The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 24A] - October 16, 2011 (Matthew 22:15-22)

It seems like everyone is thinking or talking about loopholes these days and how they supposedly make the nation’s tax codes unfair. What with the economy on shaky ground and would-be presidential candidates’ touting their alternate tax plans, people everywhere seem disgusted that loopholes exist, and they're demanding an end to them. They go against our idea of fairness—lurking deep in the tiny print, buried beneath all the red tape—those areas of bureaucratic ambiguity that allow the clever or the qualified to circumvent the law. We tend to be resentful of those who can find and exploit the loopholes, and yet, if we’re honest, we wouldn’t exactly pass up an opportunity to have them work in our favor, if you know what I mean.

There is no telling if the Pharisees and the Herodians had found loopholes in Caesar's tax code that demanded a yearly payment for each male above the age of fourteen and each woman between twelve and sixty-five. I’d bet they had, but I have no proof. Both groups were entrenched in the power structures of the day. The Herodians were a group that supported the reign of King Herod, the local puppet of Caesar. Not much is known of them, but they were likely well-connected with people up top—like a modern-day special interest group, maybe. They would have supported the payment of Caesar’s head tax because it helped prop up the system that kept Herod, their fave, in power, even if they had found a way to be exempt from it themselves.

The Pharisees, on the other hand, liked to pretend they weren’t that politically involved, but they certainly could play the game enough to keep themselves at the center of Jewish temple life. Although they never openly organized, let’s say, an “Occupy Temple Street” rally against Caesar’s policies, the Pharisees probably resented Caesar’s tax because—first of all—they knew it was a constant reminder to the Jewish people of their Roman oppression, and—second of all—dealing with the emperor’s printed and minted money raised all kinds of issues regarding false idols and graven images and disobeying the first commandment.

"Show me a coin."

So, both the Pharisees and the Herodians find the issue of paying taxes to the megalomaniacal leader of a foreign military power the perfect way to trap Jesus in his own logic. They consider it the question that will finally do him in. For if Jesus supports paying the tax outright, then he will reveal himself to be party to the Roman law and deeply unpopular with the people. But if he rejects the tax, the Herodians and other local leaders will be able to accuse him of treason or inciting a rebellion. In every commentary I checked, they labelled this the “horns of a dilemma.”  I’d love to know the origin of that expression.  It sounds pointy.  In any case, this is a situation where Jesus can’t win, a situation where Jesus has to choose between two equally bad alternatives, unless, of course, Jesus can find…a loophole. This is a time when we hope Jesus might find a way out of answering directly, of exploiting something in the system that will get him—and us, of course—off the hook.

Already by Jesus’ day emperors and other rulers were imprinting their images on coins to serve as currency for the empire. This system of monopolizing all commerce transactions by inscribing the ruling powers’ mottos and likeness on tokens of common exchange was one of the most effective methods for an empire to extend its authority into every aspect of human life. Soon people would no longer barter for goods and services in the market—(“two camels, say, for a hectare of wheat”)--but they would trade tokens and bills that could be backed by the emperors’ treasure. It’s not just that money made taxes easier to levy and collect; the emperor also essentially had a hand in every business deal that took place, investing, somehow, in every venture out there. I imagine that’s where the term “currency” came from: it was the circulation of money that could keep goods and services flowing, like a current.

Caesar's denarius coin

When the Pharisees present Jesus with one of the empire’s coins with which the tax was to be paid, Jesus shows them that it plainly has Caesar’s head on it. If it contains Caesar’s image, then it must be Caesar’s. In other words, Caesar has made this money and stamped his likeness on it, therefore, it belongs to Caesar and should be rendered to him. If this is how Caesar would like to run his empire—going around minting things of value so that he can eventually control and create wealth, then so be it—keep the system of denarii flowing back to him, Jesus says, corrupt though it may be. But then Jesus adds a phrase that is much more than just a loophole in that process. He throws the whole system on its head, so to speak: “And give to God the things that are God’s.”

The message? As it turns out, it is not just Caesar who has gone around and placed his image on certain things. As the Pharisees and maybe the Herodians surely would have known, each human being on earth bears God’s image. We have been created—male and female—in the image of God, fashioned, each in our own unique way, to reflect back to the Creator something of great value. We have each been formed and shaped with the idea that we are not just precious, but that we bear within us some of the very qualities of God. And, in Jesus’ economy, that also needs to flow back to the being who minted us, and, if the system works like it should, it will enrich the entire universe.

In Jesus’ statement to pay taxes to Caesar, we find the call to a life that is far more radical than anything we might otherwise be up to. It is more activitist than occupying Wall Street and more countercultural than forming a new political party. What Jesus means is that we are the currency through which God will deal change in the world. Created in his image, and redeemed from corruption through the cross of Christ, we are in circulation to God’s glory. And no matter how many other labels get attached to us, no matter how many other images are pounded into our brains, we will always, at our core, be forged in God’s own image.

And that means, with the Spirit’s power, we have the priviledge to interact with this world in much the same way as God does. It means we have the power to love and forgive as well as the power to hate and hold grudges. It means we have been granted the capacity to show compassion rather than indifference. It means we can choose generosity over greed, and selflessness over egocentrism. This is, in part, what it means to be created in God’s image, to bear his likeness. Sin causes us always to choose the latter options—the hate, the indifference, the greed, the selfishness—but in Jesus Christ, God still claims us for the good.

It also means that our lives don’t just matter to us and those with whom we share this planet, but that they matter, in fact, to God. It matters to God what we do with, for example, our money—all of it. It matters to God what we do with our bodies, our minds, our relationships, our sexuality, and our ability to create new life ourselves. And while we might not completely be set free yet from the emperor’s system of weights and balances and levying taxes, we can still begin direct to God’s purposes these things that are rightfully God’s.  We can still remember that, in Jesus Christ, God once more gives us lives that actually matter amidst so many world systems that assign worth and wealth rather arbitrarily, amidst a culture that says we must really only answer to ourselves, which is a total lie.

refugee with her identification card

I can’t help but think here of the Sudanese and Somali refugees I served in the streets of Cairo—a people who would risk almost everything for the chance to possess the blue refugee I.D. card issued by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The thing was only a little bigger than an index card, but for some reason, in the wacky way the world operates, it bestowed upon them some basic human rights and the chance to be resettled to a new home. It would often take them years to obtain it, and the majority of them would die or lose hope altogether before they’d get one. It was a sad system I didn’t understand (and one in which I somehow participated), but I did notice that in the meantime while they waited, they’d arrive in worship, week after week, tracing the cross in water on their forehead as they passed by the font, hearing once again the source and call of their true citizenship, reminding us privileged westerners that they knew they already had the only identity they card they’d ever need in the love of Jesus Christ.

Because, truth be told, at some point everything that we are will be handed over in death. At some point it won’t matter how many identity cards we’ve secured or how much extra wealth we’ve accrued. All that we’ve become will be given back, and all that we’ve kept will become someone else’s. And at that point, God will be the final recipient, that’s for sure, and there won’t be any loopholes that I know of.

I wonder, regarding my own life: on that day, will God finally get back something that was rightfully his, but had been withheld all the while in greed, selfishness, and spite? Or will he be receiving something that had been lovingly prepared for him out of a response to the generosity of his Son? I shudder to answer, for I think I know.

Yet regardless, in anticipation of that day, as we each answer that question for ourselves, perhaps we should organize a protest campaign. Occupy…let’s see…Monument Avenue!   At least the end of it here…every week. For that matter, every day!  Occupy Horsepen Road…and go ahead and occupy your cubicle at Reynolds packaging or Capital One. Occupy the nurse’s station at Bon Secours and Henrico Doctors. Occupy the locker at Godwin High School and your classroom at Short Pump Middle. Occupy your breakfast conversations each morning and the dinner table each evening Occupy all these places with the news of Jesus, just as God has so graciously occupied your hearts and maybe we can get a little of Jesus’ currency—the kind that makes all things new—circulating in the process.

Play along, if need be, with the world’s system of weights and measures, I.D. cards and head taxes, but all the while lifting hands and lives to the Lord above because “all that we have and all that we are all that we hope to be we give to God…

“We are an offering.  We are an offering.”

Thanks be to God!

   

 The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 23C] - October 10, 2010 (Luke 17:11-19)

You see, they were accustomed to shouting out. Declared by ritual Jewish law to be unclean, lepers—and all those stricken with any incurable skin disease—were not only to live alone and outside the city walls away from people, they were also to walk around shouting “Unclean! Unclean!” at the top of their lungs wherever they went to warn people of their presence. It was a humiliating chore, to say the least. As if it weren’t bad enough to be burdened with such a debilitating, disfiguring condition, a leper also had to bear the responsibility of reminding others how contagious they could be, what an outcast they were. When all they probably wanted was to fit in, to be one of the crowd, to be, at the very least, ignored and passed by—the leper was charged with constantly calling attention to his or her status as an ugly outsider. “Unclean! I’m a mess! I’m a reject!” they would essentially walk around saying. As much as anyone could get accustomed to such a thing, lepers were accustomed to shouting out.

So it would not have been that strange to be walking along the road in first-century Israel and happen upon lepers who were shouting at people. However, on this occasion, as Jesus makes his way to Jerusalem, the lepers do not cry out “Unclean! Unclean!” Ten of them, in fact, clumping together at a distance like a pack of mangy, stray dogs in a borderland village between Samaria and Galilee, glimpse Jesus and his disciples and cry out for mercy. “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” Recognizing Jesus for who he is (the only non-disciples to ascribe this name to Jesus), these ten lepers heave their desire for mercy upon him. It is not clear from the passage whether their expectation was that they would be healed, or if they simply saw him as a source of alms. Nevertheless, Jesus tells them to go present themselves to the priests.
The priests in those days were like the gatekeepers of the community. According to Jewish code, priests could declare people clean and restore them to dignity and to human community. Still stricken with leprosy—and probably still shouting out to people on their path—the ten turn to go check in with the priests and on their way, mysteriously, they are cleansed, much like Naaman the Syrian who had dipped seven times in the River Jordan to cure him of his leprosy. Both Naaman and the ten lepers were asked to do something that didn’t quite seem effective in order to realize their healing. Go to the priests. “OK,” they shrug. On their way, they are healed.

And then they fall silent…finally! No longer infectious, no longer contagious, they have no need to shout out anymore. No need to cry out on the road, no need to remind everyone of their condition. No more shouting…except for one…one leper who returns, still shouting, still crying out, still yelling at the time of his lungs—yet this time contagious with praise and thanksgiving.

Each week either Chris or I stand in front of you as we prepare the table for Holy Communion and we have a little dialogue. “The Lord be with you,” we say.  And you respond, “And also with you,” as if there is something about Jesus that is catching, something that can be shared. Perhaps we should shout it?

Then we continue: “Lift up your hearts,” to which you reply, “We lift them to the Lord.”

Then we suggest, “Let us give thanks to the Lord our God,” and you oblige: “It is right to give our thanks and praise.”

At that point either Chris or I, directing our attention to the one who has called us here, to the one who has given us new life, to the one who has healed us of sin time and time again, says, “It is indeed right, our duty and our joy, that we should at all times and in all places give thanks and praise to you, almighty and merciful God, through our Savior Jesus Christ.”  The green hymnal used the word “salutary” at this point, which I thought was helpful. “Salutary,” a seldom-used word these days, means, well, “helpful.” Beneficial. Good for us.

Well, whether or not we say “salutary” every Sunday in our worship we still participate in the very actions that single Samaritan leper demonstrated on that road to Jerusalem. Getting ready to share the bread of life and the cup of salvation, you and I have, in some sense, heard his shouting and contracted his infectious joy and thanksgiving. Down through the ages it has been passed along, from one cleansed sinner to another. He has declared us clean in the waters of baptism and set us free. We find ourselves responding to Jesus’ great mercy for us by shouting praise and giving our thanks. In fact, the words in Greek for this leper’s actions are doxazon and eucharistein, two words which may sound foreign to our ears, until when we think of the words doxology and Eucharist. Enthralled by Jesus’ mercy and thrilled to be healed, the leper forgets the priests and instead runs back to the feet of the one who healed him, shouting doxology and making eucharist as he goes. Praise and thanksgiving: yes, these things are right, they are a joy…and they are good for us.

One of our professors at seminary had a practice of carrying his hymnal with him as he left his pew to get in line to receive Holy Communion. Whereas most people, when it came time to stand up and follow the usher’s lead, stop singing the communion hymns, and lay their hymnal down to assume a more quiet stance in line, this professor would keep on singing, stopping only for the few seconds it took him to hold out his hand and take the bread. I liked the image: so filled with joy and thankfulness on the way to receive and give thanks to Jesus that his words of praise cannot be silenced. I have noticed, with happiness, that several of you sing at the communion rail as you kneel. It is an infectious action. That one professor, with such a simple gesture, spurred several other worshippers to think again about their attitude toward Jesus’ merciful presence.

Indeed, the experience of the one leper reminds us that not only is praise and thanksgiving really the first and best response to our Lord’s grace, but that before we can be sent out into the world with the news about Jesus, we must return to him in worship. Jesus’ shock at the ingratitude of the other nine does not mean their healing is revoked. After all, they did exactly what he commanded. But the one leper reveals the truest life of the sinner who has been redeemed: through this return in praise and thanksgiving we realize in our heart of hearts that, in the end, the only place we really can go to encounter God’s mercy is in the person of Jesus Christ, the one who hangs on the cross.

Christian writer Don Miller writes in his best-selling book, Blue Like Jazz, that “the most important thing that happens within Christian spirituality is when a person falls in love with Jesus.” He goes on to say, “I know our culture will sometimes understand a love for Jesus as weakness. There is this lie floating around that says I am supposed to be able to do life along, without any help, without stopping to worship something bigger than myself. But I actually believe there is something bigger than me,” Miller continues, “and I need for there to be something bigger than me. I need someone to put awe inside me; I need to come second to someone who has everything figured out.” (Thomas Nelson, 2003. p 237). Salutary.

And that all makes sense to me—the need to fall down and worship something bigger and more awe-inspiring than myself, the carrying my hymnal to Communion so I can sing my praise, the salutary effect this all has on my soul, but often it’s still as if only about a tenth of me, if that, actually succeeds in responding. I estimate that only about a tenth of my heart, my mind, my soul—a tenth, at the most—that sings with joy and praise when I know I can run to him on the road. For all the times I’ve been drawn into the wonder of praise and thanksgiving at the foot of Jesus, there are nine more parts of me that go elsewhere.  There are nine more parts of me that fall in love with something other than Jesus. But thanks to the actions of this one leper, I’d like to think Jesus is pleased with that one faithful part.

Earlier this summer a stray cat started hanging out on our porch. We thought he was a little sketchy both in appearance and behavior, so we kept clear of him. We made sure our daughters knew he was an unclean cat. But eventually he wore us down, and we finally fed him one morning. One bowl. That was all. He disappeared later that day and night, but the next morning, about the same time, that cat came back. And, of course, we did it again. We gave him more food. And again. And now every morning. Our girls, ages two and three, get so excited each morning when they discover he’s returned.
It never gets old for them, even here on day forty-three. It’s like they can’t believe it. You should see their faces. They are so happy that he has come back for more, as if he’s expressing his thanks.

I’d like to think that’s something like the look on Jesus’ face each times he sees us rounding the bend, bowled over as we are by his mercy, the hymnals of our hearts open wide, growing more and more accustomed to shouting out our cries for mercy or our songs of thanksgiving.

The Lord be with you!!!

And also with you.

Got it! Thanks. And thanks be to God!




The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.