Sermons

Twenty-Second Sunday after Trinity

Sunday 19 October at 10am

David Paton-Williams
Readings: 1 Thessalonians 1.1-10 and Matthew 22.15-22

"Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God."

Politicians are never out of the news, whether its Gordon Brown going from zero to hero or Peter Madleson's return from the political wilderness once again. and it seems that few people have a good word to say for them:

"They are all the same - they're only in it for themselves"

Yet in the New Testament we are not encouraged to moan about those who govern us, but to give them their due.

The New Testament writers had no illusions about their rulers, after all they had executed Jesus, John the Baptist and several of the apostles.

But we are told to give them their due - and that means, above all, to pray for them

(1 Tim 2) I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions and thanksgivings be made for everyone, for kings and all who are in high positions.

There was a very good reason for this exhortation.

Christians were prepared, as Paul put it in Romans 13, to be subject to the ruling authorities, they were prepared to accept that in a sense these authorities were part of God's ordering of human society, that, as Paul says, they got their authority from God. But they also knew that sometimes those authorities could become demonic, totalitarian and oppressive - as John the divine saw in his Revelation

So 1st century Christians were only prepared to go along with Caesar as long as the values of the empire and the values of the kingdom were not in conflict.

Ultimately Christians had to give to God what belonged to God and so they could not give unquestioning loyalty to Caesar.

This meant that Christians were sometimes seen as subversives. So their commitment to pray for their leaders helped to counter that view, and helped to protect the small, vulnerable communities of believers from too much persecution

As 1 Tim put it, they were to pray for their leaders so "that we may live a quiet and peaceable life"

Our situation today may be different but we are still called, not to join the rest of society in dragging our leaders down, or rejoicing over their falls from grace but to offer them up in prayer,

Because they are doing a job that needs to be done for the good of our ward, our city, our society and or world
• Political power has to be wielded
• Decisions have to be taken;
• services have to be provided
• the life of society has to be organised
• international relations have to be negotiated

And if it is done well then it benefits us all. If it is done badly then we all suffer

Our leaders need our prayers to cope with the challenges of the job.

One of these challenges is the issue of compromise:

Compromise is so often presented as a dirty word but as Shirley Williams used to say - if politicians don't compromise,
if they resign on the first clash with their principles then they will never be around long enough to do any good.

So politicians need our prayers because they need wisdom not only in devising policies but also to know when to compromise and when to stand firm

and they need our prayers because they also have to live with those compromises as well as with their sometimes very public failures and mistakes.

And then there are the temptations of power

We all know that power corrupts.

It can cut people off from those they set out to serve. It has an attraction that can make people want power for its own sake, or for all the trappings that come with it. And it can easily be used to benefit one's self or one's own section of society. So our politicians need our prayers so that they can resist the subtle temptations that come with power and maintain a vision that enables power to be used in the interests of the whole of society.

Then there are the constant pressures - the party whips, public opinion, the lobbyists, and the constant clamour of the media .

All of these can mean seeking not what is good and right and proper but what is expedient, popular and vote-winning.

Unpopular decisions do have to be taken - take global-warming - if good intentions and fine-words are ever to make a serious difference then politicians are going to have to be able to hold their course and steer through long term policies that may be deeply unpopular.

They need our prayers to discern what the policies need to be and to have the courage and determination to see them through, even if it might mean losing their seat.

So while we have to be realistic about the pressures and ambiguities of politics, and of the mixed motives that affect us all
we are called to uphold politicians in our prayers.

In fact we need to go further and affirm that God calls people to go into politics We need to hold politics up as a good and proper career for people of whatever age to enter.

Yes, it will be fraught with all kinds of dangers but society needs people of faith to enter into the fray and get their hands dirty in the messy business of public life.

They say that we get the leaders we deserve We ought to pray that we will get the leaders we need.

We also need to pray for our leaders for a similar reason to the first century church, because we cannot give them our uncritical support either. and when we do criticise them they need to know that we are not fundamentally against them.

The BBC correspondent Fergal Keane once interviewed Ang Sang Su Chi the Burmese political leader who has spent 12 of the last 19 years in some form of detention. At the end of their interview they talked about the day when she might come to power. And Ang San Su Chi said - when that happens, and when we get things wrong, come back and tell us.

Come back and tell us. The constructive criticism of a friend. How often do politicians go wrong when they cannot accept the criticisms of friends, when they surround themselves with those who only say "yes" to them.

We are coming to that time of the year when as a church congregation we are encouraged to join the letter writing campaign of Amnesty International. There are times when we simply must speak out against policies or regimes that are unjust.

And there will always be times when the church in this country will criticise government policies on the basis of the values we see lived out in Jesus

When we do so our prayers help to show that we are not simply being party-minded or, far less, bloody-minded.

They show that we are seeking the good of our nation or the good of humanity, we are seeking God's kingdom.

So Christians are called to enter the political fray and offer criticisms because we cannot offer Caesar our unquestioning loyalty

But we do so with a deep commitment to pray for our leaders, whether on a local, national or international level.

We will give to our leaders what rightly belongs to them but we will give to God our prayers, our thanksgivings and our ultimate loyalty as we strive to be workers for his kingdom.

© St Edmund's Church, Roundhay