October 26, 2014 - Proper 25A

Lectionary Readings (note that the Gospel expanded to include the previous Sunday's text)

In the name of God- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

            I don’t know about you all, but I’m looking forward to November 5- the day after the election. We don’t have cable and don’t watch much tv, but still, it’s easy to be tired of the name calling and the bickering. There is so much conflict right now in our government, wouldn’t it be nice if our Scripture readings from today let us focus on something else? But it’s nearly impossible to hear this story about people questioning Jesus on taxes to the Emperor without pondering the proper role of government in our lives as Christians.

            We actually could have skipped this reading altogether, as the first half of the Gospel reading was assigned for last Sunday when we celebrated St. Luke’s day. It’s such a great passage, I didn’t want to lose it, and since it was relatively short, it is included today. We have all heard the saying “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s,” but having it in context changes it a bit. The Pharisees are trying to trap Jesus. If he says that you shouldn’t pay taxes, he is guilty of treason, case closed. And if he says that you should pay taxes, he will be seen as just another puppet of the Roman occupiers.

            They way that Jesus responds is simply brilliant. He says, “show me a coin; whose head is on it?” Someone pulls out a denarius Tiberius- a coin with the image of the emperor Tiberius on it. It would have had an inscription that read “Caesar Augustus Tiberius, son of the Divine Augustus.” To a faithful Jew, this was blasphemy to claim that Caesar was God. It is a question of allegiance, and hence the trap. Will Jesus commit treason against Rome or blasphemy against his religion?

            A more literal translation of what Jesus says in response is “return to Caesar the things of Caesar and to God the things that are God’s.” I want to suggest that there is a difference between reading this as “give to Caesar” and “return to Caesar.” Often, Jesus’ response is misapplied when we explain this response with the first verse of Psalm 24- “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it.” What many preachers say about this passage is that everything belongs to God and therefore, there is nothing to give to Caesar.

            People that commit tax fraud may have this as their favorite passage in the whole Bible, as it seems to suggest that we are to give everything to God and that it’s okay to not pay Caesar. I’ve seen church budgets before, I can say for certain that people aren’t taking the money they would have paid in taxes and giving it to God. Jesus spoke rather plainly; he meant what he said and said what he meant. If Jesus was trying to undercut Caesar, he would have said “Give to God what is due to God, then give Caesar the rest.” No, Jesus first says “return to Caesar what is his.”

            I am reminded of the humorous scene from Monty Python’s The Life of Brian where a group of freedom fighters are discussing the evils that Rome has done to them for generations without giving them anything in return. A few people then suggest that maybe Rome has done a few things, and finally the leader says “All right, all right, but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order- what have the Romans done for us?”

            Before I comment any further, it is notable that no one defends Jesus after his response, instead they all realize that they’ve been bested. The anti-tax contingency didn’t like his response, nor did the pro-tax group. Jesus’ response is not what we could call partisan. Jesus isn’t giving us an out on taxes. The fact is that taxes support our common life together, so when we game the system, all of society pays the price. You’ve probably seen in the news that the new trend among companies is to do what is called a “tax inversion,” where you move your headquarters offshore to get a lower tax rate. It’s a selfish and unpatriotic move. And I think Jesus would take exception to it as well.

            I’ve never once felt angry by paying taxes, and I don’t mind giving to Caesar one bit. And it’s worth nothing, that in the United States, in a representative democracy, the people are Caesar. A government of the people, for the people, and by the people means that if we hoard things to ourselves, we are only hurting the society of which we are a part. Now we can debate how tax dollars are spent, that’s a perfectly valid discussion. I’d be the first one to question why we spend so much on defense, but that’s another sermon for another day. But seeing government as the enemy is uninformed at best, and seditionist at worst. Healthcare, education, roads, public safety, emergency responders- these are not pawns that we should be using in our game of politics and tax debates.

            The English priest and poet, John Donne, famously said that “no person is an island.” Each and every person in this country benefits from society and is dependent on other people, from Bill Gates all the way down to the homeless. In his Letter from Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King wrote that “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” Our destiny will only be weakened by destroying that network of mutuality. Return to Caesar in our context is the same as “return to the people the things that are good for the whole.” The proper relationship between our faith and our government is not one of estrangement.

            Just because I’ve suggested that we should happily render to Caesar does not mean that we have to be supportive of Caesar. Jesus, obviously, probably wasn’t a big fan of the man under whose authority he would be put to death. There is, and should be, a tension between the Church and the State. And while we’re on the topic, the phrase “separation of Church and State” is not anywhere in the Constitution, so I’m not suggesting that they should be unrelated. In 1934 Germany, a group of Christians gathered to write the Barmen Declaration, which was a statement against the “German Christians” who were complicit and even supportive of the Nazi movement. In it, they rejected the false doctrine that the State should be the only order of life and also the false doctrine that the Church should handle the tasks and duties of the State.

            While there is a great danger when the State imposes order on the Church, legislates morality, or restricts free worship, it is also perilous when the Church tries to be larger than it was intended to be. Theologian Stanley Hauerwas has said that it is not the Christian’s role to transform the world, but rather to be the Church. Playing politics isn’t nearly as effective as being a disciple. The world will not be transformed if the Church is seeking to set up an entire system that sees itself as the religious alternative to the rest of the world. However, transformation will come when, in each action, we love God and love our neighbor.
           The salvation of the world won’t come through public policy. Instead, the Church is the Body of Christ; and we are to make God manifest in our lives and in our world. There is lot of talk about how the Church needs to understand society and even make some adaptations to current culture. Which, in some ways, is good advice. Hauerwas notes though that “in leaning over to speak to the modern world, we fell in.” The Church may have gotten a little too comfortable with the ways of the world.

            The Episcopal Church recently issued a report on how we might restructure ourselves to meet the demands and needs of the 21^st century. The report said the Church should be a catalyst, connector, capability builder, and convener. Now, I’ll be the first one to suggest that our Church needs to take a hard look in the mirror, but it’s interesting that the report reads like something developed by a corporate restructuring team. Nowhere does the report use the words transformation, love, reconciliation, Sacrament, or salvation.

            It has been said that the Church should not say what society expects to hear, but rather should live on the horizon of the expectation of the Kingdom of God. One of my favorite books is The Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis. In it, a demon is tutoring a novice demon on how to tempt humans and lead us away from God. The advice comes “Talk to him about ‘moderation in all things’. If you can once get him to the point of thinking that ‘religion is all very well up to a point’, you can feel quite happy about his soul. A moderated religion is as good for us as no religion at all, and more amusing.”

            Sometimes the Church can bit a bit shy about being the Church. Sometimes we seem to forget that the Gospel is about Good News. We worry about sounding like a superstitious and Evangelical caricature if we talk about the God-given blessings of our life in public. That was perhaps truer when I lived in DC than it is in Salisbury, but I bet that many of us, when speaking about religion in public worry, “are they going to think that I’m one of those crazy religious people?”

            So we find ways, as that report did, to camouflage and moderate our beliefs to make them sound hip and business-like. We wrongly convince ourselves that “religion is a private matter,” which sounds like advice that Screwtape might give to a demon. We misinterpret Jesus, and the Constitution, to mean that government and religion are diametrically opposed entities and should be kept separate. The fact is that we are citizens of the United States, but we are also citizens of the Kingdom of God. Being a dual-citizen can be a tough task.

Sometimes this dual citizenship works well, but other times being an American and being a Christian work against each other. There are people who end up more patriotic than they are Christian. And others see patriotism as antithetical to discipleship and shun the nation. To be honest, having a flag in the church makes me uncomfortable. We all have to wrestle with this dual-citizenship. Some like to claim that because Jesus said that “you cannot serve two masters” that we have to choose between being an American and being a Christian. I wish it were as simple as saying that I’m a Christian and that is my only allegiance. But to do so, I have to ignore reality. I am afforded many rights and luxuries by my American citizenship. There will always be a tension between the Cross and flag.

The Pharisees knew it was a complex issue, that’s why they tried to trap Jesus with it. But this tension is not a bad thing, it keeps us alert to our roles, on the one hand as citizens of the United States and on the other as citizens of the Kingdom of God. The State should not infringe upon the Church and seek to be the only voice of morality or obligation in our lives, and the Church ought to focus on the salvation of God and not running the affairs of society. When I preach, I prefer to have a clear resolution, to have answered some question. But today, I’m afraid, I have more questions than I do answers.

Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor? Jesus seems to be saying that it is proper to return to the government the things that the government provides. And this seems fitting, as it is a way of keep the Church focused on its mission and allowing the State to care for our common life together. But the goal of the State is not the same as that of the Church. Though it’s just my guess, I’m fairly confident that you won’t need a passport in Heaven, so our national allegiances are temporary. But in the meantime, we do have dual citizenship. And we’re going to have to live with that. As we do, perhaps the only answer that we need is to remember Jesus’ words- “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”