The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A, 2014 – Exodus 23:12-23; Psalm 99; 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10; Matthew 22:15-22
In some circles one of the golden rules of preaching is that you should never talk about politics or if you do, you should be very careful what you say because, we are told, religion and politics don’t mix. But in the news politics are front and centre right now with a municipal election just around the corner; and what an election! Apparently there has been a higher than normal turnout of early voters. That could be encouraging considering that the trend in Canada has been towards very poor voter turnouts. But you have to wonder if people are voting for or against certain candidates. It is hard not to be a little cynical about politics in light of the many abuses of political power whether that is found in astronomical expense claims or hugely expensive projects which get cancelled as the result of a particular political agenda. And who pays for that – the tax payer of course. Now, in many ways Canadians are fortunate because we don’t have to deal with some of the abuses of power other people around the world experience (think for example of Zimbabwe and Robert Mugabe). But that doesn’t mean that we are happy with our political leaders or that we like to pay taxes particularly when we see some of the things that our tax money is used for.
Those questioning Jesus know full well how divisive political discussions can be. In spite of their apparent flattery it is clear that their real goal is not getting an answer to their question but trapping Jesus by forcing him to address a hot political topic: ‘Should we pay taxes to Caesar or not’. There is no right answer to that question. If he says no then he can be accused of fomenting rebellion against the Romans and he will be arrested. If he says yes we should pay taxes to Caesar then half the people listening are going to walk away disillusioned and angry because they hate the oppressive Roman rule and while they pay their taxes they are not happy about it.
Jesus, knowing full well what is really going on says show me the coin used for taxes and when one of those questioning him produces the Roman coin he says –‘whose image is on the coin?’ They reply Caesar’s and Jesus says ‘render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s.’
This passage has often been used to defend the separation between Church and State . God’s territory is the spiritual life while the more practical things – managing our economy and infrastructure – belongs to political leaders. You don’t mix religion and politics, the sacred and secular, the church and the state – or so we are told. In some ways that would fit with the Pharisee’s who tried to stay disengaged from the hard political realities of Rome. They weren’t foolish enough to start a rebellion but neither were they going to acknowledge Rome’s authority any more than they had to. But the other group questioning Jesus were the Herodians who believed that the best way to fight back against Rome was to try and get their own political leverage by working within the system – perhaps a little like the Christian Right in the US today – fighting to change things from the inside.
So, render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s. Does that mean don’t confuse the spiritual with the political, don’t confuse church with state? Or is there a little more going on here?
One of the reasons why the Pharisee’s didn’t want to pay taxes to Caesar, didn’t even want to handle the Roman coins was because the coins were considered idolatrous. They were an integral part of the Roman cult of worship where the ‘god’ that was to be acknowledged was Caesar. It was his image stamped on the coin and underneath it said ‘son of god’. Pious Jews didn’t want to handle Roman coins because they were idolatrous; they implied that Caesar was ‘god’. In Canada we have the queen’s image on our coins. While we certainly don’t worship the queen there is a sense in which we continue to have a cult of worship centered around money. Money is power in our world – the way we handle it and think about it becomes practical worship. Not that we bow down and worship money at least not in a literal sense but we do put a lot of confidence in how much money we have and a lot of our worries centre around how much money we don’t have. Money shapes a lot of our decisions in that way, it is central to what we might call our practical worship: how we live day to day.
When Jesus says render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s he is saying in effect – Caesar is not God. So while Caesar might have a claim to something that has his picture on it, ultimately, everything and everyone (including Caesar) belongs to God. This of course echoes the biblical idea that all political rulers are ultimately answerable to God; God is Lord over every political leader. So this is a story about power and authority and how we recognize it and live in response to it.
After Jesus had said ‘render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s we are told that the people walked away in amazement and astonishment. They weren’t amazed because Jesus had found a clever way to avoid their question. They were amazed because his answer took them straight to the truth. That whatever authority Caesar had it was only a relative authority because ultimately all authority belongs to God.
In one sense this story points us toward what is about to happen – in Matthew 27 Jesus stands before Pilate. Pilate, who has authority over Jesus’ life and death, or so he believes, asks Jesus a question. And Jesus is silent before him. Jesus stands before Pilate knowing that God, his Father, is the ultimate authority and that Pilate has no authority apart from what God allows him to have. Matthew again uses the same word for Pilate’s response to Jesus – Pilate is amazed, astonished. In the end it is Pilate who backs down, it is Pilate who is faced with his own powerlessness in that situation.
Back to Matt 22. Jesus’ words directly challenge his listeners, the Pharisees and the Herodians, because they claim to worship God but in different ways they are all living day to day as though God isn’t in authority. To the Pharisees’ whose tendency is to insulate themselves from the political issues of the day Jesus is saying – don’t forget that Caesar rules at God’s good pleasure. And to the Herodians Jesus is saying ‘be careful that you don’t put your confidence in your attempts to exercise power’. There is only one ultimate authority.
And that brings us to look briefly at the context of this story. If we turn back a page or two in Matthew we see that there are three parables that lead up to this set of questions – first there is the parable of the two sons. In response to the father’s request one says yes and then does nothing while the other says no and then goes and does what the father asks. Then there is the parable of the vineyard workers who rebel against the vineyard owner and in the end seek to kill his Son. And finally there is the Marriage celebration which Chris Seitz spoke about last week. All the subjects of the king who are invited to the celebration of the wedding of the King’s son do the unthinkable and refuse to show up and are killing the servants of the king. In each of these parables there is an issue of authority and how people respond to authority. And throughout this line up of stories there is the claim that the people of Israel and particularly their leaders have failed to acknowledge the authority of God, they have failed to honor God.
It is a little too easy to speak of the hypocrisy of the Pharisees – perhaps even thanking God that we are not like the Pharisees. But when we do that we don’t hear what is going on in this story. The Pharisees are not evil people who intentionally cheat and deceive others. On the contrary many if not most of them were deeply devote and faithful people; they wanted to be faithful to God and they worked hard at being faithful to God. But when push came to shove – their confidence was in the wrong place. They didn’t trust God in the way they said they did, nor in the way that they wanted to.
So here is the question for us:
Do we live with Jesus as Lord over the whole of our lives. Not dividing apart the spiritual and the physical, the secular and sacred? Do we speak of Jesus as Lord of our hearts but not Lord over our lives? The radical claim of his Lordship is that all that we are and all that we have belongs to God. And that to be a Christian leaves no area of our lives outside of God’s authority.
It is a demanding call for us to live in the context that God is the only and ultimate authority. We could end here presenting this as call to radical discipleship. The danger is that could be just as oppressive as the Romans were in Jesus day. We would be exchanging the oppressive authority of political leaders, or money, for an oppressive understanding of the authority of God. And that simply isn’t what is going on.
Way back in Matthew 11 Jesus said:
“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” So where is the grace for us in this radical call to follow Jesus?
This is where we need to turn back to the words of flattery Jesus’ questioners dole out on him. “Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality.”
Those words of flattery ring true to who Jesus is – he isn’t swayed by political manoeuvring or attempts to manipulate others. Rather he is completely and wholly consistent in who he is and what he does because he is obedient to God the Father, he trusts God the Father absolutely (even to the point of death on the cross). He does what the Pharisees did not do and what we to fail to do – he acknowledged the Father’s authority in every area of his life. He does for us what we could not do for ourselves – he lives in the context of God’s authority.
But there is also a second facet to this grace and that is that Jesus is Lord over all because he is God. And his lordship, his authority, is true no matter whether we acknowledge it or not. The fact that majority of people in Toronto do not acknowledge the Lordship of Jesus Christ does not change for one instant that he is Lord over all. The fact that our political parties in Canada may not acknowledge God’s authority doesn’t change his authority over them and his authority over Canada.
…to be a Christian is to be a person who is learning what it means to say ‘Jesus is Lord’.
The grace for us is not in whether or not we are able to truly trust Jesus, to truly live in the light of his authority right now. No, the grace of God is that to be a Christian is to be a person who is learning what it means to say ‘Jesus is Lord’. Jesus comes before us as our redeemer and our teacher to teach us and shape us and mould us as people who in every area of our lives – at work at play, at home and in the world , in every area – we are learning to live in the light of his lordship, his authority. In Jesus there is no separation between sacred and secular for he is Lord over all.
