Sermon - October 22nd, 2023 - The Rev. Emily Collette

I speak in the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Amen.

So I typically preach roughly once a month and Jack preaches the rest of them.

And you'll feel remember the last time that I preached it was about economics and money.

And then this week I opened it up and it's about not just politics, but politics and taxes.

And I started to wonder if I had like done something to make Jack upset at something

I had done.

So we'll see where this gets us.

So truthfully we're in the middle of a string of several difficult stories in Matthew's

Gospel that are all full of parables and lessons that would be difficult for the preacher.

This week's Gospel reading shows Jesus at his most clever.

He is masterfully navigating his own difficult situation, side stepping thorny traps laid

for him by some of his fiercest critics and staunchest enemies.

In this short passage Jesus not only showcases his ability to evade his opponents, but he

also has sharp and powerful instructions for his followers, words that resonate through

the centuries for us today.

This passage comes to us in the 22nd chapter of Matthew.

Jesus is now firmly on his way to the cross.

This story like several that we've heard over the past few weeks takes place between Palm

Sunday and that triumphant entry into Jerusalem where the crowds were cheering for him and

adoring him and his betrayal and his death on the cross.

In this scene Jesus is teaching in the temple.

And already we've had chief priests and elders who have come to him with difficult questions

not to learn from Jesus, but to find some way to trip him up, to catch him in a lie,

a contradiction, an impossible situation.

And Jesus has evaded all of their questions so far and has told string after string of

parables designed to turn their tricks back on the people asking them.

And in this passage Jesus is approached by Herodians or people who supported Herod in

his reign and the disciples of the Pharisees.

They too come together in an aphorious mission to trick Jesus.

They're honorifics, they call him teacher, they call his works and his wisdom good.

All of it is a ploy.

The religious powers of the day have already decided that Jesus must go, they have already

decided that they will be rid of him as soon as possible and in the most convenient means

possible.

So the trap that they devise in our gospel today is actually quite ingenious.

They seemingly leave no good exit strategy for Jesus, no loophole for him to exploit.

They ask him whether or not Jewish law would permit taxes to be paid to the Roman state

and the emperor.

This is a yes or no question that has no good answer.

If Jesus were to say yes, he risks alienating his followers, the Jews who are being forced

to pay taxes to a government who is oppressing them, who is taking their land, who is dealing

harshly with anyone who openly opposes them.

If Jesus showed even tepid support for the Roman government, the Pharisees and the Herodians

know that Jesus' supporters, at least some of them, will start to desert him.

Of course, if Jesus says no and denounces paying taxes to Rome, Jesus will swiftly find

himself taken in on charges of sedition and insurrection, one of the few crimes that Rome

dealt with immediately and brutally.

Jesus says masterfully sides up the issue entirely.

He invades the question, not only that, but then turns the onus from himself back onto

his questioners.

He calls out their schemes and tells them to bring the coins that they use to pay the

taxes in question.

And it's here that Jesus has them, the very fact that they're able to produce this coin

that contains the image of the emperor, a prohibited offense to have any graven image, and the

temple points to their own blatant and extreme hypocrisy.

It reveals clearly that their question has nothing to do with taxes or their Roman government

or even religious convictions.

When asked by Jesus whose image is on the coin, the questioners reply that it is the

emperor.

Jesus then drives the point home further, delivering that punchy and off-quoted line,

then give to the emperor what is the emperor's and give to God what is God's.

The Herodians and the emissaries from the Pharisees leave in utter amazement.

Not only has Jesus defeated their line of questioning, they're carefully and cleverly

laid out trap, but Jesus has ensnared them himself, dragging their hypocrisy into the

light, exposing their plots and their designs.

But for those who sought to harm Jesus, we know how the story will end.

They will succeed.

They will indeed find a way to be rid of Jesus whose ministry of love has so pushed them

into a power struggle that they are desperate to win.

So this story might actually then cut deeper for those of us who want to follow Jesus, those

of us who want to pattern our life around Jesus' teachings.

Jesus in this short and simple but profound phrase leaves much for us to consider about

our faith and how it should be the lens through which we view the world and the totality of

our lives.

Frustratingly the real crux of this gospel reading lies more in what Jesus leaves unsaid

than in what Jesus says.

How are we supposed to go about sorting the things in our lives that belong to the emperor

and the things that belong to God?

Jesus seems to think that we must know the answer already for he gives no instructions

beyond that.

But for us, trying our best to live our lives in good and meaningful ways.

The answers are not quite as obvious as Jesus would insinuate.

In grappling with this passage though, it is important for us to understand right at

the outset that Jesus is not actually instructing us to create a dichotomous world.

Jesus is not telling us that our lives need to be neatly sorted into two piles.

Things that belong to the empire and things that belong to God.

Early things and heavenly things, and Jesus is certainly not telling us that if those

two categories were to exist that they would be in any way equitable.

Nothing on earth comes close to competing with what is in heaven.

But at their very core, in their very essence, all the things in our lives belong to God.

As the book of first chronicles reminds us, something that many churches say at the offertory

every Sunday, all things come from God.

And everything that we give, whether to the emperor or to God, is only because God has

given to us first.

So truly in this passage, Jesus is giving us a much simpler instruction.

Everything belongs to God.

All of this belongs to God.

And we have everything that we are.

And so then, what do we do with that?

How do we learn to structure our lives in such a way that acknowledges that the gifts

that we've been given are ultimately from God?

We're in the middle of a stewardship season where our stewardship committee has asked us

to do just that, to consider the riches of our time, our talents, and our treasures,

and how we're using them.

Just no surprise that they chose the lens of first chronicle to frame this stewardship

season.

All things do come from God.

We're not giving from our own abundance, but we only ever give from God's abundance to

us.

Jesus is not naive.

Of course, our time and our talents and our treasures, our wealth, our gifts, our goods,

will be used for both worldly things and heavenly things.

And it's not a bad thing.

We're not a bad person for doing that.

But Jesus' message today is more of an urgent and a poignant reminder.

We cannot, in the push and pull of our lives and the busyness and the fullness of our days,

we cannot forget to make space for God.

We cannot forget to set aside the things that belong to God.

Indeed, in a fully ordered and right life, the kind of life that Jesus desires for us,

we would set aside those things first, those things that belong to God, and fill in everything

else after that.

Jesus is not asking us to split our lives into earthly and heavenly things, things that

belong to the empire and things that belong to God, because in truth, the whole of our

lives and everything in them belongs to God.

The trick for us then becomes learning to use our lives to build up God's kingdom on

earth through all of our actions and our choices and our moments.

So if all things come from you, Lord, then in that generous abundance may we learn to

give generously to.

Amen.

Thank you.