The Rev. Dr. Austin Leininger
Sermon of Proper 24
20th Sunday After Pentecost
22 October 2017
Isaiah 45:1-7
Psalm 96:1-9, (10-13)
1 Thessalonians 1:1-10
Matthew 22:15-22
Give to the emperor that things that are the emperor’s and to God the things that are God’s.
What is it about this statement that so amazes Jesus’ antagonists that they simply abandon their plot to entrap him and leave the scene?
Over the past few days of Jesus’ encounters with the Pharisees, Scribes, and Elders, he has quite simply eviscerated them. He has likened them to a brother paying his father lip service, saying they would go into the field and then not going, telling them that the prostitutes and tax collectors would enter the kingdom of heaven before they would, he has compared them to unfaithful stewards, rejecting and killing the messengers sent to them, and to unworthy subjects whose invitations to the wedding feast were revoked and given to the commoners on the street. He has called them hypocrites, and told them that the kingdom would be taken away from the likes of them and given to those who would produce the fruits of God’s kingdom. Essentially he has called them unworthy to be leaders of God’s people, clashing symbols and noisy gongs whose lives have betrayed their haughty words, and who seek for outward appearances over the conditions of their hearts.
There is little wonder why this wildly popular man, being referred to as the messiah by the common masses, has found himself at the center of their plots for capture and arrest—this man who has challenged their livelihood, their source of power and standing in society, their niche in a dangerous political climate, as well as contradicting their understanding of scripture, tradition, and ultimately even God’s own self.
So bringing both the Pharisees’ disciples and the Herodians—representatives of the keepers of both the Religious Law of the Israelites and the keepers of the political law of Rome—they hope to present Jesus with an unsolvable dilemma: “Is it lawful to pay tax to the emperor or not?” If Jesus says it is lawful to pay tax to the emperor, he condones paying tribute to someone other than God and is guilty of blasphemy. If he says it is unlawful, he breaks the civil law that demands the tax and is guilty of sedition.
Seemingly aware of their intentions, he asks them to produce a coin used for the tax. As with the earlier encounter when Jesus answers their questions with another question—about whether or not John was a prophet—he doesn’t simply deflect their question, but, through their answers, he allows them to convict themselves of their own hypocrisy. In producing the coin with the head of the emperor on it, those seeking to entrap him are themselves guilty of idolatry, of carrying the common coin of the empire, with the image of the Emperor’s head stamped onto it, rather than the coins of the temple, which were exchanged for all sacred and ritual business.
What is so amazing about what Jesus says is not simply his words, but the context in which he uses them to allow the religious authorities to once again undermine themselves. At the same time, the alternative he offers addresses a fundamental truth about God’s relationship with us that further undermines the very legitimacy of the question they have asked.
In producing the denarius—the common coin of the empire, the day wage of the laborer in the field, the Pharisees’ disciples demonstrated their complicity in the system of oppression from which they so carefully appeared to claim innocence. This was the very coin which the temple authorities insisted those coming to the temple exchange for temple business because of its sacrilegious taint.
In his response, Jesus essentially suggests giving the sacrilegious, defiling coin with the emperor’s head on it back to the emperor, along with the other things that belong to the emperor—starting perhaps with the political alliances that gave the Pharisees their privileged position in the otherwise oppressed nation where they benefited while the rest of their people suffered.
And by the same measure, give the things to God that are God’s is well illustrated in the parables leading up to today’s gospel to mean, “stop betraying your teachings by living contrary to them. Stop paying lip service to God by saying you’ll go into the field and then serving your own purposes, stop ignoring the prophets, or worse having them killed, and stop tending to your own affairs when you’ve been invited to the feast that is the Kingdom of heaven… you hypocrites.”
I think I would have abandoned my plan and fled the scene too.
Leading up to this encounter, Jesus spends considerable time talking about the kingdom of heaven. In fact, as we discussed last week, in our lectionary readings, we’ve spent the past eight weeks hearing about what the Kingdom of Heaven is like.
At the end of all of these examples of the kingdom, we ultimately arrive with Christ in a reciprocal and living relationship with God, wherein we are participants with Christ in the ministry of bringing God’s kingdom near to all those around us in the world. It is a life reflecting God’s unconditional love, that proclaims through our participation in God’s kingdom, the good news that God’s love and forgiveness is similarly unconditional, and that whatever boundary we thought stood between us and God is one that we ourselves have erected, and all that we have to do to discover how close to us God really is, is to turn around and find that God is waiting right behind us with open arms.
This is not the God of the Pharisees, Scribes, Chief Priests, and Elders, who teach the human traditions that keep God at a safe distance, who teach that we must pay with earthly treasure, sacrificing to earn God’s forgiveness, and essentially keeping the temple authorities living a life of privilege. In fact, it turns the whole system completely on its head.
Part of what I love about this particular encounter, in its longer form as well as in the short segment from today’s Gospel, is that it shows that wily trickster side of Jesus that is so possessed of the truth, and so intuitively clever, that he makes a complete mockery of those seeking to use human traditions to undermine the absolute, unconditional, inexhaustible, and reckless love and forgiveness of God that defines the abundance of God’s kingdom.
We had another Trickster encounter with Christ this past Lent, but for those still unfamiliar with the trickster character, he exists in many different forms around the world. Common to all traditions, he is always turning conventional understanding on its head in favor of deeper and more fundamental truths. Coyote is the trickster in many Native American stories of faith, frequently bending gender roles and always breaking taboos of tradition to demonstrate that human convention may be premised on deeper truths that in fact the same conventions ultimately get in the way of seeing.
In this same way, Christ uncovers for us the deeper truths on which the old traditions were built, turning human convention on its head to demonstrate the underlying and more fundamental truth of God’s timeless, passionate, and unceasing desire to be in relationship with us no matter what the cost.
Particularly in today’s encounter with the Pharisees’ disciples and the Herodians, our trickster Christ uses the same rules of human convention to point out the hypocrisy of those seeking to trap him.
Give to the emperor the things that are the emperors, and give to God the things that are God’s. While for those seeking to arrest him, this presented a resounding defeat, there is yet another layer for the rest of us. As is so frequently the case with our trickster Christ, his words speak of a deeper truth than just what the situation demands in the immediate context. For Christ’s followers, and us with them, for example, we may hear a different message of hope and promise, again stemming from Christ’s understanding of the kingdom of God, and our place in it. In this deeper context, when we seek to understand what is owed to God and what is owed to worldly powers, we turn to that fundamental understanding of our relationship with God, premised on God’s ultimate and unfailing love for us, and find that whatever it is that may be demanded of us in the world, our hearts belong to God.
From the point of view of the kingdom of heaven, we owe to God our sincere participation as instruments in carrying God’s abundance into the world around us, doing our part to create breakthrough moments where the kingdom of heaven becomes present into the here and now as often as each of us reaches out to others in love and hope – acting as Christ’s hands and heart in the world.
This Sunday, as we kick off our 2017 visioning process together, I can think of no better place to start than with our Wily Christ reminding us of the deep roots feeding the heart of our Calvary family. This is our time to not only take stock of who we are and why we’re here, but to dream together of who we want to be and where we hope to be heading as a faith community over the next six years of our journey together.
Sharing our stories together over the coming weeks, of what has brought us together, of who we are as a community, of who we want to become, and where we dream of going together—this is a process of bringing out the heart of our community as we seek God in our midst, as we draw inspiration from the Holy Spirit—working through and with each of us as we engage meaningfully with one another in relationships of fondness, trust, mutual care, and hope.
In the days and weeks ahead, as we invest our hearts and minds to the renewing of our community vision and dream for the future, may we be reminded that the most precious resource this community has is each other, and may our time in conversation be a gift both feeding from and back to God as we seek our common path with Christ and one another in the heart of downtown Santa Cruz. Let us together seek what is God’s amongst us, nurture it, celebrate it, and offer it back to God, one another, and the communities lying just outside our doors who need a glimpse of God’s kingdom right here. Right now.
Amen