Easter and Empire

 Let’s talk about Easter and Empire. More specifically, about the way the Easter story challenges the pretensions of Empire, exposing imperial power as ultimately empty, as so much sound and fury signifying nothing.

Of course, Easter is about much more than this. It is about the redemption of the world. It is about the defeat of death. It is about God’s love for humanity and the astonishing lengths God is prepared to go to for the sake of creatures like us, sinful and petty and limited as we are. But the path to redemption passes through the cross—which, before it became a Christian symbol, was the ultimate symbol of imperial domination and control. 

The cross was deployed to terrorize any who might question the authority of the Roman Empire: human beings, nailed to wooden posts and hoisted up for all to see. Still alive when initially crucified, the victims of this imperial terror were allowed to die slowly of exposure and deprivation, and any who might think to defy the might of Rome could see these victims in various stages of demise: suffering, dying, dead.

The cross represented a certain kind of power: the power to dominate and control through the infliction of suffering and death and the fear of death. This was taken to be the ultimate proof of the Emperor’s supremacy and the final argument for obedience.

Bow down or die in agony. If you choose not to bow, you are a fool or you’re crazy, and the price for your defiance will be a living hell. 

This is the message of Empire. The empty tomb is God’s answer, declaring the emptiness of this imperial message and the final impotence of imperial power. 

Don’t get me wrong. The power to kill is terrible, and even worse is the power to kill slowly and painfully, with deliberate attention to humiliation: the conscious effort to turn a living human being into a thing. 

We see the evil of it in the Passion story, in Jesus’ journey to the cross, in His anguish. And on the cross, Christ stands in for humanity and thus declares in the most unequivocal terms, “What you do to the least of these, you do to me.” On the cross, God announces that what Empire does to secure its control—every hammer blow, every word of mockery, every infliction of death—is done to the very Creator of the Universe. It is a monumental crime against God.

That is the first lesson of the Easter story: the magnitude of the evil that imperial power commits. The use of suffering and death and the threat of these things to dominate and control others is a crime against the Great I Am, Being Itself, the Creator and Sustainer of all that is.

But the Easter story has a second lesson. It is this: the power to kill is nothing in comparison to the power to give life. That power lies with God, and through that power God will undo Empire’s every pretention to supremacy. 

Not only is the coercive domination of human bodies evil, but it is, in the final analysis, impotent. Everything it accomplishes is eventually swallowed up by the very forces of death that it wields with such sinister glee. What remains, what endures, is the life God gives out of boundless love.

It is in this power of love and life that we must abide if we seek anything eternal. If we desire anything that will last, we will not find it in the power of Empire. We will find it, instead, in the quiet power of healing the sick and feeding the hungry and loving our neighbors as ourselves. 

When we do these things, we abide in God. And when we abide in God, the threat of death cannot force us to bow. For when we abide in God, there is an empty tomb at the far side of every dark moment, every threat, every misuse of terrestrial power to terrorize and kill.

It is said that life is fleeting, and death the final answer to it all. The Easter story inverts this. It is death that is fleeting, and life the final answer. And if that is so, our standards of wisdom and foolishness become inverted as well. When that refusal to bow before coercive power springs from an allegiance to life and love, then—foolish as that may seem to the disciples of Empire—that refusal is the greatest wisdom in the world.

Jesus' Temptations in the Wilderness

Reading the news recently has inspired me to reflect on the story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, as recounted in Matthew 4: 1-11. In this reflection, it isn't my purpose to explicitly draw out connections between the story of Jesus’ temptation and current events. My purpose, rather, is to lay out my understanding of the scriptural story. But I do think it can be instructive, especially in times of war, to consume the news and listen to what our leaders say in the light of the temptations that Jesus repudiated. I invite you to do this for yourself.

In the story, the devil tempts Jesus in three ways. The first temptation is to use His power to turn stones into bread to feed his hunger. The second is to prove His power and authority as the Son of God by flinging Himself from the highest point of the temple and calling down God’s angels to shield Him from harm. And the third is the temptation of authoritarian control: the chance to rule the world in the manner familiar to subjects of imperial Rome, the manner that the devil identifies with worshipping him.

The first temptation is interesting because it represents a use of power that, according to Scripture, Jesus was not shy to invoke. Turning one thing into another? Surely it is no worse to turn stones into bread than it is to turn water into wine. Miraculously meeting the needs of the body? That was a core element of the ministry Jesus pursued after leaving the wilderness.

Such uses of power are not inherently “of the devil.” Rather, the temptation represented here is a matter of using such power at the wrong time and place. Jesus retreated into the wilderness to focus not on His material comfort but on His connection to God, readying himself for the challenges to come—challenges that would call Him to face far worse than mortal hunger. 

What He was tempted to do here was forget that “man does not live by bread alone.” The needs of the body are not meaningless—and to value those needs by healing the sick or multiplying the loaves and fishes is not evil. But it is one thing to do these things in the service of love and grace, something else to prioritize them over such service.

There are times and places when we must be willing to go hungry, to pass through suffering and even to die, in the name of what is right and good, loving and holy. At those times, it is tempting to use our power to ease our hunger or to fend off threats to our lives and welfare. But in doing so, we forget what matters most. Physical health and security matter, but they are not the most important thing. Sometimes, the path of true courage lies not in using our power to overcome threats to our physical welfare but in enduring what threatens us because using our power to overcome it would be wrong.

But the other two temptations aren’t just a matter of the wrong time and place. These represent uses of power that are more intimately opposed to the divine. It is one thing to use power to heal when illness strikes or when malign human agents inflict harm, another to leap towards death solely to stage a display of one’s mightiness. That use of power is not about healing. It is not about restoring what has been broken. It is not about infusing divine grace into a world distorted by the forces of alienation. That use of power is about showing off. 

More egregiously, it is about showing off for the purpose of inspiring people to bow down before might. “See what I can do! See my might and be cowed!” 

What is the reaction of human observers who are confronted with someone who shows off his power in such a stunning display—and does so to dramatize what he is capable of? Put another way, what aspect of our humanity does such a display speak to? Our love? Our desire to be good? Our capacity for trust and gratitude?

Of course not. Such a display is meant to trigger our awe and terror of power for power’s sake. It triggers the fear of retaliation and the hunger for favors, the sorts of self-interested feelings that inspire sycophancy. “Look what he can do! What power! Maybe if we hitch our wagons to him and shout his praises, he’ll use that power to our benefit.” And also: “Maybe, if we don’t, he’ll make us pay.”

This is what Jesus repudiates. The transactional relationship with power, the sort that defines the relations between authoritarian leaders and their subjects, does not spring from God. And when it infects the relationship between humanity and God, it is arguably the worst expression of sin. The worst, because it displaces the relational dynamic of loving and being loved, of grace and gratitude. The worst, because it reinforces the distance between creature and creator, the distance that God is trying to close with relentless love.

The third temptation, to become a ruler in the manner of emperors, is an extension of these same considerations. What the devil is offering is a certain kind of earthly power—not the power of love but of control; not the power of healing and giving life but of harming and dealing death; not the power of creation but of destruction; not the agency and empowerment that spring from hope and trust but the coercion and domination that spring from hopelessness and fear.

To claim that kind of power and wield it with relish is to worship the devil rather than God.

(Let me note here that there is a big difference between claiming such power and wielding it with relish and reluctantly resorting to such power as the lesser evil in a broken world that forces tragic compromises. The Christian tradition has long debated the ethics of the latter, with Just War Theorists defending it and Christian pacifists rejecting it. But that debate is recognized by both sides as complex, and no one accuses sincere Just Warists of worshipping the devil. That charge is directed to the shameless embrace of such power, not the solemn and regretful employment of it as a tragic last resort in a broken world.) 

The full significance of what Jesus rejected and repudiated in the wilderness does not, of course, come into full focus apart from the path he took when He returned from the wilderness. It comes into full focus only in the light of His ministry of healing and hope, His message of love, His inversion of worldly conceptions of greatness, and His path through being bodily dominated by imperial power towards the radically different sort of triumph represented by the empty tomb. This will be the focus of my next post.

But with that context in mind, the following message of Matthew 4:1-11 comes clear: those who exult in the dealing of death, who take glory in displays of power for power’s sake, who crow over their ability to destroy and dominate—such persons have fallen prey to the devil’s temptations. In the divide between the imperial power to crucify and the divine power to endure crucifixion without flinching from the good, they have chosen the power to crucify.