Whose Is It?
A Homily on Matthew 22:15-22
by Griff Martin
For the Twenty Sunday of Ordinary Time (and the Thirty First of Covid Worship)
For the Beloveds of First Austin: a baptist community of faith
October 18, 2020 (Stewardship Sunday)
*This document comes from an oral manuscript.
Let’s pray… Incarnate God, we ask that you once again take the Word and transform it into a living and breathing reality we can all together experience. Be present here in this space and in these words God, for if you are present here then nothing else will matter, but if you are not present here then nothing else will matter. In the name of the Creator, the Christ and the Comforter.
It’s not the best timing but it never is… In the middle of a war between two very different political realities and options, two sides that seem to see nothing the same, those two groups going at it trying to win the future with their vision and ideology, so maybe then, at that particular moment, it is not the right time to bring up money.
But don’t blame me… it’s not my doing.
And don’t blame Stewardship Committee… it’s not completely their doing.
And don’t blame Jesus… It’s not his doing, this time, although he does love to bring up the most inappropriate thing at the most inappropriate times, he had no social graces. All the things that we think it’s inappropriate to bring up in polite conversations -- sex, politics, money, God -- those are Jesus’ favorite topics. Jesus is like the kid who walks into the dinner party and starts asking the adults all the questions: How much money do you make? Who are you going to vote for? Who is your best friend? What is sex and do you like it? Who is God and do you like God? You know all the questions we want to ask but don’t, questions that would actually help us know each other, the personal kind and Jesus loves the personal, it’s kind of his thing. So of course he brings them up again and again.
But we can’t blame him this time… Even Jesus seems to know now at this moment with these two political sides, money should not be the conversation starter.
We can blame those who ask the question… so let’s blame it on the Herodians and Pharisees… but let’s take a step back…. Those in first century Palestine paid a lot of taxes: temple tax, land tax, customs tax, trade tax, and the dreaded Imperial tax, the tax that Jews paid to support the Roman takeover of their land, think of it as an unwelcome house guest demanding you give him rent for food and board while he is overstaying his welcome on your sleeper sofa. But this tax makes complete sense when you see it through the lens of power, the Romans were only in it for themselves, politics was a "winner takes all" game, not a "how do we build a better world for all" philosophy.
Now, this particular imperial tax was problematic. The Herodians were fine with it, but they were at this point essentially religious puppets for the Roman Empire. The Pharisees knew this tax was wrong but also knew that not saying too much about it helped them stay in power as well.
And then these two different political groups, one supporting Rome and the other Israel, well, they finally found something to unite about: this guy Jesus, who was (and I personally think, still is) trying to disrupt politics as usual, in particular a two-party system that seemed to have no actual care for the human beings that Jesus was (and still is) so deeply in love with, he just can’t help himself, Jesus loves humanity. And his ideas were (and still are) threatening to all that held power so dear.
So these two groups of leaders with two different plans for power and politics united to trap Jesus and they did it in a conversation about money.
“Teacher,” they said, “we know that you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You aren’t swayed by others, because you pay no attention to who they are. Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not?”
Now, either way Jesus answers the question is going to cause problems for him with Roman rule or faithful Jews. These teachers have done what any great evil system will do: trap you, expose you, make you choose this or that, in particular when it comes to money and who you support and how you spend your funds.
Trust me, follow any system of evil, racism, or sexism or any of the host of evils we see today… trace them back to their root and it’s always, always about money and power. Which means we can only disrupt the systems by playing at that level, with money and power, with how we spend our funds and time, who we care for and share with, do we hoard or give, do we include all or only a select few, it’s all funds and time.
Which means it’s about stewardship.
It’s about how we spend our time and our funds.
And Jesus does something really brilliant here caught in the middle of all this, Jesus does what Jesus always does when caught between a this or that, he creates a new way, a third way. Jesus is as non-binary as it gets, when faced with an either/or, he finds a way to build a both/and bridge, to shift the conversation to get to the heart of things and not face a false dichotomy.
And he does it in this brilliant manner… Let me see a coin, Jesus says. I see him flipping the coin up in the air a while, allowing silence to settle things for a bit because silence always settles things, like turbulent water calming. Finally, he stops the coin toss and looks at the coin: "Whose image is on it?”
Caesar’s, they reply.
And he smiles and says with a devilish grin, “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”
Now, in that exchange, don’t miss something super important that as religious scholars Jesus has used a key word and turned the entire conversation into something else when he asked about image. Because image and bearing image is a really important concept, starting in the Creation story, “made in our image,” to all the stories about images and idols, it’s a key concept in the Torah -- all of creation is made in the image of God and we are not to hold false images, false idols.
And you have to read his third way reply with that in mind… because with that in mind, nothing is Caesar's and everything is God’s.
And then he gives the coin back to them, with this look that says it all, this look that says, you can do whatever you want with this, but know who it truly belongs to… and that is not Caesar and that is not you, so do with it what you want now in light of that.
When faced with these two sides trying to derail everything he was trying to do, Jesus gave us a pretty important stewardship lesson about what belonged to whom.
And I think it’s a lesson our world needs to hear once again today…. Because God knows we are faced with two political sides right now, that we are in a crisis right now, and that one of the ways we can create a third way in the midst of this, like Jesus would create, is to focus once again on stewardship.
Now, I know I am preaching this sermon on Pledge Sunday… I know that, I know this is about us making budget, being able to do all we are called to do. And I know that big changes start with practice, which is why church stewardship is really training ground for life stewardship. We start here, we give and then we give more and that slowly changes our economics, calendars, which then changes our hearts and our world.
But I also know it’s bigger than that. So let’s start there.
Our world did not completely change thirty one weeks ago, that was just the climax of a really long time getting here. We have been in crisis way longer than that, we have been on a road that was a dead end road and not just a dead end, a dead end with a huge drop off cliff at the end. We just worked really hard to pick up as much steam as possible to hit the cliff with… And 31 weeks ago, we did it. We nailed the jump, now let’s see if we can nail the landing.
Everything changed. Now pay attention to how quickly the news headlines move from whatever the event is to reports on how that is going to impact our economy. Ask yourself, do we focus more on how this is going to impact human beings, creation, our world, or the global market?
It was less than 24 hours after the country shut down that we started hearing horror story after horror story about the recession, our economy tanking overnight, and what this was going to do to our wallets. And we were then faced with a huge challenge as people: were we going to batten down the hatches and begin hoarding and storing away like we were bears preparing for a long winter -- or really, we don’t even need the metaphor of bears, it’s just us acting like normal human beings.
And we had a choice to make: would we be generous or would we hoard? It’s the choice we face every minute of every day. I will tell you what the Martin house chose -- we decided that it was not time to hoard, that I was still getting a paycheck and that we would certainly still be wise about our money and savings but we would also be generous. So in the last few months we have given more to the church, we have given to global mission partners, to artists and individuals and cases that we believe in that we have previously given. If something we love and feel is important has a donate button, we push it, even if it’s just $5. We are trying to give more freely because that feels like our calling in the face of all this fear around us and we are learning that generosity is a vaccine to fear and scarcity.
When everything changed last March, it was not long before I had met with all the ministers and church leadership and we all agreed that the majority of our budget would take a 25% reduction with the exception of our staff and our missions. I can’t tell you how grateful our staff is for this. What I can tell you is what we have been able to do with the missions funds… It has allowed us to be able to immediately respond to begin offering hot, wholesome meals to our neighbors three times a week, it allowed us to invest in the new lunch boxes that allow our neighbors to keep this food hot or cold, it allows us to give out snack bags that will last them until the next meal we serve, we have given out meals to those who could not afford them or find them, we have given paper towels and toilet paper to a local HIV shelter when they could not locate those supplies needed for their daily work, to offer rent assistance and aid to so many who need it right now, to be able to tell the Baileys that yes, we will able to help them with aid needed for so many in their ministry that have been so impacted by Covid, it has allowed us to continue to help feed, clothe, house, and heal people… You know, doing the ministry that Jesus found so important.
It has allowed us to be able to be active in the racial awakening, in this work of anti-racism for our black and brown siblings. We have been at the marches passing out water and popsicles to folks chanting Black Lives Matter. It is allowing us to reach out to art groups and justice groups to talk about art residencies and small business incubators in our space for those doing the work of anti-racism, for those impacted by systemic racism. It’s allowing us to have a conversation about a scholarship in the name of Rev. Jacob Fontaine… And this seems like ministry work that Jesus would be doing today.
And we have kept doing ministry to our kids, to our youth, to adults. It has looked differently but it is still ministry, it is still kingdom work and training. It has allowed us to move worship online and in doing so we have found new ways to engage with folks; in fact, at World Communion just a few weeks ago, we had a new family there who has discovered us through this weird online church thing and they are now part of us and they will make us better.
And although we don’t know what 2021 will hold, we know this: we want to keep doing that work. We want to feed, clothe, house and heal. We want to be doing the work of justice-making in our world today, of peace-making. We want to continue to do worship. We want to keep on growing children and youth into builders of God’s kingdom. We want to keep having folks join us saying, yeah, we want to be part of what God is doing here.
And that takes money. We can’t do that without your pledge and your dollars. There is no getting around that.
But there is also something deeply spiritual about it because our dollars are one of those ultimate places where we see if our faith holds and is true. How we spend our dollars, if we are generous, is about as good of a faith test as anything... it’s about control, fear, trust, hope, faith, love… think about that next time you take your credit card out of your wallet, all those things are part of that.
It’s about looking into the unknown and taking a step of faith and hope with generosity.
It’s how we declare our allegiance. It’s what Jesus is ultimately asking here, not whose question is on the coin, but whose question is on us and does the way we use these dollars reflect that?
Whose image? Whose is it?
Which is, of course, a trick question because it’s God’s. We just get to steward it and hopefully we steward it well, wise, and with grace and generosity.
The Gospel ends like this… When they heard this, they were amazed. So they left him and went away.
Which is a pretty common reaction to Jesus talking about money -- people leave him and walk away. Because what he says is hard and it takes a lot of courage, faith and hope to live like that.
But maybe we have walked away too often... and maybe this time it’s time we change the ending to our story of stewardship. This time instead of walking away, we are amazed, and we join him and see if together with generosity we can create the Kingdom Jesus has demanded we create.
As always, without us God won’t; without God, we can’t. But that "us" included our wallets too.
So may we be faithful and generous. Amen and Amen.
*artwork: "Fruit of Generosity," by Leslie Ansley
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