The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost - Proper 24A

Rev. Carl Saxton

The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost                                                           

Proper 24A

1 Thess. 1.1-10; Matthew 22.15-22

You may remember that just three weeks ago we talked about the beginning of this series of encounters that Jesus had with the important men in Temple and Jerusalem society.  A little more than 30 verses ago in Matthew’s Gospel Jesus entered the Temple and was teaching when a group of priests and elders approached Him and asked by what authority he taught; and from whom did he receive that authority – remember?  If you do you’ll also remember that I said the way the Gospel reading ended that day we were led to believe that Jesus refused to give them an answer, but that Jesus would spend the next two and half chapters proving His authority over and over again when confronted with similar questions designed to trap Him.  This is the same day – the saga continues.  Jesus has told them 3 separate parables; each of which highlights the refusal of these leaders to live up to God’s expectations.

Having grown sick of Jesus turning the tables on them, the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said.  So they send their disciples and some Herodians to ask a question specially designed to entrap Him.  First, though, they try to butter Him up, they say: 

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.

Then they ask the question:  Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?

Now, Matthew told us back in chapter 12 that the Pharisees had already decided to destroy Jesus, to manipulate events that would lead to His death.  In our reading three weeks ago the “powers that be” had asked Jesus by what authority he taught in an effort to trap Him into saying something blasphemous.  Blasphemy would have led to stoning or some other terrible death, but the plot had failed.  Having failed at luring Him into blasphemy, this group poses a question designed to lure Jesus into committing treason - and they had stacked the deck.

You see, by sending both Pharisees and Herodians they had hoped to force Jesus to slip up.  The Pharisees saw paying taxes to Caesar as sinful, while the Herodians, followers of Herod the Great, did not.  In fact, the Herodians probably benefited from these taxes because of Herod’s relationship with Rome.  Had Jesus simply responded, Of course you should pay your taxes, the Pharisees would have decried Him as a Roman collaborator; while if He had declared it unlawful [meaning against the Torah, the law of God] to pay the census tax, the Herodians would have condemned Him as a rebellious Zealot.

But Jesus, once again, sees the trap!  This time he even calls them on it, he says, Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites?  Then to prove their hypocrisy he says, Show me the coin used for the tax.  This is Jesus’ own little trap.

Remember the story of Jesus throwing the money changers out of the Temple?  Well, the reason they were needed in the Temple in the first place was the answer to Jesus’ second question to those trying to entrap Him.  Whose head is this, and whose title?  They knew the denarius, the coin used to pay the tax - worth one day’s wages, had the head of Caesar and Caesar’s title.  There’s the small matter of Jewish law forbidding the making of any “graven image,” which the face of Caesar on the coin would be considered; but the title is far more blasphemous.  Caesar’s title found on the denarius was: TIBERIUS CAESAR, AUGUST SON OF THE DIVINE AUGUSTUS, HIGH PRIEST.  Declaring Augustus, and therefore Tiberius, divine made the title and the coin repugnant to the Jews.  It was forbidden to carry this image and title into the Temple, and here were the very cream of society, those secretly plotting Jesus’ death, with one in their pocket.  Don’t forget, we’re still in the Temple where we began at our Gospel reading three weeks ago!

That little zinger aside, the real central message of this reading is Jesus’ next statement: 

Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.  Or, for those of you who love the King James Version, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.

We often hear this particular scripture verse interpreted as the Bible’s teaching on the separation of Church and State; I think that on the surface you could absolutely defend that interpretation.  I also think the real meaning is found much deeper.  

The word that is translated in the New Revised Standard Version as “give to” and in the King James Version as “render unto” can also be translated as “give back” or “return.”1

  This is the sense Jesus seems to be giving.  Having asked whose image is found on the coin Jesus then points out that the coin is already Caesar’s and, therefore, it cannot be unlawful to give back to Caesar what already belongs to Caesar – Jesus 1; Pharisees and Herodians 0.

Matthew’s original readers, mostly new Christians who had grown up steeped in the Jewish traditions, would have caught onto the meaning instantly.  They would have recognized that Jesus’ question about whose image – in Greek whose εἰκὼν (icon) – is found on the coin was pointing back to the creation story of Genesis.

That scripture tells us that:

God created humankind in his image (εἰκόνα),

in the image of God he created them;

male and female he created them. (Genesis 1.27 NRSV)

If that which bears Caesar’s image, or icon, should be given back to Caesar; how much more should that which bears the “image and likeness”2

 of God be given back to God?  Jesus affirmed the tax while making it all but irrelevant. He implies that, though we do owe the state, there are limits to what we owe. Yet, Jesus places no limits regarding what we owe to God.

This text is often used to talk about stewardship in terms of what you give to the church. And it is about stewardship, but this is no passage on the tithe. Because if giving 10 percent of our income is all we do, we would fall way more than 90 percent shy of the mark. Jesus says that everything you have and everything you are is God’s already.

While this would certainly apply to the money you make, the formula is not that you give 100 percent of your income to God, God knows you need money for the necessities of life. The message is that once you have given God some of the money you earn, don’t feel that you have bought off an obligation. God wants to share in some of your time and energy, so the 100 percent formula relates to your calendar as well as your wallet.

In our culture Christianity has become a sort of family heirloom for many people.  There are large numbers of people who would, if asked, say that they are Christian though they have rarely darkened the door of a church.  These folks probably couldn’t name the four Gospels or tell you much about what Jesus actually said, instead they parrot what they’ve heard from televangelists, or what has been bandied about by friends as they explain why modern men and women should have outgrown the need for God and faith in Jesus Christ.  These people identify as Christian because their families have always been “Christians,” or because, as products of a predominantly Christian culture, they don’t know what else to say.

This is the kind of faith that Jesus points out in the religious leaders of His day.  That’s why he says, “You hypocrites,” to those who are trying to trap Him into speaking treason, when they themselves are committing a religious offense by carrying the blasphemous coin into the Temple.  He wants their faith to reach deep into their lives and into their hearts so that it affects everything that they do.

What God wants is nothing less than to come and live in your heart. The point is that you’ve been made in the image and likeness of God. God loves you. God keeps your picture in the divine wallet and on the heavenly refrigerator. Jesus didn’t care about the tax, his real concern was that we live into the image and likeness of the God who lovingly created us.

Make no mistake - being a follower of Christ asks something of us.  Jesus asks for all that we are and all that we have. We begin to live into the image and likeness of God by conforming our lives to be more like Jesus’ life. Giving back to God through the church does matter, but merely giving money to the government, to this church or anywhere else is only part of the picture. We are made in the image of God - it’s only fitting that that which bears God’s image should be returned to God.  

C.S. Lewis says it best:

Now the whole offer which Christianity makes is this: that we can, if we let God have His way, come to share in the life of Christ. If we do, we shall then be sharing a life which was begotten, not made, which always has existed and always will exist. Christ is the Son of God. If we share in this kind of life we also shall be sons [and daughters]† of God. We shall love the Father as He does and the Holy Ghost will arise in us. He came to this world and became a man in order to spread to other men the kind of life He has ... Every Christian is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else. 3

To live more fully into that image and likeness of God that is in you, give back your heart to God – it’s God’s anyway. When the time comes for communion in just a little while, I encourage everyone to remember that the Eucharist is our communal sacrifice to God. We make an offering, not only of our financial gifts in the collection, but of our hearts, minds, and souls - of all that we are.  At this altar, we can meet Jesus once more every time we worship. Because in answer to the question, “What are the things that are God’s which we are to give back to God?” the answer is, “You.”

1. ἀπόδοτε, verb 2nd person, plural, aorist, imperative, active of ἀποδίδωμι.

2. Genesis 1.26

† - My addition

3. C S. Lewis, Wayne Martindale, and Jerry Root, The Quotable Lewis (Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House Publishers, ©1989), 93.

Sixteenth Sunday After Pentecost                                                                                 Rev. Carl Saxton

Proper 21A                                                                                                      Php. 2.1-13; Mt. 21.23-32

This is Jesus’ final time entering the temple before His impending Passion, Death, and Resurrection.  Soon he will face the chief priests and elders as they gather to interrogate and judge Him, but for now they try to trap him with a question: “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?”  It’s clear in Matthew that “these things” that the chief priests and the elders of the people are so worked up about are Jesus’ teachings, because they approach him “as he was teaching.”  And the way our Gospel reading is ended today we are led to believe that Jesus refuses to give them an answer, but Jesus spends the next two and half chapters proving His authority over and over again when confronted with similar questions designed to trap Him.

But first, Jesus asks them whether the message of John the Baptist came from heaven or from human thinking.  Matthew tells us that the chief priests and elders smell the trap, they say, “If we say from heaven then he will ask why we didn’t believe him; and if we say ‘of human origin’ the crowds will turn on us because they believe John was a prophet.”  So, instead, they say, “We don’t know.”

Too simple, their only possible answers were ‘from heaven’ or ‘of human origins.”  So Jesus tells them a little parable.  A father asks one son to go work in the fields - he says no, but then changes his mind and goes.  The second son says that he will to out into the fields, and then doesn’t.  Which one did what the father asked?  See, they can’t say, “we don’t know” without looking like fools - Jesus has set his own little trap.

This kind of parable, the kind used to point out their own error to those in power, has been used before.  In 2 Samuel the prophet Nathan tells a parable  to King David about a rich man who steals the only little lamb of a poor man to feed an unexpected traveler because he doesn’t want to slaughter one of his own lambs to be wasted on this traveler.  When the King is incensed against the man and says, “As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die” and declares that the man had no pity, Nathan comes back with, “You are the man!”  Nathan used the parable to show David his sin in taking Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite, and then having Uriah killed.

That’s what Jesus is doing in this parable.  His accusers respond, of course, “The first,” because the first son is the only one that actually went to work.  Jesus then goes on to point out that many of them went out to hear John preach, but then went away without believing - like the second son; while those who’re considered sinners, the tax collectors and the prostitutes, who through their sins had refused John’s message on its face had, after hearing his message first hand, believed and been baptized.  Even after seeing those conversions, the chief priests and elders still failed to believe!

It’s all about intentions.  You see the priests and elders had gone out to hear John preach intending to hear, but they closed their ears to the truth of John’s message.  The tax collectors and prostitutes had gone out probably intending to mock and heckle John, but their ears had been open and they believed.  The old saying, “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions” is talking about this.

How often have we intended to do something good and failed.  How many of us have told someone that we would pray for them, and then gotten too distracted or forgotten and didn’t?  It wasn’t done out of malice, at least I hope it wasn’t - that’s a whole different conversation.  How many have said to themselves, “I want to get involved in some of the good work being done in Jacksonville by my brothers and sisters at St. John’s...but never do?  How many of us have been confused when we see a brother or sister whose faith was once an inspiration to us start to drift away from the community, and their spiritual life die, and we intended to reach out to them - to call or stop by - but never have?  We all have good intentions.  But Jesus says in today’s gospel reading that our intentions don’t really matter - it’s our actions that are rooted in and flow from our relationship with God that really count.

Often, our intentions never come to fruition because we don’t think we can do those kinds of things.  What will I say, who am I?  We forget that we don’t do any of these things ourselves.  Your baptism gave you a permanent connection to God in Christ, like a pipeline of mercy and grace that is always flowing. It is only God’s mercy that makes us members of the Body of Christ.  I know that you’ve heard me say this before, and I’m only saying it again because it is so important!  That pipeline though, it only remains freely flowing if we pour out that mercy.  When we fail to share the grace through reaching out to one another and putting our faith into action, the pipeline gets stopped up, it gets clogged.

Tell me if it isn’t true.  How many times have you known someone who only gives lip-service to their faith, then after a while they seem disinterested, bored, and drift away from the community.  The people around us who have a vibrant and lively faith are the ones who are serving, inside the church and outside the church.  They let that gift of grace and mercy flow through them and then on to others. Like the first son who ended up living his life faithfully; he didn’t just talk about it or just say whatever he needed to say to appease his father.

We, too, are called to live our lives faithfully.  God has given us the gift of life, and the gift of new life in Christ, and we are called to respond.  We are to be good stewards of our lives, spreading the love of God that has been given to us to others.  We’re not perfect, I’m certainly far from it, but God calls us very pointedly through the message and example of Jesus to be different.  Stephen Colbert said once, “Either we’ve got to acknowledge that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we’ve got to acknowledge that he commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition; and then admit that we just don’t want to do it.”

We have a tendency to think of ourselves as the good son in this parable of the two sons, just as we have a tendency to identify with the prodigal son in his parable; when, in truth, we’re much more like the older son who stomped off in a huff when the father welcomed the prodigal back with open arms.  If we’re honest with ourselves, we’re much more like the son who says he’ll go, just to get dad off our backs, then we are the son who has a change of heart and goes to the vineyard.  The pipeline of grace is open and flowing - we can choose to serve, knowing that the power to do it comes from our relationship with Jesus.  As St. Paul reminded the Philippians, it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.