What Belongs to God?

Matthew 22:15-22

Has anybody got penny on them? Or even a pound coin? Okay, whose picture is on the front of it?

We’re used to our coins, aren’t we – we barely even notice that they have a picture of the Queen on one side, and a few odd remarks in Latin printed round the picture. They basically say Elizabeth, and then DG, which means by God’s grace; Reg, short for Regina, means Queen, and FD means Defender of the Faith – a title, ironically, given to Henry the Eighth when he wrote a book supporting the Pope against the Protestant Reformation, long before he wanted to divorce Katherine of Aragon and had to leave the Catholic church.

When I was a little girl, though, before decimalisation, coins were even more interesting, as they didn’t all have pictures of the Queen on – the old shillings, sixpences, florins and half-crowns had often been issued during the reign of George the Sixth and pennies were often even older – it was not unusual to find penny that had been issued during the reign of Queen Victoria, even! My father used to make us guess the date on the coin, based on which reign it was, and if we were right we got to keep it. Not that we ever were right, so it was a fairly safe game for him, but it made sure we knew the dates of 20th-century monarchs!

Different countries have different things on their coins, of course; if you look at Euro coins, they have a different design on one side depending on which country issued them: the German ones have a picture of the Brandenburg gate, or a stylised eagle; the Irish ones have a harp. Those Euro countries which are monarchies have a picture of their monarch on them, as we would if we joined the Euro, and the Vatican City ones have a picture of the Pope!

This convention, of showing the monarch on your coins, dates back thousands of years, and was well-known in Jesus’ day. But unfortunately, this raised a problem for Jesus and his contemporaries, as the Roman coins in current use all showed a picture of the Emperor, and the wording round the side said something like “Son of a god”, meaning that the Emperor was thought to be divine.

You might remember how the earliest Christians were persecuted for refusing to say that the Emperor was Lord, as to them, only Jesus was Lord? Well, similarly, the Jews couldn’t say that Caesar was God, and, rather like Muslims, they were forbidden to have images of people, either. So the Roman coins carried a double whammy for them.

They got round it by having their own coins to be used in the Temple – hence the moneychangers that Jesus threw out, because they were giving such a rotten rate of exchange. But for everyday use, of course, they were stuck with the Roman coins. And taxes, like the poll tax, had to be paid in Roman coins. You might remember the episode where Jesus tells Peter to catch a fish, and it has swallowed a coin that will do for both of their taxes. But that was then, and this is now.

Now, Jesus is in the Temple when they come to him – in the holy place, where you must use the Jewish coins or not spend money. “They”, in this case, are not only the Pharisees, who were out to trap Jesus by any means possible, but also the Herodians, who actually supported the puppet-king, Herod.

The question is a total trick question, of course. They come up to Jesus, smarming him and pointing out that they know he doesn’t take sides – so should they pay their poll tax, or not? If he says, yes you must, then he’ll be accused of saying it’s okay for people to have coins with forbidden images; it’s okay to be Romanised; it’s okay to collaborate with the occupying power. And if he says, no don’t, then he’ll be accused of trying to incite rebellion or terrorism.

So Jesus asks for a coin. I expect it was the Herodians who produced one – the Pharisees would probably not have admitted to having one in their pockets, even if they did. And he asks whose image – eikon, the word is – whose image is on the coin? And they said, puzzled, Caesar’s of course, whose else would it be?

And we all know what he said next: Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar; give to God what belongs to God.

It’s kind of difficult, at this distance, to know what he meant. Was he saying we need to keep our Christian life separate from the rest of life? God forbid, and I mean that! If our commitment to God means anything at all, it should be informing all we do, whether we are at worship on Sunday or at work on Monday or out at the pub on a Friday! There is a crying need for Christians in all walks of life; whether we are called to be plumbers or politicians, bankers or builders, retired or redundant! Wherever we find ourselves, we are God’s people, and our lives and values and morals and behaviour need to reflect that.

So what is Jesus saying? It’s about more than paying taxes or not paying them. It’s not about whether we support our government or whether we don’t.

I think he’s saying that there doesn’t have to be a conflict. The image of Caesar is on the coin – but we, we are made in God’s image! If we were coins, the writing around us would say “A child of God”, not, as for the Caesars, meaning that we are gods ourselves, but meaning, quite literally, that we are God’s beloved children.

Sure, sometimes God’s image gets marred and spoilt, when we go astray. I’ve seen coins that have been buried in the earth for years, and they go all tarnished, and sometimes, if they’ve been there for centuries, they build up an accretion of gunk round them to the point that you can’t possibly tell what they are. But even that gunk can be cleaned off, with care – and you’ve all seen those Cillit Bang ads where he dips a penny into the fluid and it comes up bright and shiny again!

Maybe Jesus is saying that this is not an issue to divide people – Caesar gets what belongs to him, which is the coin, and God gets what belongs to him, which is us!

This isn’t just about the fact that we probably owe the Government a limited amount of money in taxation, but we owe God a far greater response, of our very being. It is about that, of course it is, but maybe there’s more.

I think, perhaps that we are being called to appreciate a God who isn’t trying to divide us on contentious issues – we’re quite capable of doing that ourselves. God, I think, is trying to make win-win situations, where nobody loses. Look at the crucifixion, for instance. It’s not about whether it was the Jews, or the Romans, or even we who caused it. Grace is for everybody, no matter who. It doesn’t matter who you were; it doesn’t even matter who you are – God looks at what you can become! God’s way is open to anybody. At the crucifixion, blame is cancelled. We don’t have to live that way any more.

That’s one of the reasons why we are told to forgive. There is no blame. We live in a win-win world. We are forgiven, so we need to pass that forgiveness on – not always easy, but we know, when someone has offended us, that sooner or later we will simmer down and then we’ll be able to forgive.

So Jesus is saying that there is no need to choose – both are right. We pay our taxes, but we give ourselves to God.

Maybe, too, he is also saying that this was not the question. It’s not about whether you should pay your taxes or not – or even about whether a true patriot of the day should pay the poll tax. Maybe he is also asking whether people see God’s image when they look at us.

That’s the kind of question I hate, because I always assume the answer will be “No, I’m a rotten Christian and nobody could possibly see God’s image in me!” But that’s me being paranoid, I dare say. After all, we are told that we are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and that the fruit of the Spirit will be manifest in our lives.

I do think we try too hard sometimes – we try to make ourselves Christians rather than allowing God to make us so! We try to stamp God’s image on us ourselves; we don’t let God do it. Isaiah said something about potters and clay, didn’t he?

Come to think of it, I used to hate the image of the potter and the clay, assuming I’d be moulded in ways I didn’t like and would be made to suffer all sorts of things. Again, that’s me being paranoid.

But we do need to be open to God, to allow him to stamp His image on us, to write His name on us. That’s our job. Whether or not other people see God in us isn’t really down to us. Obviously, if we know we aren’t listening to God, or if we know something is badly wrong in our life and that this is informing our relationship with God, then we aren’t going to be displaying His image. But for most of us, our job is to stay open, to allow God to mould us. To give God, in other words, what belongs to God – ourselves!

Amen.

Faith and Love

To note: When you say "You know it here" and point to your head, "but not here", and thump your breast, it helps not to have a microphone attached just there! I was hard put to it not to giggle for the rest of the service.

Gospel reading: Matthew 21:23-32

The story I want us to focus on this morning comes from the second part of today’s gospel reading. It is the story of the two sons. This isn’t the most famous story of two sons, of course; that is the story Jesus told about the lost son. In this story, we could say that we see the two sons when they were younger. Those of you who know teenagers well will probably realise that these must have been boys of 13 or so!

So, let’s look at this story a little There are three characters: the father, the elder son and the younger son. Father seems to be a farmer or landowner. I think he is one of Jesus’ favourite characters, one that he tells a lot of stories about. The gospel writers had to be a bit selective, but I shouldn’t wonder if that particular man wasn’t a well-loved character in Jesus’ stories. Jesus probably gave him a name – why don’t we do the same, and call him Caleb, and call his sons Levi and Simeon. And maybe when Jesus said to the crowds, “You remember Farmer Caleb....” they all sat up a bit and made themselves comfortable, as they knew a story was coming.

We had a story about him last week, if you remember – the farmer who employed more and more workers in the vineyard as the day wore on, and who then paid the whole lot the same, even though some had worked the whole day and some had only worked for the last hour. We meet the whole family, as I’ve said, in the story Jesus told about the lost son. And now we meet him in this story.

He has his two sons, Levi and Simeon. And on this particular day, he needs some help in the vineyard, so he grabs the first son he sees – let’s say it was Levi – and says “Can you give me a hand in the vineyard this afternoon?”

Now, Matthew tells us that the boy said, “I will not.” But I bet that what he really said was something like: “Oh Da-ad! Do I have to? I’ve got masses of homework. And I said I’d go round to Sammy’s house and see his new scrolls.”

And Dad probably said something like, “Oh well, don’t help then. Be like that!”

So Dad goes and finds son number two, Simeon. “Will you give me a hand in the vineyard this afternoon?”

“Sure,” says Simeon. “No problem, Dad; I’ll be there.”

And then what happens?

Come the afternoon, Simeon’s best friend calls round. “You coming swimming?” And Simeon conveniently forgets he’d promised to help Dad, and goes off swimming without a care in the world. Or perhaps he doesn’t forget, but it’s so hot. Dad won’t really mind. After all, he’s of times before. Blow it, he’s going swimming!

Levi, meanwhile, the other son, has finished his homework. He’s about to go round to his friend Sammy’s, but then there’s a little niggle. Dad did want some help this afternoon.

Yes, but why should I help, he argues with himself. It’s my brother’s turn. I helped last week. I’m allowed some time for myself, aren’t I?

But he’s just seen his brother go off swimming. He won’t be helping this afternoon, for all he said he would. Oh all right, Levi says to his conscience. I suppose I can go round to Sammy’s house later. He won’t mind. And anyway, I bet his Dad’s clobbered him for some help, too.

So Levi takes himself to the vineyard, rather unwillingly. But he does work hard when he gets there, and his father is seriously pleased with him. And, as Jesus pointed out, he was the son who was obedient after all.

===oo0oo===

So then, Matthew tells us, Jesus goes on to explain why he told this story. The trouble, of course, was with the Pharisees. As you will remember from the first part of our reading, Jesus had just had yet another run-in with them, this time on the subject of his authority to teach.

Jesus was always having run-ins with the Pharisees. They were good, religious people, of course, but the trouble was that they did not see God in the same way that Jesus did. They believed that you had to keep the Jewish law absolutely perfectly if you wanted God to accept you. To help them do that, they had added some incredibly detailed “what ifs” and “in this case yous” to the Law. The Law, as interpreted by the Pharisees, provided for every single detail of life, and if you failed to keep it absolutely perfectly, then, they thought, God wouldn’t want to know you.

Well, that was all very well. The Pharisees meant well, of course, but they were, quite without realising it, imposing impossible burdens on people. It was quite impossible to keep the Law in their way. And the Pharisees themselves made one very big mistake: they rated keeping the Law more highly than human relationships. They were more concerned about the way people obeyed, or did not obey, the Law than they were about who people were, and how they were hurting, and why.

So you can see that it was absolutely devastating for them when Jesus came along and said “You’ve got it all wrong!”

What? They weren’t being perfect, after all? No, no, this couldn’t be right. They had to be perfect, or God would reject them. Of course they were perfect. Who was this silly teacher, anyway? What right had he to be telling them that they were all wrong? And so on.

They simply couldn’t handle Jesus’ teaching. For Jesus said, obey the Law, by all means, but do realise that it was originally written for a nomadic community which needed detailed regulations in order to keep healthy and increase in numbers. The Law, he taught, was your servant, not your master. God was far more concerned with truth, justice and right relationships than he was with whether you needed to give five or ten leaves of mint, or whether you washed your hands like this or like that.

So the Pharisees rejected Jesus and all he stood for. At last, most of them did. There were a few honourable exceptions, of course, like Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, and of course, much later, St Paul. But by and large, the Pharisees, and the rest of the religious establishment of the day, rejected Jesus.

But one group of people did turn to Jesus and accepted his teaching. These were the outcasts, people who had been considered quite beyond the pale so far as the regular religious establishment was concerned. The tax gatherers, who worked for the Roman occupying power and often had to charge excessive commission in order to have enough money to stay alive. Prostitutes. Other people who for one reason or another felt it was hopeless trying to keep the Jewish Law and so had stopped trying.

Until Jesus came, the politically correct response to these people was to ignore their existence completely. Religious people would not have been seen dead with them; what would people think? But Jesus knew that they were longing for God, needing God, and wanting only the least bit of encouragement to turn to Him. And sure enough, when he provided that encouragement, they turned to God in their multitudes. We know the names of some of them: Zacchaeus, Levi, Mary Magdalene. But there were many others whose names we don’t know.

So in the story, Jesus equates the Pharisees with the second son, the one who said “Yes” to his Father, but then did not obey when the crunch came. The outcasts were represented by the first son, the one who had said “No way”, but who after all went and helped his Father.

===oo0oo===

So what does this story say to us today? We are a long way in time and in culture from 1st-Century Jerusalem. The thing is – and I’m speaking from personal experience here – it’s all too easy to get stuck like the Pharisees. We think that God only loves us when we are perfect, and that we have to be perfect in order for God to love us. Now, said in cold blood like that, it sounds silly. After all, that was the whole reason Jesus came, to provide a bridge between us and God. We know that. At least, we know it in our heads – we don’t always know it in our hearts.

I’ve often said that these Sundays between Pentecost and Advent are a time when we are looking at the outworking of our faith; how what we do in Church on Sundays affects who we are on Mondays. And when we get our faith tied up in knots – I did, years ago, and I don’t suppose I was the only one – we end up not really being able to be who God created us to be and, arguably, not able to do the work we were designed to do. If we’re too busy worrying over whether we are perfect, we can’t be getting on with life.

And, also, if we’re too busy running around trying to be perfect – and I know I used to do this – we’re actually denying God’s love. Even when we see God doing wonderful things, we assume he will only do them for us so that we can spend our time and energy working for him. My friends, the truth is that God loves us. He made us. He is interested in us. He wants us to be whole because he loves us. And because when we are whole we will be able to do more to help bring in his Kingdom, that’s true, but first and foremost because he loves us.

Now, of course, sometimes we do terrible things, and God hates the things we do. But he still loves us. Sometimes we deny him, say we are agnostic or even atheist, but he still loves us, and longs and longs for us to turn to him.

And he still loves us. Every single person, whither Christian, Moslem, Hindu, Buddhist, or any religion you can think of, and those with no religion at all. Even Richard Dawkins! Even George W Bush.

Those who commit terrible crimes, even terrorists. Those who live honest, upright and sober lives.

God loves us.

The Father in Jesus’ story loved both his sons. He didn’t stop loving the son who did not go to the vineyard, nor did he stop loving the son who said he wouldn’t go. God loved the Pharisees, even though he agonised over their obsession with perfection. He loved the tax gatherers and other outcasts. And he loves me. And he loves you.

So let’s respond to that love by recommitting ourselves to him again this morning. It doesn’t matter if we have never said “Yes” to him, or if we have been Christians for more years than we care to remember. To help us, we are going to sing that lovely hymn, one of my favourites: “Oh love, that wilt not let me go!”