Saturday, February 21, 2015

A "both-and" world

Proper 24-A
October 19, 2014
Exodus 33:12-23
Psalm 99
1 Thessalonians 1:1-10
Matthew 22:15-22

"Two worlds" can be the rationale for almost anything that you want it to be. We all live and move and have our being in many worlds, many communities, many relationships. In school we know the rules, the way life is lived, who's in charge, who are friends, who are “frenemies”, then we come home to another world where different rules, different players and different expectations are laid on us. Clean up. Feed the dog. Put away your cell phone at the dinner table.

The story read today from the Gospel of Matthew has been used since the Middle Ages to justify a doctrine of two worlds. Martin Luther can be credited with developing the notion based on this passage, that Christians should maintain a total separation between the sacred and secular, between the temporal and spiritual governance of their lives. Although first used to protect the Church against the corrupt interference of "Christian Rulers," it has more often served the purpose of people who might behave well in Church, but would justify cut-throat business dealings or immoral public policy on the grounds that Caesar or the civil authorities must be dealt with on their own dirty territory by their own dirty means. After all a man's got to do what a man's got to do.

Many people, however, think this interpretation is a misreading of what Jesus had in mind. Jesus is in Jerusalem, in the last week of his life. Group after group representing the Jewish authorities threatened by his teachings come to confront him, to trick him into admitting some crime for which they could punish him.

This time a group of Herodians and Pharisees, usually in opposition, join forces to quiz him on loyalty to the foreign civil authority of the Emperor versus the Jewish commandment to worship no other God but Yahweh and to make no graven image. (You remember that all Roman subjects were to worship Caesar as a god; to do otherwise was treason. The Jews were the one exception to this civic religious duty.) The Herodians were like the Vichy French; they collaborated with the occupiers. Herod the Great owed his position to the Emperor, who wanted Herod to keep the Jews quiet. The Pharisees were good, religious folk who wanted no part of the blasphemy of accommodating Rome and their pagan god. On this occasion however, these two joined forces to trap Jesus into political treason or blasphemy against the first commandment.

Jesus refuses to be trapped. "Render to Caesar what is Caesar's, to God what is God's,” he says. Jesus affirms that we live in one world, not two. To the Herodians and others like them who want to compartmentalize their lives in the real world – the world where they compromise with the Roman occupiers -- from their religious obligations – where they want to stay pure -- , Jesus says, no. God demands that we are his people in social as well as religious duties. To the Pharisees who believe religious people should deal only with religion, Jesus again says no! Our God is the God of all history, of all politics, of all nations. God's standards of justice and mercy apply to all times and in all places.

There are no easy answers in this “both-and” world. The social-political world – the world of Caesar,
in Jesus’ terms – is deeply flawed. This is the world of the zero-sum game, where people think that if I gain, you lose. It is a world governed more by fear than grace, more by scarcity than abundance. And it is the world into which God has plopped us, and it is in this world that God expects us to be God’s people. God expects us to take those flaws and imbue them with life. We can pay our taxes, yes, but God expects us to use our resources to do more: to contribute to the common good. To make the world a better place. To feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, visit the sick, comfort the prisoner.

The world will get its due from us – but the world will not get all of us. The lion’s share, God’s share, our whole selves, our souls and bodies, are what we give in the way God would have us give, and, amazingly, the more of THAT we give away, the more and more and more we will always have.

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