Matthew 5:1-12
All Saints Day: October 30, 2011
I have, my whole life – well maybe not my whole life…probably only since I was about 6 – made fun of my mother for being the world’s foremost “Pollyanna”. I’m not kidding – she can find a silver lining in every situation. It drives me nuts. And I’m not alone – it’s a family pastime to make fun of her for this. But consider this in our defense: I’m 8 years old. We are on a family vacation to NYC. Three kids in the back seat, fighting, I’m sure, tired of being in the car, we’re trying to get to the city, traffic is terrible, and we get stuck in the Holland Tunnel. My dad undoubtedly selected some choice word for the occasion that is not sermon appropriate. The fight in the backseat probably just intensified because now, with the light gone, my brother could more easily torture us without parental retribution. And my mother? My mother breaks through the negative energy in the car with, “I LOVE the Holland Tunnel.” And seriously, she probably does.
All of this is by way of saying, please don’t tell my mom about my sermon today. I will lose all rights to making fun of her. This is a Pollyanna sermon: You see, I LOVE the church. I love the church with a capital “C”, and I love this church. I know there are reasons not to – just like the Holland Tunnel there are potholes, graffiti, pollution, and long stretches of gray. But, bottom line: I love the church.
Now, I’m not saying the potholes aren’t important to pay attention to and fix. You don’t have to tell me. Pollyanna is not my normal attire. Cynical Sue, my mom calls me – she can dish it as well as take it. I know the church has its foibles, big and small. I know hypocrisy is rampant. I know wars are waged in the name of religion. I know all the bad stories about people in power. But when I look at the church in general, and think about all the little things – all the things that happen in churches all over the world, all the visiting, caring, giving, serving, loving – I think I get what Jesus was saying when he sat down with his disciples on that mountain and told them how “blessed” the people in the crowds were.
The people in the crowds Jesus is talking about were not heroes – not in the Roman sense anyway. They were not the stars of society. They were the masses of people, mostly struggling to get by, yet somehow wanting to follow Jesus…to be faithful in the midst of their everyday lives. These are the meek, the grieving, the reviled, the downtrodden, the persecuted, the nobodies. And Jesus calls them “blessed.”
There has been, as you can probably imagine, a great deal of talk over the last 2,000 years about what Jesus meant when he called them blessed. Did he mean they were happy? Did he mean they were better than everyone else? Did he mean even though their lives sucked now, they would get to heaven? We can’t know for sure. We do know such sayings were not uncommon in the ancient world. It was a common form to say, “blessed are…,” and then give a list of people who were worthy of honor. This was something like how Time Magazine chooses the person of the year every year; or doing a whole special edition of the magazine for someone important when they die – it’s a public way of saying “these are the important ones.”
But Jesus was being ironic at least when he did his “blessed” list. These were not people who usually found themselves on such lists. I think Jesus was telling the disciples, “this movement, this God’s kingdom thing – these are the people who we’re talking about. This is going to happen with the ordinary folks…the ones who, with all their gifts and foibles, are trying to live faithfully in the midst of an oppressive empire, dire poverty, natural disaster, and every day problems. These are your saints. Enjoy.”
When I looked back over this past year at who in our congregation has died, Jesus’ words of blessings certainly seem to apply. The poor, the meek, the peacemakers, the ones who worked for justice, the ones who suffered, grieved, and those who extended mercy to others. There was no special edition of Time Magazine featuring their lives when any of these folks passed on…they weren’t on those lists of blessed ones. But they are on Jesus’ list of blessed ones – of that there is no doubt. And they are a part of a long, long, line of faithful saints in this congregation.
Please join me in remembering the saints of this congregation who passed on this year:
Mary Jo Adams: Born May 26, 1946. Died January 29, 2011
Mary Jo loved people: loved to be around people, loved to talk to people, loved to be involved in people’s lives, people’s problems. For her family, she was both the rock and the glue that held them together through good and bad. For her friends, her church, her clients, she was always there.
Dorothy Johnson: Born April 21, 1923. Died February 17, 2011
Dorothy was full of life, loved God and church, found comfort in God’s grace. She was refreshingly honest and straightforward, and had a wonderful sense of humor. Her friends say you could talk to her about anything. She kept complete confidence, listened carefully, and loved unconditionally.
Warren Porter: Born February 22, 1928. Died April 23, 2011
Warren was a farmer – in practice and deep in his heart. He loved land and knew God best through creation. Warren was a little “rough around the edges,” but he valued the people in his life immensely, many of whom are in this room right now. And he believed in hard work, family, and home.
Imogene Logan: Born September 12, 1914. Died May 20, 2011
Jean was strong, vibrant, feisty, and funny. She did not have a lot of wealth in the material sense, but that was never important to Jean. She found joy in relationships, in having fun, in playing games, and in family.
Shane Cook: Born September 28, 1934. Died June 10, 2011
Shane spent her life seeking justice for the underdogs in the world. She advocated for human rights, was an early feminist, fought for inclusion of gay and lesbians, and always spoke up for those on the margins of life.
Randy Kisling: Born October 28, 1956. Died July 16, 2011
Randy’s life was not an easy one. But to know him was to know someone with a positive attitude, an appreciation for what he had, a love of people (and cats…and cars ), an indelible spirit for life. He was someone who gave of himself to others, even when he himself was in great need.
Velma Martindale: Born August 13, 1918. Died October 3, 2011
Velma was quiet, kind, gentle, and incredibly giving. Velma volunteered to do pretty much anything in the church over the years; church and God being at the core of Velma’s life and who she was. Velma wasn’t loud, she didn’t make a spectacle of her faith; instead she quietly knew God, and lived faithfully, showing others through her actions what she knew of God’s love and grace.
My housemate was telling me about a story he heard recently on a podcast. The story comes from a talk by Ram Dass, the Harvard psychologist turned Hindu seeker. Ram Dass had a friend named Milton Friedman, who was a speechwriter in Washington, but not THE Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize winning proponent of laissez-faire capitalism and trickle-down economics. One day Friedman got a call from a man who said he represented a large church that had found itself with a great deal of surplus funds, and he was calling to ask him where they should best invest their money. Friedman, unsure what was happening, said, "Well, have you considered giving it to the poor?" After a long pause, the voice on the other end asked, "Is this the real Milton Friedman?"... to which the friend replied "is this the real church?"
This is the real church. Right here: First Presbyterian Church. We stand on the shoulders of amazing, faithful people – the ones Jesus called “blessed.” Not perfect people; faithful people, doing the small faithful things that make up the work of the church. And we are amazing, faithful people. Not perfect; faithful. Trying to listen for God’s voice amongst so many loud voices clamoring for our attention. Trying to follow Jesus in a world that can be confusing, confounding, painful, and overwhelming. We follow in the footsteps of people who showed up: For church, for each other, for the least among us.
It’s All Saints Day: And we don’t just honor those who have passed on by remembering them. We honor them by continuing the story of the faithful. We honor them by remembering that we too are the Saints: humble, meek, poor, suffering, grieving…the rag-tag bunch of people whom God has chosen to love and to partner with in continuing the story of creation. And so we show up: For church, for each other, for the least among us. We show up to listen for God’s call and to follow as best we can given all our gifts and our foibles. Blessed are the Saints: those of the past, and those here today. Amen.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Where Shall I Live?
Matthew 22:15-22
October 16, 2011
I got a letter home from preschool a couple of weeks ago that was talking about Grinnell Homecoming. That whole week there were going to be activities and special days in celebration of homecoming. On Monday they were supposed to wear goofy socks, on Tuesday Hawaiian shirts, on Friday they were supposed to wear orange and black, of course.
Before I read the whole thing, I glanced at the bottom portion of the letter. It was a tear off form that asked for a parent’s signature. I expected it to be a permission slip – you know, like, “I give my permission for you to put my child on a bus with no seat belts and drive at excessive speeds.” Instead, it was an “opt out” form. You had to sign it if you didn’t want your child to get a tiger paw tattoo on Thursday of that week.
In other words, on Thursday, every child was going to be branded with a tiger paw in a show of team spirit. My child is in preschool. Technically, she doesn’t even go to public school yet – her preschool just happens to be in a public school building. At age four, they want to tattoo her with a tiger paw so she can start learning that she is a Grinnell Tiger.
Now, I’m not against team spirit. I was in sports. I even marched at half time in the marching band at football games on cold October evenings! Okay – it was in the dome, so it didn’t require quite as much sacrifice as one might think, but still. I had team spirit.
But looking at this letter I found myself annoyed because my daughter was being taught at such a young age that we have “teams,” and that you root for “your team,” and that you want to “win,” and that school spirit includes things like branding yourself. You live in Grinnell – so that makes you a tiger. Grrrrrrrr!
Then, as the week went on, annoyance began to give way to a deeper level of disturbance. I began to think about how hard it is to raise a child to believe that her first and most important allegiance is to God. We like to give allegiance to things. We like to give allegiance to football teams, countries, families, ideas, political parties, religions and denominations. And we like to show our allegiance: with team shirts, flags, buttons, the way we dress, rings. We like images that signal to people what we believe, where we live, who we love, and how we vote. And the darker flip side of that is that teams, countries, families, political parties, like it when we do this because it means they have some claim on us.
In the midst of it all, I found myself wishing for a repeal of the second commandment: “You shall not make for yourself a carved image.” Odd wish, I know, for the probably one parent who signed the opt out form for the tattoo, but what I want is to be able to have a tangible image for God that I can tattoo on my daughter. Something equally as catchy as an orange tiger paw, as exciting, something that gets people as worked up as a mascot on game day. I want Lydia to have something tangible that tells her, “This is the team we are on, and it’s different in so many ways.” But darn that 2nd commandment, we don’t get to do that. No images of God for us.
It was worse for 1st century Jews. Let’s be clear, the issue of taxes was not an issue of team loyalty. But it was an issue of the power of images and the things that make claims on our lives.
They come to Jesus and ask: “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor?” This was a volatile question. Ever since the Jewish homeland had been added to the Roman Empire in 63 BCE, Rome had required a large annual “tribute” from the Jewish people. Rome didn’t collect the tribute directly from its individual subjects. Instead, local authorities were responsible for its collection and payment. It’s these authorities who send the Pharisees and Herodians to Jesus.
Though tribute included a per capita, or “head,” tax levied on all adult Jewish men, the annual tax due to Rome included much more. Most of this was gathered through taxes on land and agricultural production. All of this together contributed to “tribute” to Rome. It was the way the empire profited from its possessions.
Roman taxation was onerous not only because it was economically burdensome. It also symbolized the Jewish homeland’s lack of sovereignty. It was a constant reminder that their allegiance was to Caesar, first and foremost. They didn’t live in God’s creation, they lived in Roman territory – they had to do what Caesar said, they had to obey a king they didn’t choose or want, they were subject to laws that had nothing to do with the Torah. For Jews, paying taxes hit hard on both a practical and symbolic level. It was economically painful – impoverishing people who were already struggling to get by. And, it was a painful reminder of where they lived – Caesar’s realm…it was a reminder of the oppression of the Jews by an alien lord.
The spokesmen of the authorities set a skillful trap for Jesus. Either answer would get him in trouble. If Jesus were to answer no, you don’t have to pay taxes, he could be charged with advocating denial of Roman authority – in short, with sedition. He could be imprisoned or killed. If he were to answer yes, he risked discrediting himself with the crowd, who for both economic and religious reasons resented Roman rule and taxation.
Jesus’ response is masterful. As he so often does, he turns the question back on his opponents. He sets a counter-trap when he asks to see a denarius. A denarius was a silver coin equal to approximately a day’s wage, and it was used to pay taxes. His interrogators produce one. Jesus looks at it and then asks, “Whose head is this, and whose title?” And we all know the answer: “The emperor’s.”
Jesus’ strategy has led his questioners to disclose to the crowd that they have a coin with Caesar’s image on it. Immediately, they are discredited. Why? In the Jewish homeland in the first century, there were two types of coins. One type, because of the Jewish prohibition of graven images, had no human or animal images. The second type (including Roman coinage) had images. Many Jews would not carry or use coins of the second type. But Jesus’ questioners in the story did. The coin they produced had Caesar’s image, along with the standard and idolatrous inscription heralding Caesar as divine and Son of God. They are exposed as part of the politics of collaboration.
And so, even before the famous words about rendering to Caesar, Jesus won the encounter. But Jesus isn’t all about winning encounters. He goes on to respond to their first question so that people might learn more about who God is and what God is up to in the world.
He says, “Give to the emperor – or Caesar – the things that are the emperor’s. Give to God the things that are God’s.” Following immediately upon the disclosure that they are carrying a coin with Caesar’s image, the first half of the saying means simply, “It’s Caesar’s coin – give it back to him.”
This is in effect a nonanswer to the larger question, “Should we pay taxes to Caesar?” It can’t be seen as an endorsement of paying taxes to Rome or Rome’s rule. If Jesus had wanted to say, “Pay taxes to Caesar,” he could have simply answered yes to their question. There would have been no need for the drama of asking to see the coins of the Pharisees and Herodians.
The nonanswer is not simply a dismissal of the issue. The second half of Jesus’ response is both evocative and provocative: “Give to God the things that are God’s.” It raises the question, “What belongs to Caesar, and what belongs to God?” Or rather, where do I live: Caesar’s realm or God’s? And is there any way to live in both? What the Jewish people knew was that as long as they wanted to stay alive and out of prison, they had to subject themselves to Caesar. But they also knew that you can’t live in God’s realm while subjecting yourself to Caesar – God alone is lord.
Jesus’ answer was, in part, compassionate – not so much for those who were asking, but for those who were listening and struggling with how to be faithful to God and Rome at the same time. Yes, Caesar’s image in on the coin – yes you have to pay taxes – yes oppression is real and you are subjected to Caesar even though you didn’t choose it. But, that is not the end of the story.
Jesus asks the Pharisees and Herodians what image in on the coin. As soon as he used that word, “image,” he was speaking a language the people understood. Images were a big deal in the Jewish faith; and they were a big deal for two reasons: First, there was the 2nd commandment. They knew images that tried to make claims on your life were a BIG no, no. But the second reason the word “image” would have struck a deep chord for the Jews is because they knew their scriptures by heart, and they knew of the creation story. As much as the Lord’s prayer is solidified in our memory, so was the passage about God’s creation of humankind solidified in theirs:
Genesis says, “Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness;” So God created humankind in God’s image.”
“Give to God what is God’s,” Jesus says. Every good Jew would have realized the freedom in that statement. Just as the coin is stamped with Caesar’s image, and so belongs to Caesar, you are stamped with the image of God and so belong to God. And not only are you stamped with this image, but every part of creation. Even Caesar, for goodness sake, is stamped with the image of God. It can be done, he was saying. You can live in God’s realm even while a citizen of an oppressive regime, because you are stamped more indelibly than the coin…because when you answer the question of what belongs to God, you see that nothing belongs to Caesar that doesn’t also belong to God.
Notice, he’s not saying they are compatible, in the sense that you can be a good Roman citizen and a good Jew by just following the laws and rulers of both. Instead, he’s reminding them that no tattoo can obscure their true identity…you can have my coins…you can’t take away who I am at my core: a child of God. That’s what makes me who I am and what will determine how I act in this world…and that alone.
This question is pertinent today. There are so many things vying for our allegiance. We are not subjected to oppression and rule in the same way the faithful people of Jesus’ day were. But we are asked to give allegiance to many things. And the temptation is to believe that we can separate our lives into compartments, with our religion being just one aspect of our life. I’m a Christian here, an American here, a Grinnell Tiger here. In fact, many people have used this very passage from the bible to argue for such separations.
But this is not a passage about the separation between church and state. This is not saying that God and Caesar are equals that we choose between, nor are they symbolic names for separate realms. Quite the opposite is true. Humans bear God’s image. Wherever we live and operate – whether in the social, economic, political, athletic, or religious realm – we belong to God. Our primary loyalties do not switch when we move out of the church and into the voting booth.
This text actually operates subversively, as we know from Jesus’ life. In every context in which governments – or any other entity for that matter – act as if people have no higher commitments than to the state, or team, or party, or denomination, the fact that we and everything are stamped with God’s image means such things must be resisted. When the divine image is denied and people are made by political circumstances to be less than human, then Jesus brings a revolutionary word, a word that has to be spoken to both the oppressed and the oppressor. No matter who you are, where your image is stamped, or what authority you think you have, we have a higher allegiance to God and live in a realm where all people are equal because all people are stamped with God’s image. It is that reality to which I answer, even if it gets me in trouble with Caesar.
We are not to create images of God and worship them. But we do have an image of God, and it is compelling – and if we remember what it all means, it can inspire radical allegiance that will guide us as citizens of many complicated realms. We are stamped with the image of God. It’s not visible, but it’s a tattoo I won’t, in fact can’t opt out of. And it means in every aspect of life, no matter where I physically reside, no matter what other images I take on and bear that show my allegiance – either by force or voluntarily – my true residence is in God’s realm. And that frees me from secondary claims on my life. That frees me to act differently than those around me. That frees me because I know a reality that can’t be changed or taken away. And that has the power to undermine any realm that seeks to oppress or dehumanize us or others. And thanks be to God for this tattoo. Amen.
October 16, 2011
I got a letter home from preschool a couple of weeks ago that was talking about Grinnell Homecoming. That whole week there were going to be activities and special days in celebration of homecoming. On Monday they were supposed to wear goofy socks, on Tuesday Hawaiian shirts, on Friday they were supposed to wear orange and black, of course.
Before I read the whole thing, I glanced at the bottom portion of the letter. It was a tear off form that asked for a parent’s signature. I expected it to be a permission slip – you know, like, “I give my permission for you to put my child on a bus with no seat belts and drive at excessive speeds.” Instead, it was an “opt out” form. You had to sign it if you didn’t want your child to get a tiger paw tattoo on Thursday of that week.
In other words, on Thursday, every child was going to be branded with a tiger paw in a show of team spirit. My child is in preschool. Technically, she doesn’t even go to public school yet – her preschool just happens to be in a public school building. At age four, they want to tattoo her with a tiger paw so she can start learning that she is a Grinnell Tiger.
Now, I’m not against team spirit. I was in sports. I even marched at half time in the marching band at football games on cold October evenings! Okay – it was in the dome, so it didn’t require quite as much sacrifice as one might think, but still. I had team spirit.
But looking at this letter I found myself annoyed because my daughter was being taught at such a young age that we have “teams,” and that you root for “your team,” and that you want to “win,” and that school spirit includes things like branding yourself. You live in Grinnell – so that makes you a tiger. Grrrrrrrr!
Then, as the week went on, annoyance began to give way to a deeper level of disturbance. I began to think about how hard it is to raise a child to believe that her first and most important allegiance is to God. We like to give allegiance to things. We like to give allegiance to football teams, countries, families, ideas, political parties, religions and denominations. And we like to show our allegiance: with team shirts, flags, buttons, the way we dress, rings. We like images that signal to people what we believe, where we live, who we love, and how we vote. And the darker flip side of that is that teams, countries, families, political parties, like it when we do this because it means they have some claim on us.
In the midst of it all, I found myself wishing for a repeal of the second commandment: “You shall not make for yourself a carved image.” Odd wish, I know, for the probably one parent who signed the opt out form for the tattoo, but what I want is to be able to have a tangible image for God that I can tattoo on my daughter. Something equally as catchy as an orange tiger paw, as exciting, something that gets people as worked up as a mascot on game day. I want Lydia to have something tangible that tells her, “This is the team we are on, and it’s different in so many ways.” But darn that 2nd commandment, we don’t get to do that. No images of God for us.
It was worse for 1st century Jews. Let’s be clear, the issue of taxes was not an issue of team loyalty. But it was an issue of the power of images and the things that make claims on our lives.
They come to Jesus and ask: “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor?” This was a volatile question. Ever since the Jewish homeland had been added to the Roman Empire in 63 BCE, Rome had required a large annual “tribute” from the Jewish people. Rome didn’t collect the tribute directly from its individual subjects. Instead, local authorities were responsible for its collection and payment. It’s these authorities who send the Pharisees and Herodians to Jesus.
Though tribute included a per capita, or “head,” tax levied on all adult Jewish men, the annual tax due to Rome included much more. Most of this was gathered through taxes on land and agricultural production. All of this together contributed to “tribute” to Rome. It was the way the empire profited from its possessions.
Roman taxation was onerous not only because it was economically burdensome. It also symbolized the Jewish homeland’s lack of sovereignty. It was a constant reminder that their allegiance was to Caesar, first and foremost. They didn’t live in God’s creation, they lived in Roman territory – they had to do what Caesar said, they had to obey a king they didn’t choose or want, they were subject to laws that had nothing to do with the Torah. For Jews, paying taxes hit hard on both a practical and symbolic level. It was economically painful – impoverishing people who were already struggling to get by. And, it was a painful reminder of where they lived – Caesar’s realm…it was a reminder of the oppression of the Jews by an alien lord.
The spokesmen of the authorities set a skillful trap for Jesus. Either answer would get him in trouble. If Jesus were to answer no, you don’t have to pay taxes, he could be charged with advocating denial of Roman authority – in short, with sedition. He could be imprisoned or killed. If he were to answer yes, he risked discrediting himself with the crowd, who for both economic and religious reasons resented Roman rule and taxation.
Jesus’ response is masterful. As he so often does, he turns the question back on his opponents. He sets a counter-trap when he asks to see a denarius. A denarius was a silver coin equal to approximately a day’s wage, and it was used to pay taxes. His interrogators produce one. Jesus looks at it and then asks, “Whose head is this, and whose title?” And we all know the answer: “The emperor’s.”
Jesus’ strategy has led his questioners to disclose to the crowd that they have a coin with Caesar’s image on it. Immediately, they are discredited. Why? In the Jewish homeland in the first century, there were two types of coins. One type, because of the Jewish prohibition of graven images, had no human or animal images. The second type (including Roman coinage) had images. Many Jews would not carry or use coins of the second type. But Jesus’ questioners in the story did. The coin they produced had Caesar’s image, along with the standard and idolatrous inscription heralding Caesar as divine and Son of God. They are exposed as part of the politics of collaboration.
And so, even before the famous words about rendering to Caesar, Jesus won the encounter. But Jesus isn’t all about winning encounters. He goes on to respond to their first question so that people might learn more about who God is and what God is up to in the world.
He says, “Give to the emperor – or Caesar – the things that are the emperor’s. Give to God the things that are God’s.” Following immediately upon the disclosure that they are carrying a coin with Caesar’s image, the first half of the saying means simply, “It’s Caesar’s coin – give it back to him.”
This is in effect a nonanswer to the larger question, “Should we pay taxes to Caesar?” It can’t be seen as an endorsement of paying taxes to Rome or Rome’s rule. If Jesus had wanted to say, “Pay taxes to Caesar,” he could have simply answered yes to their question. There would have been no need for the drama of asking to see the coins of the Pharisees and Herodians.
The nonanswer is not simply a dismissal of the issue. The second half of Jesus’ response is both evocative and provocative: “Give to God the things that are God’s.” It raises the question, “What belongs to Caesar, and what belongs to God?” Or rather, where do I live: Caesar’s realm or God’s? And is there any way to live in both? What the Jewish people knew was that as long as they wanted to stay alive and out of prison, they had to subject themselves to Caesar. But they also knew that you can’t live in God’s realm while subjecting yourself to Caesar – God alone is lord.
Jesus’ answer was, in part, compassionate – not so much for those who were asking, but for those who were listening and struggling with how to be faithful to God and Rome at the same time. Yes, Caesar’s image in on the coin – yes you have to pay taxes – yes oppression is real and you are subjected to Caesar even though you didn’t choose it. But, that is not the end of the story.
Jesus asks the Pharisees and Herodians what image in on the coin. As soon as he used that word, “image,” he was speaking a language the people understood. Images were a big deal in the Jewish faith; and they were a big deal for two reasons: First, there was the 2nd commandment. They knew images that tried to make claims on your life were a BIG no, no. But the second reason the word “image” would have struck a deep chord for the Jews is because they knew their scriptures by heart, and they knew of the creation story. As much as the Lord’s prayer is solidified in our memory, so was the passage about God’s creation of humankind solidified in theirs:
Genesis says, “Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness;” So God created humankind in God’s image.”
“Give to God what is God’s,” Jesus says. Every good Jew would have realized the freedom in that statement. Just as the coin is stamped with Caesar’s image, and so belongs to Caesar, you are stamped with the image of God and so belong to God. And not only are you stamped with this image, but every part of creation. Even Caesar, for goodness sake, is stamped with the image of God. It can be done, he was saying. You can live in God’s realm even while a citizen of an oppressive regime, because you are stamped more indelibly than the coin…because when you answer the question of what belongs to God, you see that nothing belongs to Caesar that doesn’t also belong to God.
Notice, he’s not saying they are compatible, in the sense that you can be a good Roman citizen and a good Jew by just following the laws and rulers of both. Instead, he’s reminding them that no tattoo can obscure their true identity…you can have my coins…you can’t take away who I am at my core: a child of God. That’s what makes me who I am and what will determine how I act in this world…and that alone.
This question is pertinent today. There are so many things vying for our allegiance. We are not subjected to oppression and rule in the same way the faithful people of Jesus’ day were. But we are asked to give allegiance to many things. And the temptation is to believe that we can separate our lives into compartments, with our religion being just one aspect of our life. I’m a Christian here, an American here, a Grinnell Tiger here. In fact, many people have used this very passage from the bible to argue for such separations.
But this is not a passage about the separation between church and state. This is not saying that God and Caesar are equals that we choose between, nor are they symbolic names for separate realms. Quite the opposite is true. Humans bear God’s image. Wherever we live and operate – whether in the social, economic, political, athletic, or religious realm – we belong to God. Our primary loyalties do not switch when we move out of the church and into the voting booth.
This text actually operates subversively, as we know from Jesus’ life. In every context in which governments – or any other entity for that matter – act as if people have no higher commitments than to the state, or team, or party, or denomination, the fact that we and everything are stamped with God’s image means such things must be resisted. When the divine image is denied and people are made by political circumstances to be less than human, then Jesus brings a revolutionary word, a word that has to be spoken to both the oppressed and the oppressor. No matter who you are, where your image is stamped, or what authority you think you have, we have a higher allegiance to God and live in a realm where all people are equal because all people are stamped with God’s image. It is that reality to which I answer, even if it gets me in trouble with Caesar.
We are not to create images of God and worship them. But we do have an image of God, and it is compelling – and if we remember what it all means, it can inspire radical allegiance that will guide us as citizens of many complicated realms. We are stamped with the image of God. It’s not visible, but it’s a tattoo I won’t, in fact can’t opt out of. And it means in every aspect of life, no matter where I physically reside, no matter what other images I take on and bear that show my allegiance – either by force or voluntarily – my true residence is in God’s realm. And that frees me from secondary claims on my life. That frees me to act differently than those around me. That frees me because I know a reality that can’t be changed or taken away. And that has the power to undermine any realm that seeks to oppress or dehumanize us or others. And thanks be to God for this tattoo. Amen.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
A Harvest of Justice is Sown in Peace
James 3:13-18; Matthew 21:33-46
Peacemaking and World Communion Sunday: October 2, 2011
When I was in college, I was given a bumper sticker – I don’t remember who gave it to me – but I loved it immediately, and I’ve internalized ever since. It said: “If you want peace, work for justice.” It made sense to me: You can’t have peace if people are oppressed – if injustices exist.
All these years I’ve thought my job is to work like crazy for justice so there might be peace. Fight the systems which have injustices built in. And because these are really complicated systems, and those who benefit use their considerable power to maintain them, sometimes you have to fight really hard.
“Fight.” It’s usually a metaphor for me. I don’t get in fights with people I think are supporting unjust systems – we don’t meet in a dark alley somewhere and duke it out. But it’s not a metaphor for everyone who works for justice. The systems are so powerful, so ingrained, that those who benefit are sometimes willing to use violence to keep things as they are. And so, sometimes to get justice it seems like the only option is to fight – literally. Use violence to fight violence for the sake of justice, because once justice is restored, the argument goes, the fighting can end and peace will reign.
At first, the author of James seems to be an early forerunner of my bumper sticker. In this passage, we’re told – just like the bumper sticker – peace and justice go hand in hand. You can’t have one without the other. But is he saying the same thing as the bumper sticker? Or is he, actually, turning it completely around? “A harvest of justice is sown in peace,” the author writes. It seems he’s saying peace first, then justice. Could it be that the order matters?
If this is what James is saying – you have to have peace before justice – I find it challenges much of what I have believed, and I’m not entirely convinced this makes sense. To not resist injustice wherever we find it seems wrong. And if we don’t set things right – change unjust systems, how can we ever have peace?
At first, it seems impossible that we would find a message of peace in today’s gospel lesson. We tend to read this as an allegory, and read this way, not only are the tenants violent, but if God is the landowner, God is violent. After the tenants, meant to be the Jewish leaders, kill the landowner’s son, meant to represent Jesus, Jesus asks what the landowner will do to the tenants, and the chief priests and elders answer, “he will put those miserable wretches to death.” God. God will put them to death.
We do usually read this as an allegory. And, honestly, I do think Matthew meant this as just such an allegory. But did Jesus? Did Matthew and Jesus say the same thing? Were they trying to make the same point?
It’s kind of an odd question – one we don’t usually ask. We think Matthew knew precisely what Jesus said, and then wrote it down, precisely. And that’s how we know what Jesus said. That’s the whole point of the gospels – to know what Jesus said and did. And so we assume Matthew’s words and Jesus’ words are one and the same. But is this always true?
Remember that the gospel writers relied on someone else’s eye witness account. People who were there wrote down what they heard and what they saw. But the gospel writers weren’t there, so they used what these other folks wrote down in order to put together their account of Jesus’ life. Now, we might assume it doesn’t make a difference that the gospel writers weren’t there. If those eye witnesses wrote things down pretty accurately, then Matthew’s gospel should reflect pretty accurately what Jesus actually said and did.
But we know Matthew didn’t write things down exactly as those first witnesses did. We know he – and the other gospel writers – sometimes added things, changed things, left some things out, and said things in a different order. We know this because even thought the authors of Mark and Luke used the same source, their gospels aren’t the same as Matthew’s. Even this parable looks a little different in each of the three gospels – they all changed parts of it.. Each changed the words and added some things, or took things out, in order to emphasize a point they were trying to make.
So even though Matthew probably meant this as an allegory, with the landowner as God, we can’t assume Jesus did. In fact, people who have studied this passage in depth have concluded that Matthew added some things to what Jesus originally said. He added some things in order to make it an allegory that made sense to the people living in his day – decades after Jesus’ death. Many scholars think what Jesus said ended at the point where the land owner’s son was killed – leaving out all the parts that explicitly connect the tenants to the Jewish leaders, the son to Jesus, and the landowner to God. And, in my humble – decidedly non-scholarly – opinion, there are some pretty good reasons to think Jesus didn’t mean it as an allegory.
The Greek word for “landowner” in Matthew is literally “house despot” – which of course has terrible connotations. A despot is someone who exercises power tyrannically. And it seems like the landowner in this story is a lot more like a despot than the God we see revealed in Jesus. We know back then, the land had actually been taken from the peasants and given to aristocracy. These new landowners made profit by collecting what they wanted of the fruits of the field and using cheap labor to work the land. These farms were stolen and those from whom it was stolen were now forced into near slave labor and subsistence living – at best.
The landowner in our story is just like every other landowner at the time. He set things up to ensure maximum profits, he built a watchtower so no one would get out of line, he employed people who made so little and struggled so much to survive that they resorted to violence – he set up and participated in a system that was unjust from the start. This is not God, this describes the human reality at the time.
We see this kind of thing happen today. Despots running countries pushing people into poverty, taking away their rights and freedoms, and eventually the people rise up against their oppressor, often violently. It’s a system we know, and it was certainly a system Jesus’ hearers would have recognized – it was where they lived – and where they were often crushed. Jesus was pointing out that if the system itself is full of injustice, no matter what anyone does, violence is inevitable…violence is built it. Maybe in telling this story, Jesus was saying they need an entirely different set up – a new vineyard – a vineyard of peace.
We know Jesus came to institute a new system – he announces right off the bat that he came to bring the realm of God. The realm of God is set up differently from the realm of Rome. No absentee land owners living high off the backs of others. No watchtowers meant to keep people in their place. No pitting one group against another, leaving them to fight each other for survival. No violence.
Working for justice within a system of violence will likely lead to more violence. If we keep trying to work within flawed systems, we will find justice only through the violence embedded in that system. We need a new system – we need a new field: A field of peace, in which justice can be sown. We need spaces within our world that are peaceful, spaces separate from the violent trappings of unjust systems.
Problem is: creating such a field is no easy matter.
James describes how we might go about it – and while his instructions sound simple, they don’t exactly come naturally for most of us. He says we must be pure, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. We can’t be boastful or have selfish ambition in our hearts. I don’t know about you, but if he hadn’t lost me at pure, I’m definitely in trouble when it gets to “willing to yield,” and “without a trace of partiality.” As an opinionated person, sometimes stubbornly so, I struggle to live up to James’ ideal. I suspect we all do. And so, we can feel like we’re trapped in the old ways – fields of peace are hard to come by.
A headline in the paper this week was, “Banks to Make Customers Pay Fee for Using Debit Cards.” The reason for the fees, of course, is that new federal regulations have cut down on profits by limiting other fees and interest the banks can charge. The regulations were put in place to protect consumers, especially those who were being hurt most by these things. In other words, the idea of the regulations was to bring some justice into a system that often preys on the poorest in our communities. The reality is these regulations have started a financial arms race of sorts. The more we try to impose justice, the harder the system will fight against it, and the angrier people at the bottom get, the harder they will try for justice, the more forcefully the powerful will respond, and so on.
The decisions are made by the people at the very top of these banks – the ones furthest removed from the people affected by their decisions…the ones like the absentee landowners – they’re fighting to keep the same-set up…to keep the vineyard running exactly as it is: keeping profits high no matter the cost to others. The people it affects, the ones who pay the price and the people working in the banks who see how much it hurts, they are helpless and just grow angrier each day. It makes me think maybe we’re trying to work for justice within a system not set up for justice, and so it is futile.
But as I read the article, I also got to thinking about the microfinancing program we have here in Grinnell – the program our church helped to start. I realized it starts with an entirely different playing field. This program was created completely outside the banking system for people who are most hurt by banks. The people in charge of the whole program meet directly with the recipients, there are no fees, no interest, no scary papers to sign, and no hammer when you can’t pay. It looks completely different, behaves differently, feels different. It is more just. It’s a different kind of vineyard – a field of peace.
It’s world communion Sunday. This table is meant to be a field of peace. It’s meant to be a place where the set up is different: all are welcome, all are equal, all are broken and wounded when we come, and all are made whole in Christ. There is no hierarchy, authorities might try to restrict who comes, but the very nature of what communion is resists such things because it is not the authorities who set the table, it is Christ – and as we know, Christ dines with everyone…no exceptions.
Here we create a pocket of peace in which justice can be sown – and it happens not just here, but around the world – every time we set this table and invite everyone to share the feast which has been prepared. We don’t usually think of communion as something that undermines unjust systems, as an act that fosters justice; but the simplicity of the elements, the expanse of welcome, the lack of requirements, symbolizes that no one can be denied what they need. We don’t have the right to judge or exclude or charge or control. No one profits, no one pays. It’s a statement about what the world should look like when we leave this table.
Later, after we take communion, we will pray together. We will pray: “May we be strengthened and challenged by all who have shared in this meal, both here and around the world. May we be sustained in our struggle by these elements, drawing strength from this divine feast. May we carry in our hearts the life and peace embodied in this bread and wine, that we might be a message of hope and reconciliation to a desperate and hurting world.” This is a political is supposed to have ramifications for how we live in this world. And it’s not meant to incite us to fight, to overthrow…instead we are to carry in our hearts the life of peace, which is where justice can be sown. Amen.
Peacemaking and World Communion Sunday: October 2, 2011
When I was in college, I was given a bumper sticker – I don’t remember who gave it to me – but I loved it immediately, and I’ve internalized ever since. It said: “If you want peace, work for justice.” It made sense to me: You can’t have peace if people are oppressed – if injustices exist.
All these years I’ve thought my job is to work like crazy for justice so there might be peace. Fight the systems which have injustices built in. And because these are really complicated systems, and those who benefit use their considerable power to maintain them, sometimes you have to fight really hard.
“Fight.” It’s usually a metaphor for me. I don’t get in fights with people I think are supporting unjust systems – we don’t meet in a dark alley somewhere and duke it out. But it’s not a metaphor for everyone who works for justice. The systems are so powerful, so ingrained, that those who benefit are sometimes willing to use violence to keep things as they are. And so, sometimes to get justice it seems like the only option is to fight – literally. Use violence to fight violence for the sake of justice, because once justice is restored, the argument goes, the fighting can end and peace will reign.
At first, the author of James seems to be an early forerunner of my bumper sticker. In this passage, we’re told – just like the bumper sticker – peace and justice go hand in hand. You can’t have one without the other. But is he saying the same thing as the bumper sticker? Or is he, actually, turning it completely around? “A harvest of justice is sown in peace,” the author writes. It seems he’s saying peace first, then justice. Could it be that the order matters?
If this is what James is saying – you have to have peace before justice – I find it challenges much of what I have believed, and I’m not entirely convinced this makes sense. To not resist injustice wherever we find it seems wrong. And if we don’t set things right – change unjust systems, how can we ever have peace?
At first, it seems impossible that we would find a message of peace in today’s gospel lesson. We tend to read this as an allegory, and read this way, not only are the tenants violent, but if God is the landowner, God is violent. After the tenants, meant to be the Jewish leaders, kill the landowner’s son, meant to represent Jesus, Jesus asks what the landowner will do to the tenants, and the chief priests and elders answer, “he will put those miserable wretches to death.” God. God will put them to death.
We do usually read this as an allegory. And, honestly, I do think Matthew meant this as just such an allegory. But did Jesus? Did Matthew and Jesus say the same thing? Were they trying to make the same point?
It’s kind of an odd question – one we don’t usually ask. We think Matthew knew precisely what Jesus said, and then wrote it down, precisely. And that’s how we know what Jesus said. That’s the whole point of the gospels – to know what Jesus said and did. And so we assume Matthew’s words and Jesus’ words are one and the same. But is this always true?
Remember that the gospel writers relied on someone else’s eye witness account. People who were there wrote down what they heard and what they saw. But the gospel writers weren’t there, so they used what these other folks wrote down in order to put together their account of Jesus’ life. Now, we might assume it doesn’t make a difference that the gospel writers weren’t there. If those eye witnesses wrote things down pretty accurately, then Matthew’s gospel should reflect pretty accurately what Jesus actually said and did.
But we know Matthew didn’t write things down exactly as those first witnesses did. We know he – and the other gospel writers – sometimes added things, changed things, left some things out, and said things in a different order. We know this because even thought the authors of Mark and Luke used the same source, their gospels aren’t the same as Matthew’s. Even this parable looks a little different in each of the three gospels – they all changed parts of it.. Each changed the words and added some things, or took things out, in order to emphasize a point they were trying to make.
So even though Matthew probably meant this as an allegory, with the landowner as God, we can’t assume Jesus did. In fact, people who have studied this passage in depth have concluded that Matthew added some things to what Jesus originally said. He added some things in order to make it an allegory that made sense to the people living in his day – decades after Jesus’ death. Many scholars think what Jesus said ended at the point where the land owner’s son was killed – leaving out all the parts that explicitly connect the tenants to the Jewish leaders, the son to Jesus, and the landowner to God. And, in my humble – decidedly non-scholarly – opinion, there are some pretty good reasons to think Jesus didn’t mean it as an allegory.
The Greek word for “landowner” in Matthew is literally “house despot” – which of course has terrible connotations. A despot is someone who exercises power tyrannically. And it seems like the landowner in this story is a lot more like a despot than the God we see revealed in Jesus. We know back then, the land had actually been taken from the peasants and given to aristocracy. These new landowners made profit by collecting what they wanted of the fruits of the field and using cheap labor to work the land. These farms were stolen and those from whom it was stolen were now forced into near slave labor and subsistence living – at best.
The landowner in our story is just like every other landowner at the time. He set things up to ensure maximum profits, he built a watchtower so no one would get out of line, he employed people who made so little and struggled so much to survive that they resorted to violence – he set up and participated in a system that was unjust from the start. This is not God, this describes the human reality at the time.
We see this kind of thing happen today. Despots running countries pushing people into poverty, taking away their rights and freedoms, and eventually the people rise up against their oppressor, often violently. It’s a system we know, and it was certainly a system Jesus’ hearers would have recognized – it was where they lived – and where they were often crushed. Jesus was pointing out that if the system itself is full of injustice, no matter what anyone does, violence is inevitable…violence is built it. Maybe in telling this story, Jesus was saying they need an entirely different set up – a new vineyard – a vineyard of peace.
We know Jesus came to institute a new system – he announces right off the bat that he came to bring the realm of God. The realm of God is set up differently from the realm of Rome. No absentee land owners living high off the backs of others. No watchtowers meant to keep people in their place. No pitting one group against another, leaving them to fight each other for survival. No violence.
Working for justice within a system of violence will likely lead to more violence. If we keep trying to work within flawed systems, we will find justice only through the violence embedded in that system. We need a new system – we need a new field: A field of peace, in which justice can be sown. We need spaces within our world that are peaceful, spaces separate from the violent trappings of unjust systems.
Problem is: creating such a field is no easy matter.
James describes how we might go about it – and while his instructions sound simple, they don’t exactly come naturally for most of us. He says we must be pure, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. We can’t be boastful or have selfish ambition in our hearts. I don’t know about you, but if he hadn’t lost me at pure, I’m definitely in trouble when it gets to “willing to yield,” and “without a trace of partiality.” As an opinionated person, sometimes stubbornly so, I struggle to live up to James’ ideal. I suspect we all do. And so, we can feel like we’re trapped in the old ways – fields of peace are hard to come by.
A headline in the paper this week was, “Banks to Make Customers Pay Fee for Using Debit Cards.” The reason for the fees, of course, is that new federal regulations have cut down on profits by limiting other fees and interest the banks can charge. The regulations were put in place to protect consumers, especially those who were being hurt most by these things. In other words, the idea of the regulations was to bring some justice into a system that often preys on the poorest in our communities. The reality is these regulations have started a financial arms race of sorts. The more we try to impose justice, the harder the system will fight against it, and the angrier people at the bottom get, the harder they will try for justice, the more forcefully the powerful will respond, and so on.
The decisions are made by the people at the very top of these banks – the ones furthest removed from the people affected by their decisions…the ones like the absentee landowners – they’re fighting to keep the same-set up…to keep the vineyard running exactly as it is: keeping profits high no matter the cost to others. The people it affects, the ones who pay the price and the people working in the banks who see how much it hurts, they are helpless and just grow angrier each day. It makes me think maybe we’re trying to work for justice within a system not set up for justice, and so it is futile.
But as I read the article, I also got to thinking about the microfinancing program we have here in Grinnell – the program our church helped to start. I realized it starts with an entirely different playing field. This program was created completely outside the banking system for people who are most hurt by banks. The people in charge of the whole program meet directly with the recipients, there are no fees, no interest, no scary papers to sign, and no hammer when you can’t pay. It looks completely different, behaves differently, feels different. It is more just. It’s a different kind of vineyard – a field of peace.
It’s world communion Sunday. This table is meant to be a field of peace. It’s meant to be a place where the set up is different: all are welcome, all are equal, all are broken and wounded when we come, and all are made whole in Christ. There is no hierarchy, authorities might try to restrict who comes, but the very nature of what communion is resists such things because it is not the authorities who set the table, it is Christ – and as we know, Christ dines with everyone…no exceptions.
Here we create a pocket of peace in which justice can be sown – and it happens not just here, but around the world – every time we set this table and invite everyone to share the feast which has been prepared. We don’t usually think of communion as something that undermines unjust systems, as an act that fosters justice; but the simplicity of the elements, the expanse of welcome, the lack of requirements, symbolizes that no one can be denied what they need. We don’t have the right to judge or exclude or charge or control. No one profits, no one pays. It’s a statement about what the world should look like when we leave this table.
Later, after we take communion, we will pray together. We will pray: “May we be strengthened and challenged by all who have shared in this meal, both here and around the world. May we be sustained in our struggle by these elements, drawing strength from this divine feast. May we carry in our hearts the life and peace embodied in this bread and wine, that we might be a message of hope and reconciliation to a desperate and hurting world.” This is a political is supposed to have ramifications for how we live in this world. And it’s not meant to incite us to fight, to overthrow…instead we are to carry in our hearts the life of peace, which is where justice can be sown. Amen.
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