20 Pentecost A; lectionary 29A
Text: Matthew 22:15-22
sermon by Rev. Robert Klonowski
Faith Lutheran Church, Homewood, IL
October 18, 2020
Image
Then 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, would you vote to remove the portion of the Revenue Article of the Illinois Constitution that is sometimes referred to as the ‘flat tax,’ to give the State the ability to impose higher tax rates on those with higher income levels and lower tax rates on those with middle or lower income levels?” it was a trap, and then those evil ones sprung the trap, and they tortured Jesus with endless mailers and internet ads and TV commercials about the Illinois Fair Tax.
It’s always a trap, a political question about taxes, whether it’s the Third Rail in American politics that is the Social Security system or the question in ancient Israel about paying taxes to the hated Roman oppressors. To understand what a sensitive and dangerous trap it was that the Pharisees and Herodians set in today’s Gospel lesson you have to understand that Roman currency of the time had on it not only that image of Caesar, yes, but also had on it the declaration that Caesar was god, worthy of worship. For Jews this was problematic because it was idolatrous. That was why those moneychangers you always hear about were in the Temple, so that travelers from abroad who came into Jerusalem with nothing but the idolatrous Roman currency could change it into the local currency that could then be put respectfully into the Temple offering. So when they ask Jesus whether it is lawful to pay the tax, they are asking whether he thinks it’s OK to be passing around coins that proclaim the divinity of Caesar. Jesus asks in reply, “Whose head is this [on the coin], and whose title?” On the coin of Caesar Augustus, it was his head on there, and the title on the coin was “Son of God.” No kidding.
If the emperor’s image is imprinted on the coin, then that coin must belong to the emperor. Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s. And then comes that open-ended part: give to God the things that are God’s. And we are left to speculate for a minute – Jesus using good Socratic teaching method here – wait a minute, we say; what then are the things that hold God’s image? What are these “things that are God’s” about which Jesus speaks; they must be the things that bear God’s image. What do you know, that bears God’s image? And who do you know, that bears God’s image?
Jesus’ reply throws you back to the Genesis 2 creation story, where it is said that we are created “in the image of God.” We have God’s image stamped on us. The coin belongs to Caesar. We belong to God.
And so Jesus takes a complicated but ultimately silly question about the payment of taxes, and turns it into a teaching about to whom we belong, our selves, our time, and our possessions. Don’t tell me about Caesar, says Jesus. He’s small potatoes, and as a god I’ve got to tell you Caesar is a miserable failure. Caesar thinks that you belong to him, and Caesar thinks that your money is his money, but don’t you forget to whom you really belong, yourself, your money, all of it. Caesar, that old false god Caesar, says that you serve that house of yours, those nice appliances, that great ol’ automobile; Caesar says that your salvation lies in this political savior or clicking on that Facebook justice petition; Caesar says in every television commercial you ever see that your very redemption depends on the purchase of this weight-loss program or that new gizmo, and ask your doctor if this pharmaceutical enhancement product is for you: only that, and you will at last achieve the happiness that always seems to be just outside your grasp. That’s what Caesar says.
And then you come to church, and right in the middle of worship we do offering. That money you bring has Caesar’s imprint on it, Caesar’s little hands all over it. Spend it on this, says Caesar, spend it on that, spend on what would make you happy. And in the face of all of Caesar’s overheated exhortations, you quietly and calmly and regularly … you open your hand, and let it go. It absolutely breaks poor Caesar’s heart when you do that. You let it go, because you don’t need it – Caesar absolutely hates when you talk like that, talk like you don’t need more money; ah! – you let it go into the care of a community that is larger than yourself, into the care of a community that bears the mark, not of Caesar, but of God. I don’t belong to Caesar after all, you are saying when you let it go. All this Caesar stuff around me is small potatoes; all this Caesar stuff is not ever going to get me to the place I really am going. I don’t really belong to Caesar after all. Whose image is on me, and whose title? It is the image of God on me, and the title written there is, Jesus Christ is Lord.
You ever wondered why in church buildings like ours the windows are not clear, but filled with stained glass? I know it sounds like I just shifted into a very different sermon there, but bear with me; it’s the same sermon, just hang on. The tradition in the Church is to have stained glass windows because we come to church to see things in a different light. We come with our rather colorless, none-too-inspiring drab little lives, our lives with too many little Caesars stamped all over them, and we come here to see our lives in God’s light. And our lives are thereby transformed.
Continuing the visual metaphor, church is also where we look at our lives from a different perspective – God’s way of seeing things. In church, when we’re at our best, things come into focus, and we see what things are really worth, and how much certain other things cost us.
I think about these things – sometimes I think that the very core of our faith is the matter of what is worth it, and what is not. What is something for us to worry about, and what is not. What it is in our lives that is really a matter of God’s concern, and what is not – what belongs only to some mere Caesar or other.
From many of you I hear that this question is front and center during these days of our pandemic response. Bad as it all is, these pandemic days have a way of focusing us on what is really important and what isn’t. What you’re willing to let go of, in your life, for the sake of things in your life that are truly Godly and beautiful. Or think: to put it in a wider social sense than just your own household – what sacrifices are we all willing to make, for the sake of the older and more vulnerable among us who live under the more serious threat, whom we value as having the very image of God upon them? That’s a Caesar-vs.-God question for us, right there.
Now, I don’t believe that God sent us pandemic to teach us that lesson. Let’s not get into that!; that would indeed be a different sermon, I suppose. However, I do believe that God can take even the worst events of our lives and use them to show how much less valuable is so much of the stuff that we supposedly treasure and worry about, and expend so much of our lives upon – how much of our stuff really is the stuff that belongs only to Caesar – and how much more important are the things in our lives and in our world, that bear the image of God.