Matthew 22:15-22
Once again, I say, “Good morning, Church!” Although there are some who will be watching this service a little later online, today is the first time in many months that we have actually gotten to see one another inside this church that we call home. It is fabulous beyond belief!.
I don’t know how many times or for how long we’ll be able to meet together, but while we are here, let us rejoice and be glad! We live in such uncertain times.
Each of us is making lots of decisions about how to live our lives each and every day, and what we decide today may be entirely different from what we decide tomorrow, as we process tons of new information that comes to us on a continual basis.
And, as we meet today, we are but 16 days away from Election Day in our country. So, I have to ask you, how are you doing? How are you holding up? If you are anything like me, you receive tons of election-related mail each day; my recycling pile grows by leaps and bounds. You probably have phone calls coming in as well, and perhaps, like me, you are receiving texts too.
You cannot tune in to television without being bombarded by political ads, every one of them trying to help YOU decide to vote for THEIR candidate. I for one have grown quite weary of it all.
So, I have a question for you - have you made up your mind yet?
Have you already voted by mail or are you holding out, planning to hit up the ballot boxes as soon as they open on the 3rd?
But here’s the real burning question that I have on my mind: I know that you are all sincere, faithful people who follow Jesus Christ, and you shape your lives after his teachings.
So, with that in mind, who are you voting for?
Who is the president of your choice this year, or the Congressman or woman of choice? Who is your choice to fill the various other positions on this year’s election ballot? Perhaps it’s a good thing we are all wearing masks and aren’t supposed to be speaking out loud right now.
So, don’t worry. I am not really expecting you to answer this question.
Unlike the Pharisees in today’s gospel reading, I am not testing you or trying to put you on the spot.
As we look at the passage before us, what we see is that truly, the Pharisees and Herodians were testing Jesus. They were trying to trap him, to trip him up. We know that when they asked him, “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor or not,” it was a trick question which, no matter how he answered it, would get him into trouble. The Pharisees of Jesus’ day, after all, saw this tribute tax, as a heretical and political submission to the pagan emperor, whereas the Herodians would see refusal to pay as sedition.
What is Jesus to say? It is a lose-lose proposition, to answer this question, and yet, they are all standing there, with Jesus on display and in the spotlight.
“Who are you voting for?” “Should we pay this tax or not?”
So, Jesus takes the Roman coin and holds it up and offers an answer that bridges the gap between the religious and secular expectations of the day, making his answer a teaching opportunity.
“Give the emperor what is the emperor’s and give to God what is God’s,” he responds. As author and theologian Debie Thomas writes, “How typical of Jesus – not only to respond to a challenge with an even great challenge, but to insist that the relationship between faith and politics is too complex to reduce to platitudes – or tweets.”
We have Jesus’ words in front of us; but what does Jesus not say?
He doesn’t say that there are two realms, and they are separate but equal and ne’er the twain shall meet. He doesn’t say that we can live our lives divided, that to live in the world we should go one way but when in church or considering our religious selves live and go another way.
Instead, he points to a coin, which bears the image of the emperor. In the Roman world, in Roman occupied lands, the emperor was to be considered like a god. One’s loyalty and service are owed to the emperor.
But from the opening chapters of Genesis, we know that human beings – you, me, all people who ever have or ever will walk the face of the earth – are created in the likeness of God. We bear God’s image. Therefore, since it is God’s signature on each and every one of us, since it is God’s image with which we are stamped and in whose image we have been formed, if we follow Jesus’ analogy and his reasoning, we belong to God and we owe God everything – including our very being.
Everything we have and everything we own comes from God and belongs to God.
We often hear this kind of message during Stewardship campaigns, at times when we need to make big decisions for the church, or at times when we must determine what portion of our riches we will return in the form of offering to God.
But our lives do not equal our riches. “Our Lives” include things like our bodies and what we do with them and how we treat them, and our words and what we do with them and how we use them, and as followers of Jesus Christ, we are called to a special kind of living incorporating all aspects of our lives into our discipleship.
Included in what we owe God are the ways in which we are called to bear the image of God in our choices, among our friends, in our interactions, to what we devote our time and loyalties, and so much more – even in the way we vote.
Again, turning to Debie Thomas, “How do we bear forth God’s image while our families, communities, and churches splinter over political and cultural differences that seem unbridgeable? How do we live into the all-encompassing reign of God while a scorched-earth, ideology driven, “the end justifies the means” divisiveness reigns within American Christendom?”
As Christians, how do we know how to answer any of these questions other than to look to Jesus, who calls us to be his disciples, living lives in ways that point to his justice and love? And here’s the rub. Different people interpret what that means differently.
Jesus, the one who refuses to take the bait when asked this tough, tricky question, still answers with wisdom and righteousness. He remains faithful to God while making it clear that what comes in the name of the emperor isn’t the ultimate life-giving gift of unearned grace and mercy that comes only from God.
The thing is that as Christians dedicated to living lives shaped by Jesus Christ, every action we take, every decision we make, every single thing we ascribe to, every engagement in which we enter, every word we utter, every day we live, and how we do each of these things is as inseparable from our who we are as the image in which God made us and his very own countenance with which he stamped us. That is our call. This is our reality:
As Christians, we bear the image – the love and mercy of God to the world, and we do not alter or abandon it for some “greater” social or political end result.
We can’t isolate our political choices and actions from who we are as children of God and followers of Jesus Christ. If everything belongs to God, then our political and spiritual lives must bear that same God to the world and must not contradict each other.
We aren’t one kind of Christian on Sunday and another kind of Christian the rest of the week, a charge so often lobbed at Christians by those who are disenfranchised through engagement with any Christian church.
So, we look to Jesus to determine how to practice our faith in the political realm, and the religious realm, and the spiritual realm, and the secular realm, in our personal lives, in our public live, in our financial and economic lives, and in our worship and praise activities.
Following Jesus, we see that there is no way to offer God our whole selves other than to live in humility, kindness, forgiveness, compassion, and sacrificial love.
For God will be my God regardless of who resides in the White House. I will continue to owe my life and every good thing in it to this God of freedom and generosity, steadfast love and mercy, justice and goodness.
Unlike the emperor, God is not a tyrant, does not weigh favors and riches as reflective of his glory. Therefore, since you and I and our sisters here and brothers there are fashioned in the image of God, then we are compelled to practice our lives with integrity and loyalty to God alone. Then and only then will we remember and appreciate that the God whose image we bear is a God of eternal, redeeming love, who rules a kingdom that is boundless.
It is into this kingdom life that God calls us, for it is here that Jesus shapes us, and through this kingdom that we participate in the reign of God that is eternal and all-encompassing.
What should you give to God? Everything.
What will you be given? Eternal joy, eternal bliss, the blessing of grace upon grace upon grace.
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment