I.N.I.

a sermon to be preached on after the Pentecost, a.k.a. 16 October 2005, and based on the Holy Gospel for the day, St. Matthew 22:15-22, and to be preached at Christ Lutheran Church, Elizabethtown, PA

Grace, mercy, and peace be yours in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Dear Friends in Christ,

Today’s Holy Gospel came at me like a kind of “stealth text.” What I mean is that it walked in appearing to be really pretty straightforward, and the more I worked with it, the more I could tell that something deeper and more interesting had snuck in with it. Here’s a little of the process I went through to get here this morning:

First off, I thought that the key to understanding it was going to simply be getting a grasp on what it means to “render unto” “pay to” or “give to.” Turns out that verb just means to give another party something rightly owed that party. It’s used to describe when a tree bears its fruit, or when a sharecropper turns over the harvest to the farm owner, or when a prize is awarded after a contest, or when orders are given to a soldier, or yes even when taxes are to be paid. So this giving isn’t gift giving, or giving donations to aid hurricane or earthquake victims who are strangers to us. This text’s giving indicates a previous relationship and some kind of obligation or expectation. Well, that’s pretty clear and could be easy to deal with.

Then I thought that perhaps the key puzzle to unwind would be to figure out what it is that we should be paying God. After all, I thought, Jesus spells out what we are to give Caesar, but doesn’t spell out what we owe God. Honestly, that didn’t get me too far along, because once I told myself that what we owe God is “everything” there didn’t seem to be much to add to that thought.

So it next came down to working out the what-we-owe-Caesar business. Supposing it is only “taxes”? That might make this passage pretty easy to apply. Pay Caesar taxes and be done with it. That’s all. Everything else is God’s.

Unless, of course, taking the passage that simply leads you to think that since we don’t live in the Roman empire, and since we have a President and an IRS — but not a “Caesar” well, maybe we Christians don’t actually owe anybody any taxes today. I backed off that thought when I recognized that “Caesar” was a shorthand way of saying “the secular governing authorities” and that the word has the same meaning “here and now. “

But that still leaves us with the questions of whether there is anything else we owe the secular governing authorities, and of what we should do when our taxes go to pay for things that don’t sit right with a Christian conscience: things like stockpiling weapons of mass destruction (something our own country has done at least since World War Il, if not longer).

So you can see, perhaps, how this text snuck up on me as one that seemed at first to be pretty simple and straightforward, but ended up being a lot more involved. Here’s where I believe it ends up: I believe that in this text Jesus simply teaches us that we should pay both God and the secular state their due. And that the reason we have trouble with this is that we naturally want to fall into something simpler, either loving the world or hating it, either following God’s call, or disregarding his claims on us. It’s when we recognize and celebrate the biblical teaching that our theologians have called “The Two Kingdoms” that we find the balance point between these impulses.

The balancing is difficult because we naturally want the simpler answer to life’s persistent questions. Accepting what Jesus teaches in this passage is accepting a kind of paradox. And paradoxes are hard to live with. Paradoxes are statements that are seemingly self-contradictory yet are true.

In the present case, the Pharisees and Herodians presented Jesus with an either/or question that seemed to them to have mutually exclusive answers. Jesus gave them a both/and answer, and thereby teaches us that there is some manner in which both sides must be lived in simultaneously.

The Pharisees and Herodians had teamed up to try to trick Jesus into condemning himself. Their simple question was designed, they thought, to force Jesus to do one of two things: declare Himself for or against the government; or slip up and say something that could and would be used against Him later by one side. If Jesus said “Sure, pay your taxes.” then the religious Pharisees would declare that He couldn’t possibly be the Messiah. But if He said “No good Jew should have to pay taxes to this un-kosher foreign government” then the Herodians would declare him a traitor because, of course, “we have no king buy Caesar. ” They wanted the Lord to declare himself for or against the government, which would have also declared him against or for God. Jesus instead gives them a balanced answer. He tells them to live life on a balance beam.

This text is placed in Matthew as the first of three confrontations with the Jewish religious authorities in Jerusalem during Holy Week. It happens in the Temple where Jesus had just told three parables; parables which the chief priests and Pharisees understood Jesus told about them. So they were out to get Jesus partly because of these parables. And we can use the parables as a way of answering our questions about this text.

You see, Jesus is not telling us here to serve two masters: government and God. The three parables that we’ve read and heard about the last three Sundays here in church all teach about carrying out our responsibilities to a single master, but in a way that opens up the possibility of a subsidiary responsibility. The first parable was about the father with two sons. He told them to go work in the vineyard and one said “Yes” but didn’t go work, while the other said “No” but ended up working. The second parable was about the vineyard owner who, wanting to collect his rent, sent servants who were beaten or killed by the tenants, who then even killed the owner’s son. The third parable was about the king wanting to throw a wedding feast and the way the invited guests refused to come, so the king has guests swept in from the street corners.

All three parables can illustrate what Jesus tells the Pharisees and Herodians in today’s Gospel. If we place ourselves in the parables, we are actually 1) the son whose father can tell us where to go work and when; 2) the tenants whose master who could tell us to share some of his crops with another; 3) the wedding guest whose host tells us where to sit during the reception. None of these serve two masters. But at the direction

of the father we work in this vineyard or that one. At the direction of the farm owner we divide up his crops. At the direction of the host we eat and converse with whomever else he seats at our table.

The idea in this text then becomes that the Lord — whose children, servants and guests we are — is directing us to pay taxes to the government. And we follow God’s directions. We follow his directions out of loyalty. We follow out of obligation. We follow out of love for our God. He isn’t signing us over to the secular world, or even asking us to split our loyalty. But Jesus is here recognizing the fact that as long as we live this side of Heaven, we are and continue to be citizens of various political entities. Then instead of making our lives a battleground between sacred and secular, between church and state, we live in a somewhat paradoxical balance between those two poles. We keep ourselves remembering that we live in both worlds at the same time.

Yes, indeed, we Christians have been bought and paid for by the blood of Jesus. We are His completely. But at the same time, he hasn’t taken us home yet, and expects us to live in the world as leaven and light. He is calling us to be a presence that softens the sharp edges of the sinful world.

And today’s Holy Gospel is one of the places where Jesus seems to make this clear. Yes, we pay our taxes. But we also pay our prior dues to God. We live in both worlds simultaneously. We don’t have two masters, but our One Master has here given us two sets of responsibilities.

In the world, we are to return to our government some of the money that it has minted and printed, and that comes into our hands through whatever economic system our particular government is supporting. We are, by extension, also to obey the laws it sets in place that contribute to the good and welfare of our society. Christians dare not say that they won’t obey secular laws simply because they aren’t instituted by God. Stopping at red lights, for example. Where would our society be if all God’s children gave up following the rules and regulations designed to maintain harmony between us?

But toward God we owe everything. Jesus tells us to pay to God what belongs to God. And that’s all we have. Not the leftovers after serving our secular leaders and fellow citizens, but everything. That means that when there are conflicts in claims for our loyalty we mustn’t forget where our primary allegiance lies: with God.

Christians enjoy the pleasures and benefits of the secular society in which they live. We’re involved in our world; we don’t avoid it. But because God sent his Son to take the punishment of our sins upon himself, because Jesus suffered death in our places, we willingly turn away from the world, responding joyfully and loyally when God’s call comes to us.

God’s call can place limits on our responses to the secular government. His call can refine our interactions with the political world. The Pharisees and Herodians were “taken aback by [Jesus’s] reply, and they went away and left him alone.” But you and I find peace, forgiveness and joy in our Savior’s words. His words give us freedom to be involved in the secular and political. And, best of all, there’s freedom to continue in the relationship that the Lord has begun with us.

Based on Jesus’s words here, the answer to his opponents’ question of involvement with God or government turns out to be both/and instead of either/or. We give God everything. And then with his blessing we give Caesar some. That’s what he wants. That’s good enough for us.

Amen

May the peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Amen

S.D.G.