"we have no king but Caesar"

This cry found in John 19.15 has become for me one of the most chilling lines of the passion narratives, for it is here that we see these Jews betray their monotheism - Shema Israel, the LORD our God is one LORD! What causes this betrayal? Perhaps they actually fear what Jesus is capable of doing. If he lives will the bureaucracy of the Temple change? Will the Sadducees be out of a job? Will they lose their wealth? What about the Pharisees and their devotion to the Law? Will Jesus' authority usurp their power with his teachings? Perhaps it was fear combined with the power of the mob. The crowd knows that both Pilate and Herod are puppets to their will. Perhaps their allegiance to Caesar is a sham, and they only tell Herod what he wants to hear. They already tried to persuade him that Jesus was a threat by calling him king of the Jews, the precise title assumed by the Herodians. Whatever their motivation was for chanting "no king but Caesar," it is a betrayal of their monotheism, because even if they are only feigning allegiance to Caesar, their injustice has already violated their covenant with the one true God. I wonder how many Christians have committed this same betrayal. A brief look at the Creed may help remind us of Christianity's indebtedness to the monotheism of Judaism, even though Christianity redefined the nature of this one God in light of God's revelation of the Son and Spirit.

Monotheism is maintained by the first stanza: "We believe in God, the Father, the Almighty; Creator of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen." This is fairly traditional Jewish language. It is possible that they would have put Almighty before Father, but even so this is classic monotheism. It is the second set of affirmations that provides us with elements of redefinition. "And in one Lord, Jesus Christ the only Son of God." We now, with the earliest Christians, ascribe to Jesus the title, Lord, which used to be only appropriately given to God by the Israelites of the OT. It is also the title used by the Caesars: Caesar is Lord, Caesar is divine, whether in a quasi or full sense. The proclamation κύριος Ἰησοῦς, Jesus is Lord, is a rival claim to the power of Caesar; it is a rival claim to any power, authority, kingdom in heaven, on earth, or under the earth that seeks to deceive and destroy the world. Read Phil 2.5-11 in this political light - what does every prostrated creature confess when they hear the name Jesus? κύριος Ἰησοῦς. Read Eph and Col in this light with all the talk of principalities and powers. Think of this if you are a voter. κύριος Ἰησοῦς.

If these Jews were persuaded by fear, the prospect of losing security and power, then let us all think of the ways in which these same things have blinded us to our own idolatry. If the lordship of Jesus would have changed the temple system, the Torah system, and the power structures of the Jewish people, do we not think that his lordship will also challenge every "Christian" system? I recently heard one Republican candidate who is a professing Christian give a speech to a state where he said something like, "We are the 'give us our Bible and guns' people!" Our problem is certainly not that we don't have access to the Bible, it is that nobody reads it. And the problem with guns is similar but with an important difference: we also have access to guns but unlike the Bible we actually use them! Jesus is Lord, not your security in America, not the constitution, not the EU and the Euro, not your "autonomous" will, not __________. We have betrayed Jesus for far more than 30 pieces of silver.

On this Good Friday, as my wife and I participate in the stations of the cross and our Good Friday service, I pray that I will continually renew by baptism, my death into the body of Christ, which is a simple affirmation of the truth that Jesus is Lord, not me.

David Bentley Hart on the Nihilism of the Western Notion of Freedom

"The issue for me is whether, within the moral grammar of modernity, any of these good souls could give an account of his or her virtue. I with, that is, to make a point no conspicuously different from Alasdair MacIntyre's in the first chapter of his After Virue: that is, what an odd bricolage ethics has become in the wake of a morality of the Good. As far as I can tell, homo nihilisticus may often be in several notable respects a far more amiable rogue than homo religiosus, exhibiting a far small propensity for breaking the crockery, destroying sacred statuary, or slaying the nearest available infidel. But, love, let us be true to one another: even when all of this is granted, it would be a willful and culpable blindness for us to refuse to recognize how culturally arid and spiritually impoverished our society has become - which any unprejudiced survey of the artifacts of popular culture will effortlessly confirm. How, after all, should Christians regard the present age when, in America alone, more than 40 million babies have been killed in the womb since the Supreme Court invented the right to abortion, and when there are many who see these deaths not just as tragic necessities, but as blameless consequences of a moral social triumph? When the Carthaginians were prevailed upon to cease sacrificing their babies, at least the place vacated by Baal reminded them that they should seek the divine above themselves; but our culture offers up its babies to "my" freedom of choice, to "me." Surely a Christian must doubt that any other society's moral vision has ever shown itself to be more degenerate."

"Christ and Nothing (No Other God)," in In the Aftermath: Provocations and Laments

a brief word from Cardinal Newman

"Those whom Christ saves are they who at once attempt to save themselves, yet despair of saving themselves; who aim to do all, and confess they do nought; who are all love, and all fear; who are the most holy, and yet confess themselves the most sinful; who ever seek to please Him, yet feel they never can; who are full of good works, yet of works of penance. All this seems a contradiction to the natural man, but it is not so to those whom Christ enlightens. They understand in proportion to their illumination, that it is possible to work out their salvation, yet to have it wrought out for them, to fear and tremble at the thought of judgment, yet to rejoice always in the Lord, and hope and pray for His coming."

From his sermon, "The Lapse of Time"

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