September 9, 2007
Romans 13:1-7
Respecting the Powers
Surrounded by a whole generation – or more – of people
raised on the bias to “question authority,” my guess is that you find the idea
as difficult to swallow as I do: this notion
that government officials are deserving of obedience because God put them in
those positions for our well-being and God’s instrumentation. I’ve observed a few public officials who
seemed to believe that they were holiness, itself, but I haven’t heard the
citizenry – even the religious citizenry – arguing that case. Especially in these partisan times. How many Republicans saw in Bill Clinton the
political thumbprint of God? How many
Democrats listen to George Bush for the sound of God’s own voice? Paul seems to be asking quite a bit of us who
vote, these days, with one hand on the ballot and the other holding our nose.
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.
If nothing
else, it is a surprising observation, coming as it does just a handful of years
after those “governing authorities” executed the very same Jesus to whom Paul
now submits his loyalty. So much for
that business about doing good and gaining official approval! So much for the premise that only those who
do wrong need worry.
So what are
we to make of this surprising teaching from a guy whose own experience should
suggest the opposite? What are we to do
with this counsel that feels so contrary to so much of our own experience and
sensibility? Just in my lifetime,
alone, we have lived through the debacle of the Vietnam war, the shame of
Watergate, the Iran-Contra scandal, a Presidential impeachment trial; enough
Special Prosecutors and convicted government officials to populate a small
city; enough political, military, and budgetary dead-ends to make Mr. Magoo
look like a navigational genius; enough self-aggrandizement to shame any
mirror. Exactly how is this fine
demonstration of holy prowess suppose to inspire deep and awe-struck obedience
to the God who supposedly put all these guys in place?
And that doesn’t raise the issue
of examples beyond our own. What about
the government of Adolph Hitler in the 1930’s and 40’s? What about Nero and Caligula and who knows
how many others within the very Roman Empire that Paul, himself, would have
known so well? What is the guidance that
this passage gives to Christians living in Iran or Iraq, any number of African
countries including, but not limited to, South Africa under the Africaaner
government. Were those governments –
were those rulers – there because God put them there? Does every government, no matter how it was
established and regardless of how ruthlessly it may be maintained, have equal
claim to the divine sanction these verses seem to confer on governing
authorities (Achtemeier)?
To borrow
and bend a line from a favorite Neil Simon movie, “my eyes say yes, but my
heart says ‘No! No! No!’” Surely that’s
not what Paul had in mind.
Or to shine a different kind of
light, where, in this imperative, is the space for civil disobedience? Or should all those Christians martyred in
the Roman coliseum be delighted that their arrest afforded them the chance to
serve their country? Or have all the
conscientious objectors through the years been consigning themselves to
hell? Or those revolutionaries who
tossed tea into Boston Harbor or signed the Declaration of Independence? Or Rosa Parks, who refused to move to the
back of the bus? Or Martin Luther King,
Jr., who more than once found himself thrown in jail? Since, as we are told in this passage, that whoever resists authority resists what God
has appointed and that rulers are not a terror to
good conduct, but to bad, are we to conclude that anyone who runs afoul of
the government necessarily and rightfully deserves the punishment – both civil
and spiritual they receive?
Today we
are beginning a four-week series of sermons intended to explore the role of
faith in public life. In these often
choppy, often confusing and sometimes even perilous waters where the stream of
faith meets the current of civic discourse and decision making, how do we not
simply stay afloat, but navigate a useful and participatory course?
It seems to me that these
surprising and perhaps even troublesome words of Paul represent the very
headwaters of this conversation, and what we do with them will in large measure shape much of the character and
direction of all the strokes we take beyond them.
So, what are we to do with these
words? I would argue that, whatever else
we might learn from them, we should take away from them a conscious obligation
as people of faith to approach governmental authority respectfully, and even
hopefully; that we don’t have permission to simply, willfully of flippantly disparage
the institution of government nor those who serve within it as inherently evil,
diminishing or corrupt. Christians need
to know at the outset that the exercise of governing authority is a necessary,
even holy undertaking.
But that’s not really anything
new. Drawing a connection between God
and political leaders is a very old practice.
It was, in fact, from God that the people of Israel first solicited a
king. “Give us a king like other nations
have,” they pleaded. And, according to
the story, God eventually, if grudgingly, acceded. But it was with the proviso that the people
never forget that the king was merely God’s designee – God’s physical
representative; a “steward” of divine rule, we might say.
Governing authorities by
definition insert an element of order, and we have known since the Creation
story something about God’s preference for order over chaos. Governments protect their citizens,
facilitate their livelihood, resolve their disputes and. establish norms of
their collective behavior – all the while reminding their citizens that theirs
are, indeed, collective behaviors. For
all our independent, self-reliant aspirations, we do not live on islands of self-contained
activity. The earth, and our particular
jurisdictions within it, are the geo-political equivalents of town home
associations. What we do affects each
other, and we had better get organized and get along, or we will create for
ourselves a nightmare of neighborly collisions.
Paul, as both a member of
civilization and as a member of the church, appreciated that kind of
order. If you read the book of Acts
along with his letters, you’ll see the pride he took in his Roman citizenship. He regularly cited it, and frequently invoked
it for the services and protections it afforded. His missionary journeys were facilitated by
the roads built by the empire, and his horizons were opened by the Pax Romana
that allowed him to move freely from one country to the next.
Within the
church, Paul routinely touted the value of order over chaos; principled
constraint over anarchy. Think about his
letters to the church in Corinth. Their
whole congregational experience seems to have degenerated into one faction
over-talking another. Even in worship,
driven by the delusion that one’s own gifts were at the very least the best,
and more aggressively the only ones that mattered, the cacophony of theological
bigotry and spiritual arrogance threatened to prevent anything of the Spirit
from being heard. Into the collective
confusion, Paul interjected order: some
speak, some remain quiet; everyone waits his or her turn. And over all, the law of love – the kind of
holy love that is patient and kind; that is neither envious nor boastful nor
arrogant nor rude;
the kind of God-like love that does not insist on its own way; is neither
irritable nor resentful; does
not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. “Here,” wrote Paul, “is the kind of love that
God extends toward and expects from us:
love that bears
all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.”
In other
words, benevolent, encouraging, protecting order. At their best, I believe Paul was trying to
assert, governments offer the very same gift of drawing out of the chaos some
kind of mutually and generally beneficial order. And that, he also seems to be saying, is why
we pay taxes. I know we find that just
as hard to swallow as the basic teaching, itself, but if you don’t like taxes,
my guess is that you will like the absence of them even less.
I, for one, rather like going to
sleep trusting that should a fire break out in the night, a fire department
will respond to the crisis. I rather
like the awareness that a police force is on duty and that a public library is
available and a public hospital is stretching a safety net of health care
beneath those who can least afford it. I
may not always like the decisions rendered by the court system, but I much
prefer the process to pistols at 20 paces or the classic “eye for an eye”
system of justice.
Sure, we can argue about how
public monies are used and who gets the benefit and how much is finally
required, but surely the necessity for them is an argument we don’t need to
have. Authorities, and the taxes that facilitate
them, are in place for a reason, and even if those very authorities are
ignorant of that larger purpose, the order they are designed to flourish is
intrinsically connected with God’s overarching creative intent. It isn’t about “sameness” or “numbing
routine” (cf. Achtemeier); it is about justice, abundant life, and shalom. In our country we might say it is about
working together to recognize and protect that collective space where life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness can flourish.
God knows
it is possible for governing authorities to conduct themselves in ways that
oppose that divine intent rather than serve it.
When that happens, those governments have ceased to be that which Paul
commended, and deserve – indeed demand – our efforts to correct or overthrow
them. But that is the sermon for next
week.
It is
enough for this week to simply call us to a healthy measure of respect. We aren’t laws unto ourselves. We are part of an ordered whole, and
authorities – be they governments, Geneva Conventions, Leagues of Nations or
County Commissions – all play their part in God’s disciplining, enabling
vision. Like them or not, having voted
for them or not; argue with them if need be, and even campaign for their
personal ouster if you must, we devalue and disrespect them at our peril. A body with no bones simply flops. A river with no banks dissipates into
dryness. A building with no joists and
studs collapses. And a people with no
authority, like a cancer, cannibalizes itself until there is nothing left but
to die.
It isn’t
the last word on this subject, by any means, but it is necessarily the
first: honor – respect – the authorities
that order us as strings in God’s instrument of grace. The music they are help to make is good.