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Back to Sermon ArchivesOctober
19,
2008
The Rev. John Auer
Scripture: Exodus
33:12-23, Psalm 99, Matthew 22:15-22
“Passing Glory:
Citizenship/Discipleship Sides of One Coin”
I was asked if I would follow the lead of a
bunch of mostly conservative clergy who sought to test their “free speech
rights” a few weeks ago by endorsing candidates from their pulpits. I am not
even tempted. I know my “free pulpit” rights as a United Methodist! Nobody I
know needs any help deciding this election. Yet I would warn us against letting
our citizenship and discipleship, our responsibilities to faith and nation, get
reduced to the act of voting.
Even with historic struggles of many to win
suffrage, and periodic attempts to increase registering and actual voting –
since there are vested interests to keeping the voting base smaller and more
narrowly-defined – still the real work of governance of and by and for the
people goes on every day for citizens and disciples. Nobody I know has any
doubt, either, that no matter who’s elected, only an aroused, alert, attentive,
assertive constituency can hold any imperial presidency (no matter the occupant)
accountable to our hopes and visions.
In a story as fresh as this campaign, Jesus is
here being pressured by “party interests” playing “trick or trap” with him.
They want him to utter one condemnable answer or another – either pay taxes and
defy the laws of Israel, or withhold taxes and defy the laws of Rome. They want
Jesus to choose between Moses or Caesar, Israel or Rome. Both tend to be
absolutist – one a theocracy, the other an empire. In the idolatry of ideology
– as current and vicious as ever today -- you cannot have it both ways. You
have to choose one or the other.
Now Jesus is no politician. But Jesus is
consummate at speaking and acting politically when he has to! Like God
passing here before Moses, Jesus knows to how to save his backside! And Jesus
knows something like this same of “trick or trap,” this choice of absolutes, and
this guilt by association will happen to US as well! If we are faithful to
Jesus at all – following him to bear witness before the powers – even up to
Jerusalem where threats of death await him – then we will get caught in this
kind “politics.” Who knows – it may happen in our families, our workplaces, our
congregations – wherever we live out citizenship/discipleship. The real issue
is not with “church and state.” It is with us – disciples and citizens.
For we belong to JESUS’ realm, to what he calls
the “kingdom of God.” And if we happen to say or to do something worthy
of him (even by accident!) we are going to find ourselves, if not place
ourselves, in the very same kind of trouble he is in here – conflict with
“earthly” realms. Someone will want to neutralize us. Or we will choose to
neutralize ourselves (keep our mouths shut) out of fear of someone else. So
they will try to trick and to trap us in controversy and contradiction – to
discredit us or to destroy us.
The Pharisees (nationalistic Jews) and the
Herodians (Roman sympathizers) – usually at odds with ach other -- lay aside
their own bitter rivalry. They conspire to get rid of Jesus. For Jesus
threatens them both. He inspires the kind of citizenship/discipleship --
through feeding, healing, preaching, teaching – sending us out to organize! –
that brings masses of people into the kingdom and kin-dom of God. It’s one
thing to register to vote. It’s another to register for a whole new identity
and way of life -- in behalf of the world!
So this question to Jesus tries to force him to
take a position against paying taxes to Caesar. That would be the position of
the Zealots – another party around Jesus at the time – and one he has something
to do with through one or more of his close followers. No wonder they try to
“guilt” him by association! The Zealots are like “the Weather Underground” or
other “radicals” of the sixties we hear about even in this campaign! Some of
them “take up sword” and attack the “army of occupation” – most do not. Jesus
is NOT a Zealot but he is close enough to one to get him in this kind of
trouble! Moreover, Jesus’ opponents appear to get what they want! Jesus is
crucified as a traitor – the sentence only Rome could impose – the sentence
designed for Zealots and revolutionaries.
Jesus has this capacity like that of the
children he loved so much and wanted always near him. It’s a way of seeing
right through all the pretense and defense that come with adulthood. It’s a way
of seeing things and asking questions nobody else permits themselves to see or
to ask. The vision and hope expressed by the children – perhaps the “new
voters” not yet cynical on “the system” -- are too far beyond what we accept as
reality and possibility. We seem pleased that our children learn their Bible
stories and songs (Like our Hosanna Arch!) and seem to believe Jesus makes such
a difference – up to a certain point in their lives – when we expect them to be
more like “everyone else.”
Jesus rejects the idolatry of ideology that says
the only choices are either/or: black or white, good or bad, saved or damned.
Jesus appeals beyond all our thought and theory to our hearts. He reveals each
one of us to be full of the Spirit – and free to express it! (Say that with me
if you like – “I’m full of the Spirit!” “And free to express it!”) “Every time
I feel the Spirit moving in my heart I will pray!” My prayer is not only to see
things as they are, and ask, why? But to dream things that never were, and ask,
why not? Of every “new thing” God does.
Marian Wright Edelman founded the Children’s
Defense Fund in Washington, DC, 35 years ago. It grew out of an organization
inspired by the Poor Peoples Campaign Dr. King was organizing when he was shot
down 40 years ago while standing with striking garbage workers in Memphis, TN --
and for reasons much too complex to go into here. Come out this weekend to hear
Sharon Delgado – who will help us see the movement of Dr. King in light of
citizen/disciple issues! Children’s Defense Fund was born to challenge the
claims of Caesar – and to do so for children, who do not have voice or vote in
matters that may ruin their lives.
Edelman writes a powerful “Reflections on Moving
Forward” to begin this year’s National Children’s Sabbath on the theme – When
Will We Hear Dr. Martin Luther King’s Call to End Poverty in America?
“Something is awry,” she writes, “when, in the United States, nearly 1.7 million
families lived on less income than was received last year by one private equity
form executive; when the gap between rich and poor is at its highest level ever
recorded; when the average CEO of a large company makes more in a day than the
average worker makes in a whole year; when the number of children in poverty has
increased by 1.2 million since 2000; and the number of children without health
coverage by more than one million from 2004 to 2006. . . .” How are we treating
our children today?
“We are living at an incredibly perilous and
promising moment in history,” Edelman continues. “Few human beings are blessed
to experience the beginning of a new century and millennium. How will we
say thanks for the life, earth, nations, and children that God has entrusted to
our care? What legacies, principles, values, and deeds will we stand for and
send to the future through our children to their children and to a spiritually
confused, balkanized, and violent world desperately hungering for moral
leadership and community?”
Edelman then quotes a Methodist minister talking
about God’s way of self-revelation through children – “When God wants an
important thing done in this world, or a wrong righted, God goes about it in a
very singular way. God simply has a tiny baby born, perhaps of a very humble
home, perhaps of a very humble mother. And she puts it in the baby’s mind, and
then – God waits. The great events of this world are not battles and elections
and earthquakes and thunderbolts. The great events are babies, for each child
comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged with humanity, but is
still expecting goodwill to become incarnate in each human life.” That’ll be
your life, and mine.
We have called the Dr. King weekends last April
and July and next weekend “Beloved Community: The Unfinished Business of Dr.
King.” As we come to this time and beyond, I ask us to bear with Marian Wright
Edelman’s closing charge:
“The first step is to read, heed, and follow Dr.
King.” “Second: We must assign ourselves personally right now to be a voice for
justice for children and the poor in these scary and turbulent times of war and
terrorism and greed and economic uncertainty.” “Third: We must, as Dr. King
urged, ‘live by conviction rater than conformity.’” Fourth: “We must, like him,
understand the difference between charity and justice and that the demand of
great faiths and our professed democratic principles of fair opportunity is
justice.” [That is to say, the work of both discipleship and citizenship is
justice!] “Fifth: We must never give in to despair or give up. We must keep
moving.” “Sixth: Keep working and struggling – no matter what.” “Seventh: We
must keep Dr. King’s vision of a new world and beloved community for all our
children before us.” God always passes before us.
Like a child, Jesus comes to this question, this
quandary of coinage choice and commitment. Jesus comes with vision far beyond
either alternative. He comes to say, in effect, of our coins, our money,
our wealth: Give it all back. It belongs to Caesar, not God. Give it
all away! Just say No to it. Just get rid of it. It’s an idol. Don’t worship
it. Don’t pay any taxes or tributes on it! If you give it away already, nobody
can take it from you – just as Jesus says of his own life the night before he
loses it! Nobody takes my life from me – I lay it down freely!
Don’t let money and wealth tell us who we are
and what we are worth. Don’t pass that way of valuing along to our children,
our grandchildren! Don’t leave them at the mercy of the same old greed-crazed,
waste-minded culture that already sees our children as one huge market! So, how
do we just say No to our money? How do we just let it go? Let go and trust God
for all we really need? Just put it all in the offering? Just give it all to
the church – and other such “values” organizations? St. Augustine says we are
to see ourselves reflected in every coin we touch. God has invested
God’s vision and hope for this world in every last one of us! WE are the
“coins” of God’s realm.
What else do we need to know than that? Than
that you, and you, and you, and I – are stamped – irrevocably, irresistibly,
irretrievably – with the true image of God? We are never to be mistaken for
Caesar in any form! We are connected, we are related to all others stamped with
the very same image of God. Only God can relate us. Only God – Creator, Parent
-- can make us family. Caesar cannot make us family. Caesar, by definition,
divides us and conquers us. And too often the “parties” – Sadducee and
Pharisee, Democrat and Republican – stand aside and let Caesar do it – or
participate in ways to cover their own backsides!
We are all in this together. And some of us,
the poor of us, have been living without money for as long as anyone can
remember! Jesus says such “poor” are always with us – they always will seek out
the church as a place of “rest” – of acceptance and of support! In fact, in so
many ways, Jesus calls upon US to be “poor.” We come to believe what it means
for us to be poor is just to be without money. Did Jesus ever carry any money?
Does he not have to ask someone else for a coin? To be “poor,” to stand with
and for the poor, is a whole way of life for us! Jesus would say, in effect,
unless we are going to make everyone else as rich as we are, we have to make
ourselves as poor as everyone else is!
Maybe that’s what’s happening now. Maybe that’s
the meaning of this financial crisis for those who have finances. The only
coins we really need are US! In fact, isn’t that what the name “Jes-US” means?
GEEZ! IT’S US! (Not meant to be corny, just "coiny!") So how do we “become”
the money we need? The resources we need to offer this ministry and this
mission? To spend ourselves – without using ourselves up? To circulate
ourselves, freely and fully? A true “gift” economy that just keeps on giving?
Because that is the truest human nature! As we always have seen in mothers and
fathers giving whatever is need to children – not because children “earn” or
“deserve” it – but just because they are in need.
We need not only a “gift economy,” but also a
“gift ecology” –earth and all her resources, freely given – fully respected,
fully preserved. And we need a “gift ecumenicity” as well – the gifts of
insight and tradition in all the faiths, all the cultures of peoples – as we
celebrate next Sunday afternoon in the Interfaith Dialogue! If we will practice
gift economy, gift ecology, gift ecumenicity – we will discover “gift
eschatology” as well! The gift of the “ends” of time and space – the “last
things” – which also have been so politicized today. We will discover God’s
purpose in all of creation – the hope of the world into which every last child
is born! How do we learn to go from hand to hand – around the whole world? To
live from hand to mouth? So all will live. An economy without money or
wealth. An economy belonging to all – so all can belong to it. An economy of
love.
Brothers and sisters, the children of Israel
realize – after their temptation to worship the golden calf – the “cross of
gold” that plagues our economy now -- God’s full awesomeness as our God can only
be mediated to them through Moses. Somebody has to get as close to God, to see
as much of God, as anyone can. It may be Moses, or Jesus, or Muhammad, or
Buddha – or any number of revelations and embodiments. Even Moses here can only
glimpse a passing glory, the backside of God, whose own hand shields Moses from
seeing!
Part of what we observe as adults, as more or
less “grown-ups” on Children’s Sabbath, is the equally awesome privilege – the
gift – of “mediating” so much of what can be harsh and overwhelming reality in
the lives of our children. However it is that children come to know and
experience God in their lives, it is most likely mediated through those of us
who surround them, we pray, with God’s love. Sisters and brothers, we have
Moses’ word for it here: all of God’s goodness has passed before us! Everything
we ever needed has come so near!
How precious, how passing, how fragile, how
fleeting life is. We never know when God passes our way. The nature of God is
to pass as God will. Thanks be to God. God always provides us for God’s
passing. God covers our face with God’s hand. God empties us -- fully, freely
-- so we may know only the promise, presence, passion, power of God in our
lives. God hides us. God holds us – in the very hollow of God’s hallowed
hand. Only after God passes do we even catch whose passing it was. God is
forever “just passing through” as God will. God freshly revealed in the passing
itself! Come, says Jesus, this Children’s Sabbath -- Come, all you children of
God! And if we are child-like enough, we may even see the face of God – and
live! And all the children of God say, Amen!!
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