Sermon Notes for October 19, 2008

by Rev. Cathy Campbell
Oct19a: Ex 33: 12-23; Ps 99; 1Thess 1:1-10; Mt 22: 15-22

There is an old saying that there’s nothing sure but in this life but death and the tax man. And that was true then and now. [in fact if you want a brief overview of the history of taxation at the back – the latest issue of the New Internationalist magazine is all about tax justice and injustice]. So is it any surprise that those who were seeking to trap Jesus pose a taxation question:
is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?

Now this is a damned if you do, damned if you don’t question.

If Jesus says ‘no – its unlawful,’ its sedition and the Herodians are right there to hear it;
but if he says ‘yes’ he endorses the legitimacy of the brutal oppression of the people by Rome, by the empire.

So he inverts the question. He goes deeper into the issue and transforms a politically charged question loaded with malice into a profound spiritual question. Interestingly, Jesus has no coin on him. He must ask the questioner for a coin. The coin is stamped with a head and title, just like our money is today. Whose coin is it? To whom does the money belong? The questioner, Caesar, God? Now I imagine Jesus looking at his challengers as I am looking at you today and asking: whose image do we bear? To whom do we belong? What does belong to the emperor or empire? And what indeed belongs to God? To whom do we and all our possessions belong?

Jesus leaves his questioners, then and now, with an open-ended riddle:

“Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

Echoing behind this riddle is the opening verse of Psalm 24:

The earth is the LORD’S and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it.

Or from the first chapter of the bible:

Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish… the birds… cattle and wild animals and over every creeping thing… So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

So, who do we belong to and whose are our belongings? What name, whose name do we bear?

Now the Hebrew people were struggling with these issues as well as they journeyed for 40 years in the school of the wilderness. Their leader, Moses, had gone up the mountain to commune with God. And in his absence, the people got restless, perhaps disoriented or fearful. With their gold ornaments, which was all the wealth that they had carried with them from Egypt, they created an idol – a golden calf – an indigenous sign of fertility. Moses comes back. In anger or perhaps disappointment or frustration, he smashes the tablets God had created to teach the people God’s way. He crushes the idol they had made, and makes a powder of it and forces the people to drink it. Then God says to Moses:

“Go, leave this place, you and the people …Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; but I will not go up among you, or I would consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people…"

And God demands that the people surrender all their remaining ornaments. Then in the passage we read today, Moses pleads with God not to abandon them, but to go with them. And God relents and says:

I will do the very thing that you have asked; for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.

Moses is God’s and so are the people. In all this, God is shaping a people – the people of God [as we say each Sunday: the gifts of God for the people of God.] The Hebrew people, like Jesus, now travel bereft of their ornaments, their personal wealth. For, as this episode makes clear, we shape our idols from our wealth. Rather than be shaped by our creator, we create and worship what we make, and God is displaced. Our possessions, possess us and soon we find ourselves displaced without a place of belonging, trying to fill that God shaped absence in our lives will all sorts of junk food – things that cannot satisfy our deep longings.

So the question is critical: who do we [with all our possessions] belong to - God and God’s creation, idols of our own making, or of the empire’s making? In this time of global economic turmoil, when the entrails of the empire are beginning to be laid bare, we see how deeply interconnected we all are. It is not just the air we share. The coins that we trade with, stamped with all sorts of different images, are all one as well. And we see the devastating effects of greed – of people taking more than their share and bending, breaking and erasing rules to enable that to happen with complete indifference to others’ well being. The ties that bind us to each other and to God’s beleaguered, beloved creation are stretched to breaking. And who will bear the cost of this folly? How can we open to healing of these broken and messed up relations? The language of justice and peace seem shattered.

Last week, little [4 year old] Kayden asked his Aunt Tracey: where is God? Where is God in all this? Perhaps if we could see God, we would get it, find the way and follow. It’s just like Moses who asked of God: “show me your ways, so that I may know you,” and then 4 verses on: “show me your glory, I pray.” For indeed it is hard, hard to find the way in the wilderness, in the entrails of the empire. So, God said to Moses:

I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you my name… I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; [for no one can see my face and live]
If indeed creation is the body of God, then everyday we with Moses are privileged to see the back-side of God. And there were Jesus’ interrogators face to face with the living God in their midst and.

they were amazed; [yet] they left him and went away.

So here are we with coins of the empire in our pockets and purses, but gathered around our Lord’s table. The currency of this table is the fruit of our life and labour, symbolized in bread and wine, filled with God’s overflowing love and mercy, offered for free, forever, for everyone. The giving, sharing and consuming of this currency builds up community. At this table we are offered healing and restoration of relationships between us, and with the Holy, the one who made us and all that is. We are offered belonging, a statement of our place on the earth. And we are offered the food, the nourishment that genuinely satisfies our deepest hungers. We are what we eat and drink. If we say yes and take the food and drink of this table, we become part of God’s economy – something beyond our owning and controlling; an economy with a very different currency. At this altar we, like the Hebrew people surrender our ornaments to journey forward with our God. This is the ground of our hope. This is the basis for community that is not abusive or oppressive.

“Where is God?” “Show me your glory, I pray.” Borrowing Isaiah’s invitation to the table:
Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live.

In contrast to the empire, the food of God’s economy is life indeed – abundant life for all, yes even God’s beleaguered, beloved creation. So

Give to the empire the things that are the empire’s, and to God the things that are God’s.