Day 230 - The Worries of Leaders and Citizens

A sermon given at First Presbyterian Church, Soddy Daisy, TN

July 28, 2013
OT reading: 1 Samuel 8:4-18; 12:19-25
NT reading: Romans 13:1-10

People across the political spectrum have used Romans 13:1-7 to debate the role of the State and church and further their arguments.  The heat of the arguments obscure the passage, so we need approach it with much care and study. We have to be mindful of what Paul says about righteousness elsewhere in Romans, because he is making an argument.  We have to ask how the historical context shaped Paul’s writing. On the other hand if we believe the Letter to Romans is Scripture, then its message must speak us today. While Paul’s Jewish heritage may have driven his response in this passage and submission to the state, his basic message about the righteousness of Christ being connects the passage to today’s world. Our challenge is to be sure we understand the message.

Paul was a Jew. In fact, he called himself a Hebrew’s Hebrew. He was zealous in his pursuit of righteousness as a Jew and Christian. Over the years after he responded to the call of Jesus, Paul honed his understanding of righteousness as the vertical and horizontal righteousness we described last week. It is vertical is the sense that righteousness comes from God. Righteousness is Jesus Christ. Jesus’ righteousness is embodied in the Beatitudes, which Paul stated in his way (Romans 12:14-21). It is horizontal in the sense that we are called to walk in the world with the new clothes of Christ’s righteousness. You can remember this righteousness by the symbol of the cross.

How does loyalty to God’s righteousness bear on this passage? Jesus and Paul put loyalty to Christ’s righteousness as the primary duty of a Christian.  Jesus and Paul were faced with a government that proclaimed its own good news, the emperor is the god and savior who brings peace and justice to all the land he conquers.

As the epitome of radical righteousness, Jesus extols virtues such as humility, selflessness, and peacemaking in a culture that saw those as virtues of slaves.  Christ’s death on the cross represents both slavish submission to the state and the ultimate resistance to the state. His resurrection is the actual defeat of the powers of the world.  Is Jesus advocating non-violent resistance to death and Paul submission?

Last Sunday in our sermon, we heard how Paul embraced that righteousness, so I think it is not possible he would advocate backing away from it. In fact, we believe he died in Rome refusing to abandon his Christianity or defer it to Nero. 

Let’s dig a little deeper into this historical situation of Paul. Both Paul and Jesus knew this rule of Rome was a heretical challenge to the very faith of God that Jesus Christ represents but at the same time it is a government instituted by God if we recall our passage in 1 Samuel.

At the time of Paul’s letter, Rome was taxing the people severely. The Greek worlds do strongly point towards compliance with taxation. Rome also was dealing with the insurrection of Jewish zealots in Jerusalem. Common sense would demand that Paul advise discretion. Don’t provoke the authorities or your fragile congregations may be crushed.  There are other similar passages in Paul’s letters where he offers advice that seems to suggest currying favor with the authorities when there was disagreement and controversy within the church that created a public embarrassment. Perhaps Paul offered this advice to submit to the state because he feared from the survival of his small Christian communities?

Or was he responding to his Jewish history? In that early history, the Hebrews became dissatisfied with God and asked Samuel to obtain a king for them.  God gave Israel the king they asked for along with the warning that the king would place unbearable burden on them. The king afer all was a man not God. Every man will rule with all the weaknesses and shortcoming the people have them selves and fail the test of righteousness. In a sense, we could say the Hebrews exchange for their liberty for the security of a king who would protect them. They were willing to have a king to fight their battles, regardless that the king would take their best land; tax the labor of their hands at 10% and take their daughters as concubines.

There is a clear sense in 1 Samuel that the gift of kingship was an irreversible gift by God. 1 Sam 8:9: ⁹Now then, listen to their voice; only—you shall solemnly warn them, and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them,” and 12:25, “But if you still do wickedly, you shall be swept away, both you and your king.”

A person might argue, “Wait a minute, Paul was a Jew and he was talking to a Roman Jewish Christian congregation in Rome. These words about kings pertain to the Hebrews. We don’t have to honor the authority of a king.”  We are gentiles. For that matter, the Jewish zealot might use the same argument, “we are Hebrews, we honor God not Rome. Rome is a foreign invader, not our Hebrew King.”  The zealots we felt this way fought the chains of Roman rule over Jerusalem several times with disastrous consequences of wide spread slaughter and destruction of the temple.

However, Paul was a changed man who had come to understand the Law in a profoundly different way.  There is no way I can conclude Paul would advise the congregation to do anything to dishonor the two great commands that underlay Christianity, love the Lord with all your heart, soul and mind; and love your neighbor as you love yourself.  Paul had to be conflicted as a Hebrew zealot because he saw no place for violent opposition to the state in Christ.  

On one hand Paul probably did recall Samuel’s words in 12:24,25, “²⁴Only fear the LORD, and serve him faithfully with all your heart; for consider what great things he has done for you. ²⁵But if you still do wickedly, you shall be swept away, both you and your king,” and his zealous proclamation, “Jesus is Lord.”

Is he thinking submit to the rule of Rome, peacefully if possible, but hold onto righteousness even if the state does not ? Does he understand that acquiescence to the rule of Rome presented only a challenge to the body and pocketbook, as long as one was willing to hold onto righteousness and give to God what belonged to God? Was it because he understood that righteousness is self-giving, and physical well-being is self-serving, not necessarily the same thing.  Jesus said in Matt 10: 24-28, “A disciple is not above the teacher, nor a slave above the master; ²⁵it is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher, and the slave like the master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household! ²⁶ “So have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. ²⁷What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops.  ²⁸Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”

This brings us to the modern predicament. Passages such as Matthew 10 and last week’s reading in Romans 12 cannot help but create anxiety when we read Romans 13:1-7. Again, I ask, what is Paul saying to us today? What is the message of this text to our modern ears?

In 1500, both John Calvin and Martin Luther asked that question.  In a revolt against Catholicism, they looked to the state to protect not Christianity, but Calvinism and Lutheranism. Calvin used the Geneva city government to hunt down church members that he felt violated church law and threw them in jail to live on bread and water. A person could be thrown in jail for simply not being able to recite the subject of last week’s sermon.  Martin Luther thought the peasants who were rebelling against the slavery of the feudal lords were violating God’s law. He advocated violently suppressing the uprisings against the feudal system.

Almost 300 years later the founders of our country understood almost the opposite role of the state and personal liberty when they penned the declaration of Independence rather than continue under the rule of King George and the various denominations, saying “that each person is entitled to a separate and equal station by the law of nature’s God, even though governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes as experience shows mankind is more disposed to suffer sufferable evils than abolish the forms that cause them.”

The beauty of the present is we can learn from the past. For example, I can understand John Calvin’s position, though I do not agree with it. He felt he had to use the state to protect the stability of his version of Protestant Christianity. In other city states Lutheran’s; Catholics, and Baptists did exactly the same thing. You had to be really careful about identifying your religious preference when you entered a new town, else you might find yourself in jail or worse, in a bond fire or hanged. The authors of the Declaration of Independence felt that liberty and tolerance may be better for a person than the opposite.

I can understand how people 200-500 years ago could read passages about slaves obeying their masters, reading Jewish texts about the prohibition of intermarriage and suffering their own fear of the uncertainty of change and threat to their existence to conclude slavery was ok and slaves ought to be obedient. I can see how the logic carried them to oppose interracial marriage. In spite of understaning it, I  cannot agree with any of those positions to day, it because it conflicts with neighborly love. We’ve paid the price through the pain of wars and lynchings to find out loving your neighbor is a far better thing.

Conflicting scripture stares us in the face, the Lord in 1 Samuel 12:25, “But if you still do wickedly, you shall be swept away, both you and your king,” and then Paul’s words in Romans 13:9-10, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” ¹⁰Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law, and in 12:18-19, If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” For Paul, the key was understanding that the entry of Jesus Christ into the world began a new world order in which Jesus is Lord. Civil authority is to be recognized and obeyed now only in so far as righteousness is not corrupted. But disobedience must conform to neighborly love.

This is all theoretical Christianity because we do not live under a repressive government such as the Roman Empire. We live in a time and have a form of government that is making an old truth is becoming painfully obvious, obedience to God cannot take place outside the social and governmental order. To love our neighbor requires we respond with righteousness and to governmental policy and laws.  What makes it so painful is there are no hard and fast answers for exactly what we should do in specific cases.  In the truth of it, the absence of hard and fast answers and the necessity to depend on faithful personal discernment of righteous action is probably the source of the anxiety for most of us. We worry, am I doing the right thing? Is my house member, Senator, Governor, or President doing the right thing? If not, what should I do?

It is not easy in a government based on individual liberty as ours is, because liberty means different things to different people.  What some see as liberty others see as sinful acts. We just do not all agree which is which. I think our commitment to liberty and freedom has an irony to it. The United States is based on a profoundly noble defense of liberty of the individual. It is a defense that allowed the early settlers to worship as they desired but allowed also some states to deny liberty to some, for example Catholics were denied voting rights in some states in the early Republic, not to mention slavery.

Law and constitutional amendment have enforced more equality and liberty, to the point it exceeds what many think is proper. It has put pressure on the Christian church and conflict in our youth. Unlike the time of Calvin and Luther, we cannot constitutionally rely on the state to defend and enforce all our religious beliefs aggressively if we want a free country; but without righteousness we are lost spiritually.  Liberty and equality, the bedrock of America, may ultimately not be the best defender of faith.

We ought to be anxious whether my government is doing the righteous thing and if it can do it within the law, we should vote that it does.  But when righteous action is not within the reach of a government that protects everyone’s liberty, the obligation falls on us. But we have to admit it, it always has. Samuel’s warning is valid for a righteous Christian. An increasingly secular society and state makes being righteously. Perhaps in a perverse way it is good for the government to increase the protection of individual liberty. Samuel told the Hebrews, “OK you have a king now, but righteousness still rests on your shoulders. Forget that and both you and the king shall fall.) (I am paraphrasing) Paul says “Jesus is Lord.” 

The Christian church now more than ever before, must stand on the righteousness of Christ reflected in its members.  We cannot depend on, or expect the State to defend our faith because the state is a fallible human institution.  We cannot expect the state to defend our faith at the expense of liberty of other citizens.

We must embrace that horizontal part of righteousness armed with Paul’s charge, “⁸Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. ⁹The commandments, , are summed up in this word, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” ¹⁰Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law. 

If we do otherwise, our children may call us hypocrites.