Coining a Phrase (Matthew 22:15 - 22)

     I almost always read from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, because it’s a reliable translation in modern English, but from time to time I like to break out the good old King James. In the case of our passage, the NSRV gives an accurate, but rather dull, “Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites?” while the King James reads “Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites?” In my estimation, altogether more colorful and exciting. In the same vein, the NRSV reads “‘Show me the coin used for the tax.’ And they brought him a denarius” while the King James says “‘Shew me the tribute money.’ And they brought unto him a penny.” And though the NRSV is once again more accurate—it really is denarius in the Greek—the coin handed to Jesus has been known ever since as a “tribute penny.”

There’s a picture of one on the front page of your bulletin, and you can see the head(in Greek, eikon) of Emperor Tiberius with his hooked nose and prominent chin, wearing an imperial garland and a kingly frown. And on the back—the reverse, in coin-collector lingo—is his mama Livia done up as Lady Pax or in English, Lady Peace. But it’s what was inscribed around Tiberius on the obverse—that’s front to you and me—that got the Jewish religious authorities in an uproar. It said “Caesar Augustus Tiberius, son of the Divine Augustus.” And though they had no problem with him being the son of Augustus—after all, that’s who he was—they considered it blasphemous that Augustus had claimed to be divine, and thus Tiberius being a chip off the old divine block. Come to think of it, that might have been what got them mad at Jesus as well . . .

Anyway, the Romans required that taxes be paid with this specific coin, this tribute penny, so you can imagine how it made them feel. It was bad enough they had to pay taxes—which were pretty steep, and a burden on the poor—but to make them pay with a coin they weren’t even supposed to touch . . . well, that was just frosting on a very sour cake. Which, of course, was exactly why they did it, just another way of keeping the Roman thumb on them, another way of showing who’s boss.

And so it’s more than a little sly that the Pharisees ask him about paying taxes, because it’s a huge thorn in Jewish sides, and though the Pharisees are very opposed to paying the taxes themselves, just to make things interesting, they bring along some Herodians, supporters of the puppet governor Herod and therefore in favor of paying the taxes, as witnesses. They want to get Jesus in a double bind: if he answers the question in the negative—that he’s against paying the taxes—they could be sure that the Herodians would go running off to the man, and Jesus would be labeled as seditious, and therefore in hot water with the empire. If he answers the question in the affirmative, the Pharisees would have more dirt on him with his own people, and their plot to have him eliminated would be that much further along.

But first . . . they try to butter him up. “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.” And the irony of it all is that though they’re being oily, and believe not a word of it, everything they say is true. Jesus is sincere, he does teach the way of God with truth, and he shows partiality to no one.. Not even big-wigs like the chief priests and rabbis, which, come to think of it, might be another reason they were out to get him.

So. They butter him up and then slip in the shiv . . . “Tell us, my pretty . . .” Ok, there was no “my pretty,” not even in the King James, it was just “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” And the law they were talking about was the Torah and it’s interpretations, and on the surface, they’re asking him for his interpretation, one interpreter to another, but

Jesus knows exactly what’s going on, because, well, he’s Jesus, and after blasting them for being hypocrites, asks them whose picture, whose icon, is on the tribute penny, and when they reply “Caesar,” his famous reply is “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's,” or, in the boring old New Revised Standard, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

Matthew says they are amazed, and maybe we should stop right here and ponder why. Why would they be amazed? After all, seems like a perfectly good solution to me . . . I mean, we do it all the time, we divide our capital—our money, our time, even our affection and esteem—between the state and church, some of us slicing the pie one way, some another, but we all do it nowadays without even a blink of an eye, and I think the key is in that word “nowadays” . . .

Nowadays, in this country at least, we are actually able to do what Jesus suggests, we’re able to give unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and at the same time, that which is God’s to God, we think nothing of it, but in Jesus’ time, it was a radical idea, for the simple fact that most of the time there wasn’t much difference between the two. Theocracy was the order of the day, every state and city-state had their Gods, and of course, one of the much-remarked geniuses of Imperial Rome was their never meeting a god they didn’t like. They had no problem letting each conquered entity keep their national gods, they just added them to the Roman pantheon, which is Greek for “all gods,” as long as you gave overall loyalty to the Empire, as represented by the Emperor.

Which would be ok for the Jews and all, except that starting with Augustus, Tiberius’ daddy, emperors began claiming to be divine—thus the inscription on the tribute penny. And unlike many of their neighbors, Jews were monotheists, which was so important that even today, observant Jews inscribe a tiny scroll with the Shema, AKA Deuteronomy 6:4, and place it on the doorposts around their houses, so they can always be reminded of one thing: “The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.”

So this divine emperor thing wasn’t just some mild irritant to the Jewish people, not just something they could put up with. It struck at the heart of their religious identity, and for them, it was pretty obvious: you had to serve one entity or another, you couldn’t serve two masters. Either you served the emperor or you served God.

So what Jesus did was pretty radical. He took two competing ideas, two competing loyalties, and he found a third way, one unheard of in those days: “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's.” And if that were all there was to it, we could all up and go home, ‘cause we’ve heard it a thousand times as a justification for paying taxes, but as usual for Jesus, it’s not quite that simple.

And it revolves around question of just what does belong to God versus what belongs to the government. Obviously, you have to keep the roads patched and pay for the sewers and protection against fire, but beyond those kinds of things . . . Just what does belong to God?

My favorite answer is everything. Everything belongs to God . . . as creator of the universe, everything ultimately is in Gods hands. After all, doesn’t Psalm 24 begin with “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it?” Q, as they say, E and D.

But while it’s a satisfying “gotcha,” and it may have been what Jesus meant, it’s not very helpful . . . It still doesn’t help us navigate the very modern set of confusing loyalties we face every day. And I think that the Greek can help us here. When Jesus asks the Pharisees and their buddies “whose head is this?” he uses the Greek word “eikon,” which all things being equal, I would prefer to see translated as “image,” as in “whose image is on this coin?”

And of course, Tiberius’ image is on that denarius, just as Lincoln’s and Washington’s and Jefferson’s are on ours, so you can give that to them, but where’s is the image of God’s? Or to turn it around, who is in the image of God? And this is as subversive, at least, as saying all things belong to God, because the answer of course is “we are.” We have been created in God’s eikon , in God’s image, and we belong to God. Not the Roman Empire, not the State of Ohio, not the U.S. of A. And we have been commanded to render ourselves unto God.  Let’s think about what that means. Amen.

Empty As a Pocket (Philippians 2:1 - 11)

     That was a clip from Paul Simon’s “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes,” recorded with the South African Township group Ladysmith Black Mambazo. And every time I hear it I think of my time in Cameroon—I know, I know, different country, different music, but work with me here—I think of my time in Cameroon, and our short-term mission to the Bulu tribes-people. We were guests of the “Eglise Cameroonaise Presbyterienne,” the Cameroon Presbyterian Church and fed by the people of the churches, and to make sure we had meat every day, each parish would provide a chicken from their meager flock. And I was appalled, embarrassed, even—these folks might have had meat once a week, many even once a month, and here we were, eating their precious chicken. But we consoled ourselves with the thought that they would be very insulted if we didn’t take their hospitality. And who knows? It might even have been true.

     Anyway, that marvelous image in the song certainly applied to them—they were poor folks, “empty as a pocket, empty as a pocket with nothing to lose” and yet they were generous, they wouldn’t think of not sharing what they had with us visitors, nor did they think twice about supporting others, about giving freely to those who are in need. In their hearts, they knew who Jesus meant when he said love your neighbors as yourself: he meant everyone they meet.

     They were empty as a pocket, but not of their own doing . . . Their poverty was due to long years of European colonialism—British in the North and French in the South—and a corrupt current government. They weren’t empty by choice, but that’s what Paul asks of us he asks us to follow Christ and empty ourselves , to be empty as a pocket by our own choice.

      Our passage follows the one we talked about a few weeks ago, where he writes his sisters and brothers in Philippi, wistfully and with no little emotion, not knowing whether he would be released or put to death, because he was in prison for preaching the gospel. And it’s clear he had a special relationship with the Philippians, but at the same time, felt they needed some exhorting, some encouragement. They were undergoing some sort of persecution for their faith, just as he had. And he beseeches them to live lives worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that he, Paul, may know that they are in no way intimidated by their opponents.

     In our passage, he continues to exhort them, again trading upon their personal relationship: “If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete,” he says, proving that he’s not averse to using a little rhetorical pathos. And what would make his joy complete? That they be of the same mind, that they get along, and maybe the reason he’s so passionate about this is he’s seen plenty of the opposite in the churches he founded. In Corinth, they fought over who they followed—“each of you says,” he wrote, “’I belong to Paul,’ or ‘I belong to Apollos,’ or ‘I belong to Cephas,’ or ‘I belong to Christ.’” In Galatia, they fought over whether they had to be observant Jews before becoming Christians (Paul said no). And it’s possible that he’d heard the Philippians were divided over something or another.

      Whatever the case, he begs them to be united, to be of the same mind, as he puts it, “having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.” And it’s important to realize that to Paul, the mind represents the entire shebang, as in be in full accord, be totally, wholly united, united in being . . . For example, he says, “do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. . . . each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.” To be of one mind is to be humble, to subsume your will to the will of others.

      To put it another way, we’re to be of one mind, and that mind is to be the one that is in Christ. Or as Paul says “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus. “ Just as we’re supposed to clothe ourselves with Christ, we’re to be of the same mind. And the tendency is to take that metaphorically, or more accurately, as a simile: that our mind is to be somehow like that of Christ. But could it be more than that? Could it be that, somehow, we are to literally have the same mind? After all, as he said himself, Christ is mysteriously in us and we in him . . . and the goal of many a mystic spirituality is to unite with the God or Christ or Spirit that is within . . .

     Whatever the case, whatever Paul meant, it’s a set-up for some of the most beautiful prose he ever wrote. Actually, it’s not strictly prose but a kind of verse, and our best guess is that Paul is quoting a very early Christian liturgy, which we call a Christ Hymn (there’s another in Colossians). And he uses it to elaborate on what it means for the same mind to be in us as in Christ Jesus who, he says, “though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.” That’s what it means to have the same mind as Christ, to empty ourselves like Christ.

     Paul is saying that by becoming human via the incarnation, Christ emptied himself of what he was to become an empty vessel. Scholar and author Cynthia Bourgeault says this became his standard operating procedure, writing that “in whatever life circumstance, Jesus always responded with the same motion of self-emptying.” To illustrate it, she cites O. Henry’s Gift of the Magi in which an extremely poor couple cannot afford to buy one another Christmas gifts, though each does have a prize possession—James, a gold watch given him by his grandfather and Della, her long, luxurious hair. And that Christmas, James sells his watch to buy silver combs for Della’s hair and Della sells that hair to buy James a golden fob for his watch, and though the sacrifice seems pointless, though it seems for nothing, in reality it makes the love between them tangible, it makes it manifest, visible to them and anyone else who happened to care.

     When Christ emptied himself of his God-like nature and became one of us, slave to the rhythms and rhymes of earth, pawn to the powers and principalities that eventually killed him, he became love manifest. Every time he healed the lame, urged the sick and brought good news to the poor, love became concrete, it became physical, palpable and perceptible to our senses. We could touch it in Bartimaeus, to whom he gave sight; see it in the Syro-Phonaecian woman, whose child he cured and dignity he restored; and feel it as we placed our hands in his sword-pierced side.

     Social-justice workers—peace enablers, hunger advocates and the like—have a very high burn-out rate. Besides physical exhaustion, it all seems so hopeless, so pointless. Despite their best efforts, when one child is fed, ten more take her place. Political refugees pack the earth no matter how many peace deals are brokered, how many despots are deposed. The toil of aid workers is grinding, never-ending and seemingly hopeless.

But whether they know it or not, whether they are Christian, Buddhist or atheist, love has become manifest in their actions, it’s become visible and concrete and solid through their deeds. Through their self-emptying, their self-sacrifice , divine love impacts the world. Whether they believe it or not.

     Through Christ’s bodily incarnation, love became incarnate as well. And every time those Bulu tribespeople give a chicken to hungry visitors, or sustain one another in village existence, love becomes incarnate, it becomes visible, manifest in them. And as followers of Christ, the same thing happens by means of our own self-emptying: God’s love becomes visible through us. Amen.

No Other (Galatians 3:27 - 29; Colossians 1:15 - 20)

     It’s World Communion Sunday, and as far as I’m concerned, it can’t have come too soon.  There’s been a rise in anti-immigrant rhetoric and violence over the past several years, and I am at a loss to explain it.  Oh, there are all the partisan arguments, one side says one thing, another side says another, yet another says something else, and I’ve engaged in some of that myself, I’m sorry to say, but I really think it’s bigger than all of that, I think it has to do with the way we humans view reality, all of us, with the possible exception of very primitive, hunter-gatherer societies.  If there are any of those left.

And as I was re-visiting the Galatians passage from Paul, one of my go-to scriptures for World Communion, I came to the realization that Paul—and/or one of his disciples (we’ll get to that in a moment)—that they got it, whether they understood exactly what they had or not.  And to see why, let’s take a look at the two passages I read; first the one from Galatians, likely the one written first.

Paul wrote Galatians some time in the fifth decade after Jesus’ birth, sometime probably closer to 50 than to 60 Common Era.  Nobody is certain exactly where the church or churches were, and it’s likely that he established at least one of the churches himself (if there were indeed more than one).  It’s clear that he considered himself their spiritual father, and they’d been bad, and like any parent of such a child, he was angry.  Or at least the letter gives the appearance of anger; as the user or Greek rhetorical techniques, it can be difficult to tell what his actual mood was when he wrote his letters.

At any rate, the letter has an angry tone, and the reason isn’t important here, except to help locate our reading in the general stream of things.  The final verse of today’s passage is the conclusion of Paul’s argument as to why the Galatians are Abraham’s heirs according to faith instead of any external sign like circumcision.  And it has the sound of one . . . a conclusion, that is.  It’s a declarative statement of belief, one that he has derived in the preceding discussion: “if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.”  Anything else you might do, or have done to you, doesn’t matter.  If you belong to Christ, then you are a child of Abraham, and heirs of the promise to be God’s children, God’s people.

But what interests me this World Communion Sunday is what comes just before the conclusion: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”  And it’s well understood that by Greek Paul means Gentile—in other words, anybody who’s not a Jew—and slave or free, male and female are obvious references, and it’s clear that he’s obliterating primary categories in the Middle East, primary labels, primary boxes in which people are placed . . . In Christ Jesus there is none of that.

And it’s also clear that in Galatians he’s speaking in a Christian context: those who are baptized into Christ, he says, have clothed themselves with Christ.  And for centuries, congregations would replicate that . . . When I was in Africa I witnessed such a baptism.  The candidates were dressed in street clothes, maybe a little more drab than usual—the Bulu are a colorful people—and after their baptism, black-clothed elders surrounded them as they changed, and voilá! The big reveal: they stood before the congregation clothed with Christ, in blinding white as if on Transfiguration mountain.  It’s those folks who, for Paul in Galatians, are one in Christ, in whom there is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female.  Christians those who have been clothed in Christ.

Ok, now that we’ve got that straight, let’s fast forward a few years, maybe a couple of decades, maybe less, when Paul—or a follower thereof—penned the letter to the Colossians.  Because Colossae was destroyed by an earthquake in 61 CE, if Paul wrote the letter, it was likely around 60.  If a disciple wrote it in Paul’s name—a common practice back then—it could have been written sometime in the 70s, even as late as 80 years after Christ.  Whenever or by whomever, it shows a different, some say more advanced, theology.  Particularly, the author has a more cosmic view of Christ; or as Richard Rohr says, the Christ in Colossians is the Cosmic Christ.

The passage I read at the beginning is ground central for this concept.   Christ  “is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation,”Paul (or whoever) writes, and of course this harkens back to Genesis one, where humans were created in God’s image, and like what John says in his Gospel, all things in heaven and on earth were created in, through and for him, things Version should blue and invisible.  Note—all things, not just on the earth, but in heaven—the whole universe, the entire cosmos, “whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers.”

In fact—and here’s the kicker—Christ “is before all things and in him all things hold together”. Note the present tense: we’re talking how things are right now, and this verse—especially the last clause, in him all things hold together (another translation might be subsist), is what made Teilhard de Chardin’s heart sing, because he saw in it a validation of what he had experienced mystically, the sacredness of all matter, that God was in everything, and that everything was held together in that divine presence.

And so we see that Pauline theology has developed, it’s changed between the writing of Galatians and that of Colossians.  If you asked Paul the question “who is in Christ?” shortly after the turn of the fifth decade, he might have answered “those who have been baptized into Christ.  If you asked him a decade or so later, he (or his disciple) would have said all things, and that includes all people, plants, rocks and horses, the whole cosmos, the whole shebang, all are in Christ.

Now.  Does that mean all things are Christian, that they follow Christ?  Of course not! as Paul himself might have put it.  It’s self-evident that not everyone  follows the path laid out by Jesus of Nazareth.  He’s is not talking about whether someone is saved or not, whether they’re justified or not.  Here in Colossians, he’s saying that all are in Christ, whether they know it or not.  And if we’re all in Christ, then we are all one in Christ, there’s neither Cypriot or Greek, Venezuelan or American, Israeli or Palestinian.  Neither Hindu or Muslim, Buddhist or Christian, Floridian or Puerto Rican, all are one in Christ Jesus.

So how can we fence anything or anyone else out from our regard?  If we are wrapped in Christ, suffused by Christ, glued together by Christ, how can we exclude anyone from the bounty given to us by God through Christ?  When we exclude another, when we regard another as inferior or superior, we exclude Christ, we regard Christ as inferior or superior.

And that gets us to that problem in the way most of humanity views the world, including but not limited to our Western culture:  we regard ourselves as separate, both from nature and from one another.  We regard nature as something to be tamed, to be used to further our own ends, and we regard one another in the same way.  We think about everything other than our own selves—what we think of as ourselves, that is—as separate, as other than ourselves.  As Cynthia Bourgeault puts it, we are subject and every other person, every other thing, is object.  Therefore, we are forever defending ourselves and what we have sequestered, that part of God’s bounty we so presumptively call “ours,” from those people and things we consider not us.  And conversely, because nature is separate, because it’s not part of us, we can use it up, exploit it for the aggrandizement of our supposed self.

But here’s the thing: if we are truly pervaded by Christ, if we are truly one in Christ, how can we talk about separation?  How can we call ourselves separate from one another or nature, which is also perfused by Christ?  Paul set the stage in Galatians and drove the nail home in Colossians: we can’t.  We can’t say that we are separate.  And if we’re not separate, if we are all embedded in Christ, if Christ—as he himself told us—is in everything, what we do to each other, how we treat immigrants, foreign nationals, even our enemies, is how we treat Christ.

And if there is no separation, perhaps equally difficult important, how we treat immigrants, the poor, the outsiders, those we seek to exclude, is how we treat ourselves.  Jesus famously told us to treat our neighbors as ourself, and we expend considerable energy and ink trying to figure out who our neighbors are,  it the answer is simple: who are our neighbors?  We are.  Amen.