Sermons From The Crypt

Sermons from the Crypt

His German name was Karl der Grosse. At age twenty-nine, he was crowned the ruler of a tiny kingdom in what is now modern-day France. Few people at his coronation thought that King Karl would one day reshape the map of Europe.

At the time of Karl’s ascension in 771, Europe was a collection of petty fiefdoms, plagued by superstition and ignorance, poverty and pestilence. In the south, Islamic armies had conquered Spain. Vikings were raiding from the north. Ruthless hordes were riding in on the winds of the east.

In this apocalyptic age, Karl rose up to rescue Christendom. Standing six foot four inches tall in a day when the average European stood five foot three, this giant of a man declared war on all those who opposed Christendom. By sheer brutality, he dragged Europe out of the Dark Ages. Over the next forty-two years he fought fifty-three wars. When he defeated an army or captured a city, he insisted that everyone convert to Christianity. Those who refused were slaughtered. After one battle 4,500 Saxons were beheaded when they refused baptism. Their wives and children were driven into a river and drowned. After that, no one dared to oppose Karl’s evangelism by intimidation.

By the cross and sword, he carved out an empire that went from the Atlantic to Russia, earning the nickname the Scourge of Christ. Then he spent his final years building monasteries and universities, trying to atone for his reign of terror. He died as one of the most powerful men in the world, outliving four wives and leaving behind five mistresses, eighteen children, and a united Europe.

Two centuries later, workmen accidentally broke into Karl’s burial crypt under the cathedral in Aachen, Germany. As they peered into the musty darkness, they saw a two-hundred-year-old skeleton encased in cobwebs and tied with rotting ropes to a throne. Bones were covered with the tatters of what was once a rich robe, now eaten away by time. A crown was perched sideways on a grinning skull.

As the workers inched closer to the macabre remains of the man who once ruled Europe, they saw a table holding a large Bible. The right index finger of the skeleton was resting on a verse in the open book. The workmen called for a priest. Holding a candle close to the Bible, he read the Latin verse of Jesus’ words: “What do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul?” (Mark 8:36).

Historians recall that on Christmas Day in the year 800, a grateful Pope Leo III gave Karl der Grosse a new name: Carolus Magnus or Charles the Great. History remembers him by a single name, Charlemagne. Each of us has been shaped by the way he transformed history. Yet as he coughed out his last words from a blood-drenched silk pillow, he ordered his body to be buried in a way that would give a message: both the great and small will appear equally naked before God to give an account for their lives down here. We might all want to remember the last sermon preached by an emperor’s skeletal remains:

The only judgment that ultimately matters is the Final Judgment.

He is coming to judge the earth. He will judge the world with justice and the nations with fairness.

Psalm 98:9