RIFF—Another King, Another Lord: The early church’s first creed was three words long. They were treasonous then. They may be again.

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled.

So begins the second chapter of Luke’s first volume. The decree is the hinge. Caesar counts heads. Caesar moves families across provinces.

Caesar’s image sits on every coin in every pocket, and the coins all read DIVI FILIUS — son of the divine. Augustus had figured out something his predecessors had not: that to rule the body, you must first rule the imagination. So his face went on the money. His statues filled the forums. His name was etched into temples. Pater Patriae, father of the country.

The cult of the emperor was not a side project. It was the project.

Luke writes his two volumes inside that world. And he writes them as a quiet, unrelenting refusal.

Before the decree goes out, before Caesar has spoken a word in the narrative, a peasant girl named Mary sings: He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. Before Augustus opens his mouth, the gospel has already named what is coming. The hungry will be filled. The rich will be sent away empty. Thrones will fall.

This is not metaphor; this is Luke telling us how to read the world we are about to enter.

I have been thinking about this all week.

The Federal Reserve reported in January that the top one percent of American households now hold roughly fifty-five trillion dollars — about as much wealth as the bottom ninety percent of Americans combined. Highest concentration on record since the Fed began tracking in 1989. The Urban Institute reported in March that nearly one in four American adults experienced food insecurity last year, and among working- and middle-income families it climbed to more than one in three.

Hungry. In the wealthiest nation that has ever existed.

And meanwhile: a banner of one man’s face hangs across the Justice Department. Another across the Department of Labor. Another across the Department of Agriculture. His profile on the new commemorative dollar coin, fist raised, fight, fight, fight. His face on the national park pass instead of the parks. This week the State Department announced his image will be printed inside our passports — superimposed directly over the text of the Declaration of Independence, with his signature in gold beneath.

The body of one man, laid over the founding charter of the body politic.

Augustus would have understood the design perfectly. So would the regimes of the last century that learned from him.

I am a Jesus follower. Which means I belong to a story that began as a witness against exactly this. Luke ends his second volume with Paul under house arrest in Rome, in Caesar’s own city, boldly and without hindrance preaching the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ.

Another king. Another Lord. The church’s first creed was three words long: Iēsous Kyrios. Jesus is Lord. Which meant, in that world, that Caesar was not.

The hungry will be filled. The rich will be sent away empty.

Mary sang it before the decree went out. We are still waiting to see whether we believe her.

(Image by Gemini)