Flip Side
Matthew 22:15-22

October 20, 2002

A young lady was soaking up the rays on a beach when a little boy in swimming trunks came up to her and asked, “Do you believe in God?” A little surprised by that question in the context, but she replied, “Why, yes, I do.” Then he asked, “Do you go to church every Sunday?” Again she said “Yes.” “Do you read your Bible and pray everyday?” “Yes,” she answered, but now she had to know why all these kinds of questions.

The little boy sighed with relief, “ Will you hold my quarter while I go in swimming?”

The boy was straight forward and honest in his questions because he wanted to entrust to the young woman something valuable. The Pharisees are not being honest. They have no intent in entrusting Jesus with anything. They are not looking for the answer to a question. They don’t want someone to hold their quarter denarius.

None of this is the pleasant sort of spiritual conversation we like to presume as the rule in good, respectable churches. Jesus has been busy telling a whole flock of parables and most of them were barbed, targeting the Pharisees and other powerful religious leaders of the Jewish community in occupied Palestine. The Pharisees noticed, and they wanted to put him away. It got nasty and ugly. Why are you putting me to the test?

The issue was taxes to the emperor. Not that in those days there were many other kinds of taxes, but it was paying them to the emperor that was the problem. It would be a problem 1500 years later when a Roman Catholic priest and university professor, Martin Luther, would express his theological and practical resentment at being taxed by the Pope. The Roman emperors demanded not only money to support their building projects and life-styles, but also every citizen’s allegiance and worship. I don’t know if the emperors really believed they were gods, but they certainly wanted everyone else to treat them as if they were. There are coins surviving with the emperor’s mug shot engraved on it with a phrase declaring himself a god.

In asking for one of those coins, Jesus trumped his interrogators by enabling them to bare their hypocrisy. You shall have no graven images before you. Sure, we have Queen Elizabeth all over our money, but there’s never a hint that she is a goddess. What were these Pharisees doing with a graven image in their hands and pockets? Wasn’t that the worst of blasphemies for a nation under One God?

“Whose image, whose icon is this, and whose title?” Jesus queried. All they answer is “Caesar’s, the emperor’s.” Of course, we don’t know about the specific coin, but it’s a good chance that it said “God appeared [among us]” and no one pointed that out.

“Whose image, whose icon, is stamped upon you and upon me?” The coin may bear Caesar’s image; is Caesar your god? Whose image do you bear?

Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s. What we give may hurt, our money, our political allegiance for a time, our respect, maybe in some cases our military service and as a result possibly our lives. But really it is not much; what we give ChrŽtien is only a small portion of our being.

What can we possibly give to God? God does not need to receive anything, so all of our offerings and sacrifices are superfluous. Yet, our God still wants some things, would like to receive something of value as a result of mutual relationship.

To say we give God back love is not enough. If you love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, yet do not have love and compassion for fellow human beings, it does not really matter that you love a supreme being whom you cannot see or touch, smell, taste or hear.

Even criminals love one another, Jesus said, loving those of kindred minds is easy. If you can give God back extraordinary love, loving your enemies, loving justice and the oppressed, the poor and the criminals, then that’s something God can’t give you.

There is one more thing you and I can give back to God: an uncommon mind. I am a Macintosh person, and Apple Computers had some wonderful posters not too long ago. “Think Different” was the theme, even if they didn’t know an adverb, “differently.” was called for. On the posters were photos of people who thought differently - Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King, Jr., and so on. Whenever you risk to think differently, unorthodoxly, radically, you help create a new world and that’s when the image of God becomes less opaque, more clear. God can’t impose that will to think differently upon you. It’s your gift to God that like your love of God only works when it enriches men and women as well as God.

Martin Luther said, “I have held many things in my hand, and have lost them all; but whatever I have placed in God’s hands that I still possess.” If you try to hold your mind in your hands, that is, possess it and be proud of it as a possession, then your mind, no matter how brilliant, loses its flexibility, becomes rigid, and can no longer think adequately when God’s grace disrupts the world.

When you dare to think in an uncommon way to express God’s uncommon love; when you dare to fight injustice, not for your own self-righteous pride, but because you know such injustice does not belong in God’s world; then you have not given up anything precious - you are sharing all you own with God.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan