Did Jesus have a platform?: October 22, 2023

 Year A, 20 Pentecost                                               Matthew 22:15-22                                                        

At some point in 9^th or 10^th grade, I became obsessed with politics.  I think it was the presidential election that got me interested and living in Northern Virginia, which was so close to Washington DC. I remained obsessed all the way through high school and majored in political science. My honors thesis senior year was on religion and politics. For a long time I have been fascinated by the intersection of religion and politics. One of the things that drew me to the Episcopal Church is the way that it’s governed.  The structure of the Episcopal Church was created at the same time as the structure of the United States government.  It was even created by the same people in the same city---this city. While they were creating that government, they worshipped at this church.        

Despite all of that, I have always been wary of getting too close to politics in the pulpit.  I try to preach the Bible and how it applies to our lives.  Sometimes there is overlap with politics, but I will never tell you how to vote or what I think of our current tax structure. Jesus was willing to confront the political and religious leadership of the day.  He had the right to do that as he had absolute moral authority.  He deserved that right. Well at least that is what we believe now. At the time, very few people thought he had that right.  And you know what’s kind of interesting…when a lot of people hear Jesus’ words today, they perceive them as political. Funny how that is…

This Gospel reading is a familiar one. People like to depict it as Jesus’ definitive stance on the separation of church and state—as if Jesus had a political platform and this was part of it.  “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”  The popular interpretation is that Jesus was telling people that there are two spheres with a clear wall in-between them--religion and the government. 

            There are a few problems with this interpretation.  First of all, we cannot compare the political environment of Jesus’ day to ours today…and thank goodness for that.  We live in a democracy, an imperfect democracy, but a democracy none the less.  Jesus was a Jew living in an occupied territory.  Israel was under the control of the Roman Empire. Because they were a people in an occupied territory, they had no rights.  They didn’t get a vote on who their leader was.  Even the Roman citizens didn’t get to choose their leader. They had an emperor—not an elected official. To complicate matters further, the Roman emperor considered himself a god and demanded the devotion of a god. There was no separation of religion and government.  That is impossible when the leader of the government portrays himself as a god. This put the Jews in a very difficult situation because the first commandment is to worship no other god but the one true God. 

            The Romans, while not known for their overall sensitivity, were fairly tolerant of other religions. They knew that the Jewish people would never worship another god.  The Jews would revolt before they did that.  The Romans were able to keep some modicum of peace by not forcing the Jews to worship the emperor.  But they did make them pay taxes…lots of taxes.  Those taxes were controversial because they actually supported the Roman occupation of Israel. The Jewish people were paying to be subjugated.  

In our story for today, there were two groups who came together to challenge Jesus.  We don’t know much about the Herodians.  There is only one other reference to them in the Bible.  People assume they were supporters of Herod who represented the Roman leadership. If that was the case, it was odd that they were teaming up with the Pharisees in trying to trap Jesus.  The Pharisees didn’t usually associate with Herod’s people. It just goes to show how threatening Jesus was to every power structure that existed at the time. 

            They thought that they had the perfect question to trap Jesus. “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor?” If Jesus answered the question in a way that indicated that he supported the tax, he would alienate his Jewish followers.  If he said that they shouldn’t pay the tax, he could be accused of rebelling against Rome.  Instead of answering whether it was lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, he asked for the coin…the coin that would be used to pay this particular tax.  He did not have the coin.  The people asking the question did.  That is an important detail to note.

            They brought him a denarius.  It had a picture of the emperor with the inscription: “Tiberius Caesar, Son of the Divine Augustus Pontifex Maximus.”  Augustus was a smart man and a very effective emperor.  When he took power, he made himself not only political leader, but a religious one as well.  When he died, he was a declared a god, making his son, the son of god.  It was his son’s picture on the coin.  Even possessing this coin was considered idolatry in the Jewish faith.  It broke the first commandment. The Pharisees should not have even had the coin, but they did.  When Jesus asked for the coin, he was proving that he was not the pawn of the Roman government, they were…especially if they were allying themselves with the Herodians.  Even if they were not pawns, they were certainly complicit.  It was a brilliant way to point out their hypocrisy.

            Jesus’ answer to the question wasn’t clear.  I am not sure he meant it to be.  “Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s and to God, the things that are God’s.”  Jesus paid his taxes.  We know that from chapter 17 of Matthew.  We also know it because otherwise he would have been arrested a lot earlier.  It would have been impossible to remain in a land occupied by Rome and not pay taxes.  That doesn’t mean Jesus respected the emperor or agreed with the tax. He just knew that was what he had to do.  The more important part of this response from Jesus is the 2^nd half, the half people don’t quote nearly as often.  “Give  to God, the things that are God’s.” We know (in theory) that everything is God’s.  Everything in creation is God’s.  This isn’t Jesus demarcating a separation between God and the government.  Everything is God’s.  Caesar can have his coins, but that’s because God is allowing it.  God doesn’t want part of our love and commitment.  He wants all of it—not just the change in our pockets.

            One commentator summed it up like this, “Live with the emperor but live for God.”[1]  We live with and within the government.  We might ally ourselves with a political party or a certain leader, but that is not our identity---that is not the heart of who we are.  Our heart is with Jesus. We can never stop living for God, because then we lose ourselves. 

When we say that God doesn’t have a place in our government or that our faith and our politics can never touch, then I fear that we are missing the bigger picture.  God has no interest in a portion of our loyalty.  He wants all of it and he wants all of us.  Politics is occupying a large part of our attention these days.  Can you imagine if we spent as much time worshipping and serving God as we do complaining about politics or really anything for that matter? Try it. Just for a day.  Then maybe we will understand what it means to “Live with the emperor but live for God.”

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[1] http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?m=4377&post=5458

Taxes, Money and Giving: October 21, 2017

Year A Pentecost 20                                                         

 

            I have never liked talking about money.  I know very few clergy who do, but there are some who are better than others. I am not one of them.  This is why I don’t talk about pledging very often. Last week was our Celebration Sunday, which is when we celebrate what God has given us by giving back. To put it more bluntly, it is when we ask people to turn in their pledges.  It seems that I talked about it so little, some people had no idea what was going on.  This was a lesson for me.  It was more of a reminder, because I know better.  First of all, preaching about money and giving is a good and necessary thing.  It is a huge part of life.  It is what God asks of us.  God asks us to be joyful givers.  Jesus talked more about money than he did about the poor or loving your neighbor. So I know that I need to talk about money. But then I thought, oh well, celebration Sunday was last Sunday, I can talk about it next year. Then I saw the Gospel for today.  Taxes, money, giving.  This is proof that God has a sense of humor.

            It is a clear from the very first verse of this passage what is going on.  “The Pharisees went and plotted to entrap Jesus in what he said.”  Over the last few weeks, we have heard several parables that Jesus shared.  In most of these parables, the Pharisees were not portrayed well.  They came across as hypocritical, narrow minded and just plain wrong.  The Pharisees could not let these teachings continue, so they came up with a plan.  They devised the perfect question to entrap Jesus and then recruited Herodians to be with them when they asked the question. 

While we do not know a lot about the Herodians, we know that they were associated with King Herod.  They were Jewish, but were perceived to be closely allied with the Romans who had appointed Herod to be the king of the Jews.  This was especially offensive to most Jews because only God could appoint a king of the Jewish people.  The Pharisees and the Herodians did not usually get along. Thus to have these two groups working together implied that Jesus had upset not just the Pharisees and Chief Priests, but the Roman leadership as well.

            In this nation, we are divided on taxes.  How much should they be? Where should the income from the taxes go? In Jesus time, the Jewish people were extremely burdened by taxes.  Scholars estimate that there were 3-4 different taxes and most of the income from those taxes went to the Romans.  The Jewish tax money was helping pay for their imprisonment. I think we can all agree that would not be something we would support in this country.  The question was, “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” If Jesus answered the question by saying that it was lawful to pay taxes to the Romans, he would have upset the Jews.  He would have lost many of his followers.  If he said that it was not lawful, he would have most likely been arrested by the Romans.  There was absolutely no good way to answer this question.   Jesus took another tactic.

            He told them, “Show me the coin used for the tax.”  In asking for a coin, he was first of all admitting that he did not have any coins.  Someone from the group who was trying to trap him with this tricky question handed him a denarius.  A denarius is a Roman coin.  It would have had a picture of Caesar with the words, “Tiberius Caesar, Son of the Divine Augustus Pontifex Maximus.”  This coin had  an engraved image of a Roman god, an idol.  Just having this coin would have technically meant that any Jew holding it would be breaking the first two commandments. 

            In some ways, the question about whether it was ok for Jews to pay taxes to the Roman was a fair question.  Yet the fact that the Jews asking the questions were the ones holding the coin indicates their hypocrisy.  They were asking if it was ok for them to participate in a system that they were already participating in.  That is why Jesus called them hypocrites.  Jesus really did not like hypocrites.  Remember, Jesus did not have the coin.  He had to ask for it.

            When he had it, he asked them whose image was on the coin.   It was the Emperor’s image.  Jesus then provided his now famous answer, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” In other words, if it has the emperor’s face on it, give it back to him.  A lot of people have used this response to help explain the divide between church and state or sacred and secular; as if Jesus was drawing a line between what was God’s and what was Caesar’s.  That was not the case.

            Jesus asked whose image is on the coin.  Whose image.  Think about the first chapter of Genesis. Genesis takes us through all of God’s creation.  After creating earth, water, plants, animals, God created male and female in his image.  We are made in the image of God.  Therefore when Jesus tells them to give the coin to Caesar because that is whose image is on the coin…well that is a very small thing compared to what and who bears the image to God.  We give coins to the leaders of this earth, but we give ourselves to God.  There is no divide between the sacred and the secular because every part of creation is sacred. 

            The reason talking about stewardship and pledges is difficult is not just because clergy don’t like to talk about money; it’s that talking about what stewardship really means is far too daunting.  Everything belongs to God.  We earn nothing because all we have is a gift from God.  That is a difficult thing to wrap your mind around especially when you have worked very hard for what you have.  But it also explains why giving of ourselves is part of what we do in church. 

In my last church, we had a very outgoing stewardship chair.  He had a deep southern accent and was a little pushy at times, but always charming.  He loved the church.  Once I saw him sidle up to someone in the hall before the service.  It was not someone I saw regularly, not someone I would have expected to pledge.  He put his hand on the man’s shoulder and said, “Dan, do we have your commitment.” Dan looked a little confused.  The stewardship chair stopped so Dan would have to look at him.  “Your commitment.  Are you committed to this church?” He was so earnest.  It even made me uncomfortable.  Yet it made me think of what it would be like to be cornered by Jesus.  What would it be like to have Jesus pull you aside, look into your eyes and say, “Do I have your commitment?”   That is what he asks each one of us every minute of every day.  Are we committed to him? Only you know that answer.    

October 19, 2014: Matthew 22: 15-22

In God We Trust

 Year A, Pentecost 19                                                        

                                                  

            A couple of years ago there was a big rumor that circulated that indicated that the US Treasury was attempting to remove “In God we trust” from the newest dollar coins.  This phrase has been on American coins since the 1950’s and many people believed that this removal was just further proof of the secularization of America.  They showed pictures of the new dollar coins with no “In God we trust” on the coin.  It was true that this phrase did not appear on the face of the coin.  It was inscribed on the side of the coins.  

            It is interesting to me how riled up people get about things like what is on the face of a coin.  I am not sure changing what our coins say will make much of a difference for people’s faith, but there are some people who are very passionate about this issue.  Currency and what was on currency was a pretty big deal in Jesus’ day as well.  In many ways, it had much bigger ramifications than it does today.

            In the Gospel story, The Pharisees and Herodians (who were supporters  of Herod, the Roman ruler of the Jewish people) were coming together for the sole purpose of trapping Jesus.  Typically the Pharisees and the Herodians didn’t really hang out.  The Pharisees were the religious leaders, the experts on Jewish law.  The Herodians were a political party that supported the right of Herod the Great and his descendants to rule Israel.  They supported the Roman leadership while the Pharisees and the Jewish people resented the Roman occupation. The two of them coming together was like Fox News and MSNBC joining forces. 

            They had a plan that seemed foolproof.  They would ask Jesus about taxes.  There is rarely a good way to discuss taxes.  This particular tax they were asking about was a tax that supported the Roman occupation.  It was offensive to the Jewish people, many of whom supported Jesus.  If Jesus answered the question in a way that indicated that he supported the tax, he would alienate his Jewish followers.  If he did not, he could be accused of rebelling against Rome.  Instead of answering whether it was lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, he asked for the coin…the coin that would be used to pay this particular tax.  You see, he did not have the coin.  The people asking the question did.  They were people of means.  Jesus was not a man who carried money.

            They brought him a denarius.  We know what was on that coin because archaeologists have found them.  It had a picture of the emperor with the inscription: “Tiberius Caesar, Son of the Divine Augustus Pontifex Maximus.”  Augustus was a smart man and a very effective emperor.  When he took power, he made himself not only political leader, but a religious one as well.  He wanted to be a god.  When he died, he was a declared a god, making his son, the son of god.  It was his son’s picture on the coin.  Even possessing this coin was considered idolatry in the Jewish faith because it portrayed another god.  The Pharisees should not have even had the coin, but they did.  When Jesus asked for the coin he was proving that he was not the pawn of the Roman government.  They were…especially if they were allying themselves with the Herodians. 

            Jesus knew very well whose picture was on the coin and he knew what it meant.  He did not want any part of it.  Every emperor made their own coin when they came to power with their own picture.  We don’t do that. The people on our coins are great leaders from the history of our country.  But these coins changed with the leadership.  When Jesus said, "Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's…” he was essentially saying if this coin is marked with Tiberius’ face, then by all means, give it back to him.  It was both a practical answer and a theological one.  Then he said something that probably left people a little confused.  “Give….to God the things that are God’s.”  Well technically that would be everything.  Everything on earth is a creation of God…which means everything is God’s.  That would then mean that the coin with the blasphemous image belongs to God…or does it? 

This is the question that we have been struggling with for millennia and I am not sure that struggle has gotten us anywhere.  We say that everything belongs to God but then we argue about church property and who owns it…the diocese or the church?  We worry about pledges and pledges to the diocese.   We debate how much of our money we should give to the diocese and how much of our income we should give to the church.  We say everything belongs to God, but I am not sure we really understand it.  That is understandable because it is a really hard thing to wrap your mind around when we live in a culture that is all about ownership.  We own houses. We own clothing.  If it is ours, we own it. 

Perhaps we should consider it from a different perspective.  Perhaps ownership or even belonging isn’t the best word to describe it all.  Let’s consider where Jesus started this conversation.  He asked the people whose image was on the coin.  The image was a man, a powerful man but a sinful and mortal man.  He was a man who made himself into a god, but never served a god or humanity.  He was a man who determined his worth by the coins that were made in his image. 

Jesus Christ would never ask us to put his image on a coin.  God would not ask that.  God put his image somewhere else….somewhere far more valuable.  He put his image on us, on humans.  And what is amazing about that image is it looks different on all of us.  We are not coins stamped with the same image.  We don’t belong to God like property.  We are children of God designed in his image so that we might love him and love one another. 

Yet we depart from that image time and time again.  Like the newest dollar coin, we have relegated God to the periphery of our lives. God is on the side where no one can quite see him.  We can feel better about ourselves because it is still there, imprinted on the side like an obligation that we keep.  But that is not where God belongs.  God belongs front and center in our life.  And if God is truly front and center then we would not debate about percentages or ownership.  God would no longer be a priority in our life; God would be the priority.  Everything else would exist in the shadow of that one priority. We would not merely give a pledge to our church, we would pledge our lives to God.   We would not need our coins to affirm who we trust.  There would be no question. It is in God whom we trust.  It is in God’s image whom we are made.  The rest is just details…coins in our pocket.