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Original Manuscript:
There's a scene that those of you who love the movie Chariots of Fire as much as I do will remember. Scottish missionary and runner Eric Liddell is being brought into a meeting to try to convince him to betray his religious principles for his country and run an Olympic event on a Sunday. In that scene is a gruff elderly gentleman, the kind who looks like he's angry at everything. Early in the conversation, this man says to the committee that's meeting with Eric, "In my day it was king first, God after." To which a much younger member of the committee, much to the gruff gentleman's surprise, replies "yes, and the war to end a wars nearly proved your point!"
Which is very much the truth. World War I was all about nationality, of trying to hold onto the old system of governing things. And it led to some of the most brutal acts of warfare ever perpetrated, like chemical warfare. And it was the pettiness of people holding on to their national identity that led to the collapse of the economy throughout the world, not to mention the end of the Gold Standard. It was the sin of looking to king before God that ultimately lead us to face one the most evil groups, if not the most evil, with Hitler and the Nazis.
If our priorities aren't correct, this is the kind of despair and destruction we have to look forward to. But it's easy to miss that. It's easy to misinterpret what Scripture is saying to us, especially today. It's easy to think that Jesus' words "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's" as a sign that our allegiance to God and State are equal, or to even go further like the gruff gentleman in Chariots of Fire and think that our allegiance to King is greater than to God.
That's not at all what Jesus is saying, nor is it what Scripture as a whole tells us. Shortly after our reading from Matthew this morning, Jesus gives the two great commandments, which we read at the start of our service this morning. The first being that we are to "love the Lord our God with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our mind."
God comes first in our hearts. He is where our allegiance is first and always.
This is something that even Cyrus, the ruler of Persia, understood. In the reading from Isaiah this morning, God tells Cyrus clearly that God is the only reason Cyrus has been allowed to rule a great nation, and this is in part so that Cyrus can free the people of Israel from Babylon and allow them to return to Jerusalem. He is anointed, just as Jesus was the anointed one, the Messiah. It's not that the Messiah was meant to be a military ruler, but that the Messiah was meant to free us from sin and bring us all back to God, just as the Israelites were brought back to Jerusalem.
The Hebrew historian Josephus wrote that Cyrus, when reading Isaiah's words, took them seriously and did all in his power to try to obey God's words. He was willing to humble himself, as a king, to the one who is higher than all rulers. Would that we all would do the same.
Cyrus realized that the powers of this world don't matter. All that matters is God, not our allegiance to any State or Caesar.
Jesus goes further in stating where our allegiance lies in the Gospel according to John. In his last teaching to His disciples, He tells them "you are not of this world." Our allegiance isn't with the powers that be in the nations we live. It is to God, and God alone.
But, we still live in this world. We still must render to Caesar what is Caesar's. And unfortunately that means we still have to pay our taxes.
But that doesn't mean we let the powers that be rest easy. That doesn't mean we let them make us a tool for their own justification. Our patron saint Paul is a great example to us in this case. Paul wasn't beyond using his status as a Roman citizen to get out of trouble or to find an audience to share the message of the Gospel. But he didn't shy away from taking the consequences of disobeying Roman law. In acts when an earthquake freed him from prison, he stayed. When he could have escaped being put on trial in Rome, he stayed and helped rescue others who were shipwrecked. And when he was put to death by the State, represented through his symbol, the sword, he accepted his fate.
Dr. Martin Luther King is another example, along with Rosa Parks, Fred Shuttlesworth, Ruby Sales, Jonathan Daniels, and countless others in the Civil Rights Movement. They saw the law of the land for what it was, racist and unjust. And they spoke up, out of their convictions and service to God, our one true ruler. But they also accepted that the government was in charge, and that there were consequences for breaking the law. So when the time came, they gladly submitted themselves to the State for arrest.
God is the one we owe our allegiance too. We are His, and His alone. Because of that, we are not of this world, but we do live in it. And so at times we must render unto Caesar. Like Paul, we need to be dutiful citizens. We need to pay our taxes. We need to take part in our election processes. And we need to realize there are consequences when we disobey even unjust laws.
But that does not mean we roll over. That is not the example we have been given. We are not called to let the powers that be, be they Republican or Democrat, tell us that we need to justify their works to them through our faith. We are called to serve God, not any political party. And if and when we see those in power get out of line, when we see that laws are unjust and go against what God wants for us in this life, we are called to stand our ground and look those people who would have us betray our Lord in the eye and in the words of Mark Twain say "no, you move."
We are God's. We are not of the world, but we are in it. Our role as the body of Jesus Christ is to be good citizens. That means we continue to follow God and God alone. And that means being His ambassadors. That means speaking truth to power, when we must. That means in the face of injustice standing firm with Jesus Christ, our one true Lord. That means doing what we can to bring the kingdom of God and making it present in this world. That means serving Christ Jesus, and Him alone.