Below, for your consideration and reflection, is the sermon from Bethel's August 28, 2005 Sunday worship service.

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Resisting Ceasar

Exodus 3:1-15; Matthew 16:21-28; Romans 12:9-21

Bethel 8/28/05

Rev. Marc Sherrod, ThD

The lectionary reading from Matthew focuses on the familiar Christian necessity of taking up their cross and following Jesus, about losing life in order to save it.

Probably next to the cross, the Christian symbol of the fish has been used to identify followers of Christ about as much as any other. And like the popular WWJD bracelets, somebody has made a fortune marketing this fish symbol, especially in those magnetized, unmistakable fish outlines placed on the backs of cars.

I have had two encounters with this symbol that I want to share with you that frame what I’d like to talk about in today’s sermon.

World famous Bartlett’s Burgers, Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is an always crowded place with its own unique ambiance, that is, if a burger joint can have ambiance!. Particularly noticeable are various, what I might call, counter-cultural bumper stickers and signs plastered on the walls: “Elvis Lives!” “My Kharma Ran over my Dogma,” a pilfered road sign “Route 66,” and assorted others. But the one that really got my attention when I first went into Bartlett’s Burgers in 1994 was the bumper sticker displaying the Christian symbol of the fish, the “ichthus” and written inside, the word D-A-R-W-I-N. Darwin. Think about that.

The second encounter with the early Christian fish symbol was when I recently read about a web site called BushFish.org. that, I kid you not, is marketing the fish symbol with B-U-S-H written inside. (No endorsement from the President that I know of for this website) According to the web site, this car magnet is for those Christians who are tired of secularists telling them what to believe about everything from prayer and the teaching of evolution in schools, from Terry Schiavo to where the Ten Commandments can be placed in public. The Bush fish. Think about that.

Whether the word inside the fish starts with a “D” or a “B”, both represent perversions of this ancient Christian symbol and should be anathema to us. I believe that we, as Christians, should be deeply offended, and that, just maybe, that old fish symbol is something worth fighting for.

We first see the emergence of the fish in the form of primitive works of art on the walls of the first century catacombs around Rome. Those catacombs as you probably know, were subterraneum honeycomb-like chambers where persecuted Christians buried their dead, a place to escape the empire’s persecutions and the empire’s attempts to desecrate dead bodies of Christians.

The fish, in those catacombs and in other places, represented a kind of secret code since the Greek word for fish, pronounced “ichthus,” was an acronym for “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior.” Thus, Christians who lived under threat from the empire could, for example, paint the sign of the fish on their homes to identify that followers of Christ lived inside, or they could mark their stalls in the marketplace accordingly.

Although the fish symbol, apparently, had not yet emerged during the time of the Apostle Paul’s ministry and missionary travels, he writes against the background of the Roman Empire, a time of contest and growing animosity to Caesar that would eventually result in persecuted Christians needing to use codes like the fish symbol in order safely to come together in groups for worship and fellowship.

I recently read a book entitled, In Search of Paul: How Jesus’s Apostle Opposed Rome’s Empire with God’s Kingdom, a book that explores not just texts of Paul’s words in scripture, but which also spends much time understanding the archeology of various sites throughout the Roman Empire in order to describe the imperial theology that was used to legitimate the empire itself. The book explores why that imperial theology thus represented such a threat to Christianity and vice versa. I would highly recommend the book to you for further study.

The authors, for example, help us to see how the triumphal arches and inscriptions on buildings in Rome and throughout the colonies of the empire, how the coins and statues commemorating Caesar’s military conquests provided a visual image and verbal declaration that the emperor was divine, the son of God. Often, Caesar was named on these public inscriptions, diviius filius, Latin for son of God.

And so, when followers of the early Christian movement, such as Paul, made that same claim of divine status for Jesus, it put the first Christians on a collision course with one of the most prized values of the empire, that Caesar was himself the son of God and worthy of worship and that Caesar symbolized a system of conquest and domination.

In opposition to the empire, Jesus preached about another kingdom, not one based on military victory or accumulated wealth or political prestige or a hierarchy of power, all of which were tools for deifying Caesar. For the empire, the primacy of violence in military conquests ensured that victory in battle was alone that which brought a semblance of peace. But Jesus, and Paul after him, preached the kingdom values, values based on non-violence, equality among all people, male and female, rich and poor; he preached first justice, then peace. . . not military victory, then peace.

And so, if we really want to understand the radical claims of Paul for the kingdom of God, we have to realize his program, his agenda for living the Christian life, called upon the early church to resist the values Caesar represented, because Caesar and the empire embodied a rival Lord.
Listen for intimations of the ethic of Jesus, and how that ethic put Christians in opposition to the empire, in verses from the epistle to the Romans. These words we have from Paul’s hand are some that I consider to be at the very heart and core of the Christian message and how we should then live.

Reading now from Romans 12, beginning with verse 9.

“Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection.” [think about that phrase “mutual affection” – it is not a phrase Caesar or his cohorts in the Senate and in Rome, or the nobles and generals of the day, could have ever spoken, for in that phrase is the radical Christian idea and theology of the equality of all people, not just men and women, but equality between the rich and the poor, all those whom the empire would treat as servile or beneath contempt]

Paul continues:

“Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly” [In a Roman society based on class rank and class privilege, to allow such claims for harmony among all to gain traction in society could cause nothing less than a revolution. Not surprisingly then, a generation after Paul, it would be the state of Rome which led the persecution and attempted extermination of the Christians. When all is said and done, the empire, in order to be the empire, can allow no other rival lords or differing systems of value to threaten its domination]

“Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers” [In the world of Rome, the peculiar way that early Christians practiced hospitality set them apart from the surrounding culture. Non-Christians, the Roman elite, for example, certainly, also prized hospitality, but they understood hospitality to be discriminate, that is, you choose carefully whom you give hospitality. For them, it was directed towards family, friends, and influential social contacts – those who could easily reciprocate the host’s goodwill. Christian hospitality, on the other hand, was notoriously indiscriminate. Not only were all welcome, but it was those least likely to reciprocate – the widowed, the orphaned, the outcasts, and the estranged – who were its primary recipients. In a modest but important way, Christian hospitality cut against the grain of social propriety and courted controversy with the powers that be in the ancient world] (Christian Century, 1/11/05)

Paul continues:

“Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them” [sounds very similar to the words of Jesus like, turn the other cheek and pray for your enemies, doesn’t it?] “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.” [Here, once again, we see Christ’s egalitarian ethic, and the Christian refusal to endorse pay back when wrongs are done to you; peacemaking and reconciliation really become the highest good and the truest marks of living together in community]

“Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, ‘vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’ No, if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads, that is, you will get their attention if you surprise th;em and don’t do what they expect. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

I am convinced, as I study Paul’s letters, that without coming out and saying so directly, Paul very much offered the Christian message and the hope of the kingdom of God as a vital and crucial alternative to the empire, as a way to resist Caesar. The ancient Christian affirmation, “Jesus is Lord” challenged the lordship of the empire. To affirm the Lordship of Christ is to deny the lordship of Caesar. To practice mercy and forgiveness in relationships with others, to pursue hospitality and peace and non-violent behavior, to treat everyone as equals, according to the ethic of Jesus, Paul believed THIS was the best way to indict the empire and to demonstrate one’s true and highest loyalty.

I believe now, more than ever, we must reclaim, as Christians, our identity that may, at times, set us in opposition to the empire of our day.

I know that as empires go, Rome was not particularly bad. Its system of law stabilized the public order and its public projects such as roads and aquaducts made life easier on many people. Culture, education, and civilization advanced. Rome was better than the empires it replaced and better than most of the empires that replaced it. But, then again, its wars of conquest were brutal and the empire thrived by the rich taxing the poor and by an imperial economic policy that forced peasants to give up their land to large landowners.

For some contemporary observers, Pax Romana, i.e. the reign or empire of Rome, has become an analogy for Pax Americana, the reign of America as a global empire. America, like Rome, certainly has done much good in our world, but like Rome, empire is always a mixed blessing. Whether today’s empire seeks to dominate by the secular values of military might and global consumerism or the hyper-religious value of deifying earthly rulers, either form of empire, according to scripture, comes under the condemnation of God.

Lest we forget, Christianity was a movement born in opposition to the empire. Lest we forget, Jesus was killed by the domination system, the empire, of his day.

Thus, to wear the cross or to display the fish symbols should be a way to practice resistance to Caesar and resistance to whatever expression of empire seeks to come between us and what it means to follow Jesus Christ. .

May God grant us grace, then, and so to live and in such a fashion that we too, in accordance with God’s word in scripture, may love others with mutual affection, may bless those who persecute us, may live in peace with others, that we may overcome evil with good. Amen.