Who Do You Belong To?

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Sermon for the 19th Sunday after Pentecost1 19 October 2014

Emmanuel Church, Greenwood (The Rev.) Christopher Garcia

Who Do You Belong To? Whose side are you on, anyway? Who do you belong to? Who do we belong to? The itinerant teacher from the hill country is moving towards Jerusalem. His stories about the kingdom of God breaking in, all around us, are attracting ever larger crowds. The religious leaders are getting worried. The Pharisees are the religious “in” crowd, and now they’re feeling threatened. Make no mistake: the Pharisees want Jesus dead. They’re just trying to figure out how to fix things so that someone else will do their dirty work. The Pharisees have spun their web, but to make their plan work, they need some help. Everyone in Jerusalem knows that Jesus has preached parables that threaten the Pharisees’ authority. So everyone in Jerusalem knows that the Pharisees are out to get Jesus, and no one believes the Pharisees will be objective. The Pharisees twist this bias to their own advantage. They team up with a group who would normally be their enemies: the Herodians. The Herodians were the Jerusalem court party. 2 They are called Herodians because they supported Herod, the Jewish puppet king who ruled on behalf of the Romans. The Herodians despised the Pharisees as religious extremists, who refused to go along to get along, which is something the Herodians were good at. The Pharisees, who were ritual purists, hated the Herodians. The Pharisees thought the Herodians were collaborators, sell outs. If such known enemies together were to bring evidence against Jesus, the temple authorities and the Romans couldn’t ignore the results.

Revised Common Lectionary Proper 24A. Exodus 33:12-23; Psalm 99; 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10; Matthew 22:15-22. “Almighty and Everlasting God, in Christ you have revealed your glory among the nations: Preserve the works of your mercy, that your Church throughout the world may persevere with steadfast faith in the confession of your Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.” 1

Ulrich Luz, Matthew 21-28: A Commentary, trans. James E. Crouch, Hermeneia – A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005), 62-63, in particular n. 1. 2

2

Together they send a verbal hit squad against Jesus. It all sounds very friendly, even respectful. “Teacher, we know you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with the truth.” After the silky-sounding start, the Pharisees spring the trap. “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” The Pharisees think this is the perfect question to trap Jesus. If Jesus says “yes, it’s lawful” then the Pharisees have won. The Romans insist that taxes be paid with Roman coins. 3 Every Roman coin bore an inscription that proclaimed Caesar to be a god.4 For a pious Jew, even to use such coins is blasphemy. The crowds hate the tax and hate having to use Roman coins to pay the tax. For Jesus to publicly support the tax would destroy his moral authority. But if Jesus says “no, don’t pay the tax,” then the Herodians win. The Herodians, remember, are Roman loyalists. If Jesus says “don’t pay the tax” he’s saying “don’t obey the law,” and the Herodians will have the Romans arrest Jesus and put him to death as a revolutionary. The religious leaders, the Pharisees, and the civil leaders, the Herodians, think they have painted God’s Chosen One into an impossible situation. They are trying to manage Jesus and his ministry to serve their expectations, their requirements, their rules and regulations. We, too, try to trap God. We, too, try to make God serve our expectations. We want an obedient God who serves us, rather than the other way around. I do; don’t you? We understand what God wants of us, but then we try to explain to God why his expectations aren’t reasonable. “Yes, God, I know that I’m supposed to love my neighbor as myself. I know that I should reach out to this new person. But I’m too busy. He’s too different. Someone else can show your hospitality, or maybe I’ll do it next week.” We propose our own solution instead, trying to trap God, to define God’s role rather than obeying God. We want a God who will bail us out when the going gets tough, but we think we don’t need God when things are going well.

Stanley Hauerwas, Matthew, Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible (Grand Rapids MI: Brazos Press, 2006), 189; Robert H. Gundry, Matthew: A Commentary on His Literary and Theological Art (Grand Rapids MI: Eerdmans, xxxx), 442. 3

4

Luz, Matthew 21-28, 65-66.

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But Jesus isn’t buying this nonsense. He throws the trap back at the Pharisees and the Herodians. 5 “Show me the coin used for the tax,” and they produce one. Do you see what Jesus has done? Jesus makes them show that they already have the hated coin. By showing the coin to Jesus, the Pharisees and Herodians are admitting that they have the coins and they use the coins.6 Jesus asks them, “Whose head, or whose image, is this, and whose title?” Our passage today translates the answer as “the emperor’s.” By affirming that they are trafficking in Caesar’s image, the questioners have already answered the question. Yes, they are paying the tax. Yes, they are using Caesar’s coins. Jesus calls it like he sees it. “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s.” Many of us learned this passage from the King James Version in childhood as “render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's.”7 Rather than the simple “Give therefore to the emperor,” in the original Greek the verb is more powerful, and the older King James translation “Render” captures some of the sense of the Greek original, which means “give back” or “return.” Render carries the sense of returning what is rightfully owed, of paying a debt.8 Jesus is telling his questioners “Give it all back to Caesar. Give Rome all the Roman money. Give Rome all the Roman intrigue. Give Rome all the Roman corruption.”9 But Jesus doesn’t stop there. Jesus them, loves the crowd, loves us to much to leave us where we are. Jesus doesn’t stop with rejecting Rome. Jesus goes on to add10 “Give to God the things that are God’s.” If we go too fast, we might overlook these words. They seem almost an afterthought. Render unto God the things that are God’s. And what things are God’s? King David sang at the dedication of the first temple in Jerusalem: “Blessed are you, O Lord, the God of our ancestor Israel, forever and ever. Yours, O Lord, are the greatness, the power, the glory, the victory, and the majesty; for all that is in the heavens and on the earth is yours; 5

Luz, Matthew 21-28, 64.

6

Luz, Matthew 21-28, 65.

7

KJV.

Gundry, Matthew, 443; Spiros Zodhiates, ed., The Complete Word Study Dictionary – New Testament (Chattanooga TN: AMG Publishers, 1993), 222. 8

9

Hauerwas, Matthew, 190.

10

Luz, Matthew 21-28, 66.

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yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all.”11 The Psalmist proclaims: “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world and all who dwell therein. For it is [the Lord] who founded it upon the seas and made it firm upon the rivers of the deep.” 12 Everything comes from God. The whole world belongs to God. Everything on earth belongs to God. You belong to God, Jesus told them by implication. Remember whose you are. Remember who you belong to. Remember who gave you life, who gives your life its meaning. Remember who creates the whole world. And what of us, today? Who do we belong to? Unto whom should we render? The Bible tells us from the very first chapter of Genesis, “God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them.”13 You are made in God’s image. You belong to God. In our baptismal rite, we put holy oil on the head of the new Christian in the sign of the cross and proclaim “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own for ever.”14 We are all God’s beloved. God has made us and redeemed us, and we acknowledge that truth when we come to God in baptism. You are made in God’s image. You belong to God. Roman coins may have been stamped with Caesar’s image, but you and I are stamped with God’s image. We belong to God. If we get that one, central truth right, everything else will follow. Everything else will fall into place. Amen.

11

1 Chron 29.10b-11.

12

Ps. 24.1-2 (BCP).

13

Genesis 1.27.

14

BCP, 308.