Pentecost 19

19^th October 2014

“Give to God what belongs to God...”

Revd Andrew Bain

Readings:

Isaiah 45: 1-7 – I am the God of Israel, who summons you by name

Matthew 22: 15-22 – Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar

“When the chief priests and Pharisees had heard the parables, they realised that Jesus was speaking about them”.

Just imagine you’ve been described as wicked vineyard tenants who kill the owner’s son; ungrateful wedding guests who don’t show up to the most gracious invitation ever. Who would want to be the baddy in the stories this young preacher is just enthralling the people with? The scribes and Pharisees aren’t used to being typecast as anything other than admirable. So they respond by acting out the very behaviour for which they’ve just been condemned. They set a trap for the owner’s son. The final trap will need thirty pieces of silver and a disillusioned Judas. For now this is only a verbal trap, but the clever Pharisees, they think it’s a killer. “Get out of this one”, is what they’re thinking.

The search for the killer question is something we’ve got very used to in our media age. We’ve watched politicians squirm under the relentless fire of Jeremy Paxman, almost skewering some hapless minister with a question he can’t or won’t answer. In our recent pre-referendum debates we saw the same tactic at work with each side looking for that knock-down question that just shows your opponent unable or unwilling to tell the truth the questioner wants to hear – although, in fact, this kind of question has little or no interest in truth. It’s just a weapon.

 Matthew couldn’t make Jesus’ questioners any slimier if he tried: “Teacher, we know that you are sincere and teach the truth of God”. This unctuous approach, nakedly trying to catch Jesus off-guard, doesn’t just paint them as that snake in the grass tempter who shows up regularly for Jesus (as in the wilderness – even the Devil can quote scripture); it also shows that behind their weasel words there’s something else. There’s the fear, just a grain of it, that maybe this Jesus just might be the owner’s son, the expected One. It’s only a suspicion, but it’s one they’re determined to stamp on, because if he is, then the game’s up. They’ve a lot to lose.

So in their minds this is a lose/lose situation for Jesus. If he says: Withhold your taxes; don’t pay money to this heathen occupying power, then the wrath of Rome will soon be down on his head (and they’ll make sure of that) and he’ll alienate all the poor quiet folks who only want a quiet life because life’s hard enough already – they know what revolutions cost people like themselves, and it’s always in blood. But if he says: Pay the taxes, be good, dutiful citizens of the Empire, then the zealots, who want him to use his popularity to raise an army and throw the Romans out – never mind all this “Consider the lilies” stuff – they’re going to give up on him and look elsewhere for their Messiah.

It’s a killer question. It’s a great question. They must have been rubbing their hands with glee. But Jesus subverts it totally. Because their question focused totally on this Caesar, the fearsome emperor who has the power of life or death over everyone. But suddenly Jesus brings up God. They didn’t see that coming. This is the God of Isaiah for whom even kings and emperors, even Cyrus of Persia (the Caesar of his day) are in his hands. And in a heartbeat this ground of a killer question in which they had so much confidence just slips from beneath their feet.

These questioners are supposed to be experts in the faith, but Jesus, this preacher from some backwater village in Galilee, has outdone and undone them all. “This is Caesar’s face, isn’t it – so give him what’s his. But what about what you give to God?”

So, having arrived incensed because they and those who sent them know where they fit into these stories of Jesus, and they don’t like it one bit, now they’re trapped again in a role which hasn’t been written for them by Jesus, but which they’ve chosen for themselves. The ungrateful tenants, the guests who spurn their Lord’s invitation, they’re now shown up again as threadbare, unworthy heirs of the Covenant. They’ve missed the mark again, got themselves exactly where they wouldn’t want to be and shouldn’t be.

And that’s a thought that should maybe make us not too judgemental about these messengers of the Pharisees. Because missing the mark, finding that you’re acting the wrong part in the story, speaking the wrong lines, putting your hopes in the wrong things, making the bad choice – well, I never do that, or do I?

But of course I do. I reject the invitation to the wedding banquet whenever I refuse God’s invitation to give him the gift of my trust and obedience. When I choose to take someone down rather than build them up, speak unkindly about someone; when I withhold forgiveness in spite of the fact that God’s forgiven me countless times; whenever maybe I choose to sit in darkness even when I can hear him calling me. You know, I’ll give to Caesar because I have to. As the tax adverts say threateningly nowadays: “We know where you live”. I’ll do what the world expects or what makes me look good.

But the Lord of the universe to whom I owe everything never coerces me in any way at all – ever. He just sends invitations, beautiful gilt-edged invitations, to join the banquet of life with Jesus joyfully, generously, holding nothing back. I don’t have to act out these miserable lines that Matthew writes, which could be for any of us, to be always the one who refuses, the one who sends apologies and won’t join in. We can re-write the script. And next time an invitation comes – an invitation that in some way says “Choose life” – we can, this time, say “Yes”, or as Jesus puts it: Give to God what belongs to God. And we know that means everything. Amen.