Tuning Out Augustus

Tuning Out Augustus--December 17, 2017

"In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, 'Do not be afraid; for see--I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.  This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger'...." [Luke 2:8-12]

You know how a smart person deals with bullies or brats (or, as is often the case, those who are both spoiled brats and blustering bullies at the same time)?  You intentionally ignore their tantrums... and you keep going on with whatever you were doing anyway.

It's brilliant in its simplicity, and it is surprisingly effective as a strategy, actually.

That's because bullies and brats are like hurricanes--they need the added energy of heat to power up their fury.  Bullies and brats yell and shout and brag and taunt, not because they want to prevent you from sparring with them, but because they want you to take the bait... to engage and answer back, to give their angry outbursts legitimacy, and to see that they have gotten under your skin.  The same impulse that leads my young children to want to stomp around and grunt in frustrated futility when they are supposed to be cooling out in their rooms is the same impulse behind history's petty tyrants, kings, dictators, and emperors: they want attention, and they want you to push back.  They are begging for some acknowledgement of how "tough" or "big" or "strong" or "great" or "powerful" they think they are (or want you to think they are), and so they keep making noise, stomping feet, and rattling sabers to try and get the world's attention.  

So wise parents and insightful world leaders both learn that the best strategy for sucking the power out of a bully's fiery fury is intentionally to ignore their outbursts and go right on ahead with whatever you were doing full steam ahead... as if their high-powered bombast doesn't even register.  Such a tactic takes the wind out of their sails, by denying them any energy your response would give them, and taking away any credibility they would have if yo u engage on their terms.

And it is not only a good rule of thumb in general, but it is of particular importance for the followers of Jesus, because the story of Jesus' own birth shows us God's very own way of doing the same to the bratty bully named Caesar Augustus, the emperor of Rome.   In the birth of Jesus, we see the living God being the Mature One, going right on with the divine plan to redeem and rescue creation, without giving the Empire any ammunition or lending the Emperor any credibility.  It is brilliant--although I suppose we should expect nothing less from the living God.

Here's what I mean.  We have quite likely all heard the announcement of the angels to the shepherds more than a few times in our lives.  We know the line so well, we could probably recite it from heart, and at least I will admit that I hear it in my head spoken with Linus' voice from the Charlie Brown Christmas.  You know how the angelic message goes:  "I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people--to you this day is born a Savior...."  But I suspect that no matter how familiar those words are to our ears, we are not hearing them with the same powerful edge they had back in the first century, when Luke the Gospel-writer first put them on papyrus.

See, Luke's recounting of the angel's announcement is full of loaded words--words that resonated in the first century world of the Roman Empire.  That's because the Emperor at the time of Jesus' birth (as Luke himself makes note) is Caesar Augustus, formerly known as Octavian, and Augustus (a title he gave to himself, which means, "impressive" and "renowned"--toot your own horn much, Octavian?).  And Augustus wasn't satisfied to just give himself the title "Impressive"--he went further and sold the empire on the notion that he was a god, and that his birth was the beginning of a whole new age in human history.  It was classic bratty bully bluster, and he was just begging for attention, poor pitiful emperor...

We have archaeological records (one famous one is call the Priene inscription) in which Caesar Augustus has this official imperial declaration made that they should all start their calendars all over again to mark his birth as the beginning of the age.  And here's the rationale, according to the inscription:  the birthday of Caesar, a "god," is to be taken as "the beginning of good news for the whole world" because Caesar is the new "savior."  Those are the actual words Augustus had used:  "good news/gospel," "savior," and "the whole world."  Caesar Augustus wanted everyone in the empire to start counting years from his birth, because he was convinced he was a god in human form, whose birth was good news for all people, and because he saw himself as a "savior" for the world.  Talk about a load of hot, steaming imperial propaganda!

Well, of course, all of the empire swooned over that.  Augustus got himself not only the fawning praise of the subjects of Rome, and not only worship throughout the empire, but even his own month added to the year (we call it the month of August, and it is named for Caesar Augustus--guess who July is named for?).  Caesar got his wish from most people in the empire, who all fell for his bluster and self-promotion and fell down to worship the emperor and to thank him for "saving" them all from such horrible things like being free and not being ruled by his occupying armies.

Now, Caesar was looking for anyone who would pick a fight with him or defy him--he was looking for someone who would stop what they were doing and turn around to push back on his imperial decrees, so that he could unleash another round of bombast and big talk about his own supposed "greatness."  He was looking for someone to straight out defy him and to let Caesar himself set the rules of engagement.  That way any would-be deliverers, messiahs, or usurpers would have to face Rome's armies and military might.

But God, it turns out, is smarter than Augustus the bully-brat.  Thank God.

The living God doesn't get provoked when August tries to claim divine status (take note: a frequent sign of maturity is when you don't get riled up by someone else's petty remarks, no matter how dense they are).  The living God doesn't take the bait of letting Caesar derail the divine plan to save and bless and redeem all creation.  The living God doesn't let Caesar set the terms--in fact, the living God takes those terms and turns them inside out.  

So when the angel announces the birth of the long-awaited Messiah, notice how the same words August had already used get taken and flipped on their heads.  Instead of the emperor being a god and a savior whose birth is good news for all the world, it is a vulnerable baby born to powerless, poor peasant parents and laid in a spare food trough.  Instead of revising history and saying, "Well, because Caesar is in power, he gets to retroactively call the day of his birth a divine miracle," the angel announces divine presence in Jesus before he has done a thing!  Instead of measuring greatness in terms of armies, treasure, or fawning crowds, the living God turns our focus to see infinity held within the finite bounds of a seven or eight-pound baby.  Instead of sending an army back to Caesar to fight on the empire's terms, God just goes right ahead with the divine conspiracy to save the world through the suffering love of a cross.  And instead of defining "good news" like Caesar did--by pointing to military victories and good numbers at the Rome Stock Market--the living God defines good news in the birth of a child on the margins, announced to people on the margins, as good news for all people, not just the citizens of Rome.

In other words, when it came to a bratty bully of a blowhard like Augustus, the infinite wisdom of the living God was to treat Caesar like a petulant child having a tantrum--and to intentionally ignore his fuming and fury.  And it worked perfectly.  The divine rescue operation continued right along, regardless of Augustus' imperial proclamations or self-congratulatory edicts.  And now today, Augustus himself is the half-forgotten figure.  

There is a great observation of Frederick Buechner's on the subject.  Buechner writes:  "Caesar was only one of the titles Augustus bore. Others were rex, imperator, princeps, pontifex maximus, and so on. He ruled Rome and thus virtually the whole civilized world. He was worshiped as a god. People burned incense to him. Insofar as he is remembered at all, most people remember him mainly because at some point during his reign, in a rundown section of one of the more obscure imperial provinces, out behind a cheesy motel among cowflops and moldy hay, a child was born to a pair of up-country rubes you could have sold the Brooklyn Bridge to without even trying." 

All of that is to say, the divine strategy of ignoring Caesar's self-promotion did the trick--the living God ignored Augustus' bluster and just kept right on with the divine plan to save and bless the world.  In the face of Caesar's hype, the angels brought the true "good news" of a "savior" who was more than just an imperial manager, and who showed us real divinity in the presence of the ordinary and the lowly.

For us to prepare for Jesus in these remaining days until Christmas, part of what we will need to learn is how to listen to the Augustuses around us and then to intentionally ignore them--that is to say, not to be lowered to the level of giving them the fights they are spoiling for, but instead to go right on with the way of Jesus.  We won't have to bluster back at the Caesar-voices around us, but simply to keep on keeping on with the witness of justice and mercy we have seen in Jesus.  We don't have to get drawn into a petty fight with the bullies and brats who are trying to provoke us--we can be the ones who just won't be distracted from the in-breaking of the Kingdom, and the One for whom we have been waiting.  And we don't have to settle for any official imperial proclamations as our Good News--we have been given the announcement that right under Augustus' nose, the living God has brought forth a Savior who doesn't need a sword.

Train your eyes and ears to recognize that Savior and that Good News, amid all the background noise of supposedly "impressive" Caesars, in this day.  That is how we will prepare for Jesus today.

Lord Jesus, help us to hear your kind of good news, and to see your kind of saving, while we tune out the tantrums of Augustus around