Who Do You Belong To
A sermon by Rev. Rebecca Segers
Micah 6:6-8
Matthew 22:15-22
When school began a few weeks ago, I had occasions to meet Grace at the first bus stop on the route instead of in front of the manse. As a result, I was waiting with a woman that I had never met before. We chatted away about all sorts of things and she shared a lot with me about her upbringing in the area, her husband and family, in short about her life. It was a pleasure for me to get to know her a bit better, but it was also interesting to me because as she told me her story, she also located herself in the community. In letting me know that she went to elementary school here and jr. high and high school, owned a local business, had married a man who was also from the area and who owns his own business, she was also telling me that she belongs here. Not only that Melville is her home, but that it is a great part of her identity.
This question of belonging is not what the Pharisees want to know when they come to Jesus. It’s probably the farthest thing from their minds. What they want, the Bible tells us, is to test him and trap him. So they ask him, “Is it lawful to pay taxes to Rome?”
They know that nobody – not then, not now – likes to pay taxes. But nobody especially likes to pay taxes to the country that has conquered you and is occupying your land with soldiers to make sure that you stay conquered. Since rumor is that Jesus is the Messiah, that means that he would be the one who has come to take the Israelites out from under the yoke of Roman oppression. It only follows then that he will not approve of paying taxes to Rome, will tell them all so and then they will have something to go to the Roman officials with in order to have him put to death. You get the logic?
Well, Jesus doesn’t respond with an answer immediately, but asks them instead with what coin they pay these taxes. You see, Israel was an occupied country bordered by many other occupied countries that had been conquered by Rome. It had its own legal tender, the most common of which was the silver shekel, and each of the surrounding countries – Samaria, Syria, Phoenicia, Egypt and so on – had their own legal tender as well.
Do you remember how Jesus threw the moneychangers out of the temple when he first arrived in Jerusalem? Did you ever wonder who those folks were? Well, you see, all the Jews that came to Jerusalem over the high holy days wanted to come to the temple to atone for their sins, to ask for forgiveness, to ask to be cleansed, to give sacrifices of money and animals to God. Because of all the times that the Israelites had been in exile from their land over the thousands of years since Abraham left Ur to come to the Promised Land, now there were Jews all over the area who were citizens not only of Israel by virtue of their religion, but who lived in and were citizens of the various surrounding other countries as well. When they came to Jerusalem, to the temple to make their sacrifices, they didn’t always have Jewish shekels, but instead the Greek drachma or the Roman denarius or other assorted bronze or silver coins from different places. Just as Roman taxes were to be paid in Roman coinage, temple taxes were to be paid in the Israeli coinage, and so the moneychangers existed to offer the service of changing money from other countries into the coinage of the land. This is not so very different from what happens today when we go visit Mexico or Canada or any other foreign country and change our U.S. dollars into the legal tender there. Jesus was upset because a) it was happening on the temple grounds and b) the moneychangers weren’t doing it out of the goodness of their hearts but charging exchange fees just as they do today which was against the Deuteronomic law.
But let’s get back to the scripture for today. The Pharisees ask Jesus if it is lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, which means they are talking about another very specific tax: the census tax – a Roman head tax instituted in 6 CE when Judea became a Roman province. Jesus calls the Pharisees hypocrites for asking, for he knows they simply want to catch him out. He then asks them to show him the coin with which they pay these taxes. There are a couple of points that I’d like to lift up to you here.
First of all, the denarius, the coin of Rome, was idolatrous in the eyes of the people of Israel. As we discussed last week in the story of the golden calf, they did not believe in idols or graven images. Now we don’t think anything of having George Washington or Abraham Lincoln or whomever on our money. But as far as the first century Israelites were concerned, having pictures of faces – on walls, on scrolls, on money – was idolatry. It was making a graven image of and idolizing the person that was drawn.
This idea of no pictures of people is not only an ancient one, but one that still exists today in various Jewish and Islamic traditions as correct. The Taliban enforced it not so long ago by destroying all pictures of images in books and paintings in Afghanistan, up to and including even the monumental Bamiyan Buddha statues in the Koh-e Baba mountains. It is why when you go into a mosque today, even one on Long Island, you will see no images of people at all.
So in Jesus’ time, the fact of the matter was, those Roman coins with pictures of Tiberius Caesar on them were blasphemous. Even worse than the image of Caesar on them were the words minted alongside: Tiberius Caesar Divi Augusti Filius August Pontifex Maximus or “Tiberius Caesar, august son of the divine Augustus, high priest”.
So point number one is that these coins were physically repulsive to any good, law-abiding Jew. They had the image of a human being on them. A human being claiming to be divine. Point number two is: Jesus doesn’t have one with him. When he asks the Pharisees about them, he has to ask them to go get one so they can look at it together. This is not merely because Jesus is poor as dirt. It also raises up the fact that these supposedly not only law-abiding, but law-promoting Pharisees have in their possession a coin that would technically be illegal according to Jewish law. So the question is: who here is truly worried about what is lawful?
What happens next? Here we are with Jesus and the Pharisees looking at this denarius. This coin of Rome with Tiberius Caesar’s picture on it, and Jesus finally responds to the trick question by asking whose picture is on it. You see how he’s lifting up to the Pharisees and all the students around him the issue of idolatry just by asking those words? Jesus asks them, “Whose likeness is this? And whose inscription?” I imagine the Pharisees are getting a little red-faced here as they answer, “Caesar’s.”
Jesus then virtually slaps them in the face with his reply, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s.”
It’s not a direct response to their question. Not a yes or no answer. But basically he’s telling them what they already know: that it is not illegal to pay taxes to Rome according to Jewish law. Everybody hated paying taxes and they were really hoping that he would tell them that they shouldn’t be paying them so that they could get him in trouble with the Roman authorities, but he doesn’t fall for it.
But they also should know by now that Jesus never stops with simply answering their question. Remember how they asked him for the most important commandment and he gave them not one but two: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength…and love your neighbor as yourself”? Well, Jesus does it again here.
They ask him is it lawful to pay taxes to Rome and he tells them they are to give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to give to God what belongs to God. Jesus doesn’t stop with answering the question he is asked, but goes on to make the question about something much deeper and more relevant. Not to whom do we pay taxes, but to whom do we belong? For the two are not the same. To whom we pay taxes and to whom we pay homage are different issues.
Our current political climate has had a tendency to conflate the two – God and nation. This is a very dangerous and inappropriate action. As much as there are those of us who might like to think of America as a Christian nation, the fact of the matter is, it is not. Nor is any other geopolitical entity. No nation belongs to Christ above any other nation. We as individual people can be Christian, can belong to Christ, but Christianity is not a mass exercise. It is a transformative process by which God is embodied in each of us individually and through which we make independent decisions and take actions with the Holy Spirit’s guidance. Caesar and God were not the same thing back in year 30 nor are they in year 2005. So let us give to our nation what belongs to it, including our tax dollars and perhaps our loyalty and our love and some of our time and let us give to God what belongs to God.
Next question: what does belong to God? Maybe we should go back to the Micah text and look at what the Lord requires of us. Micah was a prophet who preached in the 7th and 8th centuries before Christ. His book is a short one of only seven chapters and with Jesus’ love for the prophets, it is likely that he would have known these words by heart. Micah’s primary focus was on revealing God’s concern for the combined kingdom of Israel, which in his time was the southern kingdom of Judah and the northern kingdom of Israel. It seems that the poor and hungry were forgotten while the rich were just getting richer. Jesus would have seen this truth in his time as we also see it today. Micah also, interestingly enough, speaks about a ruler who is to come out of Bethlehem whose greatness will reach the ends of the earth and whose reign will be one of peace. But we’ll leave that passage for another time.
Today’s scripture begins with the question: “With what shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before God on high?” It then goes on to name a list of possibilities – burnt offerings, animal sacrifices, oils, even the firstborn child, because nothing is too much to give to God. But ultimately, the answer is “no!” God doesn’t want that. The response from God is that you have been told what is good: “to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.” Justice, Kindness and Humility.
What does it take for us to fulfill this decree? For even though it sounds small and straightforward, justice, kindness and humility are far from simple for we rather selfish, unkind and egotistical human beings.
Justice. To do justice. What does this mean and how do we fulfill it? Of the three, I think this one is the hardest to understand. The King James Version that Ron read, and the New Revised Standard Version both translate this the same way, “to do justice.” I like the New International Version’s translation here, which is to “act justly.” Looking at the original Hebrew, justice is easy; the word is mishpat. But the verb is actually the word asah, which can mean “to do, to make, to act, to produce, to observe, to celebrate.” How does one do, make, act, produce, observe, celebrate justice? With just acts.
How many opportunities do we have to “do justice” and how well do we use them? Do we give generously to those in our community that have less than we do? Do we bring food for the basket in the foyer? Did we support the Mission Fair that occurred yesterday in the Parish Hall – if not, there is another chance during coffee hour this morning. Do we research organizations that help the homeless or troubled youth or victims of war in foreign countries and do we donate to them financially or with our time? Do we vote in our public elections and for programs that would aid others?
The second piece is to “love kindness.” This one can also be translated as to “love mercy.” I think it is good to remember that kindness and mercy are of a piece. That to be kind to someone also embodies granting him or her mercy. It can also be very simple.
The other day I was at Waldbaums and there was no express lane open. I had about seven items not in a basket, but filling my arms and the two lanes that were open both had carts filled to the brim unloading in front of me. Do you know the man in aisle five looked at me standing behind him and saw how little I had in comparison to him and told me to go ahead of him? I was renewed in my faith in human kindness. And mercy. So loving kindness or mercy does not have to mean large acts, but can be just as significant with small ones. What are the little ways that you could “love kindness or mercy” today?
Finally, we are to walk humbly with our God. We are to remember that we are not God, that we are not the ones running the show, that we are not the ones in charge, much as we would like to be or would like to believe that we are. This one, too, is very difficult. Perhaps it is the hardest one to actually do. We are so sure that we are captains of our own ships that we forget really we are merely to row and leave God in charge of steerage.
It is increasingly clear to me that we cannot do this by ourselves. Do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God. That in order to do it, we have to let God take pride of place in our lives. Perhaps it will help to remember that we are Christians. Or at least we claim to be. I remind you that when you add an “–ian” to the end of a word, it means “to live in or to belong to” an entity. So a Canadian lives in or belongs to the country of Canada. A Californian lives in or belongs to the state of California. And a Christian lives in or belongs to Christ. Which brings us full circle back to the question of identity.
Jesus tells us to “give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to give to God what belongs to God.” Furthermore, if you do this, if you give what belongs to God, to God, then you will be acting justly and loving mercy and kindness and walking humbly with God. For everything you have belongs to God. Your body and your house and your clothes and your money and your car and your spouse or your significant other and your parents and your children and your trips to Maine or Fire Island or France or Africa and your rosebushes in the backyard and your geraniums in the front and your good days and your bad days and your leaky basement and your holey socks and your arthritis and your alcoholism and your tendency to overeat and your body parts that are plastic and metal because you didn’t start out with them – everything, absolutely everything about you belongs to God.
Without God, you wouldn’t be here. And I don’t mean, you wouldn’t be here at the Presbyterian Church of Sweet Hollow on Sunday morning, October 16, 2005, although that might be true as well. I mean, you wouldn’t be here. Psalm 139:13-14 tells us that God knit us together in our mothers’ wombs, that we are fearfully and wonderfully made. We all, each and every one of us, are a product of God’s imaging, we are God’s imagination incarnate, and with that knowledge comes awesome and wondrous responsibility. For if we belong to God, truly belong to God, locate ourselves not only as people who live in Melville, Huntington, Huntington Station, Long Island, New York, USA, planet earth, but as God’s, then it is not enough for us to live our lives doing the best we can. We are called instead to lives of justice and kindness and humility. Lives in which we ask ourselves constantly, “Am I doing what God would have me do?”
What is it that we are called to do when we are told that we are to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with our God? Are we to do justice in our own dealings with people? Of course, that’s a no-brainer. But how wide does that circle extend? It’s even easy, if not always doable, to think about sharing our food by putting it in a basket. Or supporting mission through our participation in the Fair yesterday or today or through our dollars. But what about going beyond?
And loving kindness or mercy. What about that? It’s also easy to sit in these pews and think about being pleasant to those around us whom we love. But what about those we don’t? How are we to be kind to those we don’t like, much less love? Those people that don’t let us go in front of them on line at the grocery store, or who cut us off at the corner of 110 and Old Country Road and then make rude gestures when we honk, or who live half a world away and don’t believe the way we do and use those beliefs to humiliate and oppress? How are we called to respond to them?
As for walking humbly with our God, what does that mean beyond coming to church on Sunday? Does it mean committing to reading your Bible more often and really trying to glean from it meaning for you? Or coming to Bible Study starting on Tuesday, November 1st at the Sansones’ house? Or beginning a regular daily prayer practice when you get up in the morning or go to bed at night? Or does it mean something else – or more?
When you think about the fact that you belong to God and that you are to give what belongs to God over to God, what does that mean for you? Listen. What is Jesus telling you today that you are to do, to say, to be? Can you step out in faith and do it, say it, be it? Because if you listen and if you follow Jesus the Christ, if you take the fact that you live in and belong to Christ and extend it to who you are and how you live, believe me, it will change your life. Amen.