“All God’s people here send you greetings, especially those who belong to Caesar’s household.”
Philippians 4:22
Jesus used one of His most glowing public compliments about a foreign, pagan officer of the army that controlled His homeland as an invading oppressor. Take a second to let that sink in. We may all be familiar with the passage in Matthew chapter 8, but this was an incredibly offensive and shocking thing for everyone who first heard it. You see, Jesus never once praised the faith of Israel’s high priest or any of the ruling class of scribes or Pharisees. He didn’t applaud any synagogue rulers or rabbis. In the story of the Centurion, Jesus’ rousing chorus of “For he’s a jolly good fellow” was reserved for a person almost every one of God’s people would have considered automatically canceled for being an unclean, illegal alien, utterly exempt from God’s blessing. Jesus didn’t cancel him, though. He gave the Roman Centurion a standing ovation the likes of which He never gave anyone else.
But that’s not all. The Lord had an even more surprising thing to say about God’s favor and the people we don’t always include in the guest list. He declared that when it’s all said and done, there will be people seated at the table enjoying the Heavenly feast who were always treated as outsiders down here, while many of the folks who assumed they were God’s favorites wouldn’t even make it through security. It is extremely difficult to understand how infuriating and unpatriotic these words of Jesus would have felt to almost everyone who heard them. Jesus didn’t care one bit about that. He was and is building a kingdom that obliterates every national, tribal, or cultural boundary humans have invented. Jesus is rescuing people from themselves and adopting them into His beautiful family from every tongue, tribe, people, and nation.
The politics of Jesus are hard for most people to understand, but that is really an emotional issue because His politics aren’t complicated at all. Modern American Christians divide up into teams with jerseys. We stand with our side in loyalty while the folks wearing the other team’s jersey are our worst enemies. We talk about the political decisions of the other side as being the most dangerous threat to the continued existence of our very civilization. Well, that is all just a bunch of nonsense - the result of our outlandish pride run riot. Psalm 2 says “The One enthroned in Heaven laughs” at all of this absurdity. It says that the Promised King is going to rule all of reality as His own private possession. He will run the whole show. The Psalm says the Messiah will inherit all of the nations and when He does, He’s not keeping them around. Enjoy the Olympics while you can. We won’t have those medal ceremonies in the sweet by and by. Psalm 2 says Jesus will break the nations with an iron scepter and dash them to pieces like pottery. You see, people go to Heaven. Nations do not.
One of the things we sometimes forget when we read the New Testament is that every single scene is happening against the background of the Roman Empire. The most powerful human force the world had ever known up to that point was the Roman army. Jesus’ life on earth as one of us begins with the story of Roman taxation. His life ends on a Roman cross at the washed hands of a Roman governor. The fledgling church is finding its feet in the shadows of Roman power. Peter and Paul die in Rome. If you could send a drone back in time to the first century anywhere in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, you would have footage of a world utterly dominated by Roman power and yet, I can read the New Testament and sometimes forget they’re even there. Jesus didn’t fight with the Romans, He loved them and reached them and even saved some of them. Paul didn’t resist the Romans, he preached the Gospel to them and welcomed them into the family. If you love Jesus, you are a citizen of the Kingdom of God first and foremost. Every other citizenship you hold is less significant and has an expiration date. There is no human identifier or division line that should keep you from loving, praying for and welcoming any and all people into the family of God. In other words, when in Rome, reach the Romans till we all become children of God.