October 19, 2014 by The Rev. Dr. Janet W. Zimmerman
The Pharisees send their disciples along with the Herodians to try to “entrap” Jesus. This group makes a strange team. On the one hand you have the Pharisees who are the leaders of the temple. They are the people charged with interpreting and teaching about the Torah. They find the obligation to pay taxes to their Roman rulers not only oppressive, but also blasphemous. The tax is collected to support the army of their oppressors. In order to pay the tax, you were required to use a specific coin—the denarius—that bore the image of the emperor Tiberius proclaiming his divinity. On the other hand was the Herodians. They may have been followers of Herod Antipas. Herod had been named king of the Jews by Rome. These followers benefited from the Roman Empire and would have been in favor of this tax.
These two groups are not natural allies. They represented both sides of the question they posed to Jesus. They come together chiefly through their shared commitment to ensnare this young popular rabbi and obtain cause to arrest him.
They begin the encounter by flattering Jesus using words dripping with insincerity. And then they ask the question that is meant to corner Jesus. “Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” Either way Jesus answers, he would be in trouble. If he advises not paying the tribute money, Jesus will be accused of sedition. If he advises paying, he sets aside the law of God.
But Jesus immediately sees through their tactics and calls them out as hypocrites who are filled with malice. He asks for a coin from the crowd. When it is produced by one of his questioners it immediately demonstrates their compromise with the Roman Empire.
Jesus holds up the coin and asks, “Whose head is this and whose title?” When the crowd responds, “The emperor’s.” Jesus says, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”
Jesus’ reply is cause for challenging reflection:
Give to the emperor what is the emperor’s, and to God what is God’s.
How do we sort out these questions today? While we may moan about the size of our tax bill, our question today is not really about paying taxes. We are called as Christians to see the entirety of our being in terms of what belongs to empire and what belongs to God and how we act in accordance with this belief.
What is God’s? Looking behind the words of Jesus it should be clear very quickly that Jesus believed that everything belongs to God. In Genesis 1: 27 we hear that God created us in God’s image. We are God’s from the beginning.
From Psalm 24 “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it.”
All things come from God and we are to give all that we are and all that we have to God. —Not parts of ourselves—all. God wants all of us—not just our spiritual selves, not just our emotional selves– but also our political selves, our economic selves, our social selves…
We cannot say that “this part of me belongs to God, so on this occasion I will give it to God. Or in this particular situation I will consider what God wants of me.” Everything we are and everything we have belongs to God. Everything we are and everything we have we are to give back to God in thanksgiving.
Jesus invites us—actually demands of us—that we be thinking regularly and relentlessly about how all of our decisions—the way we live, what we do with our gifts and our time, what issues we choose to fight for, how we vote—should be shaped by our witness that the whole world is God’s and everything in it—including us!
This passage has sometimes been interpreted as dividing up our allegiance. It has been seen as saying that our political lives have no place in our churches. It has been used to say that Jesus had no interest in things of empire, but only lays claim to our hearts. But I believe these claims are suspect.
It leaves us without agency for the actions of our society and it leaves our society without the moral and ethical ballast that is needed to make decisions impacting the common good. In the time of Jesus, separating the politics of state from the religious and spiritual life would have been unknown. Jesus himself was immersed in challenging the political powers and the social structure of his day. When he rides into Jerusalem on a donkey and a colt, he is making a political statement. When he goes into the temple overturning the stalls of the merchants, he understood the political as well as the religious power of his actions. N.T. Wright, an eminent New Testament scholar says for all the things that Jesus was, Jesus was a politician.
So we are faced with the question of how we live out this ultimate belonging to God in our lives as people in a particular time and a particular place? How do we live as citizens of the world—people who live in a country with its responsibilities and laws—and yet recognize that our ultimate belonging is to God?
The theologian Jurgen Moltmann in his book, Theology of Hope lays out a challenge for Christian communities. He describes three roles that the church plays today in society: personal, communal, institutional. First as the religion of the personal, religion and the life of the church are considered private matters of inwardness and feeling. Religion is about our personal relationship with God. Faith is set in the place of personal decisions, rather than in the place of social behavior, political responsibility, and economic action.
The second is faith as the mediator of fellowship. Here we can find a way to be human in a community that provides the authenticity and warmth that is too often missing in society. The church may provide a counterbalance to society, but does not engage in the opportunity to participate in the coming new society of the kingdom of God.
The third is faith as an institution. The institution provides balance and order in a changing world. People can have confidence in the authority of the institutional church and thereby give up their responsibility for their own decisions. They do not need to understand, they only need to accept.
But in these three roles, Moltmann argues the church has acquiesced to society. Christianity meets the needs society leaves unattended, but Christianity in these roles has little to say to the society other than what the society wants to hear. Christianity has found relevance in the life of the world, but at the expense of the identity given it by the cross of the risen and coming Christ.
Alternatively, Moltmann challenges the church to become engaged in another role—that is to live into the expectancy of the coming kingdom of God. He says, “The Christian life must no longer consist of fleeing the world and in spiritual resignation from it, but be engaged in a struggle with the world and a calling in the world.”
If we consider that all things belong to God, then our actions in our personal, social, and political lives become the outworking of our faith. Whom we pray for, or perhaps more importantly whom we do not pray for, indicates both a decision about what we give to empire and what we give to God. When we pray, “thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” we are surely praying for political and social change as well as religious change. When we listen closely to this encounter between Jesus, the Pharisees and the Herodians we are asked to choose, because whatever our political or social allegiance, our first allegiance is to Jesus Christ and his coming kingdom.
In a few short weeks, we will be going to vote for our next political leaders and a series of questions that will have a profound impact on our communities. One of the questions, Question 3 has been addressed by our Bishop. His letter can be found in our bulletin this morning. Question 3 deals with whether or not we will have legal gambling in our state.
Being new to Massachusetts, I have much to learn about this issue. I have listened to informed speakers, read information available on line, and prayed about what gambling could mean to the people of this state in economic and moral terms. As a Christian, who believes that the earth is God’s and all that lives therein, what do I believe God is calling me to do in this debate and as a voting citizen of this state. I know that God loves the poor and cares deeply for those addicted to gambling. In three of the Gospels, Jesus speaks with unrestricted harshness to those who would put temptation to sin in the way of a brother or sister. (Matthew 18:6-9, Mark 9:38-50, and Luke 17:1-4)
There are members of our community who have studied this issue carefully and are eager to share their findings with you. As Christians we are to view issues such as these through the eyes of our faith, knowing that we are Christ’s hands, feet, and hearts in the world doing the work that he has placed in us for the good of God’s people.
Sometimes the Episcopal Church makes decisions and advocates in the community for particular issues. Because we are Episcopalians, some of will agree firmly and some will be opposed, and some may believe that the church is engaging in political issues that go beyond the authority of the church. But while this may appear to be the case, what I see is men and women of faith seeking what it means to live by word and action “thy kingdom come” through particular issues that affect our community in the Berkshires and beyond.
On Friday, a great leader of the church slipped the boundaries of this mortal life. Bishop Tom Shaw who served as Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts for 20 years died at the age of 69. He was a member of the Society of St. John the Evangelist (SSJE), the oldest religious order for men in the Episcopal/Anglican church. The members of his order remembered him as “a man of deep prayer, a charismatic figure who connected easily with young and old alike and a leader whose creativity and entrepreneurial spirit led him to invent what was needed and new.” Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori said of Bishop Shaw, “The whole of The Episcopal Church gives thanks for the life and witness of Bishop Thomas Shaw. He was a light in our generation, and his quiet and committed passion will not soon be extinguished.”
Bishop Shaw saw no separation between the hours he spent in solitary prayer and his social action in the world. He believed that prayer led to action. “We are what God has to do good in the world. Every one of us has a voice and can make a difference if we exercise that,” he said in a 2004 interview. He went on to say, “I don’t think that on most civil rights issues, for instance, we can point to one huge event that’s changed everything. I think instead its thousands of ordinary people doing what they think is right, taking risks, speaking out in their lives in big and small ways. Eventually that turns the tide. God really depends on us for that.”
When asked by the Pharisees and the Herodians whether it was lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, Jesus turns the question around and tells them to “give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” As Christians we are called to give our whole life to God—not just our Sunday mornings, or our ethical actions, or our treasure, But everything—our politics, our social relationships, our work, our play, our dreams—everything. Everything should be formed in the vessel of Jesus Christ—everything should be seen through the lens of loving God and loving neighbor. As we who follow Jesus and witness to God’s love in the world—we must know that no part of us can be left out of this allegiance. All our actions and our decisions are faith decisions. In light of Jesus’ bringing about a new kingdom, let us take the time to consider what it means for each of us to “give to God what is God’s.”