Proper 24 A
Transcribed from a
sermon given
At St. Barnabas
Episcopal Church
By Rev. Valerie Ann
Hart
October 16, 2011
Matthew 22:15-22
Exodus 33:12-23
1 Thessalonians
1:1-10
It’s interesting to see that questions
about paying taxes are nothing new. Two thousand years ago they were debating
about whether it was lawful to pay taxes. Of course it was a little different
back then. In fact, it was a lot different back then because the Romans to whom
the taxes were being paid were an occupying force.
Now the Romans, unlike some of the
earlier empires, were pretty smart in terms of economics. Other empires used to
conquer a land and then they would take the people into exile and they would
burn and destroy everything. The Romans would conquer a land, put up a puppet
king or head of some sort, and then build up the infrastructure. They would put
in roads. They would build aqueducts to bring in water. If you visit Israel
today you can still see aqueducts from Roman times. And they would fix it up so
that people could make money and the economy could thrive so that the wealth
could be heavily taxed and sent back to Rome.
The taxes were not being paid to a
government that was there to care for the people of Judea. The tax was going to
Rome, to increase their wealth, to pay for their soldiers, to pay for the
people who would harass them without any reason - the ones who had complete and
total power over them. So it is understandable that people did not like the
idea of being taxed by Rome.
But there was an additional
problem with the particular tax that was being considered here. There were lots
of taxes to Rome, but for this particular one there was a question of whether
it was lawful or not. It was a tax that was called the temple tax. The temple
tax was that every male every year had to give a certain amount for the temple
in Jerusalem. It wasn’t optional. There was no sense of percentage giving or
anything like that. It was a tax for every male. Some of it was used to keep
the temple going but most of it was given to Rome because Rome taxed the
temple. Now that made the priests and Herodians, who were the ones who were the
puppet government for Rome, a part of sending this money off to Rome. It was a
very complicated situation.
The problem was that Caesar had
made himself a god. He declared himself a god and declared that people had to
worship him. You may have heard about this, how in the early Christian times
when the Christians refused to worship the emperor they were put to death. That
was why the Christians were so persecuted. They wouldn’t burn incense to the
emperor. We get kind of a sense of this in some of the personality cults today,
like in North Korea, where whoever happens to be in charge of North Korea
becomes like a god and is worshipped.
But Caesar went so far as to say he was a god. So if you were paying
money to the temple, and some of that money was going to pay a god, were you
blaspheming? Were you going against the Ten Commandments that said don’t
support any other god?
Now this was a trick question of
course, because if Jesus said, “Pay the tax,” Then the people who don’t want to
have to pay the tax would be upset. And people could say that Jesus is saying
that we should break the Law of Moses. If he said, “Don’t pay the tax,” they
could go to the Romans and have him arrested for inciting the people to not
follow the Roman law. It was a no win situation. The reason that this is such a
memorable response from Jesus, and it got into the Gospels, is because what he
did was he took this impossible question and he took it to another level.
He said, “Give me one of the coins
that you use to pay this tax.” You may have seen pictures of Roman coins, and
what they are is a piece of metal that has been stamped with the picture of the
emperor on it. So he took the coin and said, “Whose picture is this?” They
said, “The emperor’s.“ Well there is a problem there, because these Pharisees
who handed him the coin are carrying around a picture of an idol. According to
the Mosaic Law one is not supposed to make any kind of idol - there are to be no
graven images. So he caught them in their hypocrisy.
Then he said, “Give to the emperor
what is the emperor’s and to God what is God’s.” This is just money. This is
just a piece of metal with a picture of somebody on it. You can give that to
Rome. It is of no of real value. That’s not a deep and true value.
Of course the beauty of this
answer is he took it to another level. He made it about what is our duty. You
see he is saying that we need to think about what is the important thing. Rome,
the Emperor, represents all those things that are contrary to God - all those
idols in our lives - all those things that we give our love and attention to
instead of God.
We heard God beautifully described
in the Old Testament reading today. Moses wants to see God face to face and God
says, “You can’t see my face. I’m not a face you can see.” Then God walks by
and Moses sees His back. Isn’t that the way it is sometimes - we don’t see God
working in our lives until afterwards. We go “Wow, God was in that!” We see the
back, after God has walked by. God is too great and too magnificent to be put
on a coin or to be made a picture of, or to be represented by a thing that is
worshiped. Our God is the God of the whole universe - the creator of everything,
everywhere. God is a living god. As Paul said in his letter to the
Thessalonians, “You’ve given up worshiping dead idols and are instead worshiping the living God.”
Now this living God, what are we
to give this living God? God doesn’t need anything. God doesn’t need our money.
And even though it is pledge season, God does not really need our pledges. The
church might, but God doesn’t. God doesn’t need animal sacrifices. God doesn’t
need anything. God is God. But there is one thing that God can’t just create by
willing it. You see, God is also described as Love. And Love needs to Love, and
be in relationship. The only thing that we can give God, that God can’t give
Godself is love, is faithfulness, is commitment, is relationship. Because we
give that out of our free will. And out of our free will we choose whether to
follow God, to do what we can for this God that loves us, or to put our
energies and our faithfulness, and our love into something that is dead. Caesar
claimed to be a god but he’s dead. So the choice is do we put or energies into
that which is dead or to that which is the living God.
Certainly when he says give to the
emperor what is the emperor’s he’s saying yes we need to take care of the
things of the world. Yes you need to go work. You need to take care of your
family, make sure you have enough to live. There are certain responsibilities,
things you need to do. No problem with that. Of course we live in this world.
We need to brush our teeth, we need to feed our bodies, we need to do various
things that have to do with this world and there is nothing wrong with that.
The problem is when those things become an idol.
I took a course in seminary called
bringing biblical humor to life. It’s a great course and helped me to see the Bible
in a whole new way. One of the things that the professor said was that an idol
is something you can’t laugh about. Something that you take so seriously that there
is no room for humor. What is it in your life that has become an idol, that you
can’t laugh about? Is it your work? Is it respect? Is it power? Is it a 401K?
Is it your retirement? Is it a fishing boat? Is it the football team? What in
your life takes away from your commitment to God? What sucks you in and pulls
you away from life and from love?
When Jesus said render unto the
emperor what is the emperor’s and to God what is God’s he meant that at every
point in our lives, that at every moment of our lives, we make a choice. We
make a choice to give our energies and our faithfulness and our commitment to
God, to life, to love or to give our energy and our commitment and our time to
idols, to death, to that which is not life enhancing.
There is an ancient spiritual
practice of every night before you go to bed you reflect on your day. What did
you do during the day that was life affirming, was of God, and what did you do
that was life denying, that was not of God? You are not to judge them, not to
judge yourself, but just to notice and become aware and gradually become better
at choosing life, instead of death, God instead of idols.
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