Memorial Day: An Urgent Call

Luke 5:12-39

Memorial Day, photo compliments of Richard Sagredo.

Follow the money

Eighty years seemed like a very long time to me until I hit seventy. It is sobering that eighty is the average life expectancy of a white male in America these days…since 2021, we’ve lost a year.

More sobering than my encroaching finitude is the fact that it took only eighty years — a mere mortal lifespan — for the Roman republic to descend into a dictatorship. Michelle Berenfeld, in her essay for The Atlantic on April 16, caught my attention when she stated that Rome’s republic declined from a representative form of government into an autocracy in largely the same length of time that we have experienced between the end of World War II and today. Berenfeld, an archaeologist and a classics professor at Pitzer College in California, does not believe the rank and file Roman citizen thought they could lose their vaunted republic in so short a time any more than Americans believe we could forfeit our storied democracy so quickly. On this Memorial Day weekend, with our democratic guardrails under an avalanche of attacks, we should look at why the Roman republic failed, a republic that endured 500 years, twice as long as our own.

At the outset, we should recount that America’s founding fathers assiduously studied the Roman republic as both a model for the United States and also as a cautionary tale. Rome’s senate, its separation of powers, and its checks and balances to guard against tyranny were instrumental in the development of the U.S. Constitution. At the same time, the founding fathers were candidly determined to safeguard against the tyranny that precipitated Rome’s fall. One largely forgotten safeguard the founders emphasized was the array of cardinal virtues they assumed would be inculcated into America’s citizenry. These included charity, justice, courage, temperance, reverence, prudence, honesty, industry, and moderation. The list seems quaint and antiquated in a country that now describes its populace as “consumers” rather than “citizens.”

Also, it is illustrative that Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, all wrote under the pseudonym “Publius” when composing the Federalist Papers in 1787-1788. Publius Valerius Poplicola (d. 503 BC) was an aristocrat who fought to overthrow Rome’s monarchy in 509 BC and establish the infant Roman republic. James Madison would also write under the name “Helvidius.” Helvidius Priscus (75 AD) was a Roman philosopher and senator during the imperial reigns of Nero, Galba, Vespasian, and Domitian. Helvidius, even in the face of their subjugating rules, determinedly defended the people’s right of free speech. Interestingly, Alexander Hamilton sometimes wrote under the name “Phocion,” a Greek statesman who died in 318 BC. Hamilton, who ingeniously instituted the Central Bank of the United States, was an admirer of this lesser known Greek, who believed extreme thriftiness was necessary to assume the virtuous life.

Hamilton, who wrote fifty-one of the eighty-five Federalist Papers (James Madison comes in a distant second authoring twenty-nine), recognized the need for moderation and frugality to inculcate the cardinal virtues. This is a good place to start when seeking to understand the primary reason behind the fall of the Roman republic, as well as the main threat to our own. In a word, Rome’s republic fell because of greed. Berenfeld points out that at the time Octavius, later known as Augustus, instituted imperial rule in Rome, senators were appointed for life. Subsequently, senators such as Julius Caesar, among others, became immensely wealthy, so much so that they no longer obeyed the rules governing the republic. Octavius was Julius Caesar’s grand nephew, yet, more importantly, he also was Caesar’s adopted son. According to Berenfeld, it was the wealthy elite of Rome who cashiered the republic in favor of a dictatorship. Her account of the Roman republic’s fall reads like a tragic premonition of our own:

He (Augustus) took control of the government gradually but completely, with the support of those wealthy aristocrats who valued fortune above principle… Perhaps most salient for us today, Augustus consolidated his power with the institutional blessing of the Senate. At first, the Senate let Augustus bend rules and push boundaries. It allowed him to accumulate domestic powers and bring unqualified members of his family into government. The Senate stood by while Augustus removed enemies from his path, and supported him when he put a self-serving spin on recent actions. The Roman Way to Trash a Republic

Augustus and the Allure of the Strongman, photo compliments of the University of Melbourne.

Here it is important to note that Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar was part of the inviolable high school canon for most of American public education’s history. The tragedy, along with Romeo and Juliet and the comedy A Merchant of Venice, introduces students to Shakespeare, the greatest dramatist in history. Of equal importance is the fact that Julius Caesar showed generations of American students how quickly the republic could be destroyed by rapaciously “ambitious” men. In much the same light, the customary high school canon included books like The Great Gatsby, which portrays the dark side of capitalism and the debasement of the American dream; To Kill a Mockingbird, which exposes generational racism and the shattering of innocence; and Huckleberry Finn, which celebrates freedom while denouncing slavery and hypocritical, feigned Christianity. In the non-fiction category, those in our secondary schools read Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl, which recounts a young adolescent’s coming of age beneath the specter of transcontinental genocide. Until recently, we had long assumed that a sturdy high school literary canon was foundational in forming virtuous citizens rather than indulgent, self-serving consumers.

The wealthy elite of Rome who cashiered the republic in favor of a dictatorship. The fall of the Roman republic reads like a tragic premonition of our own.

Judging by the Roman experiment in representative government, how close are we to forfeiting our republic for a dictatorship. The signs are ominous: The Republican led Senate and the House of Representatives have been eerily quiet as entire domestic and international departments of government that were earlier established by congress have been terminated. They have maintained their silence as illegal immigrants and legal residents have been denied the due process of law and thereby deported, not to their country of origin, but instead to a foreign terrorist prison. They have been silent as flagrant threats are made against American citizens, our world-class universities, independent media, law firms, and non-profit organizations. They have been complicit in proffering a ruse that denying some 7 to 13 million citizens Medicaid is sufficient to fund tax breaks that inordinately favor those making $500,000 or more per year.* Scarier still, is that they have remained mute as the president’s family garnered two billion dollars of wealth in the last month alone in cryptocurrency payoffs, investments in twenty new luxury Trump hotels, and an opulent $400 million aircraft from Qatar. And yet the most menacing aspect of congress’s inattention is the leverage given to Elon Musk to collect the private personal data of American citizens. The richest man in the world with inordinate access to digital weaponry may hold the future of our democracy on his computer’s keyboard.

*Note: According to political analyst Ezra Klein, the Big Beautiful Bill is estimated to add 5 trillion (a trillion is a million millions) to the national debt over the next decade. At the same time, the bill cuts 1.1 trillion in benefits to our poorest citizens and transfers the 1.1 trillion in tax cuts to those citizens making over $500,000 per year. Trumps Big Budget Bomb

Follow the call

The New Testament story of relinquishment stands in stark contrast to the story of greed we see unfolding in America. At a time when millions of American Christians maneuver to ratify and bless Trump’s and his subordinates’ pursuit of wealth and power, we would do well to re-read Luke 5. The chapter begins with Peter, James, and John walking away from their profitable fishing business (5:10b-11), and it ends with Levi, (Matthew is his name in Greek) leaving his lucrative tax officer post (5:27-28). Luke insists that we have a greater call on our life than prosperity and position; it is the call of our Savior.

Answering Jesus’ call to be his disciple is to begin a full, creative, generous, and altogether fulfilling life. It is not, as some have imagined, to accept a lesser life in the present for the promise of a more bountiful one after death. Luke clearly illustrates the former in this fifth chapter. The trio, Peter, James, and John are given a foretaste of how Christ will lead them to a far richer life in the amazing catch of fish. Their miraculous catch is immense, such that it nearly swamps not one, but two boats (5:4-7). This was a sign of the life awaiting the three — life in all abundance (John 10:10). No wonder they leave their boats, expensive equipment, and the prodigious haul of fish on the shore and follow Jesus.

What happens next may have given them pause. As the three follow Jesus along the Galilean road, Jesus invites a leper to approach him. Suddenly, the three may have thought they made a horrendous mistake. They knew the dire consequences of touching a leper that is spelled out in the Torah (Leviticus 5:3). Nevertheless, Jesus reaches out his hand and touches the leper, and the man is immediately cured. Subsequently, Jesus asks the man to keep quiet about his healing because Jesus does not want to become the newest religious sideshow (5:12-14). Word gets out however, and the four are soon swamped by a needy crowd. Rather than revel in their adoration, Jesus, after preaching to the crowd and attending to their needs, leaves the scene to pray alone (5:15-16 & 4:42).

The news mushrooms concerning Jesus’ teaching and healing, bringing not just those in need, but also a cadre of Pharisees and teachers of the law from every village in Galilee, Judea, and even Jerusalem (5:17). Now Jesus is surrounded on every side by throngs of hurting people along with a officious gaggle of critics. This state of affairs will persist until Jesus’ crucifixion in Jerusalem some three years in the future.

The large crowds just get larger. Recall the circumstances in which Jesus first met the three fishermen. He asked to use one of their boats as a pulpit because the crowd along the shore grew so large and aggressive that they nearly pushed him into the lake (5:1-3). Some days later, Jesus is teaching in a house, and it is so congested with those in need and religious voyeurs that no one else can get near him. Four enterprising friends of a paralyzed man climb atop the roof of the house, cut a hole through the ceiling, and drop their paralyzed friend into Jesus’ lap (5:17-19).

When the paralyzed man suddenly appears before him, Jesus saw their faith, he said, ‘Friend, your sins are forgiven.’ Jesus’ statement draws fierce denunciations from the teachers of the Law and the Pharisees, ‘Who does this blasphemous nobody think he is? Only God can forgive sins! (5:20-21).

Rather than debate his critics, Jesus agrees with them. He does so by introducing himself for the first time as the Son of Man. This can be a confusing term in the Old Testament. On the one hand, son of man in the Hebrew and Aramaic means “a human being,” which is evident in Psalm 8:4; Job 16:21; and most notably in Ezekiel 2:1, 3:4, 3:10 & 3:17. In this instance, however, Jesus is referring to himself as the exalted Son of Man whom the prophet Daniel sees in a vision:

‘In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a Son of Man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed. Daniel 7:13-14

The title, Son of Man, is akin to John’s claim that Jesus is the Logos, the incarnation of God’s desires and His authority on earth. The Son of Man is God’s corporeal presence amongst His people. Thus Jesus confronts his questioners even as he heals the man:

‘Just so you know that the Son of Man has the authority on earth to forgive sins, I command this man to get up, take up his worn out mat, and walk.’ And with that the man stood up, grabbed his old mat, and began praising God. All in the overcrowded room were astounded, and said, ‘We’ve never seen anything like this before! (5:22-26).

Michael F. Patella, a Benedictine monk and professor of theology at St. John’s University in Collegeville, MN, contends this event reveals the dual blessing of following Christ. Jesus Christ, the Son of Man, elevates our present life, while at the same time he ensures our eternal future:

The event itself is a good example of the incarnational character of Jesus’ mission. Forgiveness of sins and spiritual well-being are not separate from physical wholeness and restoration. The Son of Man does not ignore the material world or the suffering of those living in it. By the double action of forgiving sins and curing the paralysis, Jesus shows that God’s beloved creatures are redeemed in this life as well as the next. (Patella, The Gospel According to Luke, 38)

The incarnation means more than God taking human form in Jesus Christ; it equally signifies that God will infuse eternity into the day-to-day life we live now. When we abandon our paltry, self-serving, myopic plans to follow Jesus Christ, we will gradually experience life in all its fullness instead of the shadow of life we held onto before.

The lingering image of the paralyzed man now on his feet and walking into his new life is on the reader’s mind when Jesus encounters Levi in his tax booth. Because Jesus conducts eighty percent of his ministry around the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee, we can assume that Levi was stationed at the mouth of the River Jordan to collect taxes on goods as they crossed from Herod Antipas’s jurisdiction into his brother Philip’s. Levi would have been detested by his fellow Jews for three reasons: First, because he was an idolater. As an agent of the occupying Roman state, he was a servant of Augustus Caesar, who, like his great uncle, Julius Caesar, was considered divine (the Roman Senate would officially proclaim him a god after his death on September 17, 14 AD.). Additionally, Levi would primarily deal with Roman coinage, imprinted with Caesar’s idolatrous image (see Matthew 22:20-22; Mark 12:16). Second, Levi was enriching himself by demanding additional money from his countrymen. Third, he would have extorted money from his fellow Jews, even to the point of leaving them utterly penurious and sold as slaves. (Patella, 38)

When Jesus calls well-heeled Levi to follow him, the tax collector does not hesitate, but gets up and leaves his table, stacks of money and all, and follows Jesus. Levi’s response to Jesus is no less a miracle than the healing of the leper and the paralyzed man. All three have been freed from their former bondage. Overcome with gratitude, Levi throws a sumptuous feast for Jesus and invites a large crowd of others — to include other tax collectors. The religious attendees complain, but Jesus silences them with the assurance that he has come to call sinners to repentance — to a new life (5:29-32).

The Feast in the House of Levi, by Paolo Veronese, 1573.

Looking more closely, something profoundly apocalyptic is revealed in Jesus’ comment to the Pharisees and teachers of the Law. To understand this revelation, we should note that Levi is so named because he hails from a Levitical or priestly family. Obviously, somewhere along the way he became lost. Patella points out that Jesus’ call of Levi hearkens to Malachi, the gravely urgent final book of the Old Testament: Who can endure the day of the Lord’s coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver (Malachi 3:2-3). Jesus is not merely an emissary of God speaking divine truths and doing good deeds. He is the Son of Man, pulling back the curtain to reveal God’s new kingdom!

That is why Jesus refers to himself as the bridegroom. The Son of Man is the one who institutes God’s renewed relationship with his people. Isaiah’s prophecy 700 years before that Israel will become known by a new name — Beulah, which means “married” in Hebrew, is coming true through Jesus. Israel will be “married” to God in a communion of intimacy that is far stronger than a relationship based on mere duty (Isaiah 62:4). Therefore, it’s no surprise when Jesus is asked by the Pharisees and scribes why his disciples don’t fast like John the Baptist’s disciples or themselves, Jesus responds, ‘You don’t fast when the bridegroom is with you. When he is taken from you, then you fast’ (5:34-35). Jesus’ response is initially gladdening, yet the second sentence is foreboding. Jesus, the Son of Man, is with them for a little while longer, but he will be taken from them. Now is no time for fasting, but that time is fast approaching.

Complacency or joy?

Seeing that his religious critics do not comprehend Jesus’ larger meaning about fasting and the bridegroom, he offers them one of his simplest and most graphic parables: No one uses a new cloth to patch old clothes. The first time you wash the garment, the new cloth will shrink and tear away. In the same way, no one pours new wine into old wine skins, because the new wine is still fermenting and expanding and will burst the old, brittle skins (5:36-39). Jesus is the emissary of God’s kingdom, God’s divine makeover of humanity and creation. Again, Isaiah prophesied about this day and intimates that some will not recognize it: ‘Behold, I am about to do something new; it is springing up, do you not perceive it? I will make a path in the desert and rivers in the wasteland’ (Isaiah 43:19). Jesus elaborates further and asserts that the kingdom he heralds is too dynamically expansive to be contained in their old categories, customs, and rites.

While Matthew and Mark also record the call of Matthew, only Luke shares Jesus’ final comment: ‘And no one who has been drinking the old wine desires the new, for he says, “The old is good”’ (5:39). Common sense — both in Jesus’ day and ours — dictates that aged wine is better tasting than new. Few would trade a nicely aged Chateau Lafitte for a bottle of Gallo fresh off the production line. Jesus uses this common knowledge to press home his urgent invitation: We would much rather continue in the comfortable old ways than risk new ones. The old time religion fits us like our favorite worn out blue jeans. Striking off with Jesus as his disciple into his new kingdom may bring on some dis-comfort. It will for sure, but to miss this opportunity is to miss a pass at real life, or as Michael Patella explains:

Jesus’ point is that the life of a disciple is not a dour regimen of religious protocol, but a life of joy. We should not let self-complacency blind us to the banquet the Bridegroom has ushered in, a banquet that begins even now as we wait to see its fullness in the yet-to-come. (Patella, 41).

The cost of self-complacency

Self-complacency is at odds with Christianity and with democracy as well. In the face of their self-complacency Romans, in 27 BC, allowed their prized republic of 500 years to disintegrate into a dictatorship. The disintegration was abetted by the Senate and largely ignored by the people. Forfeiting the republic was a slide backwards, not forward. Rome’s republic was the first of its kind in the world, and yet expeditious, short-sighted greed thrust the nation backwards into the old ways, into the straitjacketed confines of a brutish monarchy — one that fifty years later would publicly kill the Prince of Peace.

America, too, could be headed that way. Granting unwise tax breaks for the ultra-rich, propagandizing reelections for the powerful, abandoning legal rights and civil rights for individuals and organizations, abrogating medical and food support for the poorest in our nation, and pacifying the chief executive’s commercial pursuits and vindictive actions could quickly surrender the most creative and expansive democracy the world has ever known to tyrannical rule.

On that note, this morning Kay shared a quote with me from David Brooks which she read on Dan Rather’s Steady Substack for May 22. Brooks illuminates the dual attack on both our American republic and our Christian faith:

‘And when I look at the Trump administration, I see a massive attempt to return us to the life of dog eat dog, life of nasty, brutish, and short, where gangsters have maximum freedom to do what they want to do. And that is the evisceration of all the values of civilization that conservatism is supposed to transmit and preserve. And I think the raw lust for power that Donald Trump embodies has not only eviscerated conservatism, it’s eviscerated Christianity. Christianity is a system designed around the meek and service to the poor. Jesus never embraced worldly power; Donald Trump is completely about worldly power — for him it’s about domination.’ “Shameful,” by Dan Rather

On this Memorial Day weekend, we should remember that our forefathers conceived of our democratic republic as the new wine of liberation, an oasis of freedom amidst a world of privileged despots. Our urgent charge from them is to conserve it.

Washington Crossing the Delaware, Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze, 1851.

Sources

Berenfeld, Michelle, “The Roman Way to Trash a Republic, The Atlantic, April 16, 2025, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/04/rome-senators-republic-augustus/682469/

Klein, Ezra, “Trump’s Big Budget Bomb,” The Ezra Klein Show, May 21, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/audio/app/2025/05/23/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-catherine-rampell.html?referringSource=sharing

Patella, Michael F., The Gospel According to Luke, Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2005.

Rather, Dan, “Shameful: Mike Johnson pushes Trump’s policy bill through the House,” Steady, May 22, 2025.