Henry V
There is a scene in “The King,” the most recent film version of the story of King Henry V, that takes place in the English camp on the night before the Battle of Agincourt. The young King Henry, who’d been reluctant to lead his men into battle, confides in his friend Falstaff not only that he is apprehensive about the operation ahead of them, but that he has come to doubt the wisdom of bringing the battle to France in the first place.
“Here we are on the eve of this fight,” says King Henry, “and I am scared to wonder, to tell it true, why we are here.”
Falstaff gives him a direct response: “You best discover the answer for that,” he says. “The men out there deserve it. They’ve given their lives to you. I cannot say what forces have conspired to bring you here, but these men need you, just as you need them. These men deserve your confidence. And if you cannot give them that, at least then tell them a magnificent lie.”*
The speech that the king eventually delivers to his men, though rousing, is no match for the version that Shakespeare supplied for the lips of Henry V in his version of the story. You remember how that one goes:
“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.”**
I don’t often think of Shakespeare as an advocate of toxic masculinity, but there it is.
The question we might ask, if we could keep Kenneth Branagh quiet for a moment, is whether or not this great speech is anything more than a magnificent lie, justifying one more war.
It’s painful for me to recognize that under the category of “magnificent lies,” many people these days would include “religion” far above “war” on any list. And many people might also put “God” at the top of the list of magnificent lies. To them my sermons are more replete with lies than any speech that glorifies battle.
Part of the problem can be placed at the feet of the prophet Isaiah, who pops up in December as surely as cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. His prophecies horn in on our preparations for Christmas with such insistence that we could be forgiven for imagining that John the Baptist was actually the first tenor soloist who ever sang “Ev’ry valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill made low.” Similarly, we might suppose that the prophet himself intended a continuo harpsichord and cello to accompany his words: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Emmanuel.”
Does it matter much that few people put much stock in these prophecies anymore, and many find them poetic at best, and delusional at worst? Is it only the good will of this season that prevents more people from concluding that such prophecies are little more than the fabric of a magnificent lie? And Advent begins today with another doosie: “they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”
Even Jesus could be assumed to struggle with this one, since we hear him today telling his followers to “be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.” “Like a thief in the night.” These are circumstances that might call more for swords and spears than for plowshares and pruning hooks.
If we want to know why the biblical message has become so unpopular we need only to read the Bible itself, and see for ourselves how dubious its words can seem to the world today. How can anyone who reads the papers or watches the news believe that we or anyone else will ever beat our swords into plowshares, and our spears into pruning hooks, that nations will not lift up sword against nation, and that anyone anywhere might cease to learn war anymore? Scholars tell us that this particular oracle of peace, that we encounter in Isaiah and which was repeated by Micah, probably pre-dates either of those two prophets, and so has been around for a long, long time. But the longer history unfolds with far more swords and spears than there are plowshares and pruning hooks, the harder it becomes to take the prophecy seriously.
Why, then, does this text persist in our corporate memory, promising, as it does, something that seems so woefully beyond hoping for, considering the world we live in? Has the moment at last arrived, when we should admit that this promise of peace must all be part of some magnificent lie?
In the film, “The King,” as in history, Henry V ends up marrying Catherine of Valois, the daughter of the French king that England had just defeated. And in the film, it is Catherine who shows Henry how right he was to doubt the wisdom of bringing the battle to France. She says to him, “It would seem that you have no explanation for what you have done. You have shed the blood of so many Christian souls, and yet, before me now, all I see is a young, and vain, and foolish man so easily riled. So easily beguiled.”
The war with France, she shows him, was a magnificent lie of his own telling, but Henry couldn’t see that until it was too late. The problem for the king was that no one would speak to him “clear and true,” except his friend Falstaff, who now is dead, killed in the very field of Henry’s apprehension. No one is left to tell the king the truth. But Catherine does.
Here we are at the outset of Advent, the beginning of the new church year, our preparation for the coming of our king, and the vantage point from which we gaze for a while into the distant future of the end of time when all of God’s purposes shall be fulfilled. I cannot say what forces have conspired to bring you here, but you deserve to know, when you come to listen once more to the promise that swords will be beaten in to plowshares, and spears into pruning hooks; you deserve to know if it’s all a magnificent lie: the virgin, the manger, the miracles, the Man, the Cross, the Tomb, the Resurrection, the promise of peace, and the New Jerusalem. And, of course, we few, we happy few, we band of brothers and sisters, who are here to be roused for the cause, whatever that cause may be. Someone must speak clear and true, so I will try my best.
There is a vision of peace so ancient and so true, and so compelling in its simplicity that it has migrated from prophet to prophet, and from age to age, so that the hope it declares might be forever undimmed. Though warfare long ago left its swords and spears behind, and though the plowshares and pruning hooks of the promise would be nearly unrecognizable to most of us, the unlikelihood of the esoteric and outdated imagery renders the oracle diminished not at all.
When the holy prophecy of peace becomes a hope so foreign, so distant, so remote, and so strange that it might seem to have been part of a magnificent lie all along, then what we are encountering is the work of a great Deceiver. And when war sounds nobler than peace, its promises more appealing and attractive than the promises of peace, that is the work of the Deceiver being perfected to a high art.
Of course, in many places throughout the world, the Deceiver has infiltrated the church. And it is a sad irony of our time that the law-enforcers have had to call to account those who were meant to be the truth-tellers. You begin to see the fruit of the covert operations of the Deceiver, who thrives in the shadows and deepens the darkness of those shadows just when light is needed most.
And should our eyes simply adjust to the darkness? For this is the proposition of the Deceiver, as it is the proposition of war. Get used to it, we are told, for this is the way things are, and only fools and the tragically naïve resist the good advice to simply let your eyes adjust to the darkness. But somewhere in the deeper, holier darkness of our memories, we can remember the sound of metal on metal: something being worked on an anvil: a blade! But the blade is not being made straight, smooth and sharp, it is being twisted and bent, blow by blow, re-shaped into a better tool that contributes to the sustaining of life rather than the taking of it.
Have you come to Advent Sunday apprehensive about what lies ahead, and doubtful of the wisdom of being here in church at all? Here on the cusp of whatever is ahead of us, are we scared to wonder, to tell it true, why we are here?
We are here to haul out the anvil on which the blades of swords are worked into plowshares, and on which the points of spears are hammered into pruning hooks. We are here to guard the flame that lights that work, and that sheds light on all the magnificent lies that we have told each other to goad one another into a long history of constant warfare, conflict, and antipathy. We are here to sing of peace, precisely when peace has become so elusive that working for it may seem like a fool’s errand. We are here because there is a Prince of Peace who went alone to the battle, and fought it mostly in silence, unarmed except for the power of God, which is to say the power of Love. That Prince we have made our King, because Love never lies to us - not when Love speaks clear and true.
And when Love speaks clear and true she does not call us to arms, for her song is only ever of peace, and Love speaks clear and true when no one else will. Love and Peace do not know how to lie, but the very dialect of war is falsehoods. And the Day will come when Love at last overcomes all the work of the Deceiver, and she will look down on him and address him, clear and true, as only love can:
“It would seem that you have no explanation for what you have done. You have shed the blood of so many souls, and yet, before me now, all I see is a sad, and vain, and foolish devil, so easily riled, so easily beguiled, but nothing more than a magnificent lie, spreading more lies wherever you go.
“But now the day has come that they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”
Among all the magnificent lies that swirl around us, this truth is in danger of becoming a secret, as though it must wait for another day, another time to be revealed. But although we know not the hour of his coming, we must never let this truth remain a secret - that his reign of peace will be established; that swords can be beaten into plowshares, and spears into pruning hooks; that nation need not lift up sword against nation, and we need not learn war any more! Speak it clear and true! For the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour with Love and Peace, and we, we must be ready!
Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
Advent Sunday, 2019
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street
*quotations are from “The King” 2019, written by David Michôd and Joel Edgerton
** except this one which is from “Henry V”, Act IV, scene iii, by William Shakespeare