“I am for peace; but when I speak, they are for war” (Psalm 120:7)
“Must ‘religion’ always remain a synonym for ‘hatred’? The great social ideal for religion is that it should be the common basis for the unity of civilization.” (A. N. Whitehead)
In Croatia I was handed a cookie wrapped in cellophane with a printed paper that sealed the opening. On the paper the name of the cookie: PAPRENJAK, with the explanation: “Foreign invaders and aggressors enter our land. They come after our honey and leave us the pepper. We are pepper to the enemy but honey among ourselves.” I reach for the cookie and get a political statement instead. It troubled me more than a little to visit the Roman Catholic cathedral in the capitol city of Zagreb and see high on a catafalque in the center of the nave the body of Cardinal Stepanac, hero of the people who are clamoring for his canonization, knowing his history of horrendous atrocities against the Serbian Orthodox Church and people.
I recall long ago when I was in Palestine, which all Jews call Israel. There a plant grows in the earth called sabra. It has a rough, spiky exterior, but when it’s broken apart the inside is tender and sweet. Israelis say they are like sabras, with tough skins, yet tender hearts. Rough with Arabs, but really gentle people. That hatred between Jew and Arab passes through generations. Serbs and Croats, Turks and Greeks, Romanians and Hungarians, always hatred of the neighbor. What His own people would not tolerate about our Lord Jesus is that He would have none of it. He refused to be baited into opposition against the Roman occupiers of the land: “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s; but give to God what is God’s” (Matthew 22:21). His Kingdom is His Father’s, and that Kingdom is now ours. We are temporarily here on earth; nevertheless, while we are here, we are called to be above the separations that people set up against one another. “Blessed are the peacemakers,” said our Lord Jesus, meaning us. If indeed that’s what defines us as His followers.
This is such a touchy subject even among Orthodox Christians, because we are very proud of our nation, whatever it may be. We leave the Old World, but we don’t leave the identity of our native land behind. We take up a new loyalty. We are among the first to defend and uphold the United States of America. Is it possible to convince our people to rise above national identity and behave as though we were already citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven? Who would deny that we are by virtue of our Christian baptism already dead to this world and alive in Christ, who is with the Father and the Holy Spirit awaiting our passage from this passing world to eternity? Take for example the nation of Israel. A country on nobody’s map before the end of the Second World War, yet an expensive element in the budget of the United States ever since. My point is not to support Israel or to oppose it, but rather to lift up the difference between their theology and our own. They understand that the Lord is committed to keeping His part of the bargain, the covenant between Him and His chosen people. Yet St. Paul goes to great lengths in his epistles of Romans and Galatians to explain that the covenant between Himself and Israel is no longer in effect. With the coming into the world of their long-awaited Messiah, who is also the Son of God, a new covenant is now operable. There is a new Israel, and we Gentiles are incorporated into it. Therefore, looking once again at Jesus Christ’s enigmatic answer regarding the coin stamped with Caesar’s image, He is saying in effect to own a Roman coin or a Hebrew coin is irrelevant. What God wants is not loyalty to one nation or the other, but to Himself and His kingdom. If we think through that explanation, we will realize that all political loyalties in this lifetime are temporary and conditional. “Seek first the Kingdom of God,” as He said in another place, and you will have everything else that you ultimately need.