Sermon: 23rd Sunday after Pentecost

If you don’t know that there is an election in exactly 16 days, than you must be living under a rock. Whether it is local or national news, we are fully immersed in the political world these days, hearing about who we should vote for, who we shouldn’t vote for, and why one candidate over the other should have our vote. For any of you that watched the most recent presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain, you heard plenty about a little guy from Ohio named Joe, who happens to be a plumber. Both Obama and McCain offered different explanations for what they would do for Joe the plumber, leaving many of us to think, who the heck is this Joe guy? But, at the base of all the promises to Joe was a question about taxes. Who will raise them for him and who will lower them? Who is being real about the taxes we are going to pay and who is trying to pull the wool over our eyes?

You can barely turn on the television without confronting someone who says that they are the person who is going to lower your taxes. And then, we arrive at church this morning, imaging that perhaps here we will get a break from hearing the back and forth, and what do we find Jesus talking about? Taxes.

Even if you haven’t read much of the bible, it would still be a surprise if you hadn’t at least a blurb of this passage before. Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, give to God what is God’s. For some, these words have been the warrant to head off to the hills, establish their own compound and stop paying taxes. For others, it has been a big green light to keeping a strong barrier between their political and religious lives. There are two extremes to this text, and it seems that we often head towards one or the other, leaving the middle to those who are just confused. We find ourselves trying to identify as citizens of this country, all the while know that we are citizens of a very different kingdom, the kingdom of God, where things like the economy, the structures of power and privilege, and the very day to day of life are often completely different from what might be filtering out of Springfield or Washington, DC.

Jesus is confronted by a gathering of Pharisees and Herodians. They are odd bedfellows to say the least, the Herodians were those who defended and supported the rule of the land by Herod- direct and open supporters of the Roman occupation. This tax that they come asking about was an annual tribute tax sent to Rome, a total of one denarius for each person. This was, by no means, the largest of the taxes paid by the people. They also gave tithes to the temple, paid customs taxes as well as taxes on the land. The people who worked the land were forced into subsistence farming by these taxes, taking home only about 1/3 of the production of the land. So the question isn’t really about all taxes, it is about this particular tax, a tax that was supported by the Pharisees and collected by the Herodians.

So these two sets of leaders come to Jesus and begin with some false flattery. And then comes the big question- is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar? This was the trap- either to make him lose favor with the people, oppressed by these taxes, or to cement him as a political threat, a teacher who was encouraging the people to openly defy the occupation. Either way, he was set to lose.

Which leaves us to wonder, how would we answer that question? Is it lawful for us to pay taxes? Are we first citizens of this country or world, or are we citizens the kingdom of God? Where do we have our primary allegiance? Can we really do both?

Jesus asks them for a coin, a coin bearing the face and title of Caesar. Most likely, it also included an inscription about Caesar’s divinity, he was considered descended from God to rule the people. And so Jesus tells them to give to Caesar what is Caesar’s.

Our greater church has a lot to say about this, but what I find most helpful is from our social statement on church and society, “The church must participate in social structures critically. Not only God but also sin is at work in the world. Social structures and processes combine life-giving and life-destroying dynamics in complex mixtures and in varying degrees. The church, therefore, must unite realism and vision, wisdom and courage, in its social responsibility. It needs constantly to discern when to support and when to confront society's cultural patterns, values, and powers.”

We’ve already given our allegiance, and it is an allegiance proclaimed in baptism. We are made children of God, marked with the cross of Christ, people who are called to live into the kingdom of God, making it manifest in the world. We are citizens of a kind of kingdom that is different than the one of this world, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t also, at the very same time, live in a country that both blesses and oppresses. That is what structures do- God can be found in them just as sin can corrupt them. We are citizens of both, living in the tension that this life creates. Do we pay taxes, of course. But, we don’t understand our money to come from anywhere but the hand of God. It isn’t a choice between Caesar or God- it is all God’s. What we give to Caesar, is still God’s. All we have and all we are is God’s, and so our primary allegiance will always be to that creator.

But that doesn’t mean that we aren’t pulled in all kinds of directions and our allegiance is sought after by all kinds of structures. We can ignore them, tell ourselves that they have no place and talk consistently about the evils of the world. Or we can whole heartedly fall into them, telling ourselves that our faith is relegated to only one teeny, tiny part of our lives. Either way, we lose. If we see the world around us, the political structures that have been set up, the secular world as evil, we miss the chance to discover our God hidden among the brokenness of the structure of the world. If we pretend that our faith is only something that effects us on Sunday mornings, we miss the incredible opportunity to bring our God into places that are hungry for what God is all about.

And so that is where we find Jesus’ answer to this tricky question. Somewhere in the middle. It doesn’t provide us with an easy answer, and I still find myself feeling a little uncomfortable when I see my tax dollars spent on things that I find grossly negligent of the needs of the world. But I give to Caesar what is Ceaser’s, remembering that in all reality, it is already all God’s. We are first and foremost, members of the kingdom of God, made children of God through baptism, taught to live in a world where we are marked by love and trust, hope and generosity. We can’t pretend it isn’t tricky to make our way in a world that doesn’t often reflect the gifts of God’s kingdom, but it is where we find ourselves. And regardless, we trust that because it is all God’s, because every breath and day are blessings of our God, because all we have and all we are is a blessing from God, that we are people of a different kind of kingdom. We are people of God, called to live in a broken world, called to proclaim a different kind of life. We live in the middle of the tension, in the already and not yet of the coming of the kingdom of God. Jesus gives us no easy answer, but instead a blessing to try it on our own, to be citizens of the kingdom of God while participating in the political structures of the world. We can’t separate the two, we can only live into the mystery, knowing that when we search, when we question, we will always find God. Amen.