Homily. Yr A
P29. Oct 19 2014. St. Albans
Ex 33.12-23; Ps 99; 1 Thess 1.1-10; Mt 22.15-22
We’re pretty good at giving
the Emperor the things that are the Emperor’s.
We stand when the national anthem is played. We support our troops when they go to war. We turn our noise down at 11pm, or if we don’t
and we get caught, we pay the fines. We
license our cars. We pay our taxes – in fact,
not only do we pay our taxes but we spend a considerable amount of time and
money collecting receipts and filing our tax returns every year. We may resent these things, or disagree with
the politics, or maybe we only do them because we feel we have no choice, but whatever
the reason, overall, we’re pretty good at giving the Emperor the things that
are the Emperor’s.
How good are we at giving
God the things that are God’s?
Now some might argue that
the reason we respond well to the Emperor’s demands is that the Empire is
pretty good at making clear to us what we have to do. The problem, perhaps, is that maybe we don’t
know what God requires of us?
Except that it’s pretty
clear what God requires of us.
The prophet Micah in
response to that very question puts it quite simply: “The Lord has told you what is good and what
the Lord requires of you: to do justice,
to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God.”
When Jesus was asked what
God requires of us, he too gave a clear answer:
“Love the Lord with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind and all
your strength; and love your neighbor as yourself.”
And just in case we still
have doubts, Jesus was even more specific:
Feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, cloth
the naked, take care of the sick and visit those in prison.
We know the things that God
requires of us. And sometimes, there doesn’t
appear to be any conflict with the demands of the Empire.
But there is a conflict
going on in today’s gospel, a conflict that is a matter of life and death. The day before the scene in the gospel
reading we just heard, Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey and was
acclaimed by the crowds as Messiah and King.
He then went straight to the heart of Jerusalem, entered the Temple and
drove out all those who were buying and selling, overturning the tables of the
money changers. The following day he had
the chutzpah to return again to the Temple, and when he was confronted by the religious
authorities, he proceeded to tell a series of stories each of which directly
challenged the authority of the chief priests and religious leaders and turned
the crowds against them. The leaders
were both angry and afraid: angry enough
to want to arrest Jesus and put him to death, but afraid of the crowds who
sided with Jesus.
Conflicts occur when
something important is at stake. When
loyalties are divided. When values that are important to us are threatened. What’s at stake in the conflict which is at
the heart of today’s gospel?
We know what was at stake
for the Emperor. History teaches us that
the Roman Empire valued two things in an occupied province: stability and tax revenue. Jesus was a threat to both of these imperial
values. His temple action had disrupted
the collection of taxes, and the crowds that acclaimed him as king could easily
turn to riot and rebellion.
But what was at stake for
the Jewish authorities, the Chief Priests and Elders, the Pharisees and the
Herodians? They weren’t Romans, they
were Jews, and maintaining the religious and cultural identity of the Jewish
people even in the midst of the Roman occupation was their priority. They wanted the people to follow God’s Law,
they wanted to preserve Temple worship. But
in order for them to do these things, they had to deal with the empire. In fact, they only stayed in their positions
of leadership and authority by permission of the empire, and that meant that
they had to buy in to the empire’s values of stability and taxation, even if
that made them complicit in the economic and political oppression of their own
people. Even if that meant that they
would have to put to death an upstart preacher from Galilee who was too
unsophisticated to understand their delicate situation with the Roman
authorities.
And you know what? I’m in no position to stand in judgement over
those religious leaders. I’ve been in
situations where I’ve compromised my values in order to try to make the best of
a difficult situation. They were trying
to protect their people from the very real threat of a confrontation with the
Roman army that would lead to death and destruction. Sure, maybe they were also trying to protect
their own positions of privilege, but we all do that don’t we?
But that sort of divided
loyalty wasn’t good enough for Jesus.
For him something else was at stake, something important enough to put
his own life at risk by his words and actions in the Temple.
Let’s go back to the
previous day. When Jesus enters the
Temple, he says “My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have made
it a den of thieves.”
With those words, Jesus
quotes the 56th chapter of the Book of Isaiah. If you read that chapter, you will see that the
LORD through his prophet Isaiah is calling for people to maintain justice and
do what is right. He is calling for the
inclusion of all peoples, including foreigners, including those who have been
marginalized and oppressed, he’s calling for all to be included in God’s house
of prayer. It is a radical call for
justice and inclusivity.
When Jesus then says “but
you have made it a den of robbers” he is quoting the 7th chapter of
Jeremiah. Again, if you were to turn to
that text, you will find that it is a call for repentance, a call for the
people to amend their ways and return to God.
It is a call to end the oppression of the widow, the orphan and the
outcast. It is a call to return to acting justly, for this is what God requires
of those who seek to worship in his Temple.
These are the things that
matter to Jesus. They ask about
taxes. Jesus asks to see a coin. It is a Roman coin. In whose image is the coin made, Jesus
asks. The emperor’s, they respond. “Then give to the emperor what is the emperor’s”. Is it an instruction to pay the tax? Or is it a call to take that coin, that Roman
symbol of oppression, and to get it out of the Temple area. The coin is made in the image of the emperor.
But you, in whose image are
you made? You are made in God’s
image. God created humankind in God’s
image, in the image of God he created them.
The coin may belong to the Emperor, but you belong to God. And so does the person sitting on your left
and on your right.
So give to the emperor the
things that are the emperor’s; but give to God the things that are God’s.
Some people have tried to
make this saying into a justification for the separation of church and state,
or the sacred and the secular, or a way of categorizing our actions or dividing
our loyalties.
But for Jesus there is no
divided loyalty. He is demanding that we
should be focused always and at all times about how our decisions and actions –
how we use our money, how we use our time, how we treat others, how we set our
priorities – how all these must be shaped by our faith that the whole world and
all that is in it is God’s and that we, and all people are made in God’s image.
We’re pretty good at giving
the Emperor the things that are the Emperor’s.
How well do we give God the
things that are God’s?
Amen.
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