"Trap"
Rev. Matthew Miller
According to the people who track this sort of thing, over the last forty years, the average cost of a campaign to win a seat in the United States congress has tripled. Two years ago, it is estimated that nearly $16 billion dollars was spent on campaigns for federal office. Which kind of makes me wonder if any of these super-PACs would be interested in contributing to our capital campaign. Now, there is a school of thought that would argue that the church should have nothing to do with politics. And certainly when it comes to candidate endorsements, or aligning with a political party, I couldn’t agree more. Just a couple of weeks ago we looked at the movement to publicly display the Ten Commandments and the way in which it not only violates our own country’s constitutional prohibition on government establishment of religion, it also violates the third commandment by misusing God’s name to advance human agendas. That said, when it comes to the ways in which our faith informs our lives as citizens and the values we seek to elevate in the public sphere, what we believe and how we live into those beliefs has everything to do with politics. Reformed Christianity in general and Presbyterians in particular have long been instrumental in the politics that have shaped our history. The protestant reformation itself, which we will celebrate next Sunday, had a seismic effect on the power of the Roman church, and the subsequent alliances the church had made with monarchs across the European continent and Great Britain. The revolutionary war in this country was fomented in no small part by Presbyterians and their rallying cry, “no bishop, no king.” The only clergy person to sign the Declaration of Independence was the Presbyterian, John Witherspoon. The constitution itself reflects our own governing polity that divides power and establishes checks and balances based on the theological understanding that power in too few hands is corrupting. In the nineteenth century, Presbyterian minister and publisher Elijah Lovejoy was an outspoken abolitionist who was killed the night an angry mob came to destroy the press he was using to advocate for the end of slavery in this country. One of the six great ends of the church as articulated in our Presbyterian Book of Order is the promotion of social righteousness, which means that we understand faith to be more than some private personal conviction that we keep to ourselves. There is a social component to our faith that carries political implications, and it always has.
Take our reading this morning from the gospels. From the outset we’re told that what follows is meant to be a trap. Our era of gotcha politics has nothing on Jesus, who has entered Jerusalem and is teaching in the temple. He’d already caused a stir, entering the city on a donkey to shouts of, “hosanna!” He came into the Temple with a fury, overturning tables and driving out those who would commodify faith as some kind of commercial venture. And now he’s approached by the very devout Pharisees who have teamed up with the Herodians to set their trap. It’s an odd coupling to be sure. The Pharisees were known for their strict religious practice and devotion, the Herodians on the other hand were- as the name suggests- devoted to Herod, a politician. While a king in title, Herod was a puppet of the much more powerful interests of Rome and the Roman occupation of that land. As such, Herodians were far more devoted to power and all the things that proximity to power and living in the good graces of Roman authority could give them. Like I said, it was a strange team-up to be sure, but you know what they say about the enemy of my enemy.
The question is about taxes. Namely, whether it is lawful to pay them to Caesar. It’s a question that is both political and religious. It’s a trap because if Jesus says, “yes” it will sound like he’s okay with Roman occupation. If he says, “no,” then he runs the risk of disturbing the Peace of Rome by openly opposing the Roman tax. And really the collusion of the Pharisees with the Herodians is the tipoff. As devout practitioners of their faith, the Pharisees considered it a kind of pollution to pay taxes to a gentile authority. The lawfulness in question here has to do with religious practice. While there may have been no explicit prohibition in Levitical law, the history of occupation was fraught. Some two hundred years earlier under the occupation of the Seleucid king Antiochus IV, the Temple had been desecrated when a pig was sacrificed on an altar to Zeus. Paying a tax to those who occupied their land and violated their sacred space felt like a betrayal of the faith.
But the Herodians benefited from their relationship to Rome. For them, taxes were the price that had to be paid to remain in the good graces of the empire. Both the Pharisees and Herodians are trying to play Jesus off the other. There is no good answer to the question. And in classic Jesus fashion, rather than give an answer he asks a question of his own instead. He asks to see the coin used to pay the tax and whose image it bears. When he’s told it is Caesar he gives his legendary retort, Give to Ceasar what is Caesar’s. Because here’s the thing. It isn’t real. The coin. Money. It’s not real. It has no real value other than the value that we give to it. That’s just it. We’re the ones who use it and decide to give it the power of exchange for goods and services. But we can’t eat it. Paper currency makes for poor fuel because it burns far too quickly to be of any real use. It can’t be used to build a shelter, and it would be an uncomfortable fabric to fashion clothing from. And yet it is the thing we make the basis of our existence, our livelihood, our recreation and well-being. I saw an exchange online in which a young adult observed that people who say money can’t buy happiness are usually the ones with money. Someone commented in agreement adding, “I can think of five things right now that having the money to pay for would make my life better right now.
Jesus sees the trap for what it is. Not just the trap of pitting religion against politics, but the trap of becoming beholden to this graven image and all that it represents; whether that’s the numbers in an account, or what we pay to keep the peace. That’s the real trap. Nothing against George Washington, or Abraham Lincoln, or Alexander Hamilton, or Andrew Jackson (well, maybe Jackson). But the point is that the faces that grace our currency should actually be the reminder that none of them are worthy of our devotion. They, and the numbers that they represent, while certainly useful and necessary to pay for things we need like food and shelter and clothing and buildings and air conditioning and all the rest, can also very easily become an idol. They can make our lives easier to be sure, but ease is not the same as happiness. They can make us more comfortable, but comfort is not the same as contentment. They give us a measure of control over our lives and circumstance, but control is not the same as connection.
Throughout his ministry, Jesus points those who would follow him to toward an entirely different ordering of their lives than any one state, or country, or earthly empire can offer. Jesus points us toward the kingdom, the realm of God’s power and presence at work in the world. What belongs to God is that which bears God’s image. The coin of that realm, that reign, is us- humanity. God has made us and stamped us in God’s own image and claimed us as God’s own. Which makes our values far greater than any currency could claim. Far more important than what we do for and with the money we make, have, use and spend is what we do with the one precious life that we have been given by the one whose image we bear.
Starting next week, we are going to be entering into a season of gratitude. Over several Sundays we will be talking about our impact as a church, all the reasons we have to live grateful lives, sacrificially. We’ll talk about the gift of prayer and what it means to trust that God is at work through us. The hard truth is that being church in this way, with this building, and our staff requires money. We could easily get trapped in focusing on the money required and not the gift of our whole lives given and dedicated in devotion to this story we call good news. Stewardship is not just a euphemism for fundraising. Stewardship is an invitation to the spiritual discipline of considering all that we have to give to God because we bear God’s image. While the powers and principalities of this world may compel us to pay their tax, the love of God invites us to see that what God gives freely to us becomes so much more when we give just as freely to what God is doing with, for and through us.
