God vs. Caesar: Sacred vs. Secular
Sermon for Pentecost XXI, delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY
Text: Matthew 22:15-22
We’ve been decluttering at home recently, which means a trip to the Meriwether electronics recycling center and a drop off at Goodwill. There’s usually no one around at Meriwether to check what I've brought in, but there’s always someone at Goodwill asking me if I want a receipt for the things I donate to the store. I never have said yes to a receipt because to me it wouldn’t be a true donation if I could lessen my annual taxes with my offerings. I have to give without receiving anything in return to feel that I am truly showing God’s love and giving things away. There’s another reason, though, and it comes from this morning’s Gospel reading where Jesus says the phrase that we hear every now and then: give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and give to God what is God’s. What I give to God is my material possessions and what I give to Caesar is my taxes. It can be a little difficult to discern what we owe Caesar, being the government and secular world in our time, and what we owe to God, beyond taxes and possessions, because we keep them separate. The intent of the founders of this country was to not have an established church supported by the government, and that has become a general separation between our faith and our laws. Or at least that's been how we believe it should be, even as enacted laws are increasingly representative of the particular faith of the authors. This is a significant difference from Israel in Jesus’ time, where the religious authorities were the government authorities as they were allowed to be. This puts Jesus’ words in a different light on what he meant by giving Caesar his due. It challenges us to identify who Caesar is in our time.
It would seem obvious that Jesus is talking about what is owed to government and to religious institutions until we remember that it was the Romans who were occupying Israel. They were ultimately the government in Israel. Jesus asked to see a Roman coin in use at the time, and that put the Pharisees on the spot because one of them would have had that coin in their pocket, in the Temple. He essentially called out not only their allegiance but also the legitimacy of their faith because they gave Caesar authority by carrying his coin and using it. Jesus wasn’t talking about giving money to the temple versus giving money to the rulers. He called on them to give the coin to Caesar, and in effect use shekels, the money of God’s people, to pay the temple tax and to buy what they needed. It was his call to separate the sacred from the profane, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob from the pagan Roman gods. In his mind, the Pharisees were too close and cozy with the Romans and forsaking their faith in God as God’s chosen people. Meanwhile, the Romans were having an unwanted influence on the lives of God’s people with the god-like Emperor appearing on coins.
In 2023, we don’t have a foreign country running our government and economy. We are not fighting a foreign influence on our lives or faith, though it seems that there are unfamiliar, threatening changes to our culture and values coming from somewhere that we can’t quite identify. We are caught up in a culture war that pops up everywhere, more recently in political campaign ads that seek to manipulate us with emotional outrage. We act as if we are occupied by Romans ourselves, defined as the “other,” or those we don’t like or agree with, those we are told who are threatening our values, our lives, our faith. Our Caesar, then, is within our community, and often of our making as we talk about how wrong they are, how dangerous their ideas are, and how destructive their policies and laws are. If Jesus calls us to give to Caesar what is due to Caesar, what is that? What does that look like?
One thing that is Caesar’s is to listen to someone, one of "them," explain to you something that you completely disagree with. It’s easy to build a reply as they talk about what they feel is right and best, and it’s easy to come up with ways of telling them that they’re wrong, period. So instead of listening, you’re building up a defense against their words. It is much harder to do what Jesus teaches us, and that is to listen and to learn. That listening is what belongs to our Caesar, what we give to those who are not like us, and learn why they think and feel the way that they do. To show them respect by listening is not the same as agreeing with them, and to let them speak is not to validate their thoughts. What we give to God in this scenario is our faith as obedience to carry out Jesus’ command to treat others the way that we want to be treated, and an opportunity to understand what it means to speak in love. So, giving to Caesar and to God is not always an either/or situation. We can give what is due to both at the same time.
Another example. I am fortunate to work for a company that recognizes the need for a flexible work schedule, so when there is an election, I can take 30 minutes or so away from my desk to go to my polling place to vote. Legally, employers are supposed to allow employees an hour off of work to vote, but for the service industry workers that is very difficult to do. Imagine what it would be like if you were at a fast-food restaurant and your cashier says that they are leaving to go vote. If anyone wants to sponsor a bill to make Election Day a federal holiday, I’ll sign on. But in reality, how often do we actually vote on election days? I would make a bet that it is relatively less often than when Sunday comes and we might go to worship services. This is another instance where we run into having to give time to Caesar and time to God, and in both cases in my eyes, they are equally important and we have equal responsibility for both. However, equal importance and obligation brings us close to blurring the lines between them, like seeing voting as a religious duty or attending worship services as a civic duty. We have to understand the difference between the sacred and the secular, what is in God’s realm of spirit and faith, and what is civic duty in the world. Doing something in one realm does not satisfy the needs of the other, or create requirements for the other. We may be obligated to give to both realms, but we have to understand what is appropriate for them.
In both of the examples I just gave, the distinction between what belongs to God and what belongs to the world is not as clear as who we should give a coin to, and why. Our faith guides us in the world, and the world comes to our church door asking for our help and support and the decision to give what to whom has to be carefully considered. This raises questions like, is what we give to the world an expression of faith, or are we giving away our faith when we place it in the world? Do we serve God when we give something from the world to the Church that it doesn’t need? In the end, our decision about what to give to whom must be one that reflects the faith we profess in God and Christ. It can be as much about what we don’t give as it is about what we do give. When you have to decide on giving to the world and to God, what will it or won't it be? And why will you give or withhold it? It is a matter of discernment, our head and our heart working together so that our mouth, hands, and feet do the work of God in God’s realm and in the world. There is no one answer to what we give to the world and to God, but it has to be to the glory of God and in recognition of the importance of God in the world.
It would seem obvious that Jesus is talking about what is owed to government and to religious institutions until we remember that it was the Romans who were occupying Israel. They were ultimately the government in Israel. Jesus asked to see a Roman coin in use at the time, and that put the Pharisees on the spot because one of them would have had that coin in their pocket, in the Temple. He essentially called out not only their allegiance but also the legitimacy of their faith because they gave Caesar authority by carrying his coin and using it. Jesus wasn’t talking about giving money to the temple versus giving money to the rulers. He called on them to give the coin to Caesar, and in effect use shekels, the money of God’s people, to pay the temple tax and to buy what they needed. It was his call to separate the sacred from the profane, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob from the pagan Roman gods. In his mind, the Pharisees were too close and cozy with the Romans and forsaking their faith in God as God’s chosen people. Meanwhile, the Romans were having an unwanted influence on the lives of God’s people with the god-like Emperor appearing on coins.
In 2023, we don’t have a foreign country running our government and economy. We are not fighting a foreign influence on our lives or faith, though it seems that there are unfamiliar, threatening changes to our culture and values coming from somewhere that we can’t quite identify. We are caught up in a culture war that pops up everywhere, more recently in political campaign ads that seek to manipulate us with emotional outrage. We act as if we are occupied by Romans ourselves, defined as the “other,” or those we don’t like or agree with, those we are told who are threatening our values, our lives, our faith. Our Caesar, then, is within our community, and often of our making as we talk about how wrong they are, how dangerous their ideas are, and how destructive their policies and laws are. If Jesus calls us to give to Caesar what is due to Caesar, what is that? What does that look like?
One thing that is Caesar’s is to listen to someone, one of "them," explain to you something that you completely disagree with. It’s easy to build a reply as they talk about what they feel is right and best, and it’s easy to come up with ways of telling them that they’re wrong, period. So instead of listening, you’re building up a defense against their words. It is much harder to do what Jesus teaches us, and that is to listen and to learn. That listening is what belongs to our Caesar, what we give to those who are not like us, and learn why they think and feel the way that they do. To show them respect by listening is not the same as agreeing with them, and to let them speak is not to validate their thoughts. What we give to God in this scenario is our faith as obedience to carry out Jesus’ command to treat others the way that we want to be treated, and an opportunity to understand what it means to speak in love. So, giving to Caesar and to God is not always an either/or situation. We can give what is due to both at the same time.
Another example. I am fortunate to work for a company that recognizes the need for a flexible work schedule, so when there is an election, I can take 30 minutes or so away from my desk to go to my polling place to vote. Legally, employers are supposed to allow employees an hour off of work to vote, but for the service industry workers that is very difficult to do. Imagine what it would be like if you were at a fast-food restaurant and your cashier says that they are leaving to go vote. If anyone wants to sponsor a bill to make Election Day a federal holiday, I’ll sign on. But in reality, how often do we actually vote on election days? I would make a bet that it is relatively less often than when Sunday comes and we might go to worship services. This is another instance where we run into having to give time to Caesar and time to God, and in both cases in my eyes, they are equally important and we have equal responsibility for both. However, equal importance and obligation brings us close to blurring the lines between them, like seeing voting as a religious duty or attending worship services as a civic duty. We have to understand the difference between the sacred and the secular, what is in God’s realm of spirit and faith, and what is civic duty in the world. Doing something in one realm does not satisfy the needs of the other, or create requirements for the other. We may be obligated to give to both realms, but we have to understand what is appropriate for them.
In both of the examples I just gave, the distinction between what belongs to God and what belongs to the world is not as clear as who we should give a coin to, and why. Our faith guides us in the world, and the world comes to our church door asking for our help and support and the decision to give what to whom has to be carefully considered. This raises questions like, is what we give to the world an expression of faith, or are we giving away our faith when we place it in the world? Do we serve God when we give something from the world to the Church that it doesn’t need? In the end, our decision about what to give to whom must be one that reflects the faith we profess in God and Christ. It can be as much about what we don’t give as it is about what we do give. When you have to decide on giving to the world and to God, what will it or won't it be? And why will you give or withhold it? It is a matter of discernment, our head and our heart working together so that our mouth, hands, and feet do the work of God in God’s realm and in the world. There is no one answer to what we give to the world and to God, but it has to be to the glory of God and in recognition of the importance of God in the world.
Thanks again Pete for a great sermon.
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