The Divine Rebellion--November 14, 2024

The Divine Rebellion--November 14, 2024

"For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death." [1 Corinthians 15:21-26]

You know, it's not really a surprise that the first Christians kept getting rounded up by the Empire and then thrown in jail or fed to lions. At least if any of the rest of them sounded like Paul here. Paul is downright subversive--the Romans were right to see his voice as a threat to their unquestioned rule... even if he was never looking to launch a violent coup or lead an army. We just don't often consider the real weight to the apostle's words here.

Paul clearly says that Jesus' victory is not riding the coattails of Rome, or through an endorsement of Caesar. Paul says that at the last, every ruler, every supposed "authority," and everyone who wields "power" will finally give way to the Risen Jesus. And to first century ears, that was a direct assault on the claims of Rome, which insisted that it would last forever in an eternal dominion (personified for the Empire by its worship of the goddess "Roma Aeterna," who was a sort of embodiment of the  supposed "greatness" of the nation-state of Rome).

Let me say that again so that we do not miss the point: in Paul's day, the official policy of the Empire was that the nation-state of Rome was to be worshipped as divine, and official messaging from the Empire was that Rome's rule would last forever. So when Paul comes along and says that Christ will ultimately be victorious over every ruler and authority and power, it cannot have been heard as anything less than a protest against the supremacy of the dominant nation-state of his day, and against the ruler at the top who boasted so much about its greatness.

This is a really decisive move for Paul, because he doesn't just say that God reigns "through" Rome, like a behind-the-scenes puppet-master pulling the strings. Paul doesn't say here that everything Rome does gets God's endorsement, nor does he say that criticism of Rome is criticism of God's appointed ruler. (We can spend time on another day with Paul's comments in Romans 13 about the governing authorities being used by God to restrain evil and limit the dangerous of chaos, but at least here in 1 Corinthians, Paul is not afraid to say clearly that no authority or ruler carries equal ultimacy with Christ.) Instead, Paul says that no matter how the letterhead changes from one empire to another, as the power of one nation-state after another goes into the dustbin of history, no matter who came on the scene yesterday or who comes on the scene tomorrow, none of these powers deserve our ultimate allegiance, and none of them will outlast the crucified-and-risen Christ.

And then, in what I am coming to see is Paul's greatest slap in the face to "Eternal Rome" and its Caesar, he undercuts all of Rome's propaganda by saying that the real kingpin to be dealt with at the last is death itself. Paul realizes that Jesus' victory is not simply to replace one empire (Rome) with another (even though Christians tried to do that with what they called "Christendom" or in things like "the Holy Roman Empire" or in the modern-day heresy of Christian nationalism). Jesus' victory goes deeper than just picking off Caesar. The empires of history, and the emperors who have ruled them, are really just the henchmen of the real heavy-hitting Power to be dealt with--death itself. Rome, Babylon, Assyria, Pharaoh's Egypt, and all the rest...they have just been the hired muscle that Death has used throughout history. But make no mistake about it--death has been the real Power underneath all of them. Death gave those empires--and every other empire since--their ability to threaten and coerce. After all, what Rome, Babylon, and the rest did was to intimidate their subjects into obedience on pain of death--do what the centurions say, or else they can string you up on a cross! And every empire and dominant system ever since has basically made the same threat. But death has been the real enemy all along. Without the underlying power of threatening death, no one would listen to Caesar or Pharaoh. But with that power, empires spread, and people get stepped on.

So Paul cuts through to the real contest--not between Christ and Caesar, but between Christ and Death Itself. That's got to be humbling if you are Caesar getting wind of this letter--it's almost like Paul is saying, "Christ isn't even going to waste his time taking out Caesar; he has bigger fish to fry, and Caesar is just too small a guppy to worry about." Paul knows that Caesar and his reign will come to an end, and that Rome and its boasts as a nation-state and empire will fade away in time, too. But the real power to be reckoned with is the power of death--and that, Paul says, is precisely what Jesus has come to deal with.

Jesus' resurrection is the beginning of the end of every other claim of ultimate power, because Jesus' resurrection shows that every empire and every emperor who makes the threat, "Do what I say, or else..." cannot stop or silence Jesus. The resurrection is a defiant "No!" to Rome's insistence that Jesus stay in the grave, and it is also a shot across the bow to death itself, warning that the power of death is coming unraveled, too. As Jurgen Moltmann wrote, "Christ's resurrection is the beginning of God's rebellion. That rebellion is still going on in the Spirit of hope, and will be complete when, together with death, 'every ruler and every authority and power' is at last abolished....Easter is at one and the same time God's protest against death, and the feast of freedom from death."

All these centuries later after Rome, it is tempting to think we are smarter, wiser, more pious, or otherwise different from the Empire of Paul's day. But the temptation to worship our own national power is just as real, just as alluring, and just as strong. The letterheads, change, but it is the same old impulse to bow down to "Roma Aeterna" in a different outfit and to worship the nation-state. Paul reminds us here that history's empires and nations come and go, and none of them is ever really as permanent as it imagines itself to be. But that is because death is a fickle and cruel mob boss who always turns on its henchmen. And then Paul tells us that the real power to be worried about--death itself--has its days numbered, too. And that the victory in which we hope is not merely Jesus over Rome, but rather Jesus over death itself.

That notion is potent stuff. If we took it seriously, we Christians might just become anew the world-changing, love-embodying, truth-telling movement that the Romans thought we were at the beginning. We are a part of God's rebellion against the tyranny of death and all of its minions. We are a part of God's protest against death.

Go. Now. Tell the world that death does not get the final say.

Lord Jesus, let us take confidence and courage from your resurrection, and give us strength in our voices to remind the powers of death they do not get the last word... ever.