The First United Methodist Church of Napa, CA

October 16, 2005

The 22nd Sunday after Pentecost

Scripture Readings:

 

Epistle – 1 Thessalonians 1: 1-10[1]

 

1Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, to the church of the Thessalonians in God the [Creator] and the Lord Jesus Christ:  Grace to you and peace.

2We always give thanks to God for all of you and mention you in our prayers, constantly 3remembering before our God and [Creator] your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.  4For we know, brothers and sisters beloved by God, that [God] has chosen you, 5because our message of the gospel came to you not in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction; just as you know what kind of persons we proved to be among you for your sake.  6And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for in spite of persecution you received the word with joy inspired by the Holy Spirit, 7so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia.  8For the word of the Lord has sounded forth from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but in every place your faith in God has become known, so that we have no need to speak about it.  9For the people of those regions report about us what kind of welcome we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God, 10and to wait for [God's] Son from heaven, whom [God] raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath that is coming.

 

Gospel – Matthew 22: 15-22[2]

 

15Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap [Jesus] in what he said.  16So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality.  17Tell us, then, what you think.  Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?”  18But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites?  19Show me the coin used for the tax.”  And they brought him a denarius.  20Then he said to them, “Whose head is this, and whose title?”  21They answered, “The emperor’s.”  Then he said to them, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”  22When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.

 

 “To Whom Do We Pledge Allegiance."

                                                                    

          Reminders that the country was under foreign occupation were everywhere.  Statues, standards and banners stood on every street corner and throughout every marketplace.  As if that weren't enough there were crosses outside the city hung with new victims groaning in the heat of the day and crying out in despair during the night; others who, mercifully, had already died were food for the vultures and crows that always hung around the outskirts of the city.  Caesar did not show any patience with those who would foment rebellion; even the slightest murmur of a liberation movement was brutally silenced.  And as if all of this weren't enough, his profile was stamped on every coin of the realm.  No doubt about it:  Caesar was in complete control.

          No wonder the people of Israel were torn about paying taxes.  This wasn't just the levy of a democratically elected body raising funds for the good of the community.  This was one more terrible burden crushing the spirit of the people, one more blow to their sense of dignity and value.  They were no better than possessions of the state on whose bent backs Caesar built his armies, his highways, his system of governorships and palaces.  Should they continue to pay taxes in support of such a system or not?  Should they just accept it as the cost of survival?  Or should they resist the entire system and all that it stood for to them:  the degradation of their nation, the apostasy of being forced to acknowledge Caesar as the son of god, the desecration of a land that they called holy, the crumbling of their own identity as the "chosen race?"  If they really had the strength of their faith, wouldn't they have the courage to stand up to these bullies?

          I can only imagine the pain and seething anger of the people of Israel, forced to choose between paying the tax and surviving, or resisting and facing crucifixion like those who still hung from the crosses lining the roadways into the city.  Pay… resist…pay…resist…pay…resist….  The arguments must've repeated themselves over and over again as they gathered out of sight and hearing of the soldiers that patrolled the streets, or as they faced sleepless nights when the debate went on in their heads, corroding their sense of integrity and draining them of any joy.

          Do you get a sense of the kind of trap that was being set for Jesus by those who plotted against him?  Oddly enough it reminds me of a Gary Larson "Far Side" cartoon that I remember seeing years ago.  It depicted a man in hell hesitating before two doors.  The devil, prodding him from behind with his pitchfork, urges him on, saying, "C'mon, c'mon – it's either one or the other!"  One of the doors is labeled "Damned it you do!" and the other, "Damned if you don't!"

          Taxes, as certain as death, says the old proverb.  But here they are, right in the middle of our gospel lesson, and we can't help but wonder if even Jesus will be able to turn such bad news into good news.  When we think about it taxation is more than just a distasteful inevitability; it's a powerful symbol of the intersection between the interests of the individual and the interests of the society at large – the point at which the personal and the political meet and become inextricably intertwined.  It's not surprising, then, that taxation has always been a provocative and volatile issue, inciting citizens to riot and revolution, and making or breaking candidates for public office.

          "Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?"  The question invites the responder into a maze that seems to have no way out.  It appears to be the perfect question to use to trap Jesus.  If he says "Yes," he's immediately in conflict with the religious establishment that opposed the sacrilege of such a tax.  If he says "No," then Caesar's people, no doubt, will find him a traitor to the regime and have him crucified.

          So, quite literally, the certainty of both death and taxes confronts Jesus at this moment in Jerusalem; and we could've predicted it.  The Jesus that we encounter here has become increasingly dangerous, stirring up crowds everywhere he goes.  Just a short while ago the road into the city had been lined with people shouting "Hosanna!" – "Lord, save us!" – hailing Jesus as if he were king as he passed by, spreading branches and throwing down their clothes along his path.  Now here he is teaching, preaching, about a new regime in which the least among us will find privilege and the powerful will be brought down.  That's sedition.  Clearly he's encouraging a revolution – maybe outright anarchy.  The stakes have become high indeed.

          The question asked of Jesus appears, on the surface, to be simple and sincere:  "Is it lawful to pay taxes to the government in power, or not?"  But it raises a whole host of other questions:  "Whose law takes priority in the life of a citizen?"  "Can one be a faithful Jew and a loyal citizen of Rome at the same time?"  "To whom do we pledge allegiance?"  "Which one is to be obeyed:  torah or Tiberius?"

          The trap is sprung.  But in a stunning moment of reversal Jesus manages to use even the deviousness of these quislings as a way to expand his own teaching on the new era that's about to dawn.  A simple coin, a denarius – the value-equivalent of a day's labor for the ordinary working person – becomes a parable for the kingdom.  Like all parables that leave the unsympathetic and the ill-advised puzzled and confused, this one sends the Pharisees and Herodians away from the scene in just such a disconcerted mood.  According to the narrator, here, their plot had failed, but they're not entirely sure how or why.

          You and I are not under Caesar's rule, surely!  Our system of taxation – though far from perfect – isn't the instrument of oppression by an occupying foreign force (Well…unless you live in Iraq).  But we do live in a consumer economy that still uses the image of wealth and the possession of things as the measure of importance, stature, and value.  So the question, for us, is well-worth asking:  "To whom do we pledge allegiance?"  I know that, at least for me and for some time now, it has not been "…to the flag of the United States of America," but to the God I find revealed in one Jesus of Nazareth.

          One of the reasons why I've invited everyone into reading and discussing Marcus Borg's book, The Heart of Christianity, is to have us confront – both personally and as a church – just such a question of our ultimate allegiance.  There are those persons and forces, even within our own church, that have presumed to speak for us on what it must mean, not only to be a United Methodist, but what it must mean to be a Christian.  My purpose is not, fundamentally, to perpetuate the "us-vs.-them" language that some find disturbing when I speak of what I believe in as a liberal or progressive Christian.[3]  But I will no longer allow one side of the debate to define for me to what I must pledge my allegiance.

          At the heart of the debate within the church (which I still hope will be allowed to become a dialogue[4]) is determining what the "true Christian faith" is.[5]  As much as the church has tried – through the establishment of doctrinal positions and by making dogmatic pronouncements – at no time in history have all Christians everywhere always agreed on what the heart of the matter truly is!  Part of my problem is that by trying to compromise and keep everyone at the table, we on the liberal or progressive side all too often haven't seemed to stand for anything – or just as bad, that we'll accept any and all points of view.  But neither is it fair to say of us that we do not or cannot represent a perceptive, well-reasoned, and legitimately theological vision of what it means to be a Christian.

          In criticizing liberal points of view, radio talk-show host, Rush Limbaugh, has cleverly said that to be open-minded doesn't mean you should be "empty-headed."  But to be tolerant of another person's position, to try to understand and appreciate another person's spiritual journey, to be open to the free exchange of ideas about who God is and how this man Jesus has revealed the reality of God, does not mean, ipso facto, that I represent a dangerous and mentally deficient position.  And yet I even have had a United Methodist colleague of mine say to me, "I admire your passion, Doug, but I know you're wrong!"

          A long time ago I came to the conclusion that one thing I will not tolerate in the church is intolerance.  If another person's point of view of Christianity differs from ours, but at least makes some sense and is not hurtful or destructive; if it is  healing and hopeful, then we should accept its validity.  I only ask that the same respect be shown for my own point of view.  What's more, we need not fear the revelations and advances of modern science; if what they reveal about our universe is true, then it will be true for our renewed understanding of Christianity as well.[6]

          Let us imagine, then, that all of the cunning questioners have gone, and we're left there standing with Jesus.  "Give to Caesar those things that bear the image of Caesar," he's said, "and give to God those things that bear the image of God."  There's that one question left hanging that no one has bothered to ask:  If the emperor's image is on this coin, where do we find God's?  To put it in the context of our current stewardship campaign:  What would happen if everything on which we had to spend our money became a liturgy of remembering our sacred worth?

          Somebody once said that if you want to know what a person values the most,  look no farther than his or her checking account.  Where we put our money does reveal where we've put our hearts.  While the largest chunk of our federal budget remains within the Department of Defense (well over $319 billion[7]), there seems to be little hope that the poorest sectors of our society will directly benefit from the "War on Terror" and protection of our homeland.  What is the real meaning of giving to the emperor and giving to God?  To whom do we pledge our allegiance?

* * *


[1] First Thessalonians is Paul's initial experiment in letter writing and the earliest preserved document in the canonical Second Testament.  This letter, which was probably written from Corinth around 50-51 CE, predates Mark's earliest Gospel by almost twenty years.  The community at Thessalonica seems to have been made up of largely pagan converts who (like most Christians of that first century) were anticipating the so-called "second coming of Christ" (parousia in Greek).  Paul is hoping with this letter to ease some of their anxieties about this time of "endings and new beginnings" (the eschaton in Greek).

[2] The context of today's gospel reading, like those that we've had over the last two Sundays, is Jesus' teaching in the Jerusalem temple in front of a hostile audience – i.e., the less-than-receptive religious leaders of the community.  The group called the "Pharisees" attempts to set Jesus up, to "entrap" him (the word in Greek, literally, is a hunting term).  The Pharisees were a group of laity "set apart" (as it literally means in Hebrew) from the rest of Jewish society, and marked by their rigid adherence to the written and oral law – especially to the laws of ritual purity.  The "Herodians," on the other hand, are the group that supported the rule of Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great.  Antipas owed all of his considerable power and influence to Caesar and the presence of Roman troops in the city.

   Jesus' response to his questioners here, then, is far from reassuring.  Even though he doesn't settle the question of religion and politics, it does challenge any of us who might be tempted to think too narrowly in just those terms.

[3] I wish, actually, that it were more like an "us vs. us" conversation – not only because (as that cartoon character Pogo once said) "We have met the enemy, and he is us," but because we are all meant to be in this struggle for truth and understanding together!  My loyalties, however, are often more clearly aligned with positions taken by The Center for Progressive Christianity (see their URL http://www.tcpc.org/) than they are the positions taken by the General Conference of The United Methodist Church.

[4] I define a "debate" in much the same way that it's been understood in this society for some time:  a contest in which there are "winners" and "losers," those who are "right" and those who are "wrong."  I long for a "dialogue" in which differing positions are allowed to stand as legitimate even in their difference.

[5] I owe some further clarification for me around this issue to have come, most recently, from an article written by Jarmo Tarkki, entitled "The Paradox of Liberal Religion" (in the Westar Institute's publication, The Fourth R, Volume 18, Number 4, July-August 2005, pp. 9-16, 18).

[6] Op. cit., p. 18.  And as Tarkki points out, even that highly respected theologian and prime mover of the Reformation, Martin Luther himself, said that "the church is always in need of being reformed" – ecclesia semper reformanda est.

[7] See this account of our country's budget at http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy06/browse.html.