So, one day last week I went down to the Arlington County
Courthouse, raised my right hand, and solemnly swore to uphold the Constitution
of the United States of America and the Constitution of the Commonwealth of
Virginia. Never mind that, with respect to the one “authority” vested in me by
the commonwealth, the two documents appear to be in subtle disagreement if not
downright sharp conflict, I am now an agent of the state, part and parcel of
the reign of Caesar.
“Render unto Caesar that which belongs to Caesar; render
unto God that which belongs to God.”
So much of life gets lived out in the tension captured in
that deceptively simple-sounding phrase.
For example – a timely one, to be sure – take the whole
question of marriage. As the late Will Campbell put it,
What is a marriage license but a
legal contract? And what does any legal contract promise and offer except the
right to sue one another at another time and place before another of Caesar’s
agents? Perhaps such contracts are socially necessary but what does that have
to do with us?[1]
What does that have to do with the church, with the
community of faith, Campbell wants to know.
Back in 2005, when I renounced the authority to sign
marriage licenses for any couple so long as same-gender couples were denied the
opportunity to marry, the decision received an outsized amount of media
attention. One reporter asked the local presbytery executive what he made of my
decision, and he answered quite simply, “we’re in the Jesus business, not the
wedding business.”
It was a pretty good summation, and I hope we stay in the
same business even when doing a few weddings on the side, because if comes down
to it, I’m more interested in the reign of God than I am in upholding
constitutions.
