Saint Irenaeus, Gracefully Oppositional – Br. Curtis Almquist
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Irenaeus of Lyons, Bishop and Theologian, c.202
In the calendar of the church we remember today a second-century saint named Irenaeus. He was born and raised in in what is modern-day Turkey. He became a follower of Jesus, was educated in Rome and ordained a priest, and he settled in Lyons in what is now southern France. This was at a time when Christians were being horrifically persecuted and killed by the Roman Empire. Irenaeus’ own bishop died in prison, and the surviving Christians of Lyons elected Irenaeus as their bishop.
Irenaeus found his voice to confront two opposing forces. One of these was the Roman Empire. Emperor Caesar Augustus carried the title “Son of God.” The Roman Emperor was also named the “God from God,” the “Lord of Lords,” and the “Savior of the World.” [i] That’s the Roman Emperor. Irenaeus denounced this vehemently. Rome charged him with sedition, and he was martyred around year 202.
The other opposing force Irenaeus confronted was closer to home. There was a religious sect, opposed by Irenaeus, that saw our physical life as unredeemably evil. These opponents believed the spark of the divine life was imprisoned within our corrupt bodies and the decadent earth. These were the Gnostics, who claimed a kind of superior type of knowing.[ii] True Christians, according to the Gnostics, had to learn how to be freed up from our bodies so that our souls could fly upwards and be reabsorbed into the life of God.[iii] According to the Gnostics, our life in God is a pure, spiritual life. Irenaeus confronted the Gnostics as heretics with their completely misconstruing the witness of Jesus’ incarnation and the resurrection:
- The incarnation, that is, God had become fully human in the face, and form, and voice of Jesus. Therefore all of human life – not just our spiritual life but also our physical life – is embraced by creative love of God and transforming power of Jesus Christ.[iv] Christ Jesus disconnects us from “original sin” and reconnects us to the “original blessing” of creation, which God the Creator said is “good.”[v] We meet God in the here-and-now of life on this earth. Jesus embodies what we just prayed from Psalm 85:
“Mercy and truth have met together;
righteousness and peace have kissed each other.
Truth shall spring up from the earth,
and righteousness shall look down from heaven….”[vi]
In the incarnation, God embraces – God reembraces – the whole of human life and the whole of creation.
- The resurrection, that when we die, our souls and our bodies will be resurrected, as Jesus was resurrected. Irenaeus said that in Jesus, God became a child of earth so that the children of earth might become the children of God. Jesus tells us that God loves us just as God loves Jesus, the Son of God.[vii]
But there is a hitch. What Irenaeus taught is so inviting, at least in the ways in which we are faithful followers of Jesus. To the degree that we are loving and kind, self-sacrificing and peaceful, generous and forgiving, what Irenaeus attests is easy (or easier) to grasp: how God fully embraces us in our humanity. But the problem with Irenaeus’ teaching are the problems – our problems – where we lapse, where we fall off the wagon. Momentarily we will be invited to confess our sins. We won’t take a survey, whether a public confession of sins would be helpful for any of us. The liturgy simply plunges ahead, presuming that all of us would benefit from and are needing to make a confession of our sins – our sometimes-egregious, but usually very tedious sins where we, yet again, have missed the mark. Yet again. So where do we find our hope in this? We go back to Jesus.
In our baptism, we believe that Christ Jesus has come to live within us. And yet, the Christ we find in ourselves is not identified with what we seek to admire or even idolize in ourselves. Christ does not identify with our glittering image. To the contrary. I’ll quote here Thomas Merton: “Christ has identified himself with what we resent in ourselves, for he has taken upon himself our wretchedness and our misery, our poverty and our sins.”[viii] God meets us in our human condition where we are most in need. The New Testament verb for this is “save”: Jesus “saves” us, and that Greek word has the urgency of being “saved” by a lifeguard when someone would otherwise drown. Jesus saves us. This is the very thing Saint Paul had discovered when he boasted of his own experience that Christ’s presence and power were made perfect in Saint Paul’s experience of his own weakness.[ix]
Our invitation in life is to practice the presence of Christ. Whatever our condition, Christ understands us and loves us, always. Christ seeks us, meets us, helps us, heals us when we are otherwise lost, without one plea. Christ saves us in our life here-and-now, and shows us the way for the life-to-come. Saint Irenaeus went to his grave convinced of this. Be convinced of this.
Blessed Irenaeus, whom we remember today.
[i] John Dominic Crossan in God and Empire; HarperOne (2007); p. 28.
[ii] “Gnostic” comes from the Greek word, gnōstos: “relating to knowledge,” especially mystical or esoteric knowledge of spiritual things.
[iii] Irenaeus’ is regarded as the church’s first systematic theologian. His chief work, still in print, was a large treatise entitled The Refutation and Overthrow of Gnosis, Falsely So-Called, usually shortened to Against the Heresies.
[iv] For All the Saints, revised; The Anglican Church of Canada (2007); p. 206.
[v] The creation account in Genesis 1 includes a stanza repeated after God’s creation of each new day: “And God saw that it was good.”
[vi] Psalm 85:10-11.
[vii] John 17:25-26.
[viii] Thomas Merton in The Monastic Journey.
[ix] Saint Paul wrote, “The Lord said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.’ So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.…” 2 Corinthians 12:8-10.