Today’s scripture: Isaiah 10: 1-4 (NRSV) (The Message) (KJV) What might God be saying to me?
My thoughts (John Seksay):
“What will you do in the day of punishment,
In the calamity that will come from far away?”
I just finished reading a fascinating book entitled 1453. It is historic nonfiction, recounting the final siege and conquest of Constantinople by the Ottomans. While presenting the facts, it is written in a manner that draws the reader in with well-fleshed-out prose revealing the factors that contributed to the ultimate fall.
The Emperor Constantine rededicated the city in 330 A.D. as the political center of the Eastern Roman Empire and a spiritual hub for the Christian faith. The reach of its armies was only exceeded by the reach of its traveling preachers and busy traders, and it all made Constantinople the largest and wealthiest city of its day, even eclipsing Rome in grandeur. As history records, a very telling military assault on the seat of the Eastern Roman Empire came in 669 A.D. by the followers of a new religion recently sprung from the deserts of Saudi Arabia. Despite the enthusiasm of the new believers in Islam, the power and influence of Constantinople didn’t show serious decline until after 1000 A.D. Repeated sieges over the centuries failed again and again. It took 784 years (almost 8 centuries!) for the Islamic armies of the Orient to finally bring down the Eastern seat of Christianity. What forces could bring such a mighty civilization down?
Our beliefs guide our actions — sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. One corrupting behavior in the Christian West caused two basic changes in the order of the world — just one attitude, just two changes — and Constantinople became Istanbul.
Despite the attempts of the bishops and emperors of the empire, the body of the faithful across Christian Europe lacked spiritual unity and fell into discord and sectarianism. Small differences in religious practice became ever larger issues with time, and political authority followed suit, fragmenting and polarizing into very insular regional powers driven by personal self-interest. This attitude isolated Constantinople spiritually with the Great Schism of 1054, with the Roman West growing ever more hostile to the Byzantine East. By the 4th “Holy Crusade” in 1204, this alienation, headed by the powerful city-state of Venice and with the declared intent to free the Holy Land from the hand of the heathen, found its culmination in the assault and sacking of Constantinople by its alleged spiritual brethren from the West. Even the Haiga Sophia, the most splendid church of Christendom in its time, was stripped and looted like a warehouse. The bastion of the Christian West was reduced to a shell of its former power by its own supposedly historical allies. Christianity had lost any sense of unified brotherhood among its leadership.
This widespread behavior by the leadership fed the second telling change. The Ottoman army that did bring down the city contained large numbers of Christian soldiers and workers, all either subjects of the Ottoman emperor Mehmet or levies due him by treaties with nervous Christian neighbors. A Christian in the Ottoman Empire was a lesser citizen who paid a higher rate of taxes. But, on the whole, he found himself less oppressed and exploited by a Muslim ruler than a Christian one. He had more freedom to practice his Christian beliefs as he wished with no significant official interference. Corrupt leadership in the Christian West left the faithful obligated, and not that unwilling, to serve what seemed the lesser evil. By 1453, Constantine’s empire had died from within.
When I read this passage in Isaiah, I could not help but see these forces at work in the biblical texts as well. Sometimes I wonder why nations keep repeating the same mistakes. The corrupting force that brought down this empire was an ongoing miscarriage of justice, rooted in the spiritual blindness of a self-serving leadership. What a profound message for us in a year full of politics!
Thought for the day: Lord, do my beliefs and actions promote unity or serve discord? Direct my steps toward harmony!
We encourage you to include a time of prayer with this reading. If you need a place to get started, consider the suggestions on the How to Pray page.