off their feet” and move on when people do not listen. (Matthew 10:14) The reason seems pretty clear: we should love the world – and even our enemies. We should not have an oppositional and antagonistic attitude toward the world for which God became man and sacrificed himself to save.

For many centuries after Constantine, the banner of the cross flew next to the banner of the Empire. Kings like Charlemagne in the 8th and 9th Centuries and Stephen in the 11th Century continued to conquer in the name of Christ and convert people by the edge of the sword.

Christians rightfully condemn Mohammed for converting people to Islam by the edge of the sword, and we should have no qualms about leveling the same criticism against Christian leaders. I am certain Jesus would do the same, just as he rebuked James and John.

The only banner Christians should fly is the banner of the cross as we live out the instruction of Jesus to follow him as he followed the Father. Proclaiming the Gospel and making disciples of all people who believe and follow among the nations is the main thing. Our God-given and holy task is keeping the main thing that Jesus taught us the main thing.

People call the 1000 years or so from about 500 AD to about 1500 AD the Dark Ages for good reason. It isn’t wholly deserved. Many Christians lived exemplary lives following Christ as he instructed during that time, but history is written by the victors, as the saying goes, and that history speaks of great abuses in the name of Christ.

The kingdom of God, which is not of this world, advances in spite of people who undermine it in the name of Christ.

So, how do you follow Jesus in a divided world? How do you follow Jesus in a world in which the Church is also divided? You keep the main thing the main thing. You follow Jesus as he taught us to follow him. You focus on the Gospel (the Good News) to the world that God made available to anyone and everyone through Christ.

The main thing is the main thing no matter who or what empire is in power. The main thing is the main thing in China, and Iran, and Canada, and the United States. The main thing is the main thing whether Democrats or Republicans are in control.