“We Have No King But Caesar!”
[“For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb 4:12).]
O Lover,
It can be shocking to be re-encountered by a familiar and time-worn biblical text, but now in a new and unprecedented context. This happened again this year in the liturgy of Passion Friday in the Basilica of Your Sacred Heart at Notre Dame. I had been sinking into the lengthy Gospel (Jn 18 &19) being sung when, suddenly, I heard denizens of devout and pilgrim-swollen Jerusalem, a population oppressed by the occupying legions of Roman emperor Tiberius, “people of the book” (Ahl al-Kitāb in the parlance of Islam), lecturing Pilate that he was not a “friend of Caesar” (19:12) if he released one of their own.
Closely following were the spokesmen for Jerusalem’s religious elite astonishingly declaring “We have no king but Caesar” (15). After Jesus was condemned and crucified those same leaders complained that “Jesus the Nazarene King of the Jews” inscribed on his cross inadequately expressed their preference for Caesar (21). Dumbfounded, I was hearing as if for the first time aspects of this passion text which had been there in front of me my entire life.
So what was going on in my hearing of the Gospel? What had sliced in, abruptly snagging my yet fuller attention? Was it not as if time and space were suddenly out of kilter, first century Jerusalem waxing indistinguishable from the current context adorned with the banner “liberty and justice for all”? Were not millions of us devout “people of the book” shouting in present time “We have no king but Caesar,” this in full contradiction of both our respective faith traditions and our own immediate self-interests? Why this mania in present time for being this current Caesar’s “friend”? How could it be that in Your name—no less!—this Jesus, embodiment of Your compassion and justice, the one in whom Your solidarity with the marginated was/is showcased, was being dismissed in present time as “woke”? What with this sense of déjà vu?
Since the recent feast I have come to see more clearly the extent to which the Tríduum of Jesus is not merely a historical drama which unfolded two millennia ago, one that can be viewed retrospectively in all subsequent time. No, it is also an archetypal conflict lived and relived through the “nows” of all time, the “heres” of all space, a struggle in which manipulated religiosity repeatedly plays a shameful role. And in this distortive manipulation truth is yet again the first casualty.
And so again the one embodying Your vision for “a new heaven and a new earth” (Apoc 21:1) is hanging on the cross his execution the result of the melding of crass pragmatism and the contorting of our faith traditions. In this Eastertide of 2025 I continue to hear the echoes of a major portion of us name-bearers of Your Christ in this our pátria shouting out our freely chosen choice: “We have no king but Caesar!” How astonishing! How repetitive! How tragic! Kyrie Eleison.
