God or Caesar

Introduction

Obviously, the topic on everyone’s mind as we wrap up October and head into November is the upcoming presidential elections. The pastoral staff and I have been preparing for the discussions and disagreements that are bound to come up, no matter who wins the presidency. In this crazy year, our pastors have had to tackle subjects that we have very little formal training for. We are not doctors or scientists but we’ve had to make decisions about how best to tackle regathering as a church in the midst of a pandemic. We are not sociologists or experts in criminal justice but we’ve had to weigh in on issues like police reform and inequality in our society. And I’ll be the first to admit that I am not a political science major and the extent of my education on this subject is the high school US government class that I took 30 years ago. But what I can share with you is what the Scriptures have to teach us about the intersection of Christianity and politics and in a time like this, that may be the most important lesson that we can learn together. With everything that is going on in our country and so much information coming in from all different sides, it’s vital that Christians understand how to navigate through these political landmines from a Biblical perspective. This is actually the primary reason why I chose the kingship of Christ as the main theme for our Fall series of messages because a proper understanding of the kingdom of God gives believers the comprehensive worldview that enables us to engage with the politics of this world. With that in mind, we are going to skip all the way over to Mark 12 for our message today.

Mark 12:13–17 ESV

And they sent to him some of the Pharisees and some of the Herodians, to trap him in his talk. And they came and said to him, “Teacher, we know that you are true and do not care about anyone’s opinion. For you are not swayed by appearances, but truly teach the way of God. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not? Should we pay them, or should we not?” But, knowing their hypocrisy, he said to them, “Why put me to the test? Bring me a denarius and let me look at it.” And they brought one. And he said to them, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?” They said to him, “Caesar’s.” Jesus said to them, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” And they marveled at him.

The assumption that many Christians make is that the Bible does not teach us much about politics and we’ll find out in the next couple of week that it actually does say quite a bit if we look a little bit deeper. There are three ideas that we need to examine if we are going to bridge the gaps that are keeping us divided even as Christians who worship one God.

We need to define what politics is

We need to define the church’s role as a political body

We need to clarify our understanding of the separation of church and state

As we go through this passage, I think it is important for us first to define the term politics and what it is that we are referring. In laymen’s terms, one political scientists defines it as “the activity through which large and permanent groups of people determine what they will collectively do, settle how they will live together, and decide their future, to whatever extent this is within their power.” In other words, political activity is primarily concerned about the governance of people so that they can form a stable working society. This is why politics and government are so closely linked together but using that broader definition, politics is also a part of every human institution. The major difference is that governments can use force to ensure compliance to their laws and social structures while other institutions need to govern through voluntary compliance. This is why some people say that they don’t like the politics at their work or decide to leave a church because it’s become too political. In a certain sense politics is unavoidable because it is present anytime that people need to organize themselves into a functioning group. (Remember this point because this is going to be important when we talk about the separation of church and state.) When people are largely in agreement, we don’t notice the politics of that organizations as much but when people are in disagreement and hold very strong opinions, that is when politics become increasingly noticeable. This is the cultural moment that we find ourselves in today where politics is headline news and constantly in our face because there is so much conflict over a variety of issues.

Going back to our passage, this famous event from the life of Jesus teaches us some key principles that will help us navigate through the the divisive political landscape that we find ourselves in. In a situation that seems increasingly common, Jesus finds himself being questioned about his political stance on one of the most divisive issues of his day, whether or not to pay tribute taxes to Caesar. At that time, Roman occupation of Judea was fairly recent history and the new taxes that were now being imposed on the Judeans was unpopular to say the least. On one side of the debate were Jewish nationalists, who argued that paying this tax to Caesar was paramount to idolatry and a betrayal to the nation of Israel. They had a legitimate point. Eventually, things became so heated that there was a revolt against the the military presence of Rome which was quickly snuffed out but those who considered themselves to be true patriots and faithful to God continued to promote this resistance to Roman rule. On the other side of the debate, were the Herodians, a political group of the time, who considered these taxes to be inevitable and fighting against them was not worth the trouble of Roman persecution. They wanted amicable relationships with Rome and so they supported Herod who was the leader appointed by Caesar. (If you remember Herod and his successors were responsible for the killing of every baby boy that was born near the birth of Christ and in terms of character, Herod makes Trump look like the beacon of morality.) So if you could imagine, this debate on whether or not to pay taxes was as divisive as anything we are faced with today. The future of the people of Israel literally was hanging in the balance.

And by throwing Jesus into this political argument, the Pharisees and Herodians were hoping to trap Jesus in his words. If he said “Yes, you should pay the taxes”, then he loses the support of many of his most ardent followers who would have remembered the many years of injustice at the hands of the Roman government. If he said “No, you should not pay taxes”, those who considered Jesus to be a dangerous revolutionary who could further jeopordize the safety of innocent people, well they would have a case against him and could then have him arrested by the Roman authorities. On the surface, it would appear that Jesus was placed in a no-win situation and that no matter what side that he took, he would be discredited by those on the other side. In a similar way, I hope that as a Christian you are feeling some degree of tension in terms of the political decision that you will be called to make, that there is no clear cut right answer for who should be the next president or which political party you should support. I assume that many of us are voting on the premise of the least of two evils which would mean that both candidates have a lot to be desired and that our political hopes cannot simply rest on whoever will be the next president. No matter who gets elected, there will be a lot left to be desired and its foolish to put all of our hopes for a fair, just, and equitable society into the hands of government politicians. It’s true that Trump has been an unmitigated disaster in terms of racial matters and social inequalities but it also equally true that Biden has done very little to make things better in his 40 plus years as a senator and vice-president of the US. Putting your hopes into either one seems like a recipe for failure.

As Christians, we need to trust that the political future of our world belongs in the hands of Christ and far from being just some spiritual slogan, this has huge political implications for the church. In a sense, when Jesus established the church, he recognized that it would be it’s own political entity led by God with its own laws, governance, and structures that could potentially be aligned or opposed to the politics of the larger society that it found itself in.

This is a very different aspect of the church that most Christians are not familiar with but the Greek work that Jesus used first to describe the church is definitively a political term. He calls Christians, the ekklesia, which literally means those who are called out and specifically called out to a public assembly. It’s most popular use in the ancient Greek world before the time of Christ was to describe the assembling of Greek men who had their citizenship in the Greek empire and would congregate to nominate and vote for the next magistrates of Greece and to hear about recent legislation and updates on government affairs. If Jesus wanted to refer to the church as just a religious gathering that would remain non-political, he had a perfectly good word to use, synagogue but he did not. Jesus understood that the church would need to have its own politics based on the word of God that would be different from all other political groups if it was going to be a true witness of God in this world. As I said last week, the worst thing that has happened to the Christian right in our country has been it’s alignment with the Republican party because in doing so, it has meant the loss of our distinct political identity as Christians and instead of being united by the Word of God, we are divided by the political views of the two party system. Unfortunately, most Christians today look outside of the church for their political allegiance and they forget that their primary allegiance is to Christ and his ekklesia. When the early church proclaimed that Christ is King, this wasn’t just a religious statement, it was also a political stance that let the Roman government know that they would not bow their knee to the emperor even if it meant being jailed, persecuted, and even martyred.

The kingship of Christ is the single most important political distinctive of the church? That simple statement, Christ is king, should inform every single one of our political decisions as Christians. In fact, there is a political system that Jesus came to establish that you can clearly see through the wide lens of redemptive history. One of the most remarkable things about the Jewish people, even though they have not been a sovereign state for long stretches of their history, they were able to maintain a separate political identity within larger foreign political structures that threatened to swallow them up. Most conquered people lose these distinctive over time but somehow, the Jews never lost their political identity as a people of God and the way they maintained this difference was their adherence to the OT Scriptures. The historian Michael Walzer states that “the association of politics with the state is pervasive in Western thought but politics is pervasive with or without state sovereignty. [In the Jewish exiles], there arose a tradition of thought, theological and legal rather than autonomously political in form, but political in substance none the less. Its point of departure is always the Hebrew Bible, understood as the revealed word of God.” This is the system of politics that Jesus came to establish and perfect through the church. As exiles in this world, the church was never meant to be an autonomous political state but the political substance of our lives, how we conduct our affairs, organize our community, and think through social issues must come from our allegiance to Christ and be in alignment with His Word.

As Jesus answers the question that is posed to him, rather than getting embroiled into the political debate and feeling pressured to choose a side, Jesus does something that is simply mind blowing and it is something that we can still marvel at it to this very day.

First, he asks if anyone has a denarius, which would have been the currency by which these taxes were paid. Everyone of these religious leaders no matter where they stood on this debate would have personally used this coin to get paid and to make purchases. Now the subtle implication is that Jesus, himself, did not use these coins as a matter of principle. And if you saw an image of this coin, you would understand why Jesus would not be carrying one. On the front of the coin would have been a picture of Tiberius, with the inscription Tiberius Caesar, divine son of Augustus, and on the back would be the latin words, pontificus maximus, or the high priest. In essence, this was a little pagan idol that promoted the worship of the Roman emperor. And as Jesus looks at the coin and reminds them what it stands for, he says the famous words, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” This is Jesus’s definitive statement on the the separation of church and state and it’s important that we clarify what He meant by this statement because it is very different than the definition that is given to us by secular liberalism.

For the Christian, the idea of the separation of church and state cannot mean that you leave your commitments to God when you enter into realm of politics. Secular liberalism teaches us that our religious views don’t belong in the public sphere but the problem is everyone has a religious commitment, whether they are willing to admit that or not. What secular liberalism has done so effectively is to convince an entire generation that it is the absence of religious commitments that allows society to make the best political decisions for everyone. But that is patently untrue because the broader definition of religion as explained by Tim Keller so well is that “It is a set of beliefs that explain what life is about, who we are, and the most important things that humans should spend their time doing.” There is no way for any person to leave those commitments behind them as they think through their politics. Separation of church and state will never mean the separation of religion and politics because those two things will always be intertwined within a person’s worldview. As any Christian should know, human beings are incapable of having no religious commitments, all people worship something whether it is the Christian God, a different god, or a mixture of idols of our own choosing. And eventually what we are committed to worshipping will be revealed in our political commitments. And if we are not careful, our political commitments begin to shape our religious beliefs. And I believe this is where the essence of Jesus’ views on politics lies: for believers we need to discern the things that serve the idols of this world and render those to Caesar and discern what belongs to God and determine how we can best serve God in politically charged world.

There are 5 implications to Jesus answer to the Pharisees and Herodians. Adapted from David Garland’s NIV Commentary.

Jesus refuses to condone violence as a means to justify political ends. The Herodians expected a religious zealot like Jesus to approve the use of violence to overthrow the unjust politics of Rome. Jesus refused to take the bait. As a Christian no matter how offended you may feel about a certain political outcome, violence is rarely the right answer.

Jesus opposes militant nationalism. It would have been very easy for Jesus to take the anger of the nationalists and rally support for himself but he refused to feed into the politics of anger. The reason why the political right doesn’t want to tackle the issues of racial injustice is the fact that many in their support base have idolalized the history of this country and have attempted to ignore some of the darker periods of our nation. Nationalism is taking patriotism and going a step further by making an idol of your country. One of the mottos of our nation when it was perhaps more Christian in perspective was God, family, country in that order but we know that this is not the true order of priorities among most Americans. In recent surveys, God is a distant third on the list of loyalties. The Christian right has to concede to the fact that Trump didn’t run on the slogan, Make God Great Again but it was Make America Great Again and he has used that slogan to rally the support of white supremicist groups and the conspiracy theorist group Q Anon which has taken on a cult-like following.

Because of the idolatrous nature of power, Jesus limits what a Christian owes to a government or in our case a political party. In fact, you cannot subscribe fully to the politics of either party and not find yourself at odds with what is clearly revealed in God’s word. The political left isn’t free of their damaging idols. When we think about the issue of abortion and the rights of the unborn, these political decision are largely made in service to the idol of freedom especially sexual freedom, I get to do what I want to do with my body free of any intervention, divine or otherwise. But the exercise of that freedom gets very cloudy when there is another life that is involved even it that life is within your own body. It’s surprising how many professing Christians will not take a stand on the matter of the rights of the unborn because they think it’s tied to the political right. Recently, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that there is a Pro-Life organization started by an atheistic, democrat, here in San Francisco by the name of Terissa Bukovinac.

Taking what Christ taught here, the early church had a largely positive attitude towards the Roman government not out of reverence for Caesar but out of reverence for God. We should respect the political process that has been established in this nation and submit ourselves to it out of our submission to God. Now the only limits to that submission is if the government crosses over into the boundaries of our religious commitment to God. At that point, we can apply the words of Peter and declare, “We must obey God rather than man!”

Jesus teaches us to beware of the development of civil religion. Civil religion exists when the state “assumes religious dimensions” or religion identifies with or succumbs to the state. Each Christian must know where to draw the line between the things that are Caesar’s and those that are God’s and to act responsibly and vigilantly to see that it is not crossed. At the end of the day, this is the greatest danger that the political left and the political right pose to the church. The political left’s desire is to move the state further in assuming religious dimensions. On the political right are Christians that too closely identify with the Republican party.

Martin Luther said:

The church of the New Testament did not attempt to save its existence by making a concordat with Nero and Domitian and Decius in their great persecution, or by stirring up a revolution against these tyrants, or by making an alliance with the Persian empire—but simply confessing the truth of the gospel and building up a truly confessing church whose members were prepared to die for their faith.

Conclusion

All of that to say, no matter who you vote for in November, as a Christian there is a lot to be mourned either way. If you vote for Trump, I hope you will mourn over the racial tension that it will create, not to mention his policies on the environment, and the fact that America will have a leader with so little character. And if you vote for Biden, you should mourn the further secularization of our nation, the further destabilization of the world, and the corruption that is hidden under the veneer of political correctness.

If you cannot see that neither side completely espouse the kingdom values that Jesus came to establish then it’s going to be increasingly difficult to have meaningful conversations about how believers should live out their politics differently than the world. Only Christ and His Kingdom gives us a comprehensive view of life and as Christians our politics should advance that agenda, not only life from womb to the grave but all the way to eternity. Whoever wins the election should be regarded as our next Caesar, nothing more, nothing less. The thing that confuses Christians in a democracy is the fact that we get to choose who our next Caesar is by our votes and we get really vested in our candidate but in the midst of a deeply divided country torn apart by idols, the only one we owe our allegiance to is Christ our King.