Accession Day: Love the Brethren. Fear God. Honour the King

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: 1 Peter 2:11-17, Matthew 22:16-22

Before coming to St Margaret’s, as most of you know, I was a servant of the Crown, had taken the Queen’s shilling, and wore the insignia of the Royal Army Chaplains’ Department. The crest of the department shows a Maltese cross with a laurel around it and a crown at the top. At the centre is the department’s motto “In this sign conquer”. ‘In This Sign Conquer’ refers to a vision of the fourth century Roman emperor Constantine – who in a dream saw an image of the cross and those words. The words – especially serving in the military, create a sense of unease. They sit awkwardly with the teaching of Jesus; it feels uncomfortable.

Constantine was the first emperor not to persecute Christianity and legalise the faith. He brought Christianity into the mainstream. From this point, the Church had a foothold in politics, in states and kings. Taking Constantine’s motto the Church expanded, lead armies, conquered continents, built empires, managed colonies. This made it a global faith, converted millions, sometimes by force, but created some distance from its foundations.

In the short term, for the first time, the church could own property. Constantine built basilicas. Sunday became an international day of rest. He called the first Council of Nicea in 325, from which comes the Nicene Creed, the main creed we say each week. And he removed pagan gods from Roman coinage.

Coins are the subject of today’s Gospel. And it’s this passage of the emperor’s coin that the Church chose to mark the accession, which is curious.

You can see what they were thinking. Render to Caesar and Render to God. Give the Queen your loyalty and your taxes; For God, your prayers and praise. A neat division; Only it’s not what Jesus meant at all.

The context of this is the Pharisees and Herodians conspiring to trap Jesus. They ask whether it’s lawful to pay taxes because it puts Jesus in a bind. If he says no to taxes then he’s inciting rebellion against Rome. But if he says yes to paying taxes, then he puts himself with the Herodians, the puppet regime of the Roman occupation. A yes to foreign gods is a no to being a credible prophet. It’s like trying to keep everyone on your side in a Brexit debate.

Rome required taxes to be paid in Roman currency; with Roman coins. The cleverness of Jesus response begins with him asking for a coin. To everyone around, they immediately see that, Jesus doesn’t carry the coin of the emperor. If we remember that Roman emperors were frequently associated with divinity, onlookers would see that Jesus doesn’t carry round any graven image, while the Herodians do.

Jesus 1, Herodians 0. Then Jesus takes the coin and asks ‘whose head is on it, and whose title’. The question is designed to remind them of that second commandment, not to make any graven image and not to bow down to them. Jesus 2, Herodians 0.

So when Jesus says give to the emperor what is the emperor’s, he’s not suggesting we live with divided loyalties. He’s saying – send the money back to Rome. [It’s a bit like if you were living in Crimea and someone said what should we do with these Russian Rubles. In 2017, unsurprisingly, Ukraine forbade its banks from using Russian currency with Crimean imagery on it. That hasn’t changed… yet.] As Jesus later says – ‘no one can serve two masters… you cannot serve God and wealth’ so you cannot serve God and the emperor. But in the meantime, he’s neatly sidestepped the Jewish leaders’ trap.

The Church, on the other hand, has largely preferred to sidestep the wit of Jesus’ reply, taking it instead at face value. “When you’re good to Mama, Mama is good to you.” Which means that the Church has largely sided with the Herodians. Such are the compromises of an established Church!

The point for us is that as Christians we should always sit awkwardly with wealth and power. The best we can do is to dedicate them to the service of God and our neighbour; or as some have done, give them all up altogether.

The passage from 1Peter is similar. Yes – we are being told to accept every authority but that’s not because they’re right or authorised by God. It’s really just because St Peter thinks there are more important things to be getting on with.  The kingdom of God takes us well beyond the kingdoms of men. For St Peter, following Christ means becoming the servant of all, as Jesus was the servant of all. So we should have no problem submitting ourselves before emperors and rulers, because we should be ready to serve everyone.

Now the Church of England liturgy has since its inception been tied to a certain social conservatism. It’s always prayed for the monarch and the peace of the realm – unsurprising given its origins in social and political turmoil; But it’s fair to say that, unlike the emperor in Jesus’ time, the British monarchs have usually understood themselves as under the obligation of God.

For all Henry VIII’s flaws he was intently religious;  He earned himself, from the pope – perhaps a little ironically, the title ‘Defender of the Faith’, still held by British monarchs. It is hard to imagine anyone maintaining the sense of duty and quiet but explicit faith as our Queen does.

In 1947 she declared: ‘before you all that my whole life whether it be long or short shall be devoted to your service...  But I shall not have strength to carry out this resolution alone unless you join in it with me, as I now invite you to do:  I know that your support will be unfailingly given.  God help me to make good my vow, and God bless all of you who are willing to share in it.

On her coronation, likewise, she said; When I spoke to you last... I asked you all, whatever your religion, to pray for me on the day of my Coronation – to pray that God would give me wisdom and strength to carry out the promises that I should then be making...  I have been uplifted and sustained by the knowledge that your thoughts and prayers were with me.

Those are words of vocation – of dedicating one’s wealth and power to God. And there is a characteristic straightforwardness to how the Queen expresses her faith. Last Christmas she closed her speech, which was especially moving in respect to her openness in the loss of her husband, by saying: “It is [the] simplicity of the Christmas story that makes it so universally appealing:  simple happenings that formed the starting point of the life of Jesus —  a man whose teachings have been handed down from generation to generation, and have been the bedrock of my faith.  His birth marked a new beginning.  As the carol says, “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight”.

There are few among us who remember a time when she was not our queen. And she’s been exemplary in giving her life in public service and in Christian witness. The Queen is not the head of the Church but its “supreme governor”;  but she’s also made a ‘deacon’, meaning a ‘servant’ in the Church. And no one has a greater claim to having served her people.

So, we are perhaps not so torn between serving God and the Queen. Though we might feel the contradictions more with her representatives, and as Christians should always feel the tension of carrying wealth and power.

And when we make and hear those baptismal promises, we are aware we are putting ourselves under a higher authority. It is a dedication to follow a man who gave up everything and took the form of a servant for the love of others. They are promises to maintain an awkwardness to the things of this world, directing what we have always towards service rather than self-indulgence.

These 70 years the Queen has led her nation in its service of God, and as much as she appears on our coinage it is to the glory of God and the service of her people. It’s a shilling a Christian can accept. And I think in this year of Jubilee there is nothing more than she would want than for us to: Love the family of believers. Fear God. Honour the Emperor. But perhaps more than this in just observing the Great Commandment. as she has maintained throughout her life and reign: to love God and serve our neighbour. That is all the law and the prophets. Amen.