Romans 12:14-13:10
Luke 4:1-13
A week ago last Friday we were driving home from Washington, DC. We’d spent a few days there. We were busy and hadn’t paid much attention to the news.
It was kind of a paradox, I guess. There at the center of national political power I was less aware of what was going on than when I’m here in Iowa City.
And, and honestly, it was kind of a welcomed break.
So, while driving out of Indianapolis on I-74, I was catching up on the growing atrocities caused by the “zero tolerance” policy of the Trump administration that separated thousands of children from their parents. I’m sure you experienced the same sense of heartbreak and anger than I did when you heard about these things in recent weeks.
Then the announcer said that Attorney General Jeff Sessions was using the Bible to support these actions.
And I nearly drove off the road.
I said I needed to get home and show up and preach at church on that upcoming Sunday—even though Ann Molsberry was scheduled as the guest preacher.
Well, I thought better of that, of course. But 10 days ago, my sermon for this morning began to take shape.
My sermon grows out of hearing just how the Attorney General was using the Bible—and I’ll get to this. But I need to say as an aside right here that the situation keeps morphing.
There seemed to be a small victory for decency and compassion and even truth-telling last Wednesday, when the President signed an executive order ending his policy of separating families who are caught crossing the border illegally.
This came after a growing chorus of opposition to this policy—including an ecumenical and interfaith consensus that quickly developed which condemned both the policy and the administration’s actions.
National staff in the United Church of Christ spoke out against “the dismantling of families, the criminalization of the quest for freedom, and the caging of those whose only crime is to seek shelter from harm.”
Archbishop Thomas Wenski told NPR that the practice of separating children from parents was an attempt “to weaponize children, using them as a leverage against the parents applying for asylum.”
Franklin Graham, an evangelical who has been, as I see it, a shamelessly ardent supporter of the President, said of the policy: “It’s disgraceful, and it’s terrible to see families ripped apart and I don’t support it.”
Twenty-six Jewish groups signed a letter stating that the policy of separating children from their migrant parents “undermines the values of our nation and jeopardizes the safety and well-being of thousands of people,” adding, “As Jews, we understand the plight of being an immigrant fleeing violence and oppression. We believe that the United States is a nation of immigrants and how we treat the stranger reflects on the moral values and ideals of this nation.”
And late last week the Islamic Society of Tampa Bay announced that they are ready to host migrant children separated from their parents, offering to find housing for all of the 2,300 migrant kids split from their families and spread across the United States. And, the initiative is offering to pay transportation costs, too.
People of faith spoke with clear and loud voices. The “zero-tolerance” policy and its consequences for children and parents were abhorrent.
We need to keep in mind, however, that this small victory for decency and compassion was just that—a small victory, not the end of the struggle.
It has been suggested that the executive order was more a tactical retreat than a surrender—and in the ensuing chaos that it caused it has been hard to tell how it will play out.
Certainly, the war on legal and illegal immigration continues. The Border Patrol says the “zero tolerance” approach will continue. The only difference is that children will now be imprisoned with their parents. Nor did the order stipulate that the more than 2,300 children already separated from their parents would be immediately reunited with them. And Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen even told lawmakers during a private briefing that the family separations could resume if they fail to act.
At the same time ICE is increasing its raids in the heartland: Mount Pleasant was just the beginning. In one of the largest workplace raids carried out by the administration, 146 workers were arrested at a meatpacking plant in rural Ohio. These raids are also ripping families apart. [i]
This is the context in which we consider the words of Attorney General Sessions and the challenge that they present to Christians.
You might have been as shocked as I was when you heard him say: “I would cite you to the apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13 to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained the government for his purposes.”
So I ask: How do we faithfully read scripture and responsibly use scripture in developing public policy?
The first response might be that we don’t use it and we shouldn’t use it. As people of Christian faith in a religiously pluralistic nation, we need to recognize that our sacred scriptures have no more authority for government policy than other holy texts—or even, as John Oliver suggested, the writings of Dr. Seuss. Yes, in our lives and in our public advocacy we will be guided by scripture—but that does not mean we can force one biblical perspective or another on those for whom the Bible has no authority or an authority different from the one we give to it.
But what about those words of Paul in Romans 13? You heard Paul’s “wise and clear command” this morning: “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities.”
Those words have long been the cudgel of tyrants.
They provided the defense of those who enslaved other human beings in this nation.
And they have worried the consciences of many of the faithful who have run up against unjust and even evil governments.
Paul, of course, was writing in a much different time than ours, in the Roman Empire, centuries before government of the people, by the people, and for the people as we know it came into being here or anywhere else. He was writing as much to the imperial government as to early Christians, seeking to be clear that this new and small religious movement whose leader was executed by Roman authorities posed no threat to the state—although, of course, it did.
Christianity always carried with it a relativizing challenge that questions all authorities less than the One holy and living God.
So we Christians have a long history of not following Paul’s “wise and clear command.”
Before Paul even began persecuting Christians, let alone joining them, Peter stood before his accusers and stated “We must obey God rather than human authority.”
At the time of the Reformation, Protestants acted contrary to the dictates of both church and state.
Congregationalists and others in the New World took up arms against the power of the Crown.
The German pastor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, struggled mightily with those words of Paul before joining the plot to assassinate Hitler.
And for obeying God rather than human authority Martin Luther King, Jr. ended up in the Birmingham jail.
Members of our own congregation came close to crossing Paul’s line—if they didn’t actually cross it—in joining in solidarity with native Americans at Standing Rock.
At some of our best moments, we Christians just haven’t done a very good job of heeding Paul’s “wise and clear command.”
And we haven’t done a good job at this because at our best we don’t choose a few sentences from the Bible and take them as our marching orders.
We look for the larger context of the words of scripture that they might speak to us in even more challenging ways.
So when we hear those words about obeying the government, we have already heard the recognition that we will at times oppose the structures of oppressive or unjust power, words that tell us “bless those who persecute you.”
Yes, if it is possible, so far as it depends on us, we are to live peaceably with all.
But sometimes it is not possible. Sometimes the injustice is so great, the harm done to other human beings so deeps that we cannot and will not be at peace.
We are reminded—as I remind you each week—“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil by good.” Refugees fleeing horrendous situations—life threatening situations—choose not to be overcome by evil. They come here in the hope of overcoming evil by the welcome and embrace of what remains of the goodness of this nation.
Even as we read those challenging words: “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities,” we sense that they are neither as straightforward nor as unambiguous as the attorney general thinks they are. They lead ultimately to this conclusion: “The commandments…are summed up in this word, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.”
This is where all of what Paul writes is leading us—the fulfillment that is love.
As the poet wrote: “No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark.” Parents are leaving home because of love for their children. Love is the fulfillment of the law, not obedience. If our government is intent on following the “wise and clear command” of Paul, then let this administration—and we the people—acknowledge that love—not putting children in cages, not warehousing them in abandoned big-box stores, not imprisoning them with their parents—but love is the fulfillment of the law.
Scripture, rarely if ever, provides clear-cut directions for living or for governmental policies. And this is the point of that story of the temptations of Jesus.
Or I should say it is one of the points of this story, for the Bible keeps speaking with new light and new insight.
We often read this story of 40 days in the wilderness at the beginning of the 40 days of Lent. But disconnected from a season of the church year, at the beginning of summer, especially at the beginning of this summer, those words sound different.
And fresh.
It is, yes, a story of temptation—the lure to do the wrong thing for the right reason.
But listen to how temptation is overcome.
Twice Jesus responds to a devilish suggestion by quoting Hebrew scripture: “One does not live by bread alone,” he says. “Worship the Lord your God,” he responds.
That must have been irritating to the Tempter.
So he resorts to the same approach as Jesus. He brings scripture to bear on the situation: Throw yourself down from the pinnacle, he tells Jesus, “for it is written, ‘God will command angels concerning you, to protect you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’”
As Shakespeare told us, the devil can cite scripture—and can cite it very well.
It was a nice try, but ultimately, not good enough.
In the final response of Jesus, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test,” we have a wonderful example of scripture in dialogue with itself—teasing out nuances, suggesting different interpretations, even offering correction.
Because we Congregationalists have listened attentively to this story over time, we recognize the wisdom of our Pilgrim forebears who affirmed that God has yet more truth and light to break forth from God’s Word.
After worship, go outside and look at the Jefferson Street side of our tower. You will see again—or for the first time—the shield-like medallion that quotes Jesus in the Gospel of John: “Thy Word is Truth.” But that truth is not rigid, unchanging, uninflected. Discerning and discovering the truth of scripture requires thought and imagination and conversation. We join in this task together.
And this, I think, is another challenge that we confront when we hear government officials quoting scripture: together we need to return to scripture ourselves, to explore it together, to question it, to be confronted by it, to be called to honesty and action through it. We’re really not doing much of that here, are we?
We need to develop ways to do that. We won’t always agree with what we discover. And that’s OK.
At the end of the story of Jesus in the wilderness, Luke says that “the devil departed until an opportune time.”
Daily the time is right for temptation and trial to keep us from following in Christ’s way of loving our neighbors as ourselves, of welcoming the stranger, of strengthening the weak and supporting the fainthearted.
Let us then find strength in listening to scripture together so that together we might speak to our nation in these days of crisis and chaos.
[i] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2018/06/21/daily-202-trump-lost-a-battle-on-family-separations-but-his-immigration-war-continues/5b2af7df30fb046c468e6f1e/?utm_term=.af7e8257abf3