Sermon: St. Cyril of Alexandria - 2021

27 June 2021

Text: Luke 12:8-12 (2 Sam 7:17-29, Eph 6:10-17)

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

You can often tell a lot about a man by his enemies.  And St. Cyril had a few. 

He lived at a time of great controversy in the church – in the fifth century.  Cyril defended the belief that Jesus is God in the flesh, that when He walked the streets of Jerusalem, God was walking the streets of Jerusalem.  Cyril was very vocal about his belief that Jesus is both God and man – something that we take for granted today.

But in Cyril’s day, the powerful Patriarch of Constantinople was named Nestorius.  And Bishop Nestorius taught some strange ideas about Jesus.  He taught that Jesus essentially had a split personality: one human and one divine.  Nestorius had a lot of followers and was causing a lot of division in the church.  Even the Roman Emperor sided with Nestorius, and called Cyril, the Bishop of Alexandria in Egypt, a “monster.”

So Cyril had some very powerful enemies. 

But the bottom line is that Cyril was unafraid.  He did not back down.  He confessed Christ heroically, and he took up his pen and he wrote.  Cyril eventually became known as a “doctor of the church,” and Nestorius was eventually condemned as a heretic.

Some people might look at this history and say, “Who cares?”  Why does this matter?”  Well, dear friends, it matters because if Jesus is not completely God and completely man, then He could not have lived a perfect life, He could not have given His divine righteousness to us, He could not have truly died on the cross as the atoning sacrifice for our sins.  Poor Nestorius did not see our Lord as the Savior who rescues us by grace, but rather as a mere example to follow.

And yes, Jesus is our example.  Yes, we are to strive to be Christ-like.  But what happens when we fall short as we inevitably do?  Nestorius could not preach the Gospel like Cyril.  For Cyril understood that Jesus is the eternal God, and His divinity has the power to save us.

Yes, it really matters who Jesus is.

He is a man, who was capable of dying (to be our sacrifice), and He is God, who is perfect, who has the power to save us (to be our Lord).  And this mystery is what makes Christianity different than any religion in the world, and Jesus different than any great teacher.  For because He is who He is, He is a God who has a mother; He is a God who dies; He is a man who is perfect; He is a man who rises from death.  He is God and He is man, but one God-Man who not only created the world, but took on flesh in the world.  This is the Christ of the Scriptures, the Christ that St. Cyril not only taught and preached and wrote about, but the Christ in whom Cyril placed His trust for salvation!

St. Cyril was unafraid to confess the truth, even to great power – because he was familiar with what Jesus taught us yet again in our Gospel: “Everyone who acknowledges Me before men, the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of God, but the one who denies Me before men will be denied before the angels of God.”

St. Cyril confessed Christ, the Son of Man, and would not deny Him – not out of fear, not because of logic and reason, and not because his life would have been a lot easier to just go along to get along.  St. Cyril took his stand, and stood his ground – holding firm to the Holy Scriptures.  And it didn’t matter who was on the other side, not even the most powerful bishop Nestorius, not the emperor himself.  Nothing moved the good doctor and bishop from his steadfast confession of Jesus.

For he knew well the words of our Lord: “And when they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities, do not be anxious about how you should defend yourself or what you should say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.”

St. Cyril confessed our God, the only true God, the Holy Trinity, confessing like King David, “For there is none like You, and there is no God bedsides You.”  And Cyril took up “the whole armor of God,” knowing that he would have to fight both the leaders of the church and the leaders of the state. 

St. Cyril is an example to us today, dear friends.  For today, confessing Jesus might get you in trouble with some powerful people: government officials, bosses, and in some heretical churches, confessing rightly about Jesus will get you thrown out.  But don’t worry about what you will say when the time comes, dear friends.  Get to know Jesus – the real Jesus, the Jesus of the Scriptures, the Jesus that was confessed and taught by St. Cyril and by all of the faithful saints and doctors of the church across the span of history. 

And though it might well be the path of least resistance to confess a false Christ, one who never confronts sin, one who is not considered to be God in the flesh, a Jesus who is acceptable to Muslims and Jews and Atheists, a false Christ confessed by  Marxist university professors and haughty pro-abortion politicians who now dare pastors not to commune them, a Jesus that contradicts the Father, a Christ who promotes niceness above all things.  But this is not the true Christ.  This is not the Christ of the Bible, the Savior of the world, the Lord of the Church, the Jesus of actual history.

Let us be bold and steadfast in our confession of the true Christ, come what may, whether people believe us or not, whether those in power threaten us or not.  For at the end of the day, the one thing in this life that matters more than anything is your confession of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

And indeed, making the good confession will gain you more than a few enemies, but it will also gain you eternity for the sake of Him who is both God and man – even Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.