FAITHFUL NATIONAL CIIZENSHIP IN GOD’s WORLD

Social Principle V. The Political Community

KINGSWOOD UNITED METHODIST CHURCH, Feb. 8, ‘09

Scripture: Matthew 22: 15-21, 34-40

Romans 13: 3-8

James 2: 14-19

The disputed relation between our Christian faith and the politics of our nation and our world is a very old and always difficult, even dangerous, issue. Jesus already faced it as he proclaimed his good news: that the time (i.e. history) was fulfilled; "the Kingdom of God has come near," God’s perfect reign of justice and love was beginning. His contemporary religious leaders-- the Pharisees and Sadducees --that is, the established interpreters of the Torah and the Temple Priests-- realized that to believe what Jesus called good news could become bad news for them; it might require them to repent of their too-easy political accommodation with the Roman imperial power then dominating Israel. They feared what was indeed dangerous: even to appear to cross Rome—as Jesus himself experienced in a few years by the Roman governor’s decree, Paul learned several decades later in a Roman prison, and the whole of Jerusalem suffered as much of it was destroyed by the Roman army in 70 AD.

So, as too-often happens in political discussions, the Pharisees as skilled lawyers sought to entrap and even endanger Jesus by asking him a question about taxes—always a difficult issue, and especially when they are to be paid to an occupying power. Jesus astutely, however, turned the question so that he could quip that the Emperor can have all of the money his government had engraved with his imperial image. After all, less left for the taxpayer might really be more, because as he proclaimed often, it is very hard for a rich man to enter God’s kingdom. So Jesus urges them to be sure to give "God the things that are God’s." As good Jews, knowledgeable of the Torah, the Pharisees already knew what that meant—in a word, Everything! Nevertheless, they gave Jesus an opportunity to reinforce what they already knew when they asked him what was the greatest commandment. And he replied for them, and for us: "love God with all your heart and soul and mind, and love your neighbor as you love yourself." He even dared to teach these religious and legal scholars that this commandment is the sum, the essence, of all they, or we, really need to know of God’s will for our lives; all the rest is commentary.

Saul, the converted Pharisee we know as St. Paul, when writing his letter to the church in Rome, faced much the same issue that the Pharisees had put to Jesus two decades before. It was, however, a very different context. Time and location always make a difference in our understanding. Paul’s original readers were living in the capitol of the Empire, not in a distant Semitic province, and Paul himself was a Roman citizen from his birth in the Roman city of Tarsus. They faced not only questions of taxes as Jesus had from the Pharisees-- and now not from an occupying power-- but they faced the everyday authority of a government that ordered the whole of their lives, for good and for ill, in the city that was their home.

In this context, it is clear that Paul, a converted Pharisee, who believed Jesus’ good news that God’s reign had come near in Him, also believed that the Roman governing authorities could be God’s servant for the common good of God’s people. So, he taught these Roman Christians, not only to pay taxes, but to honor and respect the authorities who ordered and sustained the common good of all of the citizens of Rome. Paul drives home his point by citing Jesus’ summary of God’s law: "love one another, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law." God’s law could and should be obeyed through the Roman governing authorities for the sake of their neighbors, even though many of these authorities knew all too little of God’s love revealed in the saving compassion of Jesus Christ

There were then-- in the early church-- as there are now, those who doubt that working for the common good, especially through government, has anything to do with faith. After all, we are saved by faith, not by works, they might contend. The letter of James, a small portion of which we read as Scripture this morning, addresses exactly this issue. We cannot have or express genuine faith in Jesus, James teaches us, without adequately meeting the real bodily needs for food and shelter of those God has given us as neighbors..

James, of course, in our brief passage, addresses only the needs of individual brothers or sisters-- as we also must, and I am glad to say, do. But he ends his teaching with what might appear to be the unrelated affirmation that "God is one," which even non-Christians, and James says, even demons, believe. James then goes on to discuss (in the rest of the passage we did not read), the patriarch Abraham, the father of the three monotheistic religions who believe in one God as the creator and redeemer of all people in the whole creation. When you see the individual in this universal context-- without losing sight of the individual-- and recognize that you are now called to enter into God’s care for millions of neighbors in need, then you have to relate your faith to political issues of how we best structure our national life for the common good of all of our neighbors.

Our United Methodist church’s relation to the American nation was a tough and contentious issue at the beginning, and in some ways has continued to be so. Because John Wesley, as a loyal English citizen, had opposed our American revolution, the 1784 Conference of American Methodist Preachers had to add Article XXIII to the Articles of Religion Wesley earlier had given, to affirm the sovereignty and independence of the new government of the United States. Methodists ever since have declared themselves loyal citizens of our American nation. But then, as the United Methodist Church grew through God’s blessing of its foreign missions around the world, the 1939 General Conference had to add a provision making clear that these non-American Methodists could and should obey the laws of their own sovereign countries. We were and are, you see, evangelists for Jesus the Christ, not for the United States of America.

I had this issue put to me more personally as I worked as a kind of evangelist for the reign of God come near in Jesus Christ during the long cold war between our country and the Soviet Union. For thirty years, I moved back and forth through what some thought was an iron curtain trying to relate our church and some of our people to churches and some of their people in Russia, Estonia, Poland, Hungary and East Germany. Somehow this attracted the attention of our FBI, and one day two of their agents visited me to invite me to report to them whatever of significance I might learn. I had to say to them that I understood myself as only a representative of the Christ’s church, and that much of my effort would be compromised if I in some way became also an agent of the United States government. I think they understood; at least they left amiably.

Once the issue of basic patriotism and loyalty is settled, you see, a far more contentious issue emerges and continues unabated: and that is, how do loyal citizens democratically participate in shaping the ethos, and policies, and laws of their country? Do Christians have some values they can, and perhaps must seek to, contribute for the sake of, not only their own people, but for God’s reign in the whole of God’s world?

The United Methodist Church thinks we do! And that is what our Social Principles, and especially number V on "The Political Community" is all about. So our General Conference, quadrennium after quadrennium, works to define and redefine a developing consensus of our insights on "Basic Freedoms and Human Rights, Freedom of Information, Education, Criminal Justice and Restorative Justice, and Military Service." Any of these can prove contentious for some, but probably none more so than the paragraph on "Civil Obedience and Civil Disobedience." After affirming the duty to abide by just laws, it stipulates that governments are "subject to the judgment of God;" and goes on to recognize the right of individuals conscientiously to dissent, and even nonviolently resist or disobey laws deemed to be unjust. This, of course, hearkens back to many struggles over the Vietnam war, nuclear weapons, and civil rights for African Americans, and continues to crucial issues of our day.

This was the unspoken issue that lay behind one of the suggestions made from the floor of the 1962 EUB General Conference when discussing, prior to adoption, the new, unified Evangelical United Brethren Confession of Faith. In its article XVI on Civil Government, you still find the sentence "As Christians we recognize the governments under whose protection we reside…" The issue was the word "recognize." Some patriotic, and perhaps more conservative, delegates wanted a stronger word or phrase; words like "loyal" or "obedient." They quickly desisted, however, after I pointed out that our Confession also would cover Christians in other countries like E. Germany, Poland and Estonia. It then seemed clear to those who had wanted a stronger word that it would be quite enough only to "recognize" their communist governments.

But what about our democratic Americah government? It didn’t take until my twelfth visit in the Soviet Union for me to realize how very American I really am, and how much I prefer the ethos and laws of the United States to any communist society. Nevertheless, I still thought and continue to think it is quite enough to recognize my duty and my privilege as a Christian citizen of this country, while reserving my ultimate allegiance and loyalty to the reign of God in Jesus Christ, which now already is for the faith of the church, and is yet to come in full glory for all of us. Thus we must witness to it, contend for it, work day in and day out for it.

So I agree with the well known author of The Audacity of Hope that, "To say that men and women should not inject their ‘personal morality’ into public policy debates is a practical absurdity; our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo –Christian tradition." And I almost agree when he also says, "We must take faith seriously ….to engage all persons of faith in the larger project of American renewal." Now, American renewal might be quite large enough a project for the president of the United States, but it is not large enough for the life project of a Christian. It is not enough, as Jesus taught us to "give to the emperor the things that are the emperors," nor is it enough as St. Paul taught the Romans and us "to give revenue, respect, and honor to those to whom they are due. " We are, beyond all this, and when necessary, in struggle with all of this, to love the one God whose compassionate reign through Christ has and is drawing near, with "all our heart, and soul, and mind" so that all of our neighbors in every country may live in peace and justice the world around, as they are reconciled to God and each other. Amen and Amen