What Belongs to God?

Matthew 22:15-22

October 18, 2020

 

            Unless you watch absolutely no television whatsoever, it’s hard to not know these four words, “What’s in your wallet?” A few years ago, this became a cultural catch phrase due to some funny commercials featuring Vikings and a few celebrity spokespersons. The ads were for the Capital One credit card, and it promotes the idea that shopping and banking with this credit card earns you rewards. If you have this credit card in your wallet, even Christmas shopping is easier, and shopping with it earns the user so many travel rewards that you can bring your whole Viking gang on trips. Vikings in Hawaii? Why not? Vikings hanging with an Elvis impersonator in Vegas? Absolutely. Each commercial, whatever its particulars, ended with that catch phrase, “What’s in your wallet?” 

            Of course, the point of the commercial is to get people to apply for Capital One credit cards. But I think that the underlying message it makes is that it is not enough to just have a credit card, it is the brand of credit card that counts. To be hip, cool, fun, fashionable, smart, and money savvy, you must have the Capital One card. The name, the image that is emblazoned on that credit card also counts; maybe even more than the card itself. So, what’s in your wallet?

            This idea is played out in our story from Matthew’s gospel. For the first time in a while, our passage is not centered on Jesus responding to his questioners with a parable, however our story does involve a confrontation with the Pharisees. The Pharisees have been confronting Jesus since he came into Jerusalem and into the temple. But this confrontation is different. Not only are the Pharisees trying to trap Jesus, this time the Herodians have joined in as well. We do not read about the Herodians very often. In fact, I think this story may be the one time they are mentioned at all. Perhaps in a casual reading of this story, we might just accept their presence without question, but it is significant that this group we know little about are siding with the Pharisees against Jesus. Consider the name; Herodians suggests Herod.  Herodians were Jewish leaders who allied themselves with Herod and the Roman Empire. The Romans were the occupiers, the alien force who held them and their land under the empirical thumb. Just as tax collectors were despised and given their own special category for sinfulness because they collected the taxes demanded by the Roman government, the Herodians would not have been popular or loved by the common folks. Certainly, the Pharisees, the religious leaders and authorities of their day, would not have cared for them. But here they stand together trying to trap Jesus. Their collaboration gives new meaning to the phrase,

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

            Both the Pharisees and the Herodians hated Jesus. Both were threatened by him. He had been stirring people up for a long time, but at first he was just a nuisance, an annoying thorn in their collective side. Now this itinerant rabbi had become dangerous. So, as Matthew tells it, they plotted to entrap him. 

            “‘Teacher, we know that you are sincere and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality. Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?’”

            Jesus knows what they are trying to do. The text says that he was “aware of their malice.” Jesus does what Jesus did best; he turns the question back on them. As one commentator pointed out; the question he was asked was extraordinarily clever, but his response was ingenious. Jesus asks them to show him the coin that they used to pay the tax to the emperor. They produce a denarius, and he asks them to tell him whose head and whose title is stamped on the coin. The emperor’s. Then, Jesus says perhaps some of his most well-known words.

“Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. Again, and again, Jesus’ words have been interpreted through the lens of separation of church and state.

“See, even Jesus implies that there is a dividing line between them. The two should not mix. Keep them separated.”

Yet that kind of political and religious separation is our modern understanding. Given the context and the culture of the time, I doubt that anyone listening to Jesus or even the first hearers and readers of Matthew’s gospel would have thought in those terms. Religious law was the law.  There would have been no separation between the two. But that is also why the empirical tax was so odious. 

This tax was the Roman census or the “head tax” that was instituted when Judea became a Roman province. The tax was not only considered unfair, it went against Torah. The land of Israel belonged to God alone. Since Caesar was a usurper, paying the tax was considered an act of disobedience to God.  Not only would Caesar’s image have been on the denarius, the inscription would most likely have read something like, “In Caesar we trust.”

Caesar was not just the governing ruler; as emperor, he was, for all intents and purposes, a god. Paying the Roman head tax meant that the Jewish people consistently broke the first two commandments. They put another god before the Lord God, and they used a coin that bore a graven image. When Jesus asked to see the coin, he essentially asked the religious leaders what was in their wallet. How interesting that they could produce this coin which went against the Law and he could not? How interesting that they could produce this coin in the temple? The hypocrisy of that, of the religious leaders having a coin like in this in the holiest of places, was not lost on Jesus. 

Yet even when this passage isn’t interpreted as a reason for separation of church and state, it is used as a way for believers to find their way through a complex world that is driven by money. Just give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and the rest goes to God. Sounds simple, doesn’t it?  But real life is a different beast altogether. We are, like it or not, driven by money. It is a reality of our lives. You need a certain amount of money just to survive. If you don’t have it, survival can be tough to say the least. Anyone who has spent time in our church office knows how many requests Erlene gets for assistance with utilities and other necessities. To be without money is to know firsthand and up close how necessary having money is, and, more importantly, what it means not to have it.

            Yet we don’t like to talk about money in church, not unless it’s stewardship emphasis season. Even with stewardship we’d prefer that the money talk only happen on one Sunday.  Once that Sunday is over, we can return to not talking about money the rest of the year. But money is being talked about in this passage. While I think that it is a critical element of this confrontation, what I really think is being called into question is allegiance. Perhaps when Jesus questioned the Pharisees and the Herodians about what was in their wallets, he was also questioning their allegiance? Who do you belong to, God or the emperor? 

            Jesus was the master at turning questions meant to trick him back onto those doing the questioning. But the question of allegiance, the question of priorities is also asked of us?  Who do we belong to? Where does our allegiance lie? The big question is what belongs to God?
 

            We might glibly answer that we, of course, belong to God. Along with that everything we have, everything we are, everything in God’s creation belongs to God. Yet how does our answer play out in our daily lives?    

            I must be honest, when it comes to my daily life the idea that I belong to God, that everything I am and everything that I hold dear belongs to God, does not always factor in. When I make a decision, whether it is about a purchase or what to have for lunch, am I thinking, “what does this mean considering the fact that all I am belongs to God?” No. Do I think on a regular basis about how what I do and say reflects on my allegiances? No. As much as I want to live mindfully and intentionally, I know that I fall short of that over and over again.

            What belongs to God?

            Seven years ago, I went to CREDO. CREDO is a retreat conference for pastors hosted and run by the denomination. It is designed to help pastors take care of themselves in four different areas: vocationally, physically, financially, and spiritually. The reason it was designed in this way is because clergy are leaving the ministry in record numbers. To reach the 25 year anniversary as I just did is a feat. I don’t say that to brag. There are plenty of times I desperately wanted out; I just did not know how to make that happen. So CREDO. CREDO saved my ministry. I tell people that it was an intervention of grace when I needed it most.

            While I was there, our faculty member who worked with us on our physical well-being, had us write three statements about how we feel about our bodies, our physical selves. How have treated our bodies? How we do feel about our bodies?

            I wrote something like that I have hated my body. I have mistreated my body. I have denied my body.

            After we wrote our statements, she had us replace the word “body” with the word “creation.”

            I have hated creation. I have mistreated creation. I have denied creation.

            Although it is not translated in this way, Jesus used the Greek word for “likeness” when he looked at the coin. The coin bore the likeness of the emperor. God also created us in God’s likeness. We bear the handprint of our creator. We are part of God’s glorious creation. We belong to God. But how quickly and how easily we forget that. I certainly do. The statements I made in CREDO prove that. I forget that I am made in the likeness of God. I forget that I bear God’s image. I forget that I belong to God, body and soul. And if I forget that about myself, how easy it is to forget that about others.

            In this time of worry and stress and fear and uncertainty and contentiousness and so many unknowns, in a time that is scarier than anytime I can remember in the half century I have lived, we have to ask ourselves, “What belongs to God?” In whose image are we made? If we believe that we belong to God, if we claim that we are made in God’s likeness, then how does that affect how we treat ourselves and how we treat one another? How do I care for myself and how do I care for others? Could this world be a better place, could we make a difference, no matter how small, in the lives of others and in our own, if when asked the question, “What belongs to God?” we answered, “We all do. Every single one of us. We all belong to God?”

Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia!”  Amen.