Death and
Taxes
Romans
13:1-7; Acts 4:1-20
© 2012, Robert J. Elder
Sunday, July 1, 2012
I recall once, a few years ago, reading an article
called “Bumper-sticker theology,”[1]
about the difficulties of preaching from the biblical book of Proverbs, then
making up our own bumper sticker phrases to capsulize some important belief in
a single phrase. It’s not as easy as it looks. Everyone should try summing up
something of their whole philosophy of life in six to eight words. There are
lots of these gracing reader boards outside churches that, like ours, have
reader boards. I have a friend who collects them and sends them to me, phrases
like:
Give Satan an inch and he will become
your ruler,
and
this friendly one that might ride on a bumper you’d do well to avoid:
“Go to God or go to hell.”
A couple more
demonstrate other points of view:
“I'm for the separation of church and
hate,”
and this, that
takes more time to think about than is usually provided at a red light:
“If
evolution is outlawed, only outlaws will evolve.”
In 1816, a few years before he would die in one of
those brainless nineteenth century “honor” duels of the type that took
Alexander Hamilton’s life, a handsome naval hero named Stephen Decatur coined
one of the more famous bumper sticker phrases of all time, even though there
were no bumpers – or stickers – at the time. That doesn’t mean we can’t find
his famous words sticking to some bumpers even today. He spoke his famous
phrase at a banquet in Norfolk, Virginia, ending a toast by saying “...our
country, right or wrong.”[2]
Everyone you speak with is likely to know the quote, few will know its origin.
I had to look it up in the Oxford Book of
Quotations.
But most who hear it will recognize right away an
ethical or even theological problem inherent in the statement. Its implication
is that the actions of my country, no matter what they may be, are the highest
moral standard to which we need make our allegiance, that there is no ethical
authority higher than that which benefits my country.
56 years later, in 1872, in an address to the US
Senate, a German immigrant and Civil War hero named Carl Schurz refined Decatur’s
words, unfortunately in a sentence too long to fit on anything but the bumper
on a Humvee or a Greyhound Bus, but it is well put nonetheless: “My country,
right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right!”
The implication of this is that there exists some
authority, some higher standard by which we may judge all human actions, and
seek to put right the ones that are in the wrong by that standard. This is
something that surely transcends our common ways of looking at matters before
our nation, whether they are liberal or conservative, Democratic or Republican.
But we do often appeal to one another with the idea that we ought to be
thinking about our national life in terms of values, and of course, this
suggests that whether we call ourselves conservative or liberal, we recognize
that many issues before us are fundamentally moral in nature. Are right and
wrong measured by something higher than national interest? I know you probably
will have an inkling how I would respond to that question, and how you might,
but, as a friend of mine said to his congregation, “You know how anybody who
believes in a God worthy of the name has to answer that question. In blunt
poker language, God trumps nation, even my
nation.”[3]
Our Bible passages today speak to the sometimes
heated dialogue between “our country right or wrong” and “our country ... kept
right or set right.” On the one hand, there have been more than a few who have
used Paul’s words in our text from Romans as some sort of apostolic injunction
to give blind obedience to governing authorities no matter how wicked or
wrong-headed they may be:
Let every
person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority
except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God.
Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those
who resist will incur judgment.
(Romans 13:1-3 NRSV)
This text was popular with the slave-holders of the
nineteenth century as they tried to argue from the Bible for the continuation
of that peculiar institution.
On the other hand, our passage from Acts seems to
provide an equally strong case for resistance to authorities who misuse their
power in order to stifle expressions of faith.
“While
Peter and John were speaking to the people, the priests, the captain of the
temple, and the Sadducees came to them ... they arrested them and put them in
custody ... The next day their rulers, elders, and scribes assembled in
Jerusalem ... they called them and ordered them not to speak or teach at all in
the name of Jesus. But Peter and John answered them, “Whether it is right in
God’s sight to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge; for we cannot
keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard.” (Acts 4:1-20, selections NRSV)
It is the sort of passage to which the American
patriots of 1776, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr. and others appealed
when subjected to persecution at the hands of unjust governing authorities.
Setting these two passages side by side strikes our
minds like watching a juggler handle five baseballs. At first it might seem
easy enough, but when we observe closely, it’s not as easy as it looks.
Put Paul's words in Romans – “Let every person be
subject to the governing authorities” – next to Peter’s response to the command
of the Jerusalem authorities that they keep quiet about Jesus – “... we cannot
keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard” – and we have all the
makings of an animated discussion in the earliest days of the church’s
existence about its relationship to governing power, the sometimes cosey,
sometimes hostile relationship between church and state, a discussion which has
continued from that time to the present.
Thinking on these things on Independence Day
weekend, a friend of mine concluded, “these two passages are ... like a pair of
goal posts for Christians to aim between as they bring their faith to bear on
politics. To the one side, ‘Yes, Paul, we are subject to the authority of the
state, and must value the good of the commonwealth.’ And to the other side, ‘Yes,
Peter and John, when push comes to shove and you have to choose, God is the
higher authority.’”[4]
In just a few minutes you and I, no matter where we
agree or disagree politically on the issues of the day, will come together to
take the bread and the cup offered in the name of Jesus Christ and thereby
reaffirm our ultimate personal and corporate loyalty to his kingdom, his reign,
his Lordship, above all other lords.
Copyright © 2012 Robert J. Elder,
all rights reserved
