Be Cautious in Trusting Secular ‘Kings’

Today’s reflection is by Bondings 2.0 contributor Michaelangelo Allocca.

Today’s liturgical readings for the 29th Sunday of Ordinary Time can be found here.

“Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.” Heard in this Sunday’s selection from Matthew’s gospel, this is one of the most widely misinterpreted and trouble-causing statements of Jesus.

Many superficially read it as “shut up and pay your taxes and obey the law.” On the other hand, Servant of God Dorothy Day has famously been quoted as saying, “If we rendered unto God all the things that belong to God, there would be nothing left for Caesar” – apparently arguing that Jesus’ point was precisely the opposite. Jesus’ words, pithy and memorable as they often are, offer a prime example of how one scripture quote can generate not only different, but diametrically opposed, interpretations. We need to dig deeper to grasp what Jesus actually did mean with this specific statement – and also to better grasp the larger issue it speaks to: the relation between God’s law, and human/civil law more generally.

This issue has been a tangled mess for us in the queer segment of the population. Difficulties arise from both the “wall of separation” and from the “inherently intertwined” points of view. I will revisit examples of recent events in more detail, after some exegesis of the scripture itself.

The first thing needed to better understand any particular scripture passage is context. The first relevant bit of context is provided by today’s first reading, from Isaiah, chosen to go with this gospel selection. “Thus says the LORD to his anointed, Cyrus, whose right hand I grasp, subduing nations before him, and making kings run in his service,” shows us God speaking to a king chosen to do God’s will.  On the surface, it would seem to reinforce the superficial reading which sees Jesus as supporting obedience to political rulers, the tools of God’s plan. But this only works as long as we remain ignorant of the historical and theological background out of which, and into which, the prophet spoke these words.

The Cyrus named here is not a Jewish king, but a head of the Persian Empire, one of Israel’s traditional enemies, and therefore a somewhat unorthodox – if I can use that word for the operations of the Almighty – choice to be God’s instrument. The irony is heightened by the title “anointed,” which is indeed the same Hebrew word, mashiach, (Greek christos, respectively anglicized, of course, as “Messiah” and “Christ”) used for the descendant of David promised as the savior of Israel. How much more potent would it be if we heard the conqueror of Israel called the Lord’s “Messiah, Cyrus,” or his “Christ, Cyrus”?

Either of those renderings would be more faithful to the original impact. Isaiah was prophesying to a people who were theocratic. The only “constitution” they had was the covenant made at Sinai (Exodus 20), and God alone was supposed to be their ruler. As we know, this framework did not last, as Israel eventually demanded a king, “like all the nations” (1 Samuel 8:5) forgetting that their special gift was being chosen by God to be different from other nations. What arises from this messy history is a long pattern in the Hebrew scriptures of warnings about what happens when people – allegedly God’s people – believe their safety and salvation lay in the hands of secular rulers.

Two examples show the type of skewed readings that have been made of this prophetic text. You may remember David Koresh, the man who led a separatist, radical-Christian movement in the early 90s, that ended in fiery carnage when U.S. forces attacked the movement’s compound in Waco, Texas. You might not know that his name was originally Vernon Wayne Howell, until he legally changed it. “David,” more obviously, was meant to signify his role as the descendant of God’s chosen king, and “Koresh” is the Hebrew version of … Cyrus.

More recently, right-wing evangelical leaders struggled for a time with how they could join forces with a presidential candidate who sometimes seemed hell-bent on breaking as many of God’s commandments as possible: that struggle ended when they decided that he was this generation’s Cyrus.

The ancient context highlighted by the Isaiah reading was part of the setting for today’s gospel: those who sought to entrap Jesus brought up the quandary of whether Jewish law, demanding exclusive allegiance to God, allowed paying taxes to Caesar, a foreign ruler called “divine” on coins that bore his image. Jesus knew well that His people’s sacred history offered no pat solution to this dilemma – as his interrogators also, at least in theory, knew just as well. We modern readers often miss that there’s something fishy about “the Pharisees and the Herodians” hanging out together since the former generally hated the latter, in a way roughly similar to the way the French Resistance hated the Vichy government: only a common enemy (Jesus) could bring them together.

Jesus replied with the masterstroke that won the contest before he even answered (actually, he never really did) their question: “show me the coin.” By even carrying a Roman coin, as most in the crowd would have recognized, his adversaries betrayed their hypocrisy, as it was tantamount to handling an idol. The real point of Jesus’ response was in his refusal to endorse the foolishness of defining righteousness by reference to secular power.

We may sometimes forget this powerful warning. For example, when the justice of civil marriage equality is challenged on religious grounds, I squirm when I hear some answer with “too bad, Obergefell is settled law.” Trusting Cyrus or Caesar – or even David, the monarch “like other nations have” – as a guarantee of justice is something we should have learned not to do; God can determine what is just, a king cannot.

In case the danger is not clear enough, turn it around and apply the same logic to nations where it is a crime simply to be gay. Are we satisfied if someone points to that as “settled law,” and therefore should not be challenged?

No easy answers exist for complicated questions about the interplay between religion and civil law, but the counsel of scripture is clear, as taught not only by Jesus, but by the Torah for centuries before Him: our salvation and happiness rest not upon the systems of this world, but upon the system of God, which is love and not legalism.

—Michaelangelo Allocca, New Ways Ministry, October 22, 2023