This sermon was preached for a joint St. Andrew's - St. Michael's online service for Sunday, October 18. The texts for this sermon were: Exodus 33:12-23; Psalm 99; 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10; and Matthew 22:15-22.
When we were kids in class, we loved to play what I’m sure is an ancient and universal game much beloved by students everywhere. The entirety of the game consisted of trying to get our teacher to ramble off-topic for as long as possible. It didn’t matter about what as long as it wasn’t the lesson on hand. Over the course of the year we'd learn each teacher's particular weakness. Some teachers could be tempted to talk about something obscure they loved, while other teachers would get riled up and go on and on about something that infuriated them. The really clever teachers still managed to teach us something even as they spiraled down the rabbit hole – but that wasn’t the point for us. The point was wresting some semblance of control over what was happening in the classroom. And it was awesome when we could.
Jesus is in his last week of life here in this passage from Matthew. He's got a specific message to impart to humankind but there’s plenty others are doing their darnedest to get him off track. Here, we've got two very different and opposing groups: a religious sect, the Pharisees, and political fanatics, the Herodians. But in this moment, the two are united in their goal to wrest control of the situation away from Jesus, or better yet, to get him to say something so offensive that his followers turn away. So they ask him a controversial question whose answer is guaranteed to either offend the religious folks, or tick off the political ones. But Jesus sees through their game and refuses to play along. First, he exposes the hypocrisy of the religious leaders by revealing they had carried a graven image of a foreign god into the temple. So is their question really about lawfulness? And then Jesus pulls the focus back to God, always to God. Give to God the things that are God’s.
There will always be people, things, corporations, and other forces in our lives attempting to lead us off-topic. So, so many distractions. And not all of them are bad, and plenty are so subtle we can’t even recognize them in the moment.
I had a very enlightening conversation with one of our parents the other week about all the time pressures and commitments that press on parents these days. Your kids get involved in all these activities, she explained. Music, sports, service organizations, church. And each of those things need volunteers to support them, and you want to help out. But soon you find yourself in committee meetings at dinner time and organizing events on the weekends and squeezing errands into the workday. You’re pulled in so many directions at once that you don’t have time to do what you had set out to do in the first place: to parent your child. The original purpose – the calling from God that set you down on this path.
But I don’t think it’s just parents, is it? Or teachers. It can happen to any individual – it can happen to organizations, too. Even churches. Sometimes we lose track of the essential mission we set out to do can be precisely because we are so passionate about some particular aspect or so infuriated by another. We can let ourselves get trapped into straying down rabbit holes, not only in our speeches, but in how we spend our time, our money, our life.
But Jesus in Holy Week, Jesus who is running out of time in the temple, reminds us to step back, recognize how we’re being trapped. It’s vital to remember that Jesus very deliberately does not tell his followers not to participate in world about them. He’s being egged on to order his disciples to turn away completely from the political and economic machinations of their day, and he doesn’t. What he insists on, instead, is clarity. Be clear about what purpose God has called you to. Be clear about what of your life you owe to God. Participate, but don’t get distracted.
I spoke with a parent this summer who was feeling a bit guilty about how much their family had stepped back from church during the craziness of the spring. I spoke to a lot of families that felt that way, actually. But this particular parent then shared with me an absolutely delightful story about a hilariously curious question their child had asked about God and bodily functions and the wonderful conversation that ensued. And I thought: well that there, that was faith formation. You’ve been doing it all along.
Being part of church often means being asked to give of yourself, your time, your money. I know because I’m often the one asking! Sometimes, we, too, can be yet another distraction leading you off-topic. And, sometimes, you’ll know in your heart it’s the voice of God calling you to give back to God’s what is God’s. Untangling which is which, that’s the task of living a Godly life.
Being an imitator of Christ takes guts. It takes guts to admit to what’s been pulling us away from God and what’s most important. But Jesus is here, in the voice of a friend, a priest, a parishioner, calling you back to God.
Comments
Post a Comment