“It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.” Those opening words from Dickens’ novel, A Tale Of Two Cities, could have applied to the Jewish people at the time of our first reading from Isaiah or our Gospel reading in Jesus’ time. Of course, Dickens was writing about the political situation at the end of the 18th century, when, in London, it was among the best of times and, in Paris, it was the opposite. The political climate and the economic conditions that prevail in a region during a particular period can set the mood and shape the mind-set of the people who live in there. The prevailing mood and mind-set of the culture can, in turn, affect the faith and spirituality of the people living then. And that influences how people understand God and what God wants them to do.

In our first reading, the Book of Isaiah reflects upon what God was up to in unfolding political events. Isaiah prophesied that Cyrus was God’s instrument. This was what happened. Around about 600 BC King Nebuchadnezzar, of the Babylonian Empire – in modern day Iraq -- punished the Jewish people in Judea by taking them captive and deporting them, en masse, to Babylon. They remained there in captivity -- subservient -- for the next 60 years or so. During that Babylonian Captivity the Jewish people pined for their homeland. It was a dreadful time, and the prophets saw it as God’s discipline of Israel for their wayward ways. Then, suddenly, in 539 BC, Cyrus the Great, the King of Persia – modern day Iran -- defeated Babylon and decreed that the Jewish people return to Palestine. Isaiah, through the eyes of faith, affirmed that God was behind it all, and our passage explains how. Even though Cyrus didn’t believe in the God of Israel, God blessed him and empowered his forces to defeat the Babylon in order to return the people to their homeland. God empowered Cyrus. It was the best of times because, through Cyrus, God rescued His people from captivity, as He’d rescued them from slavery in Egypt. Isaiah and other prophets saw God as sovereign and active in political events. God works out His purposes in human history as political/economic events unfold.

The condition of the Jewish people at the time of Jesus was another story. For them it was among the worst of times, too. But they weren’t captive in another land, as they had been in Egypt and Babylon. They were captive in their own land, in ways that they had never been before. Foreign leaders ruled them -- enforced by pagan armies who occupied their streets. It was no longer their land and they felt like puppets of Rome. They tried to understand where God was in all of it and to figure out what God wanted them to do. They certainly didn’t regard Caesar as God’s instrument the way the prophets had understood Nebuchadnezzar as the rod of God to discipline them or Cyrus as the instrument of God to rescue them. Instead, they saw themselves as victims, and saw their role as remaining strictly faithful so as to please God and perhaps earn His rescue of them by sending the Messiah. What, they wondered, might it mean to be faithful to God under the circumstances, say, in the matter of taxes? After all, those taxes paid the very soldiers and government officials, who oppressed them. Worse still, they were required to pay the tax in Roman currency -- with coins stamped with a graven image of Caesar. Surely, even to touch such a coin could be to participate in idolatry. What did God want them to do? Was it obedient to God’s law to pay taxes or not? Different sects among the Jewish people answered the question quite differently. Herodians said, “Yes.” Pharisees said, “No.” And Saducees said, “Maybe.” What could God want them to do under the circumstances? That’s the question they put to Jesus in our reading for today.

How do people of faith understand where God is in political or economic events? How does God want people to act when it comes to the political arena in which we live our lives? As the Jewish people came to different conclusions, so too, Christians throughout history have responded differently. Christians in the Roman Empire saw their role as to remain faithful to Christ under persecution, and to proclaim the gospel to others even to the point of death. Christians in pagan tribes saw their role as to convert them. Christians in the Holy Roman Empire, from Constantine through the Middle Ages, saw their role as to obey the government as they would God and to guard the orthodox faith of the Church. Christian groups of different persuasions since the time of the Reformation sought to lay claim to the local state and to restructure it along their understanding of biblical lines or they moved to places where no state existed in order to create a political system that strictly conformed to their values -- in order to be a holy people, as the Puritans did in Massachusetts Bay Colony.

This is just as true in our time and place as well. The Catholic Church’s vision is to leverage politicians through the electorate in this country to outlaw abortions and euthanasia. The conservative, Christian Coalition’s vision is nothing less than to reconstruct American laws and policies along the lines of strict conservative values – through elected officials and the Supreme Court – to make the nation righteous. They believe that the Lord is ready to return and that Israel is to be safeguarded at all costs – to rebuild the Temple on the site of the Islam’s second most holy shrine – the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, so that the necessary prophecies will be fulfilled to set the stage for Christ’s return, believing, as well, that the U. N. is the potential tool of Antichrist and should, therefore, be dismantled. They see current natural disasters as proof of their convictions. Anxiety increases people’s intensity, and this all shapes the prevailing mood and mind-set of our culture, people’s faith and spirituality, and that influences how people understand God and what God wants them to do.

You see it’s one thing to ask where God is and how God wants His people to act in an outright hostile, pagan, totalitarian political climate. It’s quite another thing, and even more difficult to grasp in a democracy with Judeo-Christian roots. I say even more difficult because history has shown over and over again that, left free and to our own devices, we Christians can, like modern Islamic fundamentalists, oppress others with our enthusiasm for godly purity. The Crusades, Inquisitions, Witch Hunts, the treatment of natives in this hemisphere, the treatment of Kosovars by Serbians, the bombings of abortion clinics -- history demonstrates that Christians can violate the law of love, the golden rule, and the fruit of the Spirit in our enthusiasm to uphold our understanding of God’s ways. But is that what our Lord wants us to do?

How are we to serve God in our political context? Some of us – perhaps many – may be confused or even disturbed by the perspectives and the actions of our more fundamentalist Christian brethren when they use power politics to coerce their goals, but they, at least, have a vision rooted in faith and a passion for their sense of mission. What is yours? Is Christ returning soon? Perhaps, but, in any case, we’re instructed in scripture to live as if He will. And so, what, as people of faith and followers of Christ, are we to do? Today, Jesus told us to “render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.” That tells me that even though God may work through political systems, God is never allied with any nation. Caesar or governments and nations are always different from God. The apostles, and most articulately St. Paul, understood this to mean that we are to give our loyalty, our obedience, and our lives to God -- to obey the laws of the government under whose jurisdiction we live except in those matters that cause us to disobey God or to abandon Christ. In a democracy it also means helping to shape those laws – to promote justice, which is, after all, the primary role of a state, as well as to safeguard the vulnerable, God’s creation, peace and the possibility for people to live uprightly – at home and abroad. On the other hand, whenever governments get involved in legislating matters of faith and personal conduct, no matter how noble the motivation may be, religious wars always eventually follow. Those temptations should be resisted. Christians should pray -- to intercede on behalf of the government and the peoples of the world. We are to pray for God’s guidance of them and the welfare of all people. We should stand on behalf of those who need the protection of justice -- the poorest and most vulnerable among us. We should, as the Prayer Book states, “Strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being.” We must continually ask ourselves in any political matter -- what would Jesus do? And the gospels tell us -- He’d resist alliance with any political group and help the neediest first. Jesus demonstrated, when we band together in Him to help the neediest, that we earn the right to be heard when we share the faith and our convictions. Before we try to reshape the lives of others, morally, Christ calls us to help them live with dignity, in justice and peace.

You see God wants Christ’s people to make a difference in this world – through this most prosperous democracy. By God’s grace, our nation is privileged to be as ascendant in our time as the Persian Empire or Rome were in theirs. We have historic opportunities not to be squandered, but we are squandering them. Christ calls us -- not merely to live quietly and contentedly, not only to advocate those matters that advance our personal interests -- but, by voice, vote, and economic influence to promote God’s will and His ways. He certainly wants us to guard the freedom of all people to hear the gospel and to follow God. As Genesis 2 says, God also wants us to cultivate and nurture His planet’s life. As the prophets taught, He wants us to promote the common good -- especially favoring the poor, the disadvantaged, the uneducated, the vulnerable and the disenfranchised. As the Torah, the Gospels and epistles suggest He wants us to promote laws that support a quality of life that is ethical, moral, and just -- not only for this country, but the world. These things we are called to do, in Christ’s name. After all, our first loyalty is to God’s Kingdom in this world, and that is in the best interest of this nation and of the global community.

In some ways this may feel like the worst of times, but, through us, God can act to make it the best of times to promote His ways instead.