October 19, 2008
The Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost (Year A)
Exodus 33:12-23; Psalm 99; I Thessalonians 1:1-10;
Matthew 22:15-22
I often marvel that the lessons we are asked to reflect upon on Sunday so clearly address the world in which we live. This week the gospel lesson talks about money. And is there anyone in the church today who has not thought about money this past week? With the markets on a roller coaster ride, banks being taken over by the government, companies and the State of Massachusetts announcing huge layoffs, the presidential candidates talking about taxes and who will better serve “Joe the Plumber” and his tax situation, could it be more fortuitous that we are challenged to put all of these very real concerns for our own financial security as individuals and as a nation into the context of a gospel lesson?
And what struck me as I read and studied this gospel passage this week is that Jesus was very, very quick on his feet. One of the Pharisees who was actually plotting to entrap him asked a very clever question, “Is it lawful to pay taxes?” And in truth it was a question sort of like, “When did you stop beating your wife?” There is no way to answer it without offending someone who had power to respond and to quickly punish, even destroy Jesus. The Romans would be offended to the point of calling for his arrest if he said no; and the Jews would be offended to the point of being able to say he worships the Roman Emperor and to discredit him as a teacher and leader of the Jews if he said yes.
In what can only be seen as a brilliant insight, Jesus says, “Show me the coin . . .” And – well, you know the rest. There is that famous saying “Give to Caesar that which is Caesar’s and give to God that which is God’s.”
I thought about that money that Jesus held up. It was a coin, of course, and while we have coins, money, real money, that actually has value in our country today comes in bills. So I went to the bank and took out six bills, a one dollar, a five dollar, a ten dollar, a twenty dollar, a fifty dollar, and a one hundred dollar bill. And I studied them, prayed with them, this week during the roller coaster market ride. One thing that is very different about our currency from the coin that Jesus held that day is that it does not have any living emperor, president, leader, or quasi god, on it. The Romans believed that Caesar was not only the mortal ruler but that he had supernatural powers and was somehow divine and therefore a figure to be worshipped. So the coin of the realm bore his likeness, but the people worshiped more than just his image, they worshipped him.
We do not have such a presumption, of course. The men (and, yes, they are all men) on the six bills I prayed with are all political leaders, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Alexander Hamilton, Andrew Jackson, Ulysses Grant, and Benjamin Franklin. All men. All dead men. All but two a president, but none even remotely a god!
So then, when we consider this money that has preoccupied our concerns and fueled our fears this week, what does it mean to us to give to Caesar, or the emperor, or the tax collector, what was his due and to give to God what is God’s due? Are there things on the currency that would enable us to make the same kind of differentiation that Jesus made between the coin of the realm and the gifts of God from the people of God?
On the reverse side of each piece of currency there is a federal building of some sort, the White House, the Lincoln Memorial, Independence Hall, the capitol, United States Treasury building, except on the one dollar bill where there is a pyramid and an a stylized eagle. But on all these bills, and I understand on all denominations of US bills, are the words “In God we Trust.”
What would Jesus do with that? How would we divide ourselves between that which is God’s and that which is the rightful property of the tax collector when “in God we trust” is on the back of each bill?
I think he could say a lot to us about money given these images. And money was one of his favorite things to talk about then. It occupied as much of the conversation as it has occupied our conversations these past months of instability and financial chaos in our country and in the world. Money has always been a source of our fears and hopes. But what I think he would say if he were to look at our money today and try to teach us something about money from that, would be that “money is not where we trust, not where we put our trust at all, but in God.” And if we all did that, the fears and the concerns and the preoccupation we have with the markets and the banks and even Joe the Plumber would not be possible.
For like people in the first century who were taxed from every side, from property to purchases to travel to tolls to, well you name it, it was taxed! (Sound familiar? Some would argue that we are too!) The taxing was not the issue for Jesus, however. The issue was how the people thought about money, and I think maybe Jesus would say the same things to us today that he said to the people then.
Is it not true that we tend too often to identify ourselves by the money we make or earn or have? We think money buys us not only the necessities of life but can make everything “more” equal, in our favor certainly, if we have enough of it. We often identify our “worth” by the amount in our portfolio and savings accounts rather than by the number of people we love and the servant nature of our lives and ministries. Our occupations too often define us, and they are more often valued by us and by our society based upon how much we earn in that occupation, instead of our being valued by how well we have done what we do and in whose name we have done it.
How many times a week do we ask ourselves, “In whose name do I do this work? Mine or God’s?” Never, right?
But we do ask how much we are earning and if there is overtime! That is because, like the people Jesus was speaking to in the gospel this morning, we see money as something that belongs to us because we earned it or own it when in truth we too often let it own us! We use it for purchasing not only the things we need, but the things we think we deserve, want, or just plain lust after. When we do that, then it owns us. Sometimes, sadly, we even use money as a weapon to wield control over that which we want to have control over. It can become a weapon to assure that we get what we want.
Bottom line is, I think, all of us, everyone in the sanctuary today, myself included, see our money as ours most of the time. And, if it is ours, then it naturally follows that we should use it how we want to use it. This “it’s ours” mentality is as pervasive today as it was with the Pharisees. It’s ours and we can wrestle with the government about how much “they get” and make sure we don’t have to give away too much of what is rightly and duly ours. Yet, I couldn’t help but wonder what Jesus would do with that line on the back of the bills were we to hand him one of our bills instead of a coin with Caesar on it? What would he make of the words on the back, “In God we trust!”?
It sounds hauntingly like give God what is God’s, doesn’t it?
I think that line contradicts our prevalent mind set about owning our money ourselves. If it is in God we trust, if we are to give God what is God’s, then none of what we earn or inherit or save or have or win or own is ours anyway. We are merely stewards of all that is entrusted to us to care for, for a while; and in times like these when the certainty of the amount that will be coming into our coffers is not too stable, stewardship becomes more important, the caring for what is God’s, not so that we can insure our own self identity through our money but so that we can insure that God’s work will continue through our lives and our care, our stewardship of what is already God’s money entrusted to us.
Soon we will have the annual fall pledge drive, and we will talk about money as it pertains to this parish and what our hopes and dreams are for Good Shepherd – but not today.
No! Today I just want to challenge you to think about money, a lot, but not with fear about what is happening with the world’s economy, but in terms of how you feel about the money in your life. Do you think of all the money in your accounts as yours? Do you ever ask yourself in whose name you do the work you do each day? Do you ask yourself what the work and the money you make says about you? God? Your soul?? In short, I invite you to think about your “money attitude,” to sit with currency in your hands and think about your relationship with it. Explore how you might be like the Pharisees, and/or how you might be living into the saying on the back of American currency “In God we trust!” Think about you and money and what you truly value, not what you lust after, desire, crave, or want, but what your money allows you to do for others, for yourself, for your family and friends, for your communities, this one and the others to which you belong.
Think about who owns your money. And, finally, ask yourself how your money owns you, and what the cost to your soul is if your money truly defines you.
I invite you into this spiritual work because Jesus did it all the time. And as Christians I think it is some of the hardest and most rewarding work we can do.
And as a symbol that I no longer, at least for this one moment, am no longer – for this one moment – going to let my money own me, I am going to put this stack of bills I have pondered with all week in the offering plate, no strings, no hopes of purchasing anything with it, only because, in addition to my pledge, and everything else I have, it already belongs to God and I trust that with God’s help, God’s people will do far more with it than I can ask or imagine.
Amen.
The Rev. Dr. Gale Davis Morris
Church of the Good Shepherd