Sermon for Trinity 23
Matthew 22:15-22
Trinity 23
November 15, 2009
Grace, mercy and peace from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
There have been worse tyrants than Adolph Hitler. Possibly the greatest of all time was Mao Zedong, whose seventy million victims dwarf Hitler's eleven or twelve million. Stalin actually comes in second, with something like thirty million. But somehow, when we go looking for people or regimes to serve as the archetype of human evil and tyranny, Hitler and Nazi Germany are generally the examples that get picked.
About a year ago, Dave and Kathy Leonard and I saw Valkyrie, the Tom Cruise movie about the plot to kill Hitler. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wasn't portrayed in it, though Carl Goerdeler- the prominent Lutheran layman who would have become chancellor of Germany if the plot had succeeded- was. The movie was a reminder of the fact that German Lutherans- who are often portrayed as politically subservient to authority- were moved by Hitler's crimes to attempt tyrannicide and revolution.
Were they right, or were they wrong? Paul tells us in Romans 13 that the government is God's servant, and that whoever resists the government resists God and incurs His judgment. And the government Paul was talking about was that of Nero, who may not have killed nearly as many people as Mao or Stalin or Hitler, but whose persecution of the Church surely earned him a place among the great tyrants of history.
Two hundred thirty-three years ago last July, a group of English colonists in Philadelphia declared themselves in revolt against the legitimate government of British North America, the regime of King George III. The Declaration of Independence attributes all manner of failures and crimes to the King and his government. But the fact of the matter is that King George's "tyranny" was nothing like that of Mao or Stalin or Hitler or Nero. In fact, probably as many citizens of the Thirteen Colonies remained loyal to the Crown as sided with Washington and the Continental Congress. However sympathetic we may be to our own Founding Fathers, you will find no Scriptural support for the notion that when a government fails to secure the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to the people it rules, it is in any sense the right of the people to alter or abolish it.
Bonhoeffer finally decided that in view of the enormity of Hitler's crimes, he would follow Luther's advice and "sin boldly (while trusting) in God more boldly still." But the rhetoric of some in our present age to the contrary, it's doubtful that a great many of our Founding Fathers particularly worried about Romans 13.
When the Pharisees tried to trap Jesus by putting Him in the position of choosing between one's duty to God and one's duty to the government God has installed as His servant, our Lord refused to take the bait. "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's," He said, "and to God the things that are God's." It was a good answer, and it put the Pharisees in their place. But the question still remains: just what is Caesar's, and what is God's?
Taxes are Caesar's. He also has a claim on our obedience in all things that do not violate God's Law. The Fourth Commandment is binding even in matters in which we do not like the government's policies and actions. If Paul could call Nero God's servant, how much more do we owe obedience to a government elected by popular vote, which permits us freedom of worship and- despite standing by and allowing the slaughter of the innocent unborn and others who are too weak to defend themselves- certainly does not engage in mass murder on religious or racial or ethnic grounds!
Government is a gift of God. It exists for some of the same reasons that God gives parents to children. It protects us from those who would harm us. It defends us from terrorists and foreign enemies, as well as from murderers and thieves and muggers. If our house catches fire, it puts the fire out. It ensures that it's safe to drive the streets, and minimizes the chance of our being broadsided by some maniac driving too fast or under the influence of alcohol. It provides us with services which bridge the gap between what our resources are able to provide in various situations, and what the necessities of life require. It defends the weak from the strong, and makes it possible for us to live quiet and peaceable lives.
The government, as Paul reminds us, is God's servant. In any circumstance in which it does not require disobedience to God Hiimself, to defy it or to disobey it is to defy and to disobey God.
But our duty to obey the government ends at the point where it forgets that it is only God's servant, and not God Himself! If it orders us to serve in a manifestly unjust war, it is our duty to refuse. If it tells us to betray the weak or the persecuted, then to obey it is to sin against God. And if it attempts to interfere with the operation of God's grace or its administration, we have the absolute obligation to follow the example of Peter before the Sandhedrin and insist that we must serve God rather than men- even when those men are the government!
Were Christians like Goerdeler and Dietrich and Klaus Bonhoeffer and Dietrich's brothers-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi and Rüdiger Schleicher right in conspiring to kill Hitler and overthrow the Nazi regime? Paul seems to say "no." But whatever answer we give to the question of tyrannicide and rebellion, they were certainly right to disobey.
When the Aryan Laws ordered the German church to discriminate against Jewish Christians- to ban those of Jewish descent from the ministry and teaching positions and other positions of leadership and even denied them baptism and membership in the Church and finally even the right to attend the Divine Service- Bonhoeffer and the others were not only justified in telling the Nazis where to get off, but fulfilling their absolute obligation. And incidentally, if you ever hear someone trying to blame the Holocaust on a Lutheran refusal to stand up to the powers that be, you might remind that person that Bonhoeffer and the Lutherans refused to sign the Barmen Declaration- the anti-Nazi confession of faith- in large measure because it did not include a condemnation of the Aryan Decrees and of Hitler's persecution of the Jews!
God exercises His authority in this world in two ways. Lutheran theology refers to these as God's two "kingdoms." Contrary to what you sometimes hear, they are not the church and the state. The Kingdom of the Left Hand- the kingdom of Law, of coercion, of force, and of compulsion- includes congregational meetings and church council meetings and district and synodical conventions and church government just as much as it includes the doings of Caesar. Here God ensures that things are done decently and in order. Here God protects the weak from the strong, and the minority from the majority. Here God graciously sees to our physical and corporate well-being.
But God also has another kingdom- the Kingdom of the Right Hand. In one sense,this shouldn't be confused with the Church as such; as we've seen, the government of the visible Church belongs to the Kingdom of the Left. The Kingdom of the Right has to do with the invisible Church. It is the realm of grace, of forgiveness, and of love. There is no room here for law or coercion, and neither is there any need for them.
Christians are citizens of both kingdoms. But unbelievers are citizens only of the Kingdom of the Left. Conversely, only believers, by definition, can be citizens of the Kingdom of the Right. Caesar's job is to preserve order, to maintain the peace, and to protect the weak from the strong. But when it comes to God's grace, and to the forgiveness of sins, Caesar has nothing to say.
To be sure, church discipline belongs to the Kingdom of the Left. The Binding Key has to do with Law, with compulsion, and with demand. But the Loosing Key is pure Gospel- and it belongs strictly to the Kingdom of the Right.
All Christians are citizens of both Kingdoms. Insofar as we are the Old Adam, we are citizens of the Kingdom of the Left, just like everyone else. But insofar as we are the New Self- and only insofar as we are the New Self- we are citizens of the Kingdom of the Right. Here, there is no need of compulsion. Here, there is no need of Law. Here, there is no need of either rules or their enforcement. Here there is only love- and here, love is all that is needed.
There is a great deal of nonsense spoken in American churches about the implications of our text. At least one decision of the Supreme Court has declared the United States- the First Amendment to the contrary- a "Christian nation," whatever that might be. But nations are a function of the Kingdom of the Left Hand. Insofar as we are the New Self we have no need of divisions between political groups, any more than we have need of anything political. We are citizens of the Kingdom of God. We give Him our loyalty and our love. We give our fellow believer or friendship and our love. We do not ask where he was born, or what passport he holds. Neither do we care.
Incidentally, Saint Mary is one of the few Lutheran churches I know of that does not have an American flag in the chancel. Good. Christians who come from other countries are generally surprised and often offended to see a symbol of national loyalty in a place where only our common loyalty to the Kingdom of God ought to matter.
Should civil law reflect God's Law? Sure- in the sense that it should be just and serve to fulfill God's intentions for civil law: the maintenance of peace and good order, and the protection of the weak from the strong. And certainly it's the duty of Christians, as citizens of the Kingdom of the Left Hand, to advocate for justice in the civil law. But Jews and Muslims and Buddhists and Hindus and even atheists and agnostics can be just, too. Contrary to what a great many American Christians, influenced by Calvinism, believe, God does not require that the civil government be in any sense "Christian." He requires merely that it be just. That's why our advocacy for justice needs to be presented in terms that are accessible and congenial to those Jews and Muslims and Buddhists and atheists and agnostics who are in favor of justice, too. We are not called upon to create the Kingdom of the Right Hand on earth- or, to paraphrase the words of that favorite English hymn, "...to build Jerusalem/In Iowa's green and pleasant land." We are called, rather, to be faithful subjects of God in both His Kingdom of the Left and His Kingdom of the Right, without confusing the two.
The Psalm is right when it says, "Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord." But we confuse the Two Kingdoms and, in Luther's phrase, "brew them into one another" when we forget that there has been only one nation that God has ever chosen and one nation who as a nation has ever had the Lord as its God, and that it wasn't the United States.
No, what God asks of us as citizens of the Kingdom of the Left is that we be good neighbors, and both to obey the government He has placed over us for our welfare and for our neighbor's welfare insofar as we can do so without disobeying Him. What He requires of us as citizens of the Kingdom of the Left is that we raise our voices- and yes, our votes- on behalf of the weak who are imperiled by the strong, and in favor of fairness and justice for all, that all- Christian and unbeliever alike- may live quiet and peaceable lives in the various vocations to which God has called them.
Were Bonhoeffer and the others right or wrong to raise their voices on behalf of justice as citizens of the Kingdom of the Left Hand? In that, they were absolutely right. In fact, they were acting in accordance with their duty as citizens of the Kingdom of the Left to come to the defense of the Jews and the others persecuted by the Nazis, quite apart from the issue of tyrannicide and actual rebellion.
But even more so, they were right to stand- even at the cost of their freedom and their lives- for the right of souls for whom Christ died to be ushered into His Kingdom in baptism, to be sustained with the Word and with the Holy Supper, to join together with their brothers and sisters in the Divine Service and in the life of the New Self.
There is no end, Luther wrote, of the evil that comes when the devil manages to brew the Two Kingdoms into one another, and prevent us from distinguishing between what is Caesar's, and what is God's. Religious persecutions, religious terrorism, and the religious sanctioning of evil are what can be expected when we confuse the two. On one hand we have inquisitions and religious persecutions and jihads. On the other, we have religious sanction given the enslavement of people of another color, and the treating of our fellow human beings as somehow less than human. Where the attempt is made to govern fallen human society through love, the innocent suffer, justice is rampant, and the work of the Kingdom of the Left remains undone. But even worse, when attempts are made to make the Kingdom of the Left do the work of the Kingdom of the Right, consciences suffer violence, piety is coerced, the Gospel of God's grace is turned into an ideology,and souls for which Christ died perish, deprived of the Means of Grace by a church pursuing power rather than proclaiming grace.
Yes, it was a clever answer our Lord gave the Pharisees. It put them in their place, and deprived them of the opportunity to put Him in a negative light with either the Romans or with the Jewish people. But beyond that, it put us and the Church of all the ages on notice that we must always remain vigilant against those who try to get the Kingdom of the Left to do the work of the Kingdom of the Right, or vice versa.
God loves His creatures- believer and unbeliever alike- too much to be content that they suffer injustice through well-intentioned attempts to love psychopaths into line. And He loves His creatures- believer and unbeliever alike- too much to be content that the means by which He makes unbelievers into believers, sustains them in the faith, and at last brings them to eternal salvation be undercut by human efforts to coerce or legislate what only the Holy Spirit can do through the Means of Grace.
What, then, is Caesar's- and what is God's? Everything is God's. Everything exists to serve His purposes. Government- civil government, church government, or any other kind- exists to maintain order and promote peace. He enlists the efforts of human beings to accomplish these things, and works through them to promote His goals.
He proclaims His Word and administers His Sacraments through human means, too. But administering them is all human hands can do. "The kingdom of God comes indeed without our help, of itself." And while human beings- operating with the natural knowledge of the Law written on the human heart, if with no other resource- are able with dedication and perseverance and a refusal to accept less to achieve a more or less just and equitable social order, only God can save a soul.
Human government, operating as God's agent, can restrain rebels against God. But only God Himself can turn a rebel into a child. Human government, operating as God's agent, can create a more or less decent society. But only God can build that Kingdom which will last forever, in which love and grace and faith rule, and in which there is neither need nor place for force and coercion. Human government can limit and to some extent repair the damage done by human sin, but only God can make all things new.
In the Kingdom of the Left, God keeps us from killing one another- and that's important. But in the Kingdom of the Right, He does something even more important: He loves us, and causes us to love Him and each other, because He first loved us. And as important as it is to refrain from frustrating His efforts to preserve peace and harmony in this life by trying to love the serial killer into line, it's far more important not to impede by our own impatience or obscure by our well-intentioned zeal His final and most wonderful plan for us: to turn us into creatures who love Him and our neighbor not because He or the government are gonna get us if we don't, because He first loved us, and gave Himself for us, that through faith in His Name no matter what we have done or failed to do, or have been or have failed to be, we might be continually forgiven and renewed and restored, and transformed into an entirely new creation that some day will not need to be restrained or compelled except by love itself.
In the Kingdom of the Left Hand, God stops us from killing one another- and that's surely a blessing. But in the Kingdom of the Right Hand- and there alone- God offers us something much more wonderful; so wonderful, in fact, that we dare not confuse the two, lest we be deprived of it.
In the Kingdom of the Right Hand, God offers us life itself, through the death of His Son.
May the peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
Trinity 23
November 15, 2009
Grace, mercy and peace from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
There have been worse tyrants than Adolph Hitler. Possibly the greatest of all time was Mao Zedong, whose seventy million victims dwarf Hitler's eleven or twelve million. Stalin actually comes in second, with something like thirty million. But somehow, when we go looking for people or regimes to serve as the archetype of human evil and tyranny, Hitler and Nazi Germany are generally the examples that get picked.
About a year ago, Dave and Kathy Leonard and I saw Valkyrie, the Tom Cruise movie about the plot to kill Hitler. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wasn't portrayed in it, though Carl Goerdeler- the prominent Lutheran layman who would have become chancellor of Germany if the plot had succeeded- was. The movie was a reminder of the fact that German Lutherans- who are often portrayed as politically subservient to authority- were moved by Hitler's crimes to attempt tyrannicide and revolution.
Were they right, or were they wrong? Paul tells us in Romans 13 that the government is God's servant, and that whoever resists the government resists God and incurs His judgment. And the government Paul was talking about was that of Nero, who may not have killed nearly as many people as Mao or Stalin or Hitler, but whose persecution of the Church surely earned him a place among the great tyrants of history.
Two hundred thirty-three years ago last July, a group of English colonists in Philadelphia declared themselves in revolt against the legitimate government of British North America, the regime of King George III. The Declaration of Independence attributes all manner of failures and crimes to the King and his government. But the fact of the matter is that King George's "tyranny" was nothing like that of Mao or Stalin or Hitler or Nero. In fact, probably as many citizens of the Thirteen Colonies remained loyal to the Crown as sided with Washington and the Continental Congress. However sympathetic we may be to our own Founding Fathers, you will find no Scriptural support for the notion that when a government fails to secure the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to the people it rules, it is in any sense the right of the people to alter or abolish it.
Bonhoeffer finally decided that in view of the enormity of Hitler's crimes, he would follow Luther's advice and "sin boldly (while trusting) in God more boldly still." But the rhetoric of some in our present age to the contrary, it's doubtful that a great many of our Founding Fathers particularly worried about Romans 13.
When the Pharisees tried to trap Jesus by putting Him in the position of choosing between one's duty to God and one's duty to the government God has installed as His servant, our Lord refused to take the bait. "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's," He said, "and to God the things that are God's." It was a good answer, and it put the Pharisees in their place. But the question still remains: just what is Caesar's, and what is God's?
Taxes are Caesar's. He also has a claim on our obedience in all things that do not violate God's Law. The Fourth Commandment is binding even in matters in which we do not like the government's policies and actions. If Paul could call Nero God's servant, how much more do we owe obedience to a government elected by popular vote, which permits us freedom of worship and- despite standing by and allowing the slaughter of the innocent unborn and others who are too weak to defend themselves- certainly does not engage in mass murder on religious or racial or ethnic grounds!
Government is a gift of God. It exists for some of the same reasons that God gives parents to children. It protects us from those who would harm us. It defends us from terrorists and foreign enemies, as well as from murderers and thieves and muggers. If our house catches fire, it puts the fire out. It ensures that it's safe to drive the streets, and minimizes the chance of our being broadsided by some maniac driving too fast or under the influence of alcohol. It provides us with services which bridge the gap between what our resources are able to provide in various situations, and what the necessities of life require. It defends the weak from the strong, and makes it possible for us to live quiet and peaceable lives.
The government, as Paul reminds us, is God's servant. In any circumstance in which it does not require disobedience to God Hiimself, to defy it or to disobey it is to defy and to disobey God.
But our duty to obey the government ends at the point where it forgets that it is only God's servant, and not God Himself! If it orders us to serve in a manifestly unjust war, it is our duty to refuse. If it tells us to betray the weak or the persecuted, then to obey it is to sin against God. And if it attempts to interfere with the operation of God's grace or its administration, we have the absolute obligation to follow the example of Peter before the Sandhedrin and insist that we must serve God rather than men- even when those men are the government!
Were Christians like Goerdeler and Dietrich and Klaus Bonhoeffer and Dietrich's brothers-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi and Rüdiger Schleicher right in conspiring to kill Hitler and overthrow the Nazi regime? Paul seems to say "no." But whatever answer we give to the question of tyrannicide and rebellion, they were certainly right to disobey.
When the Aryan Laws ordered the German church to discriminate against Jewish Christians- to ban those of Jewish descent from the ministry and teaching positions and other positions of leadership and even denied them baptism and membership in the Church and finally even the right to attend the Divine Service- Bonhoeffer and the others were not only justified in telling the Nazis where to get off, but fulfilling their absolute obligation. And incidentally, if you ever hear someone trying to blame the Holocaust on a Lutheran refusal to stand up to the powers that be, you might remind that person that Bonhoeffer and the Lutherans refused to sign the Barmen Declaration- the anti-Nazi confession of faith- in large measure because it did not include a condemnation of the Aryan Decrees and of Hitler's persecution of the Jews!
God exercises His authority in this world in two ways. Lutheran theology refers to these as God's two "kingdoms." Contrary to what you sometimes hear, they are not the church and the state. The Kingdom of the Left Hand- the kingdom of Law, of coercion, of force, and of compulsion- includes congregational meetings and church council meetings and district and synodical conventions and church government just as much as it includes the doings of Caesar. Here God ensures that things are done decently and in order. Here God protects the weak from the strong, and the minority from the majority. Here God graciously sees to our physical and corporate well-being.
But God also has another kingdom- the Kingdom of the Right Hand. In one sense,this shouldn't be confused with the Church as such; as we've seen, the government of the visible Church belongs to the Kingdom of the Left. The Kingdom of the Right has to do with the invisible Church. It is the realm of grace, of forgiveness, and of love. There is no room here for law or coercion, and neither is there any need for them.
Christians are citizens of both kingdoms. But unbelievers are citizens only of the Kingdom of the Left. Conversely, only believers, by definition, can be citizens of the Kingdom of the Right. Caesar's job is to preserve order, to maintain the peace, and to protect the weak from the strong. But when it comes to God's grace, and to the forgiveness of sins, Caesar has nothing to say.
To be sure, church discipline belongs to the Kingdom of the Left. The Binding Key has to do with Law, with compulsion, and with demand. But the Loosing Key is pure Gospel- and it belongs strictly to the Kingdom of the Right.
All Christians are citizens of both Kingdoms. Insofar as we are the Old Adam, we are citizens of the Kingdom of the Left, just like everyone else. But insofar as we are the New Self- and only insofar as we are the New Self- we are citizens of the Kingdom of the Right. Here, there is no need of compulsion. Here, there is no need of Law. Here, there is no need of either rules or their enforcement. Here there is only love- and here, love is all that is needed.
There is a great deal of nonsense spoken in American churches about the implications of our text. At least one decision of the Supreme Court has declared the United States- the First Amendment to the contrary- a "Christian nation," whatever that might be. But nations are a function of the Kingdom of the Left Hand. Insofar as we are the New Self we have no need of divisions between political groups, any more than we have need of anything political. We are citizens of the Kingdom of God. We give Him our loyalty and our love. We give our fellow believer or friendship and our love. We do not ask where he was born, or what passport he holds. Neither do we care.
Incidentally, Saint Mary is one of the few Lutheran churches I know of that does not have an American flag in the chancel. Good. Christians who come from other countries are generally surprised and often offended to see a symbol of national loyalty in a place where only our common loyalty to the Kingdom of God ought to matter.
Should civil law reflect God's Law? Sure- in the sense that it should be just and serve to fulfill God's intentions for civil law: the maintenance of peace and good order, and the protection of the weak from the strong. And certainly it's the duty of Christians, as citizens of the Kingdom of the Left Hand, to advocate for justice in the civil law. But Jews and Muslims and Buddhists and Hindus and even atheists and agnostics can be just, too. Contrary to what a great many American Christians, influenced by Calvinism, believe, God does not require that the civil government be in any sense "Christian." He requires merely that it be just. That's why our advocacy for justice needs to be presented in terms that are accessible and congenial to those Jews and Muslims and Buddhists and atheists and agnostics who are in favor of justice, too. We are not called upon to create the Kingdom of the Right Hand on earth- or, to paraphrase the words of that favorite English hymn, "...to build Jerusalem/In Iowa's green and pleasant land." We are called, rather, to be faithful subjects of God in both His Kingdom of the Left and His Kingdom of the Right, without confusing the two.
The Psalm is right when it says, "Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord." But we confuse the Two Kingdoms and, in Luther's phrase, "brew them into one another" when we forget that there has been only one nation that God has ever chosen and one nation who as a nation has ever had the Lord as its God, and that it wasn't the United States.
No, what God asks of us as citizens of the Kingdom of the Left is that we be good neighbors, and both to obey the government He has placed over us for our welfare and for our neighbor's welfare insofar as we can do so without disobeying Him. What He requires of us as citizens of the Kingdom of the Left is that we raise our voices- and yes, our votes- on behalf of the weak who are imperiled by the strong, and in favor of fairness and justice for all, that all- Christian and unbeliever alike- may live quiet and peaceable lives in the various vocations to which God has called them.
Were Bonhoeffer and the others right or wrong to raise their voices on behalf of justice as citizens of the Kingdom of the Left Hand? In that, they were absolutely right. In fact, they were acting in accordance with their duty as citizens of the Kingdom of the Left to come to the defense of the Jews and the others persecuted by the Nazis, quite apart from the issue of tyrannicide and actual rebellion.
But even more so, they were right to stand- even at the cost of their freedom and their lives- for the right of souls for whom Christ died to be ushered into His Kingdom in baptism, to be sustained with the Word and with the Holy Supper, to join together with their brothers and sisters in the Divine Service and in the life of the New Self.
There is no end, Luther wrote, of the evil that comes when the devil manages to brew the Two Kingdoms into one another, and prevent us from distinguishing between what is Caesar's, and what is God's. Religious persecutions, religious terrorism, and the religious sanctioning of evil are what can be expected when we confuse the two. On one hand we have inquisitions and religious persecutions and jihads. On the other, we have religious sanction given the enslavement of people of another color, and the treating of our fellow human beings as somehow less than human. Where the attempt is made to govern fallen human society through love, the innocent suffer, justice is rampant, and the work of the Kingdom of the Left remains undone. But even worse, when attempts are made to make the Kingdom of the Left do the work of the Kingdom of the Right, consciences suffer violence, piety is coerced, the Gospel of God's grace is turned into an ideology,and souls for which Christ died perish, deprived of the Means of Grace by a church pursuing power rather than proclaiming grace.
Yes, it was a clever answer our Lord gave the Pharisees. It put them in their place, and deprived them of the opportunity to put Him in a negative light with either the Romans or with the Jewish people. But beyond that, it put us and the Church of all the ages on notice that we must always remain vigilant against those who try to get the Kingdom of the Left to do the work of the Kingdom of the Right, or vice versa.
God loves His creatures- believer and unbeliever alike- too much to be content that they suffer injustice through well-intentioned attempts to love psychopaths into line. And He loves His creatures- believer and unbeliever alike- too much to be content that the means by which He makes unbelievers into believers, sustains them in the faith, and at last brings them to eternal salvation be undercut by human efforts to coerce or legislate what only the Holy Spirit can do through the Means of Grace.
What, then, is Caesar's- and what is God's? Everything is God's. Everything exists to serve His purposes. Government- civil government, church government, or any other kind- exists to maintain order and promote peace. He enlists the efforts of human beings to accomplish these things, and works through them to promote His goals.
He proclaims His Word and administers His Sacraments through human means, too. But administering them is all human hands can do. "The kingdom of God comes indeed without our help, of itself." And while human beings- operating with the natural knowledge of the Law written on the human heart, if with no other resource- are able with dedication and perseverance and a refusal to accept less to achieve a more or less just and equitable social order, only God can save a soul.
Human government, operating as God's agent, can restrain rebels against God. But only God Himself can turn a rebel into a child. Human government, operating as God's agent, can create a more or less decent society. But only God can build that Kingdom which will last forever, in which love and grace and faith rule, and in which there is neither need nor place for force and coercion. Human government can limit and to some extent repair the damage done by human sin, but only God can make all things new.
In the Kingdom of the Left, God keeps us from killing one another- and that's important. But in the Kingdom of the Right, He does something even more important: He loves us, and causes us to love Him and each other, because He first loved us. And as important as it is to refrain from frustrating His efforts to preserve peace and harmony in this life by trying to love the serial killer into line, it's far more important not to impede by our own impatience or obscure by our well-intentioned zeal His final and most wonderful plan for us: to turn us into creatures who love Him and our neighbor not because He or the government are gonna get us if we don't, because He first loved us, and gave Himself for us, that through faith in His Name no matter what we have done or failed to do, or have been or have failed to be, we might be continually forgiven and renewed and restored, and transformed into an entirely new creation that some day will not need to be restrained or compelled except by love itself.
In the Kingdom of the Left Hand, God stops us from killing one another- and that's surely a blessing. But in the Kingdom of the Right Hand- and there alone- God offers us something much more wonderful; so wonderful, in fact, that we dare not confuse the two, lest we be deprived of it.
In the Kingdom of the Right Hand, God offers us life itself, through the death of His Son.
May the peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
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