Pentecost 23, 10/19/2008

Sermon on Matthew 22:15-22, by David Zersen

Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said. 16So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, ‘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. 17Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?' 18But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, ‘Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? 19Show me the coin used for the tax.' And they brought him a denarius. 20Then he said to them, ‘Whose head is this, and whose title?' 21They answered, ‘The emperor's.' Then he said to them, ‘Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's.' 22When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away. (NRSV)

ARE YOU COMFORTABLE IF EVERYONE WINS?

We are enmeshed here in the United States in a debate season when candidates for both president and vice present receive major coverage. Millions of people watch these debates on TV and following the debates we listen to the commentators to tell us who won and who lost. If we have chosen our candidate, it is our hope that he or she, in the case of the vice presidential choices, will have won.

The frustration for many in this race is that nobody seems to come out a winner. We like winners and it's a problem when the commentators tell us that maybe by a point or two one or the other was the winner, but that's only because they've been told they have to pick a winner. Most are telling us that the candidates in the debates came out pretty even.

This is a fairly interesting context within which to try to understand this Sunday's Gospel lesson. The Gospel is one of four debates, if you will, in Matthew that Jesus conducts with his opponents at the threshold of his last week in Jerusalem. Suspense is created for us as we are told how Jesus' addresses controversial issues with his opponents. The challenging repartee is worthy of the best debaters in our political sphere. One question seeks to get the Pharisees to say who Jesus is, David's inferior or David's superior. Another is a debate about which is the greatest commandment. Still another seeks to challenge the truth of the resurrection. The very first one is our lesson for today, the question about whether it is appropriate to pay taxes. This is really a relevant and thorny issue for Americans because in our debates we have heard everything from the view that it's patriotic to pay taxes to the view that taxation should be replaced with a sales tax to the view that taxation should be abolished.

Assuring that one side wins

Clearly, from the standpoint of the Pharisees (and, for that matter, the Herodians and the Sadducees), Jesus needed to be debated. He represented another authority that was troubling to those who felt their authority to be established. It is fascinating to imagine what kinds of debate questions may have been considered. The few that have been passed down to us are very clever in their implications.

If Jesus answers the question about paying taxes to the government positively, he can be in trouble with the Jews many of whom opposed the Roman authority. If he answered the question negatively, Jesus could be in trouble with the Romans who didn't need leaders of the subjugated Jews planning sedition. From the standpoint of those who structured the debate, it was a win-lose situation. Either way, they had Jesus trapped and he would be required to lose face among his followers. The Pharisees, the majority party at the time, hoped to be the winners.

Often we interpret this story to show that Jesus beat his opponents with his clever remark and made them the losers. However, I would like to suggest another possibility. The Pharisees themselves recognized that Jesus didn't tend to take sides. As they set up the debate, they said, "you do not regard people with partiality." So, we are introduced to the possibility that Jesus proceeds from a different kind of authority. And that rather than crushing them with his clever response, he is merely giving them an option, in keeping with his approach not to take sides. Having them recognize that Caesar's image is on the coin, he encourages them to give Caesar his due, which is the tax paid for services provided by a government. On the other hand, Paul Nuechterlein points out to us that Jesus recognizes that another image, the image we ourselves bear of God's likeness, owes God our very selves. We don't need to be divided on this issue, Jesus is saying. Caesar gets his image (a coin) and God gets his image (us).

There is a profound Stewardship truth in this argument which should not be bypassed. There are limited financial responses that we owe to our governments, but there are greater and more extravagant responses that we owe to God given that everything we are and possess is God's gift to us. And in a Stewardship season, it is probably important for us to think about the privilege given to us to make a difference with our gifts in the lives and destinies of those less fortunate than we. This is a major role of our churches.

However, the bigger insight to be gleaned here, it seems to me, is that we are being called to appreciate a God who seeks not to divide us with different conclusions on issues, but to create convincing options for us through which everybody wins. At its most amazing place, there is in this understanding the conviction that despite the blame we might like to affix for Jesus' own suffering and death (was it God, Romans, Jews, or us?), God wants blame for no one. Grace is for all, no matter who they have been and what they have done. In the crucifixion, God opens to all the new approach to acceptance and affirmation in which everybody wins and nobody loses. We no longer have to live in a world that loves to point the finger of blame. At the crucifixion, God cancels the blame for all of us and tells us that this is the last time we need to do this to one another.

Rejoicing when no one loses

What can this possibly mean? Does it mean that there are no criminals, that murderers and child molesters and thieves should not be punished? Of course not. We have laws against such crimes and people who disobey them need to be punished, for their own sakes and for the safety of the society in which we live.

Yet you know, as well as I, that we have become extreme in our litigious society with our need to find fault even when there is none. Where tragedy results from mere accident, we desperately need to find out who is to blame so that somebody can pay.

Parents also know that sometimes we go to extremes telling our children that nobody in our household is a loser, that we raise winners here! And so our games and our sports become conflict resolution schemes of the highest order-in fact taking on the form of religion. Not a few have pointed out in my home state of Texas, that the temple which is the football stadium (built with Greek columns) courts a kind worship in which winning teams give self-worth and validation to their fans.

Pressing this further, when countries get into war games, few enter it with the assumption that it's going to be a win-win situation. In war, where vast expenditures will be made and many lives lost, the inevitable anger and the hatred, often perpetuated by governments, insist on victory. Our current political situation has laid out this debate rather specifically.

Is there something that Jesus is saying to us today that can be drawn from his comments to the Pharisees of his own day? On the one hand, it is clear that apart from those areas in which laws mandate punishment, no one needs to end up being a loser in life. At the cross, our sins were cancelled and we are forever encouraged to surrender the need to point the finger and castigate the loser. Because forgiveness applies to everyone without distinction, we are encouraged to accept one another as mutual recipients of the grace of a loving God.

That the Pharisees had difficulty with this is clear because they continued their attacks through Holy Week, bringing about the crucifixion as their way of silencing the optional authority in which everybody wins. You and I, however, have the freedom to let the Spirit's power draw us into new ways of addressing our differences in the world.

Just this week, as an example of how this can be done, my wife wanted to watch the old classic, Chariots of Fire, because Joe Biden had said it was his favorite movie. In the film, for the most part a true story, two young Cambridge students compete at the Olympics in Paris shortly after WWI. They are finally prevented from running against each other because they don't compete in the same race. This is a problem for the Jewish runner because he is angry at how he feels he has been discriminated against and he is running to prove to all his detractors that he is the best in the world. The other young man also wants to win, but because it gives him pleasure to run because God made him fast. In the end, as said, we don't see a victory. It is a win-win situation. Each wins in his own race. However, the one man, like the Pharisees, continues his life unhappily because he has not come out on top. The other man goes off to be a missionary in China where he dies after a life giving God praise in an internment camp at the end of WWII.

There is a clear sense to the viewer that the win-win option was available for both, even if both didn't choose it. Perhaps the Academy Award for the film that year sensed that as well.

Ultimately, then, the choice is ours, is it not? That being the case, one wonders how creative we might get if we accepted one another, as God has accepted us, and tried to fashion win-win situations in our jobs, our relationships, our games, our conflicts, and our systems of testing. The challenge is a great one, and to a great degree it depends on the degree to which we accept and affirm one another in the same way in which we have been accepted and affirmed by God.

Do you, for example think, that we have even begun to reflect on how to create win-win situations with terrorists? With abusive spouses? With bullying kids on the playground? With religions that try to convert with pressure? With athletes who have used steroids to make their mark? I think we are far too ready to use might and strength and authority first, and then to think we have accomplished what needs to be accomplished.

Jesus, however, introduces a new kind of authority to the debate that astonished even his opponents.

I suggest today that we seek to be astonished as well, and to reflect on creative ways in which that new style of dealing with differences can make us all winners.

Prof. Dr. Dr., President Emeritus David Zersen
Concordia University Texas
Austin, Texas

E-Mail: djzersen@aol.com

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