Sermon by Pastor Joel
Isaiah 45:1-7
Psalm 96:1-9 [10-13]
1 Thessalonians 1:1-10
Matthew 22:15-22
The voices of those who use the Bible – and even the gospel – as a weapon against the vulnerable, have become the loudest religious voice in our society today. They use God’s word as a means to hold power over those seen as less deserving -- to make rules run contrary to love, mercy and kindness. We hear them all the time -- the Pharisees holding their gold coin, talking as if they know best.
But like Jesus, we do not need to fall into that trap.
Our three readings all pose versions of these same three questions from different angles: Where is God's authority located? Who is included in God’s work? What is the relationship between faith and political power?
How we answer these questions is not a theological debate. These answers translate into a defining characteristic of who we are as people, as Christians, and of how we serve the world. What sets the tone for all our interactions is the question of where we see the presence of the Divine.
Take our first lesson, and the story of Cyrus, chosen by God to lead, even though, as Isaiah says, Cyrus does not know God. A traditional reading has focused on God’s control, viewing Cyrus as an instrument of God. Some have used to it argue that political figures – at least certain ones – are appointed and raised up by God, promoting a blind loyalty that overlooks cruelty and tyranny. Like many passages in the Bible, it’s been used to argue that there is only one correct faith, and that no others are equal.
But the scandal lies in God’s appointment of Cyrus, a pagan emperor. For it shows that God is present and active in the world outside the religious rules created, in many ways, to contain and shrink God. If God can work through a pagan then God may work through anyone. God is free to do good works wherever injustice and persecution are found, in whomever God chooses. That choice is not ours to make. And now the question becomes: what gospel work in the world have we failed to recognize, and how can we support and learn from it?
In the same vein, the Psalm this morning might also be interpreted as elevating some humans and certain beliefs above others. But what happens if we focus on this line: "Sing to the Lord all the earth"?
If we place God in the centre of the forests and the ocean and nature, then we understand they have value beyond what we take from them. In that context, when the Psalmist writes, "All the gods of the nations, they are but idols,” we must ask ourselves what idolatry makes our song to all the earth a lie.
Is it doing nothing and sacrificing nothing, while waiting for God to take care of everything and save the right people? Or is it acting with those of different beliefs – those Cyruses among us - to defend conservation, to support decisions that allow all the earth to be equally shared?
In Thessalonians, we might see Paul’s message as focused on right and wrong belief. But that is an individual question – or it certainly should be: when we sit with the gospel, what is right or wrong is our own inner journey. If we extend that internal reflection beyond ourselves, we self-appoint ourselves to sit in judgement – like so many who have distorted the gospel’s message over history.
In the second reading, Paul is praising community, not individuals. And not a powerful, wealthy community, but a marginalized and vulnerable one. Paul is calling on the crowd to focus on collective action and relationships. Communities are built, not with judgement, but with openness to difference and change. Paul is saying that faith is about the care we show to others. And so, our question, while we search for God’s presence should be: what kind of community are we becoming?
Finally, we come to our gospel, the most divisive of our readings. This conversation between the Pharisees and Jesus has been seen, traditionally, as an argument for the separation of church and state. Give Caesar – the state – what is Caesar’s. And God what is God’s. By focusing here, the message is: “Pay your taxes and obey your leaders.” But it is much less clear on what parts of our lives belong to God. Does God have influence only at the end of our workday, when we’ve finished earning the money to pay those taxes? And how do we even divvy up what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God? Does God get the sea and forests that the Psalmist writes about? Does Caesar get the marketplace that defines the needs and desires of the community Paul is celebrating?
Let’s step back; Jesus is getting a version of “proof-texting” from the Pharisees. They are trying to trap him; to have him say out loud that people should not support the emperor in the hopes that he will be arrested for treason. But Jesus is no fool. “Give therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,” he tells the Pharisees, when they have shown him the coin, “and to God the things that are God’s.”
The religious leaders walk away amazed. Jesus has outsmarted them. Should Caesar hear his words, he would think that Jesus was indeed saying, “Pay your taxes.” The religious leaders could not complain either, for God gets what is God’s.
But what Jesus avoids doing is defining either, and yet elsewhere in the gospel, Jesus continually widens the people’s understanding over who and what falls into God’s purview. Jesus includes those who are outcast or seen as weak and irrelevant by society, those have done wrong but sought forgiveness, those who have done wrong and not yet sought forgiveness, those who believe different things. He tells parables that cast God as landowner or gardener over the crops we harvest and the seeds we grow, the most important part of that early, ancient economy.
What Jesus leaves unsaid when he responds to the religious leaders is that “all the earth” falls into God’s domain, and all the earth is part of the gospel.
We can never be blindly loyal to a leader, because we must view leadership through the principles of the gospel; we make decisions so that our actions, as much as possible, are the best chance of producing a just community.
In our country, that means we pay taxes – so that opportunity may be created and shared. And we follow rules, so that we don’t have chaos for the sake of chaos. But we also take to the streets to raise issues, and vote to make our priorities known, and question and challenge and debate.
But when we take all our readings together, what we learn is that spreading the gospel is not about the signs we hang on the walls in places of power, or the prayers we say in rooms of leaders, or the people we convert to our exact understanding of God. The gospel’s strength is bolstered by community-building and standing against wrong-doing; its strength, specifically, is other-centred action.
That’s the conclusion of all our readings this morning: The people who think they know exactly where God can be located often miss the gospel message. Meanwhile, God quietly carries on – working through foreigners, small communities, ordinary people, and unexpected places to bring more justice, inclusion, and hope into the world. We choose how to interpret that message. And we choose what to do about it. Amen.