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Sermon - Australia Day - 25th January 2009
St Alban's Anglican Church Epping 7,8 and 10am
Readings: Deuteronomy 28:1-9, Psalm 145: 1-9, Romans 13:1-8, Mark 12:13-17
Romans 13 has attracted so much severe criticism, particularly in the twentieth century where most thinking Westerners developed a more than justified horror of totalitarianism. The reading to many seems not to be in accordance with what would be expected and so it ought to be rejected outright. People are inclined to say either Paul did not write it, or he did not mean it like it sounds, or he was just plain wrong. In such modern thinking it is implied that whatever else you do with this passage you ought not to be caught agreeing with it.
Until, of course your house is burgled, or someone you love is murdered. Or you are cheated in business, or even in sport. Then, quite suddenly, you want someone to be in authority. Nobody enjoys the presence of a referee or umpire when they are trying to foul an opponent, or sneak offside; but everybody appeals to them when the other side does it. Actually, none of us want to live in a world where the bullies get away with it, except when we are planning to do the bulling ourselves.
Libertarian histories of Western culture read the story of the last millennium as one of increasing social and civic freedom. The long march from Magna Carta to universal adult suffrage was not, in fact, as smooth an upward rise to freedom as it is sometimes made out to be. Oppression and systemic injustice still exist within every Western democracy. But since we tell our story as one of dethroning authorities and discovering new freedoms, we are bound to find Romans 13 a surprise, or even a shock. Unless we are actual anarchists, however, we will soon acknowledge explicitly that all societies need some regulation, some ordering, some structure of authority and we will soon recognize that this ordering is no use unless everyone is, at least in principle, signed up to it or, failing that, able to be coerced into going along with it.
Romans 13:1-7 then issues commands that are so obvious that they only make sense if there might be some reason in the air not to obey the civic authorities. More or less everyone in the ancient world, with the possible exception of Cynic philosophers on the one hand and occasional radical groups like the extreme “zealous” Jews on the other, would have shrugged their shoulders and accepted that some form of civic authority was a necessary part of an ordered world.
If a moral or religious teacher took the trouble to explain the rationale for such authorities and insisted that those who embraced that moral or religious system were bound to obey them, that would be of itself a sign of what we have seen both that the average Christian might well have supposed that there might be grounds for not doing so. You only put up “No Smoking” signs where people are likely to want to smoke. Since Paul himself frequently hints at what the grounds for not obeying the authorities might be, we do not need to speculate for long about them. They are the sovereignty and saving justice of the one true God, unveiled in action in the world’s true Lord, Jesus the Messiah.
Romans 13, in short, carries a hidden “nevertheless” at its heart. Jesus is Lord; nevertheless, his followers must obey their earthly rulers. This is not because the rulers have somehow, in theory already submitted to his lordship, but despite the fact that they have not done so. The authorities are part of the present world order, the good and wise structure of God’s original creation. Not to submit might look like a noble piece of over realised eschatology, claiming to belong already to the new world promised when the full day dawns, but to make that complete claim ahead of time is in fact to move toward a dualism in which the goodness of the present world, even in its not yet redeemed state, is denied. That, in fact, is what millenarian and similar movements have classically done. Such movements who believe that the Second Coming of Christ will result in a final conflict between good an evil that will bring the end of the world.
The authority of the state, however, is strictly limited here by the instruction that stands over the whole paragraph: the rulers exist by God’s will and at his pleasure. The book of Daniel is a graphic description of how this works out within a pagan world and how the people of God may find their way through the resultant moral minefield. It is noticeable that even when human rulers become fatally guilty of excessive pride and arrogance and court their own destruction, this does not signal the end of all human rule. Even in the apocalyptic scenario in Daniel 7, the one who eventually sits on a throne dispensing judgment is “one like a son of man”. Just as there is an apparent contradiction between Daniel 1-6 that describes the stories of human kings and God’s people and Daniel 7 that describes the enthronement of the Ancient of Days and the vindication of “one like a son of man,” representing God’s people, so in Romans 13 Christians belong in the tension between the present existence, owing submission to earthly rulers and the promised future “day”. Just because we have become horribly aware of the dangers of brutal, self-serving, self-justifying “governments”, it does not follow that there are no errors in the opposite direction.
In Romans 12:14-21 we read,
“Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. 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.’ No, ‘if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.’ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
Putting together this reading and our reading this morning has the salutary effect of reminding us of one of the most important, if pragmatic, reasons for there being governing authorities. Private vengeance, whether individual or (as in the lynch mob) corporate, is shocking in itself and can easily spiral out of control into vendettas and generations of senseless brutality. Where authorised policing fails, or is felt to be failing, the authority vacuum is quickly filled and the results are seldom happy. Of course, commanding people to pray for their persecutors, not to repay evil with evil, to live at peace with all and above all not to avenge themselves, is excellent advice at a purely personal level. People who allow vengeance, however apparently justified, to dominate their motivational life will become eaten up by it. It is a way of allowing the evil that someone has done to you to continue to hold you in its power. Part of the enormous breakthrough achieved by Jesus in his teaching and death is found just here: that to suffer innocently and not to retort or retaliate is to win a far greater victory than can ever be achieved by hitting back. It is to win a victory over evil itself.
“Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s and to God the things that are God’s.”
This sermon composed using the resources of the New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol X, Abingdon Press 2002.