II Thessalonians 2:1-12
The most faithful way of
reading the Bible is to ask what was being said to and heard by the people to
whom each section was first given, and then to hear the same thing said to us
in our own situations.
The good folks in the
church at Thessalonica were not wrapped up in trying to piece together a
schedule of future apocalyptic events involving people unborn and places unknown. What they were doing was trying to make sense
of living faithfully under persecution. When
they heard about someone who
“opposes and exalts himself above every
so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of
God, declaring himself to be God” [II Thessalonians 2:4]
they didn’t have to go
scrambling to invent prophetic timelines to project that figure into the
future. They knew exactly who it
was. It was the emperor, any
emperor.
From Augustus in 14 B.C.,
right on from there, every Roman emperor claimed to be no mere mortal, but divi
filius, the son of a god, and therefore divine and therefore worthy of
worship. The two strong columns of religion
and political power held up the sky, and the emperor was the sun that shone
from its apex. Rome saw those two
aspects of social control working together.
(I say “control” because control was what they were after.) Both were absolutely necessary to hold the
world in place. Let me use a totally
different analogy, maybe. Think of religious submission and political obedience
like the two halves of a taco shell; break either one of them, and everything
spills out all over the place and is ruined.
Not even the Jews were
exempted. They had a special loophole in
that they were allowed to offer sacrifices for the emperor instead of to
him. They were not allowed, however,
to split apart the coalition of religion and politics. The Romans approved the hierarchy of the
temple in Jerusalem and the hierarchy did its best to make sure the taxes were
paid and rebels were silenced.
You could believe
anything you want, of course. As long as
you were willing to play the game, offer the emperor’s statue a sacrifice, and
allow that the emperor’s decisions and laws were the decisions and laws of a
god, nobody cared if you were privately choking on that. Just don’t undermine the system. Don’t dare suggest that the emperor is not
divine or that someone else is.
That left the Christians
of Thessalonica and anywhere else in the empire in a vulnerable position. It still does. Christians cannot be trusted by earthly
rulers to endorse every position that is judged to be in the interest of the
state. What is good for the country as
viewed by those who would build up their own position may not be what is good
for the entire world, which is God’s creation, placed into the hands of humanity
as a whole. What is convenient is not
necessarily right.
Augustine of Hippo, the classic
Christian observer of politics, described how a truly great ruler would, from a
Christian perspective, never meet the standards that the Roman empire set up as
its own measure of greatness.
“We Christians call rulers happy, if they rule with justice; if
amid the voices of exalted praise and the reverent salutations of excessive
humility, they are not inflated by pride, but remember that they are but men;
if they put their power at the service of God’s majesty, to extend his worship
far and wide; if they fear God, love him, and worship him; if, more than their
earthly kingdom, they love that realm where they do not fear to share the
kingship…”[1]
But where or when, he
asked, have we seen any earthly ruler more eager to share control than to lay
hold of it, or who does not go to great lengths, sometimes too far, to hold
onto power?
Christy Thomas, who blogs under the title “The Thoughtful
Pastor”, says much the same thing. She recently
wrote about how tempting it can be to follow any leader uncritically, and how
dangerous. She uses the sort of end-time
language we hear in II Thessalonians when she says:
“I’m now convinced that, in nearly every society, an anti-Christ
has emerged. It’s not a one-time event, but an event that our human nature
demands with boring regularity. The charismatic, influential leader, seemingly
appearing from nowhere, who, if we only trust him/her/them enough to overlook
the subtlety of the evil whispers in his/her/their ear, will solve our
problems.
Such ones appear at every level—from heads of state to leaders of
churches to entrepreneurial unicorns to garden club presidents and leaders of
the latest in-group cliques.
Why trust this one? Because
this one, yes, this one, holds the solutions to the evils of society or group
or corporation if we will only believe what he/she/they say.
Yes, this one may cut some corners, may cost some lives, may utter
unceasing lies, and both commit and commission evil deeds, but just believe and
you, should [you] be one of the chosen ones, of course, will be safe, happy,
and prosperous.”[2]
Augustine pictured the Church as a people who are
citizens of one city, living in another.
He wrote about us as people living in this world but with our true
belonging in heaven.
I would suggest that as we spend the time God gives us in
this world, we find ourselves not only between the earthly and heavenly cities,
but that daily, in our life here on earth we also find ourselves in the in-between
place where, one terrible Friday, the disciples stood. We stand not inside any city but just outside
the walls of Jerusalem.
We stand and we can look
up to the top of the city that climbs the hill behind them. At the summit we see the temple and the Roman
fortress that stood next to it and maybe just beyond that the palace of Herod. In that direction we can see and even feel the
power and the majesty of the sun reflecting off marble and gold leaf.
But turn your head in
the other direction and you see another hill, not so tall, unprotected by any
wall. It’s a place nobody wants to
go. On top of it stand crosses where people
are nailed up without mercy to die. On
one a man who offended the emperor and his officials is hanging. He has a crown of thorns jammed into his
scalp and there’s a sign mocking him for his crime. It says, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews”.
We stand there in
between those hills but cannot stand there forever. Eventually you have to move. Eventually you have to go in one direction or
the other.
Two hills: pick one.
Choose carefully.
Choose well.
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