****
Our readings tonight show us various religious leaders engaging with power. In 2 Samuel, the prophet Nathan tackles King David, who has just sent Uriah the Hittite to die in battle so he can seduce Uriah’s wife. In Luke’s gospel, agents of the Chief Priests ask Jesus a tricky question, hoping that his answer will sound like treason against the Emperor, but Jesus evades them with a conundrum.
How people of faith should deal with power - especially the different demands of divine and human power - has been a central concern of Christians since the beginning of the faith. People have come up, broadly speaking, with four responses:
You can reject this world and withdraw into the desert or the cloister to prepare for heaven. You can reject the world but stay in it, calling other people to reject it and prepare for heaven.
You can stay in the world and practise your faith quietly, relying on the way it changes you gradually to change the people around you. Or you can stay in the world and work actively to change it, to make it a bit more like heaven.
All those paths are recognized in the New Testament, and all of them have been taken by people of faith. Which one we take, depends on temperament, circumstances, and whether we believe that the Kingdom of God is a world apart, or is growing in this world. But today, I want to recommend the fourth way. Because I believe that we can serve both God and Caesar - with the proviso that Caesar will often need to be persuaded that God’s interests and his actually coincide.
I believe that, is because a key part of the Christian world view is that the creative power that shapes the world, breathes its own spirit into it to give it life. The world God made is the material world. And when it isn’t perfect, God response to its imperfection is not to destroy it or any part of it, but to come and be part of it: to share our human life and speak to human hearts. I don’t think one can be Christian and not affirm that God is profoundly interested in this world and cares for it. And as Christians are called to follow the Son of God, surely we are called also to care for the world.
What’s more, we see around us every day that that the world shares all sorts of instincts and values with Christianity.
1For instance, we know as part of it, that the world is a unity. At the most basic level we are physically one: made up of the same particles and energies. Every being comes together from the worn-out materials of other beings, miraculously re-engineered and resurrected. Whether we learn it through science or faith, we are one body. What is good or bad for others is good or bad for us. When one person is hurt, the whole world is hurt, because we are the world.
We know, moreover, how much we need one another: as friends, families and communities. And when our communities fail, as they do, we need to find ways of mending them, because as human beings we don’t do well in isolation - physically, psychologically or spiritually.
And we want to do well, because we love life. Unless something is very wrong, the instinct of all living beings is to go on living. We want to live fully, creatively: to have life most abundantly.
And on the whole, we think that’s fine, because we share a deep conviction that we, as individuals and as groups, matter. Our life, our fulfilment and happiness matter. ‘Because you’re worth it’ is a pretty bad reason to buy make-up, but it’s a profound statement about the meaning of life. You are worth it. You’re worth everything.
All those instinctive values - unity, community, love, life, value - are all deeply rooted in human beings. They are also the heart of the good news of Jesus Christ. ‘God so loved the world that he gave his only son... Love one another as I have loved you... I am the vine and you are the branches... I came that so that they might have life, and have it more abundantly.’ And that means that in every person and every society there is something which resonates with the gospel - and which Christians believe the gospel can liberate and bring to fullest fruition.
Well, that sounds encouraging, but how does it help us in practice serve both God and Caesar? We all deal with all sorts of power in our everyday lives, from the government to the college, from the bank to the internet to our style icons. But I think there are some principles that apply to dealing with most kinds of power.
One is that we need to be positive, looking out for those instincts and values we share. ‘Walk cheerfully over the world,’ as George Fox said, ‘answering that of God in every one.’1 Those shared values are where we
1 Journal, 1656.
connect with worldly powers: they’re the foundation on which we can hope to build loving, life-enhancing communities and institutions.
We also have to be smart: to recognize the ways in which other people are different from us. You will know from your own experience that in any relationship, the other person is in some ways completely different from yourself. We have to learn to understand, and work around, and with, those differences to make a good relationship. The same is true when we engage with any form of power. We have to work out how it works, in order to work out how we can work with it. To be wise as serpents, as Jesus said, as well as innocent as doves.
And we have to be brave. The defining feature of power, and powerful people, is that they intend to do what they want, and they don’t intend for anyone to stop them. If you want them to do something else - something more just, perhaps, or more compassionate - you’re going to have to get in their way, and that takes courage. Think of any time you have stood up to any figure of power in your life: it can be daunting.
Nathan was brave, and positive, and clever. Faced with King David (an alpha male if ever there was one) Nathan knew that if he told him outright that he’d sinned, David would throw him out or worse. So he told him a parable - a story that started from values they shared - fairness, compassion, affection. It led David to sympathize with the poor man, and condemn the rich man. He deserves to die! David exclaimed. And then Nathan said, ‘The rich man is you.’ And let David work out the rest.
Last but not least, we have to be patient. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and it wasn’t converted in a day either. It takes an age to create heaven on earth, and none of us will do it by ourselves or in one lifetime. Sometimes, of course, we feel we aren’t even making progress. (I find it helpful at those times to recite the 37th psalm: ‘Fret not thyself because of the ungodly; neither be thou envious against the evildoers...’)
Often we feel despondently that there’s very little we can do anyway - about the government, or the markets, or the media. And that’s in a liberal democracy. What if we lived under a dictator, or a totalitarian regime, or just a much more unequal society?
But if we feel that, we are wrong. Because if one thing is certain in this world, it’s that cultures and societies change. The Europe we live in is vastly different from the one in which Jesus advised us to render unto Caesar - largely because of Jesus himself.
The one thing we can’t do as living beings, is make no difference to the world. Because we are one fabric of creation; one body. Every single thing we say and do makes some difference somewhere. Staying in bed all day makes some difference somewhere! Our only choice is what difference we make.
And so with faith, and love, and hope - and courage and wisdom and patience - people of faith have set themselves and still set themselves to tackle kings, dictators and magnates, and markets and media and style icons, and work to bring what Caesar asks of us closer to what God asks of us. Remembering that even the Roman Emperor eventually found himself rendering his Empire to God. And that Jesus himself assures us he basileia tou theou entos humon estin: the Kingdom of God is within your grasp.2
No comments:
Post a Comment