000 Allen FMT (i-xxii) - The Presbyterian Leader

104 Proper 24 [29]/Year A
The Lord uses Cyrus for God’s universal purposes: “that they [all peoples]
may know, from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is
no one besides me; I am the LORD, and there is no other” (v. 6). God’s purpose
is that all peoples shall be a blessing to each other. They shall share
that blessing only in relations of mutuality with and difference from each
other. Cyrus is different from the people Israel—they are the Lord’s but
Cyrus does not so understand himself. Yet in serving the Lord’s purpose,
he is nonetheless also the Lord’s. He, too, is one whom God created.
Our reading ends with a verse on which much ink has been spilled: “I
form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe; I the LORD do
all these things” (v. 7). This is often interpreted to mean that the omnipotent
God does all things good and evil. Whatever happens, God is directly
responsible for it, every great instance of peace and every atrocity of war,
every self-transcending act of justice and every drive-by shooting.
We take it differently, noting that if we seek to determine God’s will by
referring to whatever happens, then we have no need of the revelation of
God in the history of Israel, in the Torah and the Prophets, and decisively
in Jesus Christ, to be clear about what God’s will is. We simply have to
point to the general run of stupidity and happenstance and say “There!
That’s God’s will.”
Rather, we think that God has created a world in which blessing and
well-being are possible, provided that we accept them as gracious gifts
rather than seeking to hoard them for ourselves and provided that we
allow others to receive them as well. Blessing has to pass through many
hands. If we do not live so as to make well-being possible, we set up the
conditions that make for curse and death, and we receive our share of
these.
God is not in control of the decisions and actions of finite but free
agents such as ourselves. If God were, the world would be a much happier
place and 15 million children per year would not die of starvation. All each
of us has to do to discern that God is not in control of our lives and behavior
is to examine our lives and behavior.
What links the Cyrus prophecy to the account in Matthew 22:15–22 of
the question about paying taxes to Caesar lies in Isaiah 45:5: “I am
the LORD, and there is no other; besides me there is no god.” Coins with
Caesar’s image on them proclaimed the Caesar-theology of the Roman
Empire, that Caesar was God or the Son of God or pontifex maximus or
showing Caesar’s spirit ascending to heaven to join the other gods. Unlike
Cyrus, Caesar was decidedly not pursuing an enlightened program of considerate
justice. 34