Texts
Gospel text is from Revised Common Lectionary, Year A, Proper 24. OT and NT are my own.Gospel Text: Matthew 22:15-22
15 Then the Pharisees met together to find a way to trap Jesus in his words. 16 They sent their disciples, along with the supporters of Herod, to him. “Teacher,” they said, “we know that you are genuine and that you teach God’s way as it really is. We know that you are not swayed by people’s opinions, because you don’t show favoritism. 17 So tell us what you think: Does the Law allow people to pay taxes to Caesar or not?”
18 Knowing their evil motives, Jesus replied, “Why do you test me, you hypocrites? 19 Show me the coin used to pay the tax.” And they brought him a denarion. 20 “Whose image and inscription is this?” he asked.
21 “Caesar’s,” they replied.
Then he said, “Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.” 22 When they heard this they were astonished, and they departed.
OT Text: Genesis 1:26-28
26 Then God said, “Let us make humanity in our image to resemble us so that they may take charge of the fish of the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the earth, and all the crawling things on earth.”
27 God created humanity in God’s own image, in the divine image God created them, male and female God created them.
28 God blessed them and said to them, "Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and master it. Take charge of the fish of the sea, the birds in the sky, and everything crawling on the ground."
NT Text: Romans 13:7-12
7 So pay everyone what you owe them. Pay the taxes you owe, pay the duties you are charged, give respect to those you should respect, and honor those you should honor.
8 Don't be in debt to anyone, except for the obligation to love each other. Whoever loves another person has fulfilled the Law. 9 The commandments, Don't commit adultery, don't murder, don't steal, don't desire what others have, and any other commandments, are all summed up in one word: You must love your neighbor as yourself. 10 Love doesn't do anything wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is what fulfills the Law.
Sermon
Introduction
Laws are good and necessary for the orderly functioning of a society. But they can be interpreted to advance the agenda of one group or individual over another. Laws are often seen as the ultimate authority and arbiter of what is right or wrong, and what is just or unjust. In today’s gospel text found in Matthew, we see an example of just that. We see a group of Pharisees who have an agenda against Jesus, attempting to use their interpretation of their law to entrap Jesus into destroying his own credibility and possibly incriminating himself. They were trying to do this to Jesus because he had been pointing out their failures in fulfilling the responsibilities that had been given to them. From the context around today’s passage, the failure seems to center on the failure of the leaders to be conduits of God’s love, mercy, and justice to all people.
Like the Pharisees
When we read Bible narratives, we tend to identify with the heroes, the good guys — in today’s passage that would be Jesus. But I think that in real life we are often more like the Pharisees. Consciously or not, we like to win arguments, we want to be right, and we are tempted to skirt the boundaries of law and ethics to try to get what we want.
The first thing Jesus does is call out his interlocutors for their hypocrisy and their tactics. If only their words are heard, it might seem like they are sincere in their questioning. On the surface it appears that neither side is at an advantage. But by identifying his opponents motives and position, Jesus turns the tables and places them at a disadvantage. He identifies their words as insincere flattery merely designed to conceal their true motives.
To further demonstrate the insincerity and hypocrisy of his opponents, Jesus asks if any of them have on them the coin that is used to pay the Roman tax. And at least one does. To us reading this text, this might not seem like a huge deal. We carry our currencies and coins with us wherever we go. I’m quite certain that if I asked you now if you had any U.S. money on you, nearly every person could show me at least a bill or a coin.
The problem for the Pharisees is that carrying a Roman coin on the Temple grounds (where this story likely took place) is that in their interpretation of the law, it had theological implications of idolatry. The coin not only bore the image of Caesar, the inscription read, “Caesar Augustus Tiberius, son of the Divine Augustus,” thus identifying Caesar as “the son of god.” To bring such an item into the Temple area was seen as idolatrous and blasphemous.
Through this physical illustration, not only does Jesus turn the tables on the argument, but effectively causes his opponents to do to themselves what they had hoped Jesus would do to himself. They discredit their own argument and incriminate themselves according to their own interpretations of their law.
Another lesson for us is before we try to assert our own moral and ethical superiority, to look into our own pockets and closets and see how often we might be inconsistent between our words and our actions. Before we try to accuse someone else of their shortcomings, perhaps it would be well for us to pause and examine our own lives. This illustrates part of Jesus’ sermon on the mount where he taught, “Don’t judge, so that you won’t be judged… Why do you see the splinter that’s in your brother’s or sister’s eye, but don’t notice the log in your own eye? How can you say to your brother or sister, ‘Let me take the splinter out of your eye,’ when there’s a log in your eye? You deceive yourself! First take the log out of your eye…” (Matthew 7:1-5)
Dualism
We are conditioned to operate in binaries and dualism. We are more comfortable with either/or, black and white, and us vs. them thinking. As a society, we haven’t done a very good job at teaching nuances and allowing for ambiguity and nuance. I think we are reaping the results of dualistic thinking in our politics, in religious teachings, and pretty much all areas of life.
Another tactic Jesus uses to disarm his opponents’ question is to enlarge the topic. The question pitted a theological issue (idolatry and blasphemy) against a political one (taxation and loyalty to secular government). The original question was about an apparent conflict between two laws and their domains.
What Jesus does is enlarge the question so that both are now encompassed within a greater circle and no longer at odds with one another. Jesus nullifies the question of “What does the Law allow.” Instead he asks a different question, “What does loyalty mean to a subject of the living God?”
So many of the problems and issues encountered by us as individuals and as members of society might be the result of pursuing the wrong questions.
“It's not that they can't see the solution. They can't see the problem.” - G.K. Chesterton
“To ask the proper question is half of knowing.” – Roger Bacon
“A wise man’s question contains half the answer.” – Solomon Ibn Gabirol
“The art of proposing a question must be held of higher value than solving it.” – Georg Cantor
A few skills we might find beneficial in learning and improving are: 1) When issues are presented in either/or terms, to go deeper and examine if there is a third way. 2) When intractable questions are presented, is there a way to enlarge the topic so that the original question is replaced by a different one? 3) Dedicate more effort to forming good questions.
Image and Loyalty
Jesus asked, “Whose image and inscription is this?”
His opponents responded, “Caesar’s.”
And in response Jesus said, “Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.”
What is implied in Jesus’ response is that those things bearing God’s image belongs to God. And what bears God’s image? Genesis 1, the Creation account, offers an answer. All humanity bears God’s image. But at the same time, humanity was delegated dominion over Creation. Jesus’ response is that loyalty to civic authorities and loyalty to God are not necessarily at odds. In fact, loyalty to civic authority can be a form of loyalty to God. When the entire scripture is taken into account, we know that this is not a blind loyalty, but a discerned one. Once again, this is an issue where good questions are necessary, and where answers are not always clear-cut. But what is clear is that loyalty is not an either/or but a qualified both/and.
Fulfilling the Law
In Romans chapter 13 the Apostle Paul expands on a Christian’s responsibility to civic authorities and to God. This passage too, has sometimes been misused to justify an unqualified and unquestioning loyalty and obedience to civic authorities. The proper context is where a government, on balance, exists to benefit those it serves, thus fulfilling the “love your neighbor” mandate delegated from God to human authorities.
Paul, too, sees no conflict in paying taxes to Rome, respecting civic authorities, and in following God. It should be noted that this was to a government that had some serious moral and ethical issues, was often repressive and violent, and at times harassed and persecuted religious minorities. Once more I think this shows us that there is no single, universally applicable across all time and space Christian response to government. Perhaps the question is, “How can Christians, as far as it is possible, live peaceably and effectively in this time and place?”
What Paul does address is what it means to fulfill the Law: “Whoever loves another person has fulfilled the Law… Love doesn't do anything wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is what fulfills the Law.” It seems that the only absolute, unqualified mandate from God is to love other image-bearers of God. And that may in fact be more difficult than obeying any written law. Written law has boundaries and limits, but love of neighbor has none.
Jesus’ questioners went away astonished, because Jesus enlarged the responsibilities that a person has to God beyond the narrow prescriptions of law and theology. He found a third way out of a binary dilemma by reframing the original question into a new and better one.
“What does the law allow?” is not the right question. “What does love demand?” is the question we need to keep asking in all of our encounters.
What are we to give to God? God deserves our respect and our love. God deserves our time and our resources. So what about the 7-1/2 billion human beings today who bear God’s image? Your neighbors, your difficult-to-get-along-with family member, that state or federal official you don’t like, the person in prison, the person struggling with substance use disorders and mental health, the person who can’t seem to hold down a job… What does it mean today to give to God what belongs to God?
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