A Call to Simple Loyalty
St. John’s United Church of Christ
Greeley, Colorado
Juvenal Cervantes, Pastor
March 6, 2022
I would like for us to take a moment to pray for our world and the leaders of our world who are making decisions and for those who are on the receiving end of so much violence and terror right now, so will you join me in prayer.
Our Father who are in heaven hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Lord, you taught us to pray this way, to ask for your kingdom to come, for your will to be done. And now, there is more evidence, more than a few days ago, of how broken our world is, and how many places in our world are so dark and need the light of your kingdom. We particularly want to join our voices and our hearts and our faith with the followers all around this world who are praying and praying hard for the situation in Ukraine. We pray first for our brothers and sisters in the faith who are in Ukraine, for there are so many, there are many believers, just like us as well as other denominations and traditions, and they are your followers, Lord, and they are suffering and we lift them up to you. We also have brothers and sisters in Russia and I know they are troubled deeply by what they are seeing take place and we ask you to be with them as well. Help them to have wisdom.
We pray for those who are there who are trying to give humanitarian aid, to the hungry, those who need water, those who need shelter. For the many thousands of refugees who are crossing borders to other countries, we pray God that they will find hospitality and welcome and find their needs met. We pray, Father, for wisdom in the part of the leaders from the west, we pray for our president and those who advise them and we pray for the leaders of the nations of Europe. We pray for others who are contributing to the decisions on how best to respond to the situation.
We pray for patience on our part, we are going to likely be inconvenienced in one way or another economically. Help not to complain, but to remember how deep the suffering is, halfway around the world. And God, our prayer is that you and your power, you who crush swords and melt weapons, that you will bring these hostilities to an end. We pray that it would be sooner, rather than later. We ask God that you keep us mindful as we watch the news and as we listen in, to be in a spirit of prayer for the end of all of this We pray in Jesus name, that your kingdom will come, and your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.
Jesus spoke with the voice of a prophet, I don’t mean by that that he foretold the future, although sometimes he did speak of the future, what was to come. Often Jesus spoke with the voice of a prophet like Jeremiah or Ezequiel, or Isaiah, or Amos or Joel or one of those prophets who spoke truth to power. Jesus often spoke out against the political and religious powers that be, and you know what, they crucified him, that’s what they do with prophets.
They did not crucify him for teaching us to be nice and love each other, you don’t get crucified for things like that. The Sunday School Jesus would never be crucified; He would have never had a PBS show with a purple dinosaur, but he wouldn’t have got crucified.
The powers that be crucified Jesus as a political revolutionary. They nailed him to a cross for saying that this world and all of its powers are being undone by a new kingdom, the kingdom of God. They pierced him for challenging their abuse of their power, their injustice, their abuse of their wealth, their prostitution of God’s temple, their inhumanity, their failure to submit to the rule of God. He spoke to them about those things and that’s why they crucified him. The placard over his head on the cross did not say, “He was just too nice and he wanted us to be nice also.”
The placard over his head said, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” He was claiming the dawning of a presence of a new kingdom, undermining their powers and speaking of a power that would overthrow all the powers that be.
Maybe in the Christmas story, the only person who truly knew what was going on was king Herod, because when the magi came from the east and said to him, “We’re looking for the one who was born as king of the Jews,” he knew that his jig was up, that another king was being born that would undermine his kingdom and his power and so he set off in a series to have those children killed.
The lesson is, if you want to be popular, support the status quo, don’t challenge it, go along with the powers that be, don’t speak up for those who are being oppressed. Tell those who are being oppressed to get over it, sprinkle the blessing of God over the heads of Caesar and the delegates, but don’t challenge them, don’t speak truth to power, they crucify people who do that.
The prophet Amos said in Amos 5, verse 13, “The prudent will keep silence in such time, for the times are evil.” He said, “If you know what’s good for you, you keep your mouth closed, don’t speak truth to power.”
That would be pretty wise advice in these divisive and polarized times in our own country and in our world. Don’t be a prophet. Jesus clearly was. The text is one of those prophetic passages and it is a challenge to listen to. I would admit this, but if you will give it a shot, it will be helpful.
Then the Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap him in his words. They sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians. “Teacher,” they said, “we know that you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You aren’t swayed by others, because you pay no attention to who they are. Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay the imperial tax[a] to Caesar or not?”
But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, “You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me? Show me the coin used for paying the tax.” They brought him a denarius, and he asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?”
“Caesar’s,” they replied.
Then he said to them, “So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”
When they heard this, they were amazed. So they left him and went away.
Matthew 22:15-22
Maybe that text does not strike you as particularly prophetic, that’s because over the years we have watered it down and diluted it and draw from it, “It’s just a text that Jesus was teaching us to be nice, to be good citizens, pay our taxes, obey the law, serve on the jury, do those things that are appropriate. Now, those things are important things to do as we talk about Christians who ought to be decent citizens in the place where they live, but that is not what Jesus was talking about when he said this, it was something much stronger than that. We’ve read it and preach it in such a way that it supports the powers that be much more than Jesus intended to be. That was not the intent of his statement, to say, “Be good Christians, support the powers that be.”
Jesus never taught us simply to be nice, but that’s mainly the diluted Christian ethic in our world that Jesus just told Christians to be nice people. Now don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of Christian people around the world today that if they would just shoot for being nice, that would be an improvement, but that’s not what he was saying. Jesus never called us to niceness, he called us to a radical love, that loves the person that is different than we are, not just to be nice to people. He taught us to have a radical love that looks like the cross and to follow him wholeheartedly. His statement was intended to be evasive and it was.
See, the Herodian’s and the Pharisees said, “We got him now. We’ll ask him if it’s lawful to pay taxes and his says ‘Yes, pay your taxes,’ than we got him as someone who is supportive of these oppressors, the Romans who are here. And if he says, ‘No, don’t pay our taxes,’ thank we got him there too, because then we can turn him into the authorities saying that he’s revolting against Rome.”
And so, Jesus very quickly did this evasive tactic, he said, “Give me a coin.” It’s interesting that Pharisees who were devout keepers of the law were carrying around in their pants pocket a coin with Caesar’s image on it and Caesar was believed to be a God in the Roman world; they were literally carrying an idol along with them. They gave him a coin. Jesus took the coin and look at it and said to them, “I want you to tell me, who’s image is that?” They said, “That’s Caesar’s.” He said, “Who’s inscription is that on the coin?” It’s Caesar’s and Jesus said, “If Caesar wants his money back, give it to him, but give God what is God’s.”
That was an important statement to make. Jesus was saying, as he conceived it, “We are citizens of a different kingdom, we are not citizens of Caesar’s kingdom. We are citizens of the Kingdom of God, he is Christ, the Lord, the King of that kingdom and our ultimate loyalty belong to him and to him alone, not to any earthly power, ruler or authority.
“We serve the Lord Christ,” Paul says.
Peter said,
Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul. 1 Peter 2:11
And that makes us, you and me, in Biblical terms, where we live right now in the United States of America or if we lived in the Ukraine, or if we lived in Russia or South America or somewhere, it makes us stranger and aliens, just like people who come here from other countries, are aliens, are strangers here, we are strangers here, we are strangers wherever Christians live in this world because our citizenship is in heaven. Paul says in Philippians:
But we are citizens of heaven, where the Lord Jesus Christ lives. And we are eagerly waiting for him to return as our Savior. He will take our weak mortal bodies and change them into glorious bodies like his own, using the same power with which he will bring everything under his control. Philippians 3:20-21
The church is like an outpost, an embassy here on earth. We are citizens of another kingdom, living in this kingdom for a time, representing that kingdom, and Paul says in Philippines, our citizenship is in heaven and from there we are expecting a savior, the Lord Christ. We await
The kingdom of our king and he’s not coming to take us out, he’s coming to take over. The kingdoms of this world, all of them, will become the kingdoms of the Lord and of his Christ, the scriptures say in Revelation.
So meanwhile, while we’re here, we’re supposed to be good visitors in the places where we’re living. Submit to the demands of the civil authorizes, whether we live in ancient Roman cities or modern constitutions, courts or congress or presidents. We’re supposed to be good visitors here and submit where we can within our conscience, but what we must not do and that’s what Jesus is getting at, we must not confuse the simple issue of loyalty.
We can serve only one ruling power, ultimately. The service of Christ will teach us to submit to the service of ruling powers as much as far as possible, consciously. But Christ never tells us to yield to any power other a than to himself.
We give Caesar what is due him, not because Caesar says so but because Jesus says so and we are followers of Jesus. Jesus is Lord, not Caesar. We have to keep that in mind. Loyalty is a simple thing, what I mean by that is that it can’t be divided, you can only give it to one; you cannot piece it out to one person and then another, then another.
Out of loyalty to God, we place all of our heart, soul and love and allegiance in his hands. Jesus was clear about that on so many occasions that allegiance to God supersedes all others, loyalty to God, Jesus is Lord.
That was the central confession of the earliest church, and it was a political statement, believe it or not, not a religious one. “Jesus is Lord.”
Paul said,
If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. Romans 10:9
Then we read,
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Philippians 2:9-11
In Acts 2:36, the very first sermon preached after Pentecost, Simon Peter spoke to the leaders there in Jerusalem and said:
“Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah.”
We hear the words “Lord” and “Christ” as religious titles in our world because for 2,000 years we sort of used them that way, but we need to hear them the way they were meant, “Jesus is Lord.”
“Christ” was not Jesus’ last name, like he was the son of Mary and Joseph Christ. Jesus Christ means, “Jesus the King, Jesus the Messiah, Jesus the Lord, Jesus the Ruler” that’s what Jesus Christ means.
The essential confession of faith, “Jesus is Lord,” would have been heard in the new testament world by non-followers of Jesus as a political confession because the basic political confession of that world was “Caesar is Lord” (Kaiser kurios) and the Christian says, “Kyrios Iesous” (Christ is Lord.)
It was a challenging, revolutionary confession, that followers of Jesus were asked to make and people did hear it that way. In the book of Acts, the story is told how Paul went into the city of Thessalonica and preaching the gospel there and they were charged as revolutionists, they were charge with turning the world upside down because they were proclaiming a new king, Jesus.
But when they (the “they” were the authorities in the city) did not find them, they dragged Jason and some other believers before the city officials, shouting: “These men who have caused trouble all over the world have now come here… Whom Jason hath received: and these all do contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, one Jesus. Acts 17:6-7
Even the term “gospel” was a political term.
The word “gospel” was an announcement that a new king was on the throne, that a new day was dawning, there was a new ruler to submit to. Emissaries would be sent out into the world to announce that a new emperor would be seated. And Jesus used the word in just that same way when he came preaching in Galilee.
Jesus’ word in Matthew 22 really are political. As resident aliens living in this foreign kingdom, give Caesar his coins if he asks for them, they’re his anyway, give to the earthy power what they rightly deserve.
Jesus used the word image there and when he does he is echoing Genesis chapter one, echoing verses 26-27 where God says, “Let us make man and woman in our own image and he made them male and female in the image of God.”
Caesar’s image is on the coin. Where is the image of God to be found? It’s in the human life, it’s in the human heart. And if Caesar ever asks for that which belongs only to God, do not give him that. Give to God the things that are God’s. Give to God the human heart with all of its loyalty, with all of its affection, with all of its love and all of its obedience, it doesn’t belong to Caesar.
That’s Jesus prophetic statement. When he says give to God the things that are God’s, he says give worship to him alone. Jesus is Lord, not Caesar. And anytime which Caesar asks for that which belongs to God, the human heart, the conscious, the will, Caesar, in all its forms, is to be resisted.
The earliest Christians understood this. In Acts 4:19, the authorities, the powers that be, told Peter and John, “You are no longer to preach and teach on this name.”
Peter responded in Acts 4:19-20,
But Peter and John replied, “Which is right in God’s eyes: to listen to you, or to him? You be the judges! As for us, we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.”
Our allegiance, our loyalty is on a higher place and you have no authority in this matter. Jesus is dealing with deeper mater than merely separation of church and state, which sometimes this text has been used to deal with. We need to understand that Jesus is dealing with a clash of powers. There is the kingdom of God and there is what the New Testament calls, “the powers that be,” the governing power in this world and both of them want the loyalty of the human heart and Jesus is saying, “Caesar has rights that are due him, but Caesar has boundaries that he cannot cross. Responsible citizenship to Caesar is a duty but ultimate allegiance belongs only to God.
Jesus said, we cannot serve God and Mammon. Here he says, give the mammon to Caesar if he wants it, but give him nothing that belong to God because you cannot divide your loyalty like that. The state, the power that be, are not final, they not ultimate, they’re not divided, their authority is derived from God and limited. Scripture calls all the rulers of this world dust, insignificant, raised up and brought down in a moment, they’re not to be relied upon they’re not to be given our allegiance, or our loyalty, Scripture says. And when the church ever yields its allegiance to a government, government silences its prophetic voice. When a church yield alliance to a political party, any political party, it loses its capacity to speak truth to power. My friends, Jesus is not a Republican, he is not even a Democrat.
Jesus as messiah fulfilled three roles, prophet, king, and priest and all three of them in a sense he delegates to the church, the body of Christ. We have a priestly role as God’s people. We have a pastoral role in our society. We are to be concerned about the broken, the lost, the least, the last, we are the salt of the earth of this world.
We have a kingly role; we are the people of the Messiah. We are to rule, not as the Gentiles’ rule, but as suffering servants, to make disciples of all nations. Revelations says that he made us king and priests.
And we have a prophetic voice to speak up for the poor, for the oppressed. We cannot do this when we have a system whose primary concern is the powerful, the right, the influential. The church has to maintain its independent prophetic voice in order to fulfill our role here. And we lose this power when we get in a quest for political power and allow ourselves to be coopted by one political power or another. The moment we do that our voices are silenced by that party, we become mouthpieces for human beings who are seeking power one way or another, which is what politics is all about in this world, isn’t it?
May God help us as we strengthen our loyalty to him. He is worth it; He is Lord of all.