“Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. ²Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgement. ³For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you wish to have no fear of the authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive its approval; ⁴for it is God’s servant for your good. But if you do what is wrong, you should be afraid, for the authority does not bear the sword in vain! It is the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer. ⁵Therefore one must be subject, not only because of wrath but also because of conscience. 

⁶For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, busy with this very thing. ⁷Pay to all what is due to them—taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honour to whom honour is due.

Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. ⁹The commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet’; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ ¹⁰Love does no wrong to a neighbour; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.

Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; ¹²the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armour of light; ¹³let us live honourably as in the day, not in revelling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarrelling and jealousy. ¹⁴Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.” – Romans 13:1-14 

*****

Today we continue our sermon series on the book “Who Stole My Bible? Reclaiming Scripture as a Handbook for Resisting Tyranny” by Rev. Jennifer Butler. And this week’s chapter (8) takes a good look at Romans 13, which is a bit of doozy. 

At the beginning of our reading, we hear that famous clobber passage from Paul, where he states: “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore, whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgement.”

For centuries, many Christians have misused and abused this text: claiming that everyone must obey all laws and “governing authorities” because these authorities are God-ordained. 

Enslavers used this passage to justify the institution of slavery and quoted it to enforce those who were enslaved to obey those who enslaved them.

In Germany during the rise of Naziism, Protestant pastor Otto Dibelius preached a sermon calling on Germans to support Hitler, using this passage as his reasoning. From then on, the Nazi Establishment used Romans 13 as a means to claim that their government was chosen by God and thus it was a sin against God to resist their regime. 

Similarly, in South Africa, Romans 13 was used by pastors and politicians to claim that the Apartheid state was ordained by God and therefore all must submit to it and not challenge it. 

And in 2018, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions quoted this passage while urging Americans to support the administration’s policy of separating families at the border. 

Today, Romans 13 continues to be quoted in order to justify tyranny and stifle various resistance movements and forms of civil disobedience around our country and the world. 

*****

Now, what those who misuse and abuse Romans 13 often do is leave out the context from which it came. According to Cherice Bock in her work “Quakers’ Relation to the State,” she suggests that the first 10 verses of Romans 13 are part of a larger narrative that begins in Romans chapter 12 verse 17. 

According to her, this narrative focuses on how Christians are to express love toward others both inside and outside the faith community. 

Bock states: “The overall point of the long passage is to call believers to remain firmly grounded in God’s goodness while interacting with the world around them in peace and love.” 

She explains that at the beginning of this narrative, Paul discusses how Christians are to express love toward those in their inner-circles. But later in chapter 12, he goes on to discuss how one should interact with their enemies. In the last few verses of chapter 12, Paul urges his audience to not seek vengeance against their enemies and then concludes the chapter by saying: “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

And that’s when we get to this morning’s passage in Romans chapter 13. And this is where – according to Bock – Paul starts to discuss how one should live an ethic of love toward the State. 

Now, just to give some context here: – in Paul’s time – the State was incredibly oppressive and was under the rule of an emperor who claimed titles deeming himself divine and Lord over all… (So, you can just imagine how threatened this emperor would have been had he heard that someone like Jesus was given the titles Son of God and Lord of Lords.)

*****

In the book we’ve been reading, Rev. Jennifer Butler points out that we need to look more closely at the first verse in Romans 13. While in the translation that we read today, Paul says: “be subject to the governing authorities,” this verse has often been translated as “obey” or “submit to” governing authorities. 

Yet, this word is actually best translated as: “participate in the order of governing authorities” or – as Christian author Craig Greenfield explains in his reflection on this text: “arrange stuff respectfully in an ‘orderly manner underneath.’” In other words, according to Greenfield, this word focuses on “social orderliness,” and “reflects God’s concern for order and respect,” which is not the same thing as “submitting to” or “obeying” those who are in authority.

Greenfield points out that there is another Greek word that actually does mean to “submit to” or “obey,” and it should be noted that here in Romans 13 – Paul intentionally chooses not to use that word. 

*****

What is often omitted by those who have and continue to misquote and abuse Romans 13 is what comes after these two famous clobber verses. 

In verses 3-4, Paul says: “For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but (rather) to bad conduct. Do you wish to have no fear of the authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive its approval; ⁴for it is God’s servant for your good.” 

Then he goes on to say in verse 6: “for the authorities are God’s servants busy with this very thing.” Rev. Butler explains in her book that this is more accurately translated: “the authorities are God’s servants only to the extent they are busy doing this very thing.” Or, in other words, as Butler explains: “Christians give the authorities the respect they are owed only to the extent that the authorities are acting in appropriate ways in the first place.”

Now, another part of Paul’s longer narrative on the ethic of love that’s often been omitted by those who misuse and abuse Romans 13 – is what he says in verses 8-10:

 “Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law…And any other commandment, is summed up in this word, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ ¹⁰Love does no wrong to a neighbour; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.”

What we find here is Paul proclaiming that we do not owe any one – no ruler, no authority figure, no one – anything except to love one another. For the law must be centered on love. And the only way to fulfill (or be subject to) the law of God is by loving our neighbor. But if the law is not centered on love and seeks wrong toward our neighbor, then it is not law according to God. And Christians are no longer “subject to it.”

And this – then – helps make more sense of why Paul wrote many of his letters while sitting in a prison cell. For he – himself – participated in civil disobedience, and was arrested and imprisoned for choosing to disobey oppressive rulers and resist unjust laws… As did Jesus and many other followers of his. 

I think that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. speaks to the questions we often have about Romans 13  in his letter from Birmingham jail to his fellow clergy: “One may well ask: ‘How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?’ The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that ‘an unjust law is no law at all.’”

*****

I think it’s appropriate that in a few weeks, we will come to the very last Sunday of the church calendar, which is often referred to as Reign of Christ or Christ the King Sunday in many Christian traditions and is celebrated the week before a new church year begins with Advent. 

Now, several Christian leaders have chosen to drop this feast, change its name, or struggle over whether or not they should do either. And I can totally understand why we might do so or live in this tension. King, Lord, ruler, reign, and kingdom are all titles that refer to worldly and often exclusive and oppressive governmental systems.

And I also think it’s important that we look at why Christ’s Lordship has been emphasized and why Christ the King Sunday was established in the first place so we have a better understanding of why it’s rooted in our traditions.

While the Church has upheld the belief that Christ is King and Lord throughout much of its history, Christ the King Sunday is actually very new to the church calendar. The first feast was instituted in the Roman Catholic Church in the 1920s and soon thereafter was celebrated by many other Christian traditions.  

It was not only established in these traditions in response to the Church’s concern with the rise of secularism, which led many to deny that Christ was central to all parts of peoples’ lives. But this feast was also instituted and began to be celebrated in a time when dictatorships were on the rise in Europe. And it was during this time, when many within the Church who rejected such dictatorships began to strongly reemphasize Christ’s Lordship over all things.

We can hear an example of this in the Barmen Declaration, a document that was written in Germany in 1934 by theologians Karl Barth and Hans Asmussen. The document was a statement that refuted the dangerous teachings of the pro-Nazi “German Christian” movement, which glorified Hitler as a leader and – in the name of Christianity – justified his exclusionary and violent actions both inside and outside the Church during his early rise to power.

Part of the Barmen Declaration states:

“We reject the false doctrine that there could be areas of our life in which we would not belong to Jesus Christ but to other lords, areas in which we would not need justification and sanctification through him.

‘Let us, however, speak the truth in love, and in every respect grow into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body is joined together.’ (Eph. 4:15-16)

The Christian Church is the community of brethren in which, in Word and Sacrament, through the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ acts in the present as Lord. 

With both its faith and its obedience, with both its message and its order, it has to testify in the midst of the sinful world, as the Church of pardoned sinners, that it belongs to him alone and lives and may live by his comfort and under his direction alone, in expectation of his appearing.”

You see, many churches and Christian leaders at that time reemphasized Christ’s Lordship as a means to oppose such oppressive worldly governmental systems and to remind Christians that it is Jesus Christ – and no other worldly leader – who has authority. It is the Kingdom of God (or as many of us like to say: kin-dom of God) – and no other worldly government – that reigns over the heavens and the earth.

Yes, Jesus is indeed King of Kings and Lord of Lords, whose reign does not only last four to eight years, but lasts for all eternity.

But our scriptures remind us that this King and Lord is not the kind of ruler our world expects, celebrates, or uplifts. And our Gospels show us that our King and Lord is not the kind of leader who would have won an election… or even a popular vote.

Rather, we find a different kind of king in which we are to follow.

We find a king who is wearing a crown of thorns rather than a crown of jewels and gold. We find a king who is arrested and tortured for proclaiming that the Kin-dom of God is not just for those on top, but rather is for all.

We find a king who shows up in the midst of great suffering and fear. Who hangs on a cross between two criminals on death row – offering forgiveness and compassion to those who are most vulnerable and even to those who put him on the cross in the first place.

We find a king who chooses to save the entire world rather than to save himself.

With his arms outstretched, he cries out to us: “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me…Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”

And in his final breaths, he reminds us: “Who is the greatest of all? Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”

You see, for the one who we proclaim is Lord of all, the way to greatness is not to be first, but rather it is to put others first. 

To put the well-being and basic needs of others in front of our own wants, our sense of security, our concerns of offending others or being rejected, and our temptation to want to get ahead.

Jesus’ path is not about climbing the social ladder and befriending and caring for only those who have something to offer us. 

Rather, Jesus’ path to greatness is tearing down all walls that divide and welcoming and walking alongside those who suffer, including and especially those the world deems the last and the least.

When we proclaim Jesus’ Lordship (whether we use the word “Lord” or not), we are pledging our allegiance to Jesus Christ and all he proclaimed – and only to him – in all areas of our lives, no matter how difficult this might be. We are choosing Jesus’ way of radical love – which did and will always continue to trump hate. 

Amen.