THE TWENTY-SECOND SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

The Rev. Dayle Casey                                                                                                     Proper 24 - A

The Chapel of Our Saviour                                                                                               Isaiah 45:1-7

Colorado Springs, Colorado                                                                                 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10

October 20, 2002                                                                                                    Matthew 22:15-22

          In recent weeks we’ve heard a number of Jesus’ parables about the kingdom of God.  They are stories that got under the skin of the priests and the pharisees, who rightly drew the conclusion that Jesus was aiming his parables straight at them.  The stories suggested that the religious authorities in Israel were maybe not going to inherit the kingdom of God, because maybe they didn’t have things quite as straight with God as they thought they did.

            The religious leaders had heard Jesus tell the parable of the two sons, in which they came out looking like the son who refused to do his father’s will.  In another story, Jesus seems to have identified them with the wicked tenants who killed God’s prophets and were trying to steal God’s vineyard.  In last week’s story, Jesus had the authorities looking like the ones who refuse to accept the invitation to God’s feast, while ne’er-do-well transients and miscreants all enjoy its blessings.

            Enough was enough.  The priests and pharisees were becoming concerned that maybe the people might not be so ready to obey them; they might lose their power and authority if Jesus were allowed to go on talking like this.  They wanted to have Jesus arrested, Matthew tells us, but they were afraid of the crowds, because the crowds looked on Jesus as a prophet.

            So the pharisees went away for a time and held a caucus, and they agreed on a plan to trap Jesus in an argument, so that they could make him look bad in the eyes of the people.  They got some of Herod’s party, probably some of the priests, to join them in their plan.  And they all went to Jesus, pharisees and priests together, and they began by trying to flatter him:  “Teacher,” they said, “we know you are a sincere man.  We know that you teach in all sincerity the ways of obedience and service to God.  We know that you teach the way of life that God requires, not caring what anyone thinks, whoever it might be.  So we’d like the answer to a question that has been troubling us in order that we’ll know how to obey God as well.  Tell us, give us your ruling:  Is it permissible to pay taxes to Caesar or not?”

            This was a major political question in Jesus’ day, because the pharisees didn’t like having the Romans ruling the Jews in their own land.  So they opposed paying taxes to Caesar.  But Herod’s party, whose power and status depended on their being Rome’s loyal local agents in Israel, supported paying the taxes Caesar imposed.  And these two groups hoped to force Jesus into taking sides by asking him a question that was a political version of “Have you stopped beating your wife?”

            “Is it permissible to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?”   If Jesus answers “yes,” he will come down on the side of the Herodians, whose loyalty to Caesar was clear but whose obedience to God was questionable in the eyes of the pharisees.  If he answers “no,” he will line up with the pharisees, and maybe make himself look like a revolutionary in the eyes of Caesar.  Either way, Jesus would lose, because either the pharisees or the Herodians will claim victory.  “What about these foreigners, Jesus  --  the Romans  --  do they belong here in Israel, or not?  Should we support a government that carries the image of a foreign god on its coins, or not?  Is it permissible to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?”

            The question is not unimportant to Jesus; the question of who has authority over Israel was a vital matter to him.  But Jesus knew that the question was really much larger than the issue of taxes.  He knew that the question of taxes begged some larger and deeper questions of identity and loyalty. 

            So, in response, Jesus asked the pharisees, “Does anyone have a quarter?”

            What Jesus did was to pull an old trick that I first learned from my college baseball coach, who may himself have learned it from Jesus.

            On the night before a game, our coach would impose a curfew.  “In bed by nine o’clock,” he said.  “No spending the night out drinking and carousing.”  And then, the next day, if Bobby Joe or Ben came to the locker room looking suspiciously hung over and tired, which they often did, our coach would ask, “One of you guys got a light?”

            And either Bobby Joe or Ben would pull out a matchbook that read, “Bud’s Tavern.”   And as one of them would light up the coach’s cigarette with one of Bud’s matches, he would look into the eyes of Ben and Bobby Joe, and, too late, they would look at him as the light slowly dawned in their brains, because while Ben and Bobby Joe were among the cooler guys on the team, they were never too smart.  And our coach would shake his head and scratch them off the lineup for the day, and everybody else in the locker room would be looking at the floor, trying to keep from laughing.  And Ben and Bobby Joe never did seem to catch on.

            Just so, when the pharisees asks Jesus if it is permissible to pay taxes to Caesar or not, and when Jesus asks them, “Does anyone have a quarter?”...and when one of them reaches into his pocket and pulls out a quarter, and Jesus asks, “Is this what you pay the tax with?”...and when the pharisee who shows it to him says “Yes”...and when Jesus says, “Well, whose picture is this on the quarter, and whose inscription?”... and when they reply, “It’s Caesar’s”...just so, during this exchange, everyone else in the crowd is looking at the ground, trying to keep from laughing, because they know that the joke is on Bobby Joe Pharisee.  Because Bobby Joe Pharisee is supposed to know his Bible and to know that the Bible forbade a good Jew from walking around with a picture of a foreign god in his pocket like that.  But here he has pulled an idol right out of his own pocket, a picture of the god Tiberius Caesar Divi Augustus Pontifex Maximus   --  “Tiberius Caesar, august son of the divine Augustus.”  And the whole crowd standing around is looking at the ground and snickering, because they can see that even though Bobby Joe here is one of the smoothest guys in town, he’s not so smart standing there before Jesus with his pockets turned inside out and his pants down. 

            So Jesus asks him, “Who do you belong to?” 

            That’s not exactly the way Jesus asked it, of course, but it’s what he was getting at.  And everyone there that day, including Bobby Joe Pharisee himself, knew that’s what he was getting at.  “Who’s image is this,” Jesus asks, “and whose inscription?”  And Bobby Joe and all the pharisees with him who had eyes to see said, “Caesar’s image, and Caesar’s inscription, ‘the divine son of Augustus.’” 

            “Well then,” said Jesus, “you have the answer to your own question.  Surely, you good men of God have read your Bibles; you know the Scriptures; you’ve read the prophet Isaiah.  You know that God sometimes uses Caesar and the kings of this world to fulfill his purpose in the world, just as back in Isaiah’s time he used the emperor Cyrus to bring the people home from captivity in Babylon.  So you know that what belongs to Caesar should be given to Caesar.  This coin bears his image and his name, so give it to him.  Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s.  But ....

            “But, render unto God that which is God’s.

            “So, let me ask you a question, Bobby Joe.  Look at yourself.  Whose image and whose name do you see there?”

            Now those of you who listened carefully to the Gospel reading this morning know that Matthew doesn’t say that Jesus asked this question.  But he did ask it, and both the pharisees and the Herodians and everyone else in the crowd who had read their Bible heard it.  And that’s why they didn’t pursue the argument any further, but just slipped away quietly.

            They just slipped away quietly because Jesus had said, “Look at yourselves.  Whose image and whose name do you see there?”  They slipped away because they were all remembering about how, in the beginning, God had created them in his own image, male and female God had created them in his image in the beginning, and they were remembering how the Scriptures say that the Lord’s very name is written on their own hands, and how they therefore belong to the Lord.

            So they all knew that when Jesus told them to give to Caesar whatever they had with Caesar’s image on it, but to give what they had with God’s image on it to God...they all knew right then and there that all they had to give to God was themselves.

            Which is good news, because our selves is precisely what, and everything, that God asks for.  Our selves is all that God wants, and all that’s necessary for eternal and abundant life.

            Jesus, as usual, refuses to get engaged on the level of issues, because he didn’t come to live among us to speak to the issues, but to speak to human hearts.

            “Whose side are you on?” we ask him.  “Are you pro-God or pro-Caesar?  Are you pro-life or pro-choice?  Are you liberal or conservative?  In difficult times like ours, with terrorists on the loose, which is more important, Jesus, civil liberties or security?  Come on, Jesus, tell us.  Here is a woman caught in adultery; are you for zero tolerance for criminals, or not?  Are you for gun control or not, for gay rights or not, for prayer in the schools or not, for war with Iraq or not?

            “We live in a dangerous world, Jesus.  With terrorists and snipers on the loose, with corporate and personal scandals the way they are, with the stock market as unstable as it is, with all the dangers society presents to our children, we need more laws,” we say.  “We need more security, not more freedom. 

            “What kind of question is this anyway?” we ask  --  “‘Is it permissible to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?’  -- and what good is an answer like Jesus’ answer  --  ‘Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and unto God what is God’s’?  Taxes, like death, are inevitable.  It’s the law, so we’ve got to pay up!”

            It is the law, for us as it was for Jesus.  But what if the law asks of us something that doesn’t belong to government, but belongs to God?  And how do we know which is which?

            It is true that the world has never been more dangerous than it is now.  But it is also true that the world has never really been less dangerous either.  The choices faced by our ancestors were as hard, as filled with peril for them, as ours are for us.  Let me suggest one historical example.

            In January of 1820, in the United States Congress, a bill known as the Missouri Compromise was passed.  Under the law Missouri would be admitted as a slave state, Maine would be admitted as a free state, and slavery would be prohibited in United States territories north of the 36th parallel.  This would maintain the balance of power in Congress between free and slave states, and the matter of slavery would be settled.  Or so some hoped.

            But as we know, it was not settled for long, as Thomas Jefferson, then an old man, realized at the time.  Jefferson knew that, despite what the law said, the really important questions persisted:  Were slaves property, or not?  Did people have a right to own other people as property, or not?  What belonged to Caesar, and what belonged to God?  The Missouri Compromise, said Jefferson, was "like a fire bell in the night [that] awakened and filled me with terror.  I considered it at once as the knell of the Union."

            We are blessed to live in a nation with a constitution that does not permit the government to establish a national religion, a constitution that instead guarantees religious liberty, a constitution that protects the right of all of us to speak the Word of God as we hear it, even to Caesar himself, a constitution that provides the political framework for the very freedom, a religious freedom, that Jesus himself confronts us with, a constitution that recognizes our moral responsibility for answering Jesus' question:  "What is the government's, and what is God's?" 

            A question like slavery cannot be answered with the simple phrase, "It's the law."  Neither can some important questions in our own day, questions like abortion or capital punishment or genocide or war with Iraq.   The law may say one thing one day and another thing the next; it may say one thing in one place and another thing in another place.

            If the law says slavery is legal, the moral question nonetheless persists for you and me, and it always has.  "Is it morally permissible to support a government that protects slavery, or not?  Is it morally permissible to pay taxes that support abortions or capital punishment, or that encourages the extermination of a race of people or an unjust war, or not?"  So Jesus' question lingers:  "What belongs to government, and what belongs to God?"  Regardless of what the law might say, neither the pharisees in their day nor we in ours can escape the terrifying but wonderful freedom, the moral responsibility, these questions entail.

            As always, Jesus refuses to give us voting-booth answers and leaves us with the freedom God created us for, the freedom to render unto Caesar that which belongs to Caesar and to render unto God that which belongs to God.

            As always, Jesus does not give us bumper-sticker answers, but a vision.  A vision of a kingdom in which our choices are God’s  choices, a vision of a kingdom in which the coin of the realm is justice and mercy and compassion and reconciliation, a vision of a kingdom in which the currency we pull out of our pockets and the currency we walk around in the world with on our faces and in our hearts is all God’s currency, all marked with the image and inscription of God, a vision of a kingdom in which all that we have in our pockets and what we have in our hearts is all spent on God’s dream for his world, because that’s where our treasure is.

            “What good is it to be pro-this and anti-that?” Jesus asks.  “I’m calling you to something larger than labels.  I’m asking you to look at the world, at Caesar’s world and yours, and asking you to see the world as God sees it.  I’m asking you to understand  --  no, I’m asking you yourselves to image  --  God’s dream for the world.  I’m asking you to reflect God’s dream of justice and mercy and compassion and reconciliation in your own life, as well as with your own pocketbook.  I’m asking you to spend your life on God’s dream.”

            Which side will Jesus come down on?  That’s the question we ask.  Is Jesus on our side, or not?  And Jesus gives the question back to us:  Whose side are you on?  Whose image do you bear?  Will you render unto God that which belongs to God?”

            And that’s good news.  Because, as Paul said to the Christians in Thessalonika, God has great confidence in us.  God believes in us more than we ourselves believe in us.  He has chosen us to get his world back for him, chosen us to bear his image here, in our time, and in this place.  And the image we bear, and our selves who bear the image, are precisely the one life that God asks for.  How we spend it is up to us.

            In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.