Reverend Jonathan Waits
Sermon: A Proper Patriotism (Mark 12:13-17)
Date: July 28, 2024
What does it look like to properly love your country? That’s a trickier question to answer than it might appear at first glance. I suspect most of you immediately called to mind all kinds of patriotic images. We’re not quite a month past the Fourth of July. Gathering as families and communities while we eat good food and watch other people blow stuff up seems to be a pretty good way to love our country. But can you love your country too much? Is that a thing? Can you make an idol out of it? What if you love it to the point that you are willing to overlook or otherwise justify obvious and real faults? No country has a history that is totally spotless from any sort of failing of morality. Does a proper love of country allow for honest conversations about those? At the same time, though, can you give those kinds of things too much attention? I mean, no country is perfect, sure, but none of them are all bad either. Every country has noble and redeeming qualities if you are willing to search for them. Yeah, maybe you have to search a little harder in some places than others, but they’re there. It seems that a proper love of country is going to avoid both of these extremes and fall in this messy middle ground of loving without idolizing, and being honest without becoming cynical. What has me thinking about all of this today is that as we continue in our teaching series, Who Do You Want to Be, we are going to be taking a look at our duty to be good citizens wherever we happen to live.
This morning finds us in the third part of our exploration of just how exactly we are to be living now if the things guys like Jesus, Paul, John, and Peter said about the world that comes after this one are true. In the first part of this journey, we simply established the fact that how we live in this life matters. We did this with the help of a question the apostle Peter asked in his second letter to a group of churches that were all located in a hostile cultural situation. Given that all of this is one day going to be gone and give way to something new, how should we be living now? The answer Peter gave and the one we are exploring together is that we should live in a way that matters.
Living in a way that matters, though, is a pretty abstract concept. So, last week, we started to pour a bit of concrete on it. We did this by taking a look at the prophet Jeremiah’s counsel to some Israelites living in exile in Babylon after Jerusalem was conquered by King Nebuchadnezzar. His counsel to them was not to get ready to come home soon. It was to put down roots and plant themselves securely in their new environment because they weren’t going to be returning to what they thought of as home anytime soon. In doing this, though, they weren’t to bitterly seek to remain a thorn in the side of their new neighbors. They were to work to see their new communities flourish however they could. When their new communities flourished, so would they. Thinking about Jeremiah’s counsel, and filtering it through the lens of Peter’s similar counsel to those same believers living in a hostile cultural situation—a hostile cultural situation that isn’t so different from our own—we came to the understanding that living with the end in mind means making our communities better now.
Today, I want to explore this same basic idea a little bit deeper and in a little more detail. Part of making our communities better now means not only being positively committed to those communities themselves, it means being positively committed to the nations in which those communities reside. Indeed, a particular local community is always going to be a reflection of the nation in which it exists. If you don’t like the nation, you’re not ever really going to like the community. This is the case even when you consider that there are all kinds of different communities all across this country reflecting all kinds of different elements of our broader culture. In spite of the differences, though, there are bigger and deeper similarities that unite all of us under the banner of a single nation. What all of this translates to is the idea that if we are going to live with the end in mind, it’s not enough for us to be merely good neighbors. We need to be good citizens as well. Well, something Jesus said in a tense conversation with some of the religious leaders of the Jews helps to highlight this idea for us. Let’s take a look at this together.
If you have a copy of the Scriptures handy, find your way with me to the Gospel of Mark. This particular story appears in Matthew and Luke as well, but Mark likely wrote it down first, so we’ll go with his telling. When you get to Mark, join me in Mark 12. This scene unfolds during the final week before Jesus was arrested, tried, and crucified, paving the way for His glorious resurrection. Each day during that week, Jesus spent time in the enormous temple courtyard teaching and interacting with the various Jewish religious leaders who all knew He was there, and were doing their absolute best to establish some public grounds by which they could justify their desire to shut down His ministry permanently. On one particular day, the chief priests organized all of the various religious leaders to go to Him with the most impossible-to-answer questions they could devise. The goal was to get Him to say something…anything…incriminating. Jesus, of course, didn’t play ball, but their attempts are amusing and Jesus’ answers are instructive all the same.
The first of these groups were a combination of some members of the Pharisees and the Herodians. To say these guys were strange bedfellows would be a huge understatement. To put this in more modern political terms, this would be like if some members of PETA and the NRA decided to work together on a project. It would be like members of the Democratic Socialists of America and a bunch of Libertarians joining forces. The fact that these two groups were willing to work together at all was a sign of just how much they hated Jesus.
In any event, they set before Jesus a question with enormous theological and political significance. They set up a situation to try to force Jesus to sail the ship of His ministry right between a theological Scylla and a political Charibdys. And Jesus responded by essentially saying, “Nah, I’ll take a plane.” Look at how this all unfolded with me in Mark 12:13: “Then they [the chief priests] sent some of the Pharisees and the Herodains to Jesus to trap him in his words. When they came, they said to him, ‘Teacher, we know you are truthful and don’t care what anyone thinks, nor do you show partiality but teach the way of God truthfully.’”
Pause there for just a second. This was all duplicitous flattery. They didn’t believe a word of it. They thought He was a liar and a fraud. Worse, they believed in the core of their being that He was a threat to their entire political and religious system. The flattery here was just an attempt to cunningly disarm Him so that He wouldn’t be ready for the trap when they sprang it. That came next. Because we know you are all these good things Jesus, surely you can answer this question: “Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not? Should we pay or shouldn’t we?” Well, obviously Jesus couldn’t answer this correctly and they all knew it. The people listening to this interchange knew it. Jesus was utterly trapped. If you reject paying taxes, Rome is going to come down on you quickly. If you embrace paying taxes, the people are going to reject you immediately. It’s a lose-lose situation.
But Jesus is Jesus so…
“But knowing their hypocrisy, he said to them, ‘Why are you testing me? Bring me a denarius to look at.’ They brought a coin. ‘Whose image and inscription is this?’ he asked them. ‘Caesar’s,’ they replied. Jesus told them, ‘Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’ And they were utterly amazed at him.” Luke adds that in their amazement, they became silent. His wisdom and rhetorical deftness left them completely speechless.
What Jesus introduced to the world here is an idea that was completely unheard of when He said it. This idea that there are some things that don’t belong to the state was like a nuclear bomb whose blast was set to unfurl in slow motion. The reverberations of this concept would echo down through hundreds of years of history as the words of Jesus were later recorded and then disseminated throughout the world. It is an idea that is sufficiently revolutionary in its formulation that even Jesus’ own followers have struggled mightily over the centuries to grasp and apply its full implications. Trying to explore all of these would take a whole series’ worth of sermons. We’re not going to tackle that this morning. What I do want to look at with you, though, is one particular implication of what Jesus says here. If there are things that belong to God that don’t also belong to Caesar (by which I mean the governmental apparatus of a particular nation more generally), then it is possible for us as followers of Jesus to properly love one without sacrificing or otherwise polluting our love for the other.
Let me see if I can put that in another way. If there are things that belong to God that do not also belong to the State, and if there are things that God allows Caesar to claim as its own (notably, the things that bear its image), then we are able to give a proper devotion to Caesar without diminishing or at all letting go of our devotion to God’s kingdom. To put that even more simply, what Jesus says here means that as His followers and members of His eternal kingdom, we can nonetheless be good citizens of our earthly kingdoms wherever those happen to be. As a matter of fact, if we want to be making the kind of impact on our present kingdoms that we talked about last week, we have to be doing this. If you don’t love your country, you’re not going to be very motivated to work toward its benefit. You’re not likely to be terribly concerned about really making it better. You’re far more likely to embrace a posture of cynicism toward your country. The odds that you’ll become more selfish over time go way up. And why wouldn’t they? If you aren’t committed to the good of your country, you’ll be committed to the good of yourself. Now, if that good happens to benefit those around you, great, but that’s not your goal. And when that’s not your goal, you will gradually lose the ability to speak meaningfully into the lives of the people in your community. That’s not the same thing as saying you won’t be able to have an impact at all. You very well may. But the nature of your impact won’t be the same.
There’s a new world coming after this one. If we want to be able to have the kind of impact that will position us to help those around us be as ready as possible for this new world when it arrives, being good citizens in whatever our current cultural situation happens to be is an essential. Living with the end in mind means being the best citizens we can be.
Okay, but how can we do that? Well, we start by taking a page out of Jesus’ playbook here and remembering what belongs to which kingdom. The truth is that everything ultimately belongs to God. He’s the creator of it all. But in His wisdom and graciousness, He allows us to steward His creation as we see fit, and He gives us a pretty long leash for doing that. He allows us to organize ourselves in various ways. Sure, He’s the one ultimately directing it all, but He gives us a remarkable ability to make meaningful and consequential choices. As a part of this, He has allowed us to group ourselves into tribes and nations. Those nations create cultures and societies that require good management from competent leaders in order to create the circumstances that lead to the most flourishing for the most people. And while there are certainly ways that goal is accomplished more effectively than others, God lets us chart our own course in this pursuit…and also to live with the consequences of the path we choose.
The way all of this translates to us as individuals, is that we all live our lives in the context of a single nation (or at least one nation at a time). That nation is most directly going to be the major source of flourishing in and for our lives. The more committed we are to the flourishing of our nation, the more directly we will be able to contribute to that flourishing both for ourselves and for the people around us. This means that it is not only okay, but right and proper for us to love our nation. As followers of Jesus, though, we do this while at the same time always keeping firmly in mind that we are only visitors here. We are resident aliens. Our primary allegiance is to our heavenly kingdom. But just as immigrants will nearly always do best when they celebrate, submit to the laws of, and positively contribute to their adopted homeland, so will we. Living with the end in mind means being the best citizens we can be.
Well, once again, this means that it’s okay to love our country. There’s nothing particularly noble or edgy about hating the nation in which you were born and from which you have received nearly everything you enjoy in this life. I saw a meme back on the Fourth of July that read, “Somebody: ‘Happy 4th.’ Me: ‘Yeah. I kind of hate America though.’” How utterly ungrateful. That such sentiment is celebrated or encouraged by a segment of our population does not make us stronger as a people. Strong, thriving nations actively correct and even prevent such a cynical outlook by creating environments in which the strengths and merits of the nation are taught and passed on from one generation to the next with eagerness and conviction. At the same time, though, we should embrace and encourage a posture of honesty about our nation’s weaknesses. There are things we don’t do very well. There are points in our past where in moral terms we blew it. A healthy love of country as followers of Jesus allows us to evaluate our nation through the lens of our perfect, eternal kingdom in order to celebrate what is good while owning and repenting of what wasn’t. The result can be a greater, richer, deeper appreciation that increases our sense of commonality with our neighbors whether those are neighbors next door, or neighbors in an entirely different part of the nation. Living with the end in mind means being the best citizens we can be.
There’s something else this kind of properly rooted love of country that Jesus commends to us here allows. When we are conscious of our enduring citizenship in our ultimate and eternal kingdom, this prevents us from thinking that our present kingdom is somehow ultimate. It prevents us from seeing the issues we debate as a nation and the outcome of those debates as ultimate. It prevents us from seeing our politics and our political processes as ultimate. When we don’t have any kind of a sense of this ultimate kingdom, that prevention disappears. This leads only and ever to bitter partisanship, national disunity, and a million and twelve campaign ads that if you don’t vote for candidate X, our democracy is at stake.
Now, does that mean our democracy is never at stake? No. But neither does it mean that a single election is going to kill it. Elections and politics operate downstream from culture. The kind of healthy, positive citizenship we are talking about operates upstream from those. When it is on track, then even when we disagree vigorously on specific issues, we won’t be divided as fellow citizens. Our elections and politics will be healthier. When we lose that, though, then every political fight really is an existential fight, and political parties become tribes of far greater significance than any sort of a national identity we might otherwise share. Well, when the tribe to which we give our highest loyalty goes to war, we fight to win and not much is left off the table. If that tribe is a political party and not our nation itself, then our political fights won’t make us stronger. They’ll leave us broken and unable to effectively combat actual existential threats. Living with the end in mind means being the best citizens we can be.
As followers of Jesus, we have the means to put a stop to these kinds of issues. These means are loving our country properly and honoring our ultimate kingdom first. When we do this, we can put aside all the follies of partisanship and treat the people around us like the fellow citizens they are—giving to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s—rather than as potential political enemies who need to be isolated and defeated. When we do this, we can create communities that are defined by something far higher than politics or even mere national allegiance. We can create kingdom enclaves—like the church—where anyone can be a part of the life and love, the purpose and meaning that transcends the concerns of our present kingdom and allows us to love freely like Jesus did no matter where someone is from or what political party they like or where they stand or this or that cultural issue. And, yes, we still vote. We vote our Scripture-informed convictions. We have challenging conversations about difficult issues that are filled with conviction and charity. We even try to convince people who don’t agree with us to see the world like we do. But we never lose sight of the fact that all of those aspects of being good citizens come second to what really matters most. When we do this, we’ll make our nation better and stronger. We’ll leave our communities more ready for Jesus’ return than they were before. That’s living with the end in mind. Living with the end in mind means being the best citizens we can be.