Sermon for the Twenty-Third Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 24, October 19, 2008

Twenty Third Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 24
Year A
October 19, 2008
Resurrection Lutheran Church
Isaiah 45:1-7 Psalm 96:1-13I Thessalonians 1:1-10 St. Matthew 22:15-22


In the name of the triune God who created us, who loves us, who redeemed us, and who cares for us.

The Gospel today is not about the separation of Church and State. Those questioning Jesus had no interest in these kinds of issues. In fact, such a thing never would have occurred to anyone in first century Israel. What the Gospel is about is hypocrisy. And it is about idolatry.

Have you ever thought about having to pay the very person who oppresses you? Talk about taxation without representation. That is what was happening in Jesus time to the people of Israel. The oppressed were forced to pay the oppressors. And people were divided about how to respond to this great injustice. They were faced with the question of do you support the government no matter how much you might disagree or do you refuse to pay taxes. Different faiths groups in the United States and around the world have chosen different responses to this quandary. It is never an easy answer. And people of good Christian will have disagreed in our nation about these kinds of problems many times.

What is right to do and what is wrong to do in the world as a Christian. That is always a difficult decision. It is not as black and white as some would want to believe. People have struggled with this same question for centuries in different forms. Do you serve a country an in unjust war? Is a war unjust? Do the ends justify the means? Christians come to different conclusions.

But Jesus’ protagonists today didn’t really care about that at all. In today’s story people are just trying to set a trap for Jesus. But as always Jesus avoids the trap laid for him. This is the hypocrisy in the story. Those questioning Jesus don’t really want an answer or even care what it might be. They want to make Jesus look bad and put him down in front of the crowd. They think that his choices boil down to one of two possible options. He will either have to say no, they do not have to pay, and side with the rebels against the authorities. Or he will have to say yes, they need to pay, and side with the appeasers. Either way, it is a no win situation. The Pharisees think they really have him now.

So Jesus asks them to cough up a coin. They produce one, and like all of the roman coins it has a graven image on it. If you remember your Hebrew Scriptures you will recall that the Jewish people are forbidden to have idols and yet Jesus indirectly points out that merely by conforming to the societal need to carry money, they end up carrying idols around in their pockets. Whether they caught on to that fine distinction of Jesus or not I do not know.

After asking them to identify the image on the coin, Jesus gives a pretty simple answer. But hidden in this simple answer is a powerful challenge to all of us as Christians. Giving to Cesar what is Cesar’s and to God what is God may seem like a very simple and easy thing to do. But I do not believe that this is the case.

I fear that we have made money our idol in a very real way. And sadly in a way that is, on the one hand, less obvious and therefore, on the other hand, is more dangerous. This is because like the Pharisees we do not perceive money as a potential idol.

Instead, we see money in very practical terms. It is not our idol we think, it is our servant. It is what makes the economy run well and provides a medium of exchange. We think it saves us from having to haul halibut and salmon around to trade with other people. And all of that is true. But the question we are faced with is how do we live. How do we treat our money. And there is the first catch. Calling it our money. You see, as Christians, we believe that it is not our money. It is God’s money. One of the simplest offertory prayers I know goes like this: “All things come of you Oh, Lord, and of your own have we given you.”

The concept of giving to God what is God's all along really calls us to remember that everything does indeed belong to God. This is not just talking about our tithe. It is talking about our all. It is easy enough for us to acknowledge it with our lips, but it is sometimes much harder to acknowledge it as we live. At least this is what I have discovered in my own life. The earth and all that is in it belongs to God. That includes the air we breath, the food we eat, the home we live in, the time on our calendar, and the money in our bank account. So this simple response of Jesus is not so simple after all. This Gospel calls us to evaluate how we respond to this truth.

In this simple answer Jesus calls us to look at all of our lives in a much different light. We can no longer live with our easy assumptions about what is means to follow Christ. Throughout history the call to follow Christ has meant to be willing to be challenged in our comfortable lives. We are called on to be willing to lay it all down if need be, like Francis of Assisi. That is a hard call that few have been able to follow.

But my concern is that in our present day the cares and concerns of the world all too easily crowd out our responsibilities to God. I think it rather unlikely that any of us here today will be called on to respond as St. Francis did. But we will be challenged to live out in our own lives the fullness of believing that all which we possess is truly God’s possessions.

The question each of us needs to answer for ourselves is: “are we ready?”