An Ephesian interlude (3): a reflection for Day 11 of Lent
“These people
who have been turning the world upside down have come here also… They are all
acting contrary to the decrees of the emperor[1],
saying that there is another king named Jesus.” (Acts 17.6-7)
“He has
brought down the powerful from their thrones
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things
and sent the rich away empty.” (Luke 1.52-53)
The
story Luke is telling is of a God who up-ends the world-order…by sending his
Son Jesus…to be conceived “prematurely” in the womb of a Galilean girl, to
establish his kingdom among his people…by being murdered by them and then by
the risen (!) Messiah’s messengers fanning out from Jerusalem to wreak “holy
havoc” on the Roman Empire…through the proclamation that this Son of
(the real) God is the true Lord of the nations.
Make no mistake, Luke’s two-volume oeuvre is a work of
subversion. Jesus and the kingdom of
God are presented as the reality that Caesar and the empire of Rome can
only pathetically imitate. Luke is not
writing to provide fodder for an abstract, other-worldly, individualistic and
“peaceful” piety. Au contraire,
Luke is telling the story of a revolution, launched by none other than the
Creator himself.
The
Creator, as it turns out, is a sneaky God – he doesn’t establish his kingdom
(as we might have suspected) by the usual methods: overwhelming power, violence
and bravado, followed by economic and cultural manipulation – i.e. like the
Romans. Rather, this God proves to be
“crafty as a serpent and innocent as a dove” (cf. Mt. 10.16). The risen Messiah of Israel sends out his
apostles (i.e. ambassadors, emissaries) on a non-violent mission of sabotage –
this oxymoronic mandate calls for a true “hearts and minds” campaign. The book of Acts is, if you like, the
tale of a propaganda war. Whose gospel
will win – Caesar’s or Jesus’ (Paul’s)?
Who actually has “good news” to offer?
Is Roman justice, order, and civilization the best the world can hope
for? It was, indeed, the best the world
had yet seen.[2] Or is “the way” of Jesus the path to true
peace, justice and human flourishing?
Well, the story continues…
Imagine the
following scenario. Rome, 27 B.C. Octavian has just been crowned emperor of
Rome and has been endowed with the epithet of “Augustus”, and will establish
the Julio-Claudian dynasty which would rule Rome for most of a century. Octavian’s adoptive father, (the original) Caesar,
had been assassinated in the year 44.
Following his untimely end, Caesar had been accorded the “apotheosis”,
i.e. he was said to have ascended to the heavens to take his place among the
pantheon of Roman gods. This made
Octavian, his son and heir, “the son of the divine Julius Caesar”; this title
was promptly impressed onto coins which would travel the empire from one hand
to another, spreading the “good news” of Octavian’s accession to the imperial
throne.[3] As far as Augustus was concerned, there was
one world – the world of Rome – and one Lord of said world, himself. However, some two decades after becoming
“kurios”, a child was born in a far-flung backwater of Augustus’ empire. Just another peasant baby, nothing
newsworthy. Nothing, that is, until Luke
described the birth of the son of Mary in terms that undermined the marble upon
which Augustus sat, far away in Rome (cf. Lk. 2.1-20). Indeed, Luke’s birth-narrative has its own
“good news” to tell of a different “saviour” and “lord” (Lk. 2.10-11).[4]
In
his second volume, Luke continues his rhetorical revolt. In the opening chapter of Acts, Luke
describes the “ascension” of the resurrected Jesus into heaven to take
his place “at the right hand of (the throne of) God” (Ac. 1.6-9; 2.32-33,
36). Having been condemned and crucified
by Caesar’s representative, Jesus rose from death and showed himself to be
alive to the apostles by “many convincing proofs” during a 40-day period (Ac.
1.3) before ascending to assume the heavenly throne as both the Creator’s
regent and Lord of the world. Naturally
enough (in Roman terms), once the “kurios” has been enthroned, the heralds of
his kingdom must travel throughout his territories to announce the “good news
(gospel)” of the victory/coronation of the new king of the nations. Which is precisely what happens in the rest
of the narrative of Acts…
[1] i.e. Caesar Claudius, the 4th
member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty (reign: AD 41-54).
[2] It’s interesting to note that
nostalgia for Greco-Roman civilization and culture would manifest itself at
different points of Western history: the 15th-century Renaissance,
Nietzsche (19th century), etc.
Of course, as contemporary historian Tom Holland has pointed out, there
was one Western value that cannot be traced to ancient Greece or Rome –
compassion. If we now tend to value
mercy and pity, insists Holland, it’s thanks to Christianity (cf. idem. Dominion,
2019).
[3] Another Roman imperial propaganda
tool was the construction of temples in honour of deified emperors; there was
such a temple dedicated to Augustus in Ephesus.
[4] The Roman poet, Virgil, would
compose poems celebrating the birth of Augustus as heralding a “golden age”,
and a new “order of the ages” (novus ordo seclorum).
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