Sunday, October 16, 2011

The Worth of the Gift



Sunday, October 16, 2011
Jerusalem Baptist Church (Emmerton), Warsaw VA
Matthew 22:15-22
To what do we ascribe value, and to whom do we give it?

15Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said. 16So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, “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. 17Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” 18But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? 19Show me the coin used for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius. 20Then he said to them, “Whose head is this, and whose title?” 21They answered, “The emperor’s.” Then he said to them, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” 22When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.

Tony, have you stopped beating your wife?

How are you supposed to answer that question?  You answer ‘no’, and it sounds like you still spend some part of your day using your wife as a punching bag.  You answer ‘yes’, and it is an only marginally better answer, since it seems as though, by implication, you DID, at some point, beat your wife. 

To them, it was that kind of question.  

The disciples of the religious leaders and the men who supported the rule of the Herods – each of them (hence the name) – those who had a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, and their own positions of power and influence, of course, could only conceive of two possible answers, ‘yes’ and ‘no’. 

They figured, if Jesus answers ‘yes, it IS lawful to pay taxes to Caesar’ then he’d lose the base of support of everyone who was itching for a fight with the occupying forces, who could, potentially, cause a LOT of problems for THEM if Jesus just put out the word that it was time to take up arms against the Romans.  If he answered ‘no, it ISN’T lawful to pay taxes to Caesar’, it was a simple matter of treason, and they could dispose of him based on THAT charge. 

What they didn’t understand was that Jesus understood that place from which the question originated.  Something they themselves probably weren’t even aware of until this confrontation. 

It’s that place where we all live when we try to figure out at any given moment in our day how we translate our spiritual convictions into real life living. 

Almost everyone here today was born in this country, under this flag (US flag to the right).  But part of why we are here in this room this morning is because, at some point in our lives, we have accepted the one whom THIS flag (Christian flag on the left) represents as our Lord and Savior, we have pledged ourselves to HIM. 

But we still live in this world and in this country and under this flag and all that that entails.  

Part of what I think makes this passage a little harder for us to grasp in it’s original impact is that we live in a country where we enjoy – where we benefit from – the separation of Church and State. 

Even now, two hundred years and more into this grand experiment of a country, we are still living in the exception to the rule when it comes to how the State and the Church functioned in society throughout history.  Centuries before Jesus, and through the vast majority of the last two thousand years, cultures the world over have joined the two together into a seamless unit.

It was no different in the Roman Empire.  Caesar, the emperor, was, by definition, a self-proclaimed divinity – a god, to be worshipped and revered along with all the other gods in the pantheon of gods that the Romans had picked up through their expansions and annexations of territory.  His very title, Caesar, meant ‘Lord’.  When you exclaimed ‘Hail Caesar’ you were literally saying ‘Praise the lord!’ and it carried with it both a political AND a religious connotation.  In other words, you were stating a political allegiance AND a spiritual conviction at the same time. 

THAT is why early Christians got into so much trouble when, before they were baptized, as we have heard in this sanctuary or at a baptism at the river, they were asked to proclaim their faith, and their response was three words, the same that we hear today when we celebrate a baptism:  “Jesus is Lord.” They were making not ONLY a spiritual statement, but a political one as well.

Because we live in a country where those two spheres of influence have been separated (and rightly so), we don’t hear our faith terminology as political, we hear it as simply … words that express our faith.  It doesn’t register that we are making statements about our political convictions – and sometimes we don’t think of them as that – as well as our convictions of the Spirit because of the gulf that exists between the sanctuary and the county seat, or the state capital, or the national capital. 

But that wasn’t the case when these people approached Jesus and tried to trick him into that yes or no answer.  In that day and age, to speak of religion was to speak of the empire – and the emperor.  

That is why Jesus’ response was so brilliant.  He knew they were trying to trick him.  He knew they were trying in some way to get him give them an excuse to validate their view of the power structure and their place in it. 

But Jesus didn’t give them the satisfaction.  He knew that, at its heart, the question was REALLY about ultimate allegiance. 

And that question applies as much today as it did then:  Who are we going to let define who we are.  Who establishes our value, our worth?

When he asked them to show him a denarius, what would be as common as a quarter in today’s currency, they had one available and presented it. 

Keep in mind, this is happening in the temple, these were folks who considered it a matter of pride to adhere – to STRICTLY adhere – to the letter of the law.  Including the first two of the Decalogue – the Ten Commandments.  The first is ‘You shall have no other Gods before me’ and the second is ‘You shall not make any idols to worship’.  The denarius of his day carried the image of Caesar – the ‘lord’ – along with his face in profile – his image. 

I have this picture in my head of Jesus asking for a denarius, and two or three of the guys reaching into their robes for their coin purses, and one manages to get into his faster than the others, and eagerly flips the coin towards Jesus, and as the coin is arching through the air, glinting in the sun, the realization hits this young man that ‘DOH!’  He’s just revealed the emptiness behind the question… something that can actually be read between the lines leading up to the question itself, the insincerity virtually drips off the page as we read,

“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.”

As we talked about on Wednesday evening, Jesus could have stopped right there, and walked away. He could have left them hanging.  Everybody in the place realized the obvious moral bankruptcy that the fact of that coin being present in the temple represented.  They weren’t concerned about how the law did or didn’t apply to THEM, they were more concerned with how they could manipulate it for their benefit.  His point would have been obvious to everyone there.  He could have driven the knife in even deeper and asked a very simple question of them that would have left them squirming, twisting in the wind:  “what are you doing carrying around an idol in the temple of the most high God, creator of the universe, of the stars and the planets, the earth and all that is in it?”

But he didn’t ask that.  He let those obvious points be exposed without even mentioning them.   When he DID ask his question, I wonder if they hesitated with their answer:  because here is how it went:

Jesus:  “Whose face is this, and what is his title?”

Herodians: “Uh … the um … well, the emperor’s.”

Emperor and Caesar were interchangeable terms.  To even call anyone other than God ‘Caesar’ in Latin, “Lord” in English, was a sin.   The very utterance of those words within the confines of the Temple would have sounded thin and meaningless in the ears of those standing around, because if they were true Hebrews, they would KNOW that there WAS no way to create an image of God, and that nobody – not even the most powerful man in the world at the time, could be called Lord except God – Yahweh.

So with that thin excuse of an answer ringing in everyone’s ears, Jesus concludes the encounter saying, “Then give to the emperor what belongs to him and give to God what belongs to God.”

For effect, let me rephrase that statement: “Give to the Easter Bunny what belongs to the Easter Bunny, and give to God what belongs to God.” 

He had exposed the fallacy of power.

What was and is being communicated here is not an apportionment plan – Jesus isn’t saying “23% of what you own and earn belongs to Caesar, so give him that, and give God the 10% that belongs to God.” No.  What Jesus has just pointed out is that Caesar is a straw man – that the earthly power structure is a temporary fabrication, that whatever supposed power they wield over us is nothing but a fiction.  They may have the power to take work and property and perhaps even life, but that which is of ultimate value, of infinite worth – to God – is something that can ONLY belong to God – us – our spirits. 

It is so easy for us to talk about something belonging to us or to someone else, the concept of property – private property – is one that has been ingrained into us from infancy.  But Jesus is putting it in perspective.

If we look around and begin to qualify that which surrounds us as belonging to this person or that person, to this group of people or that group, to that organization or to another, … and this may sound extreme, but … go with me … what we are saying is that ‘that person, group, or organization’ is Lord over that item, this place, or piece of furniture, or book, or idea …

Do you see how radical Jesus’ pronouncement is?  He is clarifying a point that we can sometimes so easily forget and it bears being reminded:  A: There is no other Lord but the Lord God, and B: EVERYTHING CAME from him, so, ultimately, everything BELONGS to him.  So we give God that which is most valuable to him of all that.  We give him what he came for:  ourselves. 

The words of the hymn come to mind:  “My life, my heart, my all I bring, to Christ, who loves me so, he is my Master, Lord, and King, wherever he leads I’ll go.”

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

How DO we give to God what belongs to God?  How DO we make an eternal truth a reality in a finite world?  We do it by living counter culturally – against the prevailing culture – against a culture that equates wealth with importance, and poverty with irrelevance, that gives more power to the rich and pays lip service to not say ignores the poor and the hungry, that assigns worth according to fame rather than by virtue of a simple shared humanity.  We do it by rejecting the idea that God cares any less or any more for ANYONE over ANYONE else for ANY reason. 

Scripture tells us, the gospel of John, the verse we all memorized, chapter 3, verse 16: ‘For God so loved THE WORLD’. 

Our task is to do likewise. 

Let’s pray.
 
    

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