Empire - Pentecost 21 OS 29

Empire

Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost (OS 29): Isaiah 45.1-7; Psalm 96.1-9; 1 Thessalonians 1.1-10; Matthew 22.15-22

When Persian troops conquered the territories of Babylon in the sixth century, they were led by a king named Cyrus. Cyrus is remembered with great esteem in the Hebrew Scriptures, because he had a policy of permitting exiles to return to their homeland and rebuild their ancestral worship; his philosophy was something like: Let each people be as they will, so long as they pay tribute to us, and pledge loyalty. While this was strategically savvy as a way to win loyalty, he was known to have genuine respect for the traditions of many nations. He wanted to command this diverse array of cultures and peoples.

This was a watershed moment for Judeans because it meant they could return to Jerusalem and other tribal lands, and construct a second temple to replace the first, and they could live out the Torah without much interference from their overlord. This seems only to have happened in drips and drabs at first, but it happened. For this reason, when we step into the third ‘portion’ of the Book of Isaiah, one hears the voice of God calling Cyrus his ‘chosen instrument’. The God of Israel has ‘called’ and ‘armed’ Cyrus, though Cyrus does not know him.

This in Isaiah is a profound development of the doctrine of the singular God of revelation. The same benevolent God who revealed himself to Israel is at work in an empire and a person who is either Zoroastrian or religiously noncommittal. Still God proclaims:

I call you by your name. […] So that they [that is, other nations] may know, from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is no one besides me…

The God of Revelation is the God of all. Even when Cyrus doesn’t know him, even apart from Cyrus’s intentions or ambitions, God is accomplishing through him something that really matters for the life of the world. (God is acting to reveal himself.) Were we to extrapolate, we might say: although God once chose to reveal himself explicitly through a single nation, there is Divine Purpose implicit in the unfolding history of every one. In the case of Persia, we might note, the repatriation of Israel under Cyrus did create the conditions for the Messiah later to be born, die, and open up the gates of God’s kingdom to all peoples. It was a step on the road to a truer redemption in Christ than the law or the land could ever bring.

By the time of Christ, the Roman had replaced the Persian Empire. To many of his contemporaries, the fact of Roman occupation was an intolerable state of affairs. When Christ was asked if one should pay tribute to Caesar, he was being set up. Were he to say no, the Herodians would denounce him as a rebel. But the implied criticism, if he said yes, was that acknowledging the Sovereignty of Caesar would detract from that of the one true God, or complying with the occupation would betray the claim of his people to sovereignty in the promised land. The response Christ offers is the famous: Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.

On one level, it is a very clear answer. Since he is holding a Roman coin and it bears the image of Caesar, he is advising them to pay the tribute: it is minted by Caesar, so give Caesar his things.

On another level, his words make plain the absurdity of implying the sovereignty of Caesar could possibly be in rivalry with that of God. For what comparison could there possibly be between the things of Caesar and those of God?

After all, who could say what has become of the coin Christ held in his hands that day? If the face of Caesar has yet to wear off it, it has certainly ceased to be of any use to him. Whereas the one thing we can say with assurance is that whatever has become of that little piece of metal, it still belongs to God. It belongs indelibly to the God who conceived it and sustains it each moment of its existence. Nothing in the world will be in Caesar’s hands for long, but it will always be in God’s. By taking us to this more profound level, the thought of what belongs to God, he is inviting us to recognise the Sovereignty of God, as a Sovereignty that transcends every human struggle for power.

It would be easier if our Lord gave a straight answer. It would be easier if he instructed us to thank God for the Empire or condemn it out of hand. But he doesn’t. The Pharisees were right when they said Christ shows deference to no one. In the Gospel records as a whole, our Lord shows if anything a polite indifference to the Emperor. Yet it is also the case that his Church came into being by apostles walking on roads that imperial armies constructed, his resurrection was proclaimed in the words of common street Greek that all conquered nations had learnt. St Paul, Sylvanus and Timothy, in the Epistle, celebrate that The Faith of a little church in Thessalonia is known in Macedonia and Achaia and every place where faith in God has become known. The existence of the Roman Empire made possible the emergence of this profoundly rich international communion that has long outlived the Empire itself.

That perspective can take the edge of our own clamouring after or despairing of power in the world. Because God is and will be always emerging from within it, speaking to us through the facts of our own being and history. At times creating darkness, withdrawing in judgement, at times drawing near with formative power. All ways a word from the same God in the unfolding. All ways remoulding us and our history toward his good and redemptive purposes. This, even, perhaps especially in the moments when he seems most absent. For in God’s hands, even the crucifixion of Jesus can be used to open the floodgates of mercy. There and then, in the moment of his utmost rejection, he cracks the stone of the human heart, and floods it with his Light.

So it seems to me the point of Christ’s teaching has never been to work against an Empire, or to work for it, but to work around it and even through it to draw all people into a loving communion with God. Into a Communion where we find faith that no moment in the life of the world is fruitless, because in each one space is being created for the Face of God to emerge. Consider any given nation or any epoch of history, and what the Christian is searching for is a shadow of the face of Jesus Christ. In each one our Lord and his redemption are already near. It is up to us to draw nearer to him, so that we ourselves might become those sacred shadows, and help the world around us to see him as well.

Mthr Kathryn Bellhouse