29th Sunday: Render unto Caesar, what is Caesar's

The evangelists are the people who wrote the four gospels. The word derives from the Greek, ‘evangelion’, which means ‘good news.’ What is the good news? Jesus is Lord, that is, ‘Ieusus Kurios’. The term ‘kurios’ was used to describe the emperor. The emperor to emphasize his claim to Lordship, wanted to be treated as a god. He required people in the Eastern part of the empire to sacrifice to his statue. For the early Christians to refer to their preaching as the Good News was a play on and a challenge to Roman proclamations of the Emperor’s victories. Those proclamations would usually begin, “good news.” So when a Christian said Jesus is Kurios, it was a challenge to the lordship of Caesar and a claim to exactly what the good news was.

God as the 'Kurios' of History 
The biblical belief was that God worked through empires, kingdoms and states to accomplish his will. He is the Lord of history. The first reading is a good example. The people of Israel were held captive in a Babylonian ghetto for close to 100 hundred years. Cyrus, the Emperor of Persia, conquered the Babylonian Empire in the Sixth Century B.C. and allowed the Jewish people to return to Jerusalem. Isaiah, the prophet, taught that God willed Cyrus’ victory. The Book of Revelation and the Christian hope in God’s victory is an extension of that ancient faith.

To believe in Truth is to believe in God 
Render unto Caesar what is Caesars, and unto God what is God’s. To believe in God is to believe that truth exists independently of a Supreme Court decision, an executive order or a properly enacted law. The laws that sent Jews to the gas chambers were properly enacted in Nazi Germany. The laws that sent millions to their deaths in the Soviet Gulag were also properly enacted. Without accepting that moral truth exists independently of law, what objections can be raised to the horrors of the world.

What do we owe Caesar and God? 
What do we owe God? At least the understanding that we are not the source of our own truth. What do we owe Caesar? Our voices and our witness as to the limits of government and the rights of citizens. Our refusal to oppose the state renders far too much to Caesar.