This sermon was preached for Sunday, October 22 at St. Mark's, East Longmeadow. The texts for this sermon were: Psalm 99, 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10, and Matthew 22:15-22.
In our Nicene Creed, the one we say each week after the sermon, we recite that Jesus suffered under Pontius Pilate. Why do we include that little tidbit, other than to torture people with difficult-to-pronounce foreign names? I was taught that it serves to locate Jesus to a particular time and a particular place. So we remember that God became incarnate in a specific moment in history. As it happens, Jesus’ moment was filled with controversy and strife - revolt against the Roman occupation of Palestine was brewing and people were choosing sides in what would soon explode into war, destruction of the temple, mass murder, and exile.
What happened when the religious leadership attempted to pin Jesus down to a particular political stance on the most controversial issues of his day? We have one such example in our Gospel passage today. The topic: whether to pay the exploitative taxation under the Roman Empire. On one side, the Pharisees, a religious sect who were critical of Rome and its intrusion into Jewish life. And on the other, the Herodians, a political faction that supported the Jewish puppet dynasty installed by the Roman Empire. Choose yes to taxes, and Jesus is betraying his profession of loyalty to God alone - the people would turn on him. Choose no, and Jesus is a radical revolutionary, drawing the wrath of Rome. They’ve sprung a trap.
Jesus knows his questioners are not sincere. They aren’t authentically seeking to learn what it means to live morally in a complicated time. They are asking to diminish his power and discredit his name - putting him to the test. Jesus refuses to give them an easy answer - he effectively puts the question back to them. He asks them for a Roman coin - which they have. With that simple act, Jesus demonstrates that they themselves are participants in the Roman imperial economy - it’s inescapable and to claim otherwise is hypocrisy. Then, Jesus makes them point out that the coin is the emperor’s. Caesar’s economic system is Caesar’s, he is saying. You are caught up in it, we all are, so figure out how to play by its rules with integrity. But Jesus doesn’t stop there: give to God’s what is God’s, he adds. You’re part of another kingdom, too, the kingdom of heaven that is even now bursting in. Instead of wasting your energy locking each other into untenable, ideologically pure stances, take responsibility for how you are caring for, respecting, fighting for, all that is most precious to God.
Today, Jesus’ homeland is once again on fire with violence, terror, oppression, and resistance - the truth is conflict has never really ended there, has it? Only waxes and wanes in intensity and egregiousness. As a Christian leader with friends and colleagues on both sides, Jewish and Muslim, Israeli, Arab, and indigenous, this moment feels like a trap. One of those moments when taking either side - any side - feels like a betrayal, and taking no side feels like cowardice. Speaking seems like it will only add to the pain, but so does silence.
In moments like these, I long to turn to Jesus to say, okay, whose side are you on? To pin him down to a clear-cut political position or slogan that I can just wave around. Pass on the trap to him. But Jesus will not let us wriggle out of the hard work of discernment that easily.
The Gospel story today offered me no easy answers, but it did point me back to three clues as to what authentically following Jesus could look like in this moment. First, Jesus’ separation between what is Caesar's and what is God’s affirms that there can be, there should be, moments where we set politics aside. There are times to let go of the winning and the losing, the scoring of points, the vying for power, in favor of just showing up. The importance of this was driven home to me last Thursday night, when the Interfaith Council gathered for an interfaith vigil for peace. Islamic Society representative Dr. Bajwa opened the vigil by asking the prayer leaders to refrain from politics and history, debates and the disputing of facts. We were there, rabbis and imams and Christian clergy, Jews and Muslims and Christians and others, to lament together, to long for peace together, to hold and honor one another’s deep grief. We were there to recommit to the project of belonging to one another even when it is tough, even when we fundamentally disagree, even when parts of our wider extended communities are killing and dying at one another’s hands. Moments when Americans can do that authentically, safely, across all sorts of differences feel fewer and further between these days. We have to seek them out, or purposefully create them. And when the opportunity arrives or the invitation comes, it is vital, it is faithful, to show up and hold space for the rage, the grief, and the fear. To say to our neighbor in pain: I bear witness to your suffering, you are not alone, I will not leave you to face rising hatred and vitriol on your own.
Two: Jesus doesn't let us off the hook, either. He doesn’t give us the option of swearing off politics altogether. He still tasks us with participating in a broken economy, with civic engagement, and, yes, with the paying of taxes. We don’t get to stay aloof and apart as Christians. We don’t get to turn off the news or refuse to have an opinion. We don't get to pretend we can opt out and keep our hands perfectly clean. We have to find a way to authentically live out our values in the midst of the mess of the world as it actually is.
Most of all, Jesus brings us back to the particular. Despite their goading, Jesus refuses to offer a clear absolute. Jesus brings it down into the immediate moment, he makes it personal for the people standing right in front of him. He says, bring me a coin, the coin you actually have with you in your pocket right now. Let’s talk about what you will do with that coin. These values you’re debating - what do they actually mean for your life, right now? What do they mean for what kind of sibling, child, neighbor, and yes, citizen, you want to be? What stance is just words, jargon, taking a side - and what action actually bears fruit?
Paul writes to the church in Thessalonica: “For we know, brothers and sisters beloved by God, that he has chosen you, because 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.”
God has chosen you.
I’m going to ask you to look at your hands once more. Notice their size, their age, their ability. They are probably not the small hands of a child, but they’re not omnipotent either.
This whole month, we’ve been reflecting on the gifts God has given us to give away. Those gifts include all the resources and abilities at our disposal - our voice, our location, our connections, our vote, our power. God has chosen you, in this particular moment in history, in this community, in all your identities. There is a way to use those gifts to bring more love, kindness, and justice into the world - in fact, there are many ways, and not one of them is perfect and harmless and without flaw. Participate anyway. Use them anyway.
When you feel powerless and paralyzed and traps are all around, when you feel like anything you say or do could make things worse, when you feel tempted to just throw up your hands and turn away, take a deep breath and start again from where and who you are. Look at your hands, take out the coins in your pocket, scroll through the contacts in your phone. Focus once more on the particular. When in doubt, begin again from your own, actual neighbor, the ones you already know, your Jewish family members, your indigenous friends, your Arab neighbors, your Muslim colleagues, anyone who in this moment is isolated and ostracized and broken for any reason, even if that’s yourself. Turn to the ones whose suffering you can see and feel and touch. Set about loving them.
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