Sermon 20th Sunday After Trinity, 18 October 2026
Readings: Isaiah 45. 1-7; 1 Thessalonians 1. 1-10; Matthew 22. 15-22
Theme: The Prophecy of Cyrus
Realizing that the kingdom of God was not to be identified with the ethnic and political reality of Israel came gradually in the Bible. Initially, the Old Testament had portrayed God’s involvement in history as constructing Israel into a strong nation. This was what the people thought that God’s ambitions amounted to. The first reading from Isaiah is one of the key texts when this idea is enlarged by an enriched understanding of God’s universal project of salvation.
The extract from Isaiah, which reveals this developing idea, is part of what is known as “The Prophecy of Cyrus,” covering Isaiah 44.24 to 45.8. In it, Isaiah proclaims that a Gentile, the Persian King Cyrus II, is God’s ‘anointed one’ who will be chosen to lead the exiled people of Judah out of their captivity in Babylon and back to the freedom of their homeland.
By the divine choice of the messianic figure of Cyrus, Isaiah declares that Yahweh is not only the God of Israel, but also the God of all nations. This Lord is the Creator, even mysteriously of darkness and disaster, and wishes to build a kingdom of all of humanity and not only of Israel.
The well-known passage of “God and Caesar” in Matthew’s Gospel should be understood in the light of Isaiah’s enlarged notion of the kingdom of God. When the chief priests and the Pharisees begin to realize the import of the message of this kingdom, as we have been hearing in Matthew’s Gospel over recent Sundays, they start to perceive Jesus as a threat to their own authority. Theirs was an authority of religious power built on the former national and ethnic understanding of Israel as the horizon of God’s project. This is why they will later conspire with the ruling earthly power of the time, that of the Roman Empire, and have Jesus put to death.
Paul announces this new message of the project of God’s kingdom during his decade or so of missionary journeys throughout the Mediterranean. As a former Pharisee and previously ardent supporter of the old idea of the kingdom, he came to realize that neither Israel nor Rome was the limit of God’s ambitions.
He understood that Jesus is God’s ‘anointed one’ who had finally inaugurated the kingdom long promised by prophecies such as those of Isaiah. And, as Paul reminds the Thessalonians in the second reading, this same Jesus will return and complete the project that he has started.
Interpreting the events of our world today through these readings presents us with a number of issues. First, the fact that government of the world is necessary and a challenging role for anyone to take on, especially at such a conflicted time. However, take it on we must, if we are not to descend into chaos and global unrest. That means, second, that those who rule in our name need to rule in a way which acknowledges that there is only one king, Jesus, the Lord. All other earthly powers are to be at the service of this one divine rule.
However, it would seem that our world is currently in danger of not recognizing the true purpose of its political organizations. There is more than is to be expected of selfish power plays which are anything but a way of modelling the kingship of Jesus into the political life of the family of nations. Not that people have to be perfect in these roles, of course. Each leader is fallible and will make wrong decisions. The job of a political leader is an immensely difficult one. But without a clearer understanding of the purpose of the political, we risk using it to serve other ends than those of building God’s kingdom on earth as in heaven.
The crises of war, climate change, economic inequalities and many more are all current challenges which require a re-modelling of the political on its true purpose: that of serving the kingship of Jesus in the many nations and continents of our fragile earth. We need to rediscover the spirit of Cyrus so that all politicians can pursue a higher goal than simply serving self-interest in their calling to politics. The interests of the world are the interests of God, and God calls all our leaders to struggle for justice, security, and peace. This can only come about through embodying the kingly rule of Jesus, and even those outside of our Christian tradition, like the Persian King Cyrus, can serve this end.
So our prayer for the world at this moment of such strife should be one of asking Jesus’s kingdom to come on earth as in heaven. Sovereign Lord Jesus of our hearts and of our world, it is in you that we recognize the prophecy of Cyrus to have been fulfilled. Come Lord Jesus and consummate your kingdom here on earth as in heaven.
