Community Church Sermons
October 19, 2008
Pentecost
23
Matthew 22:15-22
Joe…the plumber!
There. I’ve said it. Out loud. In church!
Tim/Rhonda, I’ve just brought politics into the pulpit! So buckle your seatbelt!
You all know Joe the plumber, right? He’s the burly baldheaded guy thrust into the national limelight during the presidential debate last week because of a question he had asked one of the candidates during a rally in Ohio.
It was a question about taxes.
Taken by itself, Joe the plumber’s question would have no place in today’s sermon – or any other sermon - except for the fact that Joe must have had a distant relative back in Bible days who asked a similar kind of question. Maybe his name was “Josephus the plumber.” We don’t know. All we do know is that what happened the other day in Ohio also happened one day about two-thousand years ago somewhere around Jerusalem.
At a big outdoor rally featuring that amazing man, Jesus of Nazareth, Josephus the plumber stood up in the crowd and asked the question, “Jesus, what is your position on taxes? Is it faithful for God’s people to pay taxes to the government?”
And Jesus answered, “Under my tax plan 95% of you will get no tax increase at all, under my plan you’ll get double the deduction for dependents, the capital gains…”
Oh, wait a minute, that’s not what Jesus said.
Do you remember what he did say?
“Render unto ______ what is ______, and unto _____ what is _____’s.
Would you be willing to take a closer look at this story with me today? And even though we may be skating out onto the thin ice of bringing politics into the pulpit, don’t blame me. Blame Josephus the plumber. Blame Matthew the Gospelwriter. Blame the organizers of the lectionary for assigning this text today. And most of all, blame Jesus…
…because he is the one who forces us to take a long hard look at the relationship between ourselves, government, and God.
The question put to Jesus that day was a trap, you know. Josephus the plumber represents the Pharisees, the major religious party to survive the Roman wars and subsequent occupation. The Pharisees were primarily interested in preserving and enforcing the Torah law, and they did not like Jesus one bit because they saw him violating the law at just about every turn – especially on the matter of observing the Sabbath. But Jesus was not the only one they despised. The Pharisees hated the Roman occupation and chafed under the tax burden imposed by the government.
Along with the Pharisees that day came some people who belonged to another religious sect called the Herodians. They believed that King Herod was the Messiah and that Rome was the divinely appointed government for the people of God. They gladly accepted and enforced the tax laws as their duty to Herod the Messiah. Pharisees and Herodians despised each other, but this day came together against Jesus, their common enemy. Politics makes for strange bedfellows!
So do you see the trap that is set in the question put to Jesus?
“Is it lawful (that is, faithful to the Torah) to pay taxes to Caesar?”(meaning the government represented by Herod).
If Jesus answers “Yes!” he shows himself to be in violation of Torah and disloyal to the Jewish people. If Jesus answers “No!” he is in violation of Roman law. Either way, Jesus is going to get killed!
It’s a classic GOTCHA question! Katie Couric would be proud!
So how will Jesus respond? What will Jesus do with his W-2?
Well, he asks for a coin that is used for paying the tax. Then holding it face up, he asks, “Whose image is this?” Of course, it is Caesar’s face. Then Jesus flips it over and asks, “And whose inscription is this?” Again, it is Caesar’s.
Then Jesus says, “Render unto _____ what is _____, and unto
____ what is ____’s.”
And when Josephus the plumber and all his Pharisee and Herodian buddies hear Jesus’ answer, they walk away scratching their heads. He didn’t say “Yes!” and he didn’t say “No!”
What exactly DID Jesus say?
Well, here’s the part of this familiar story that many people are unfamiliar with. Do you know what the inscription on the coin said?
On the back of the coin of that day were engraved the words, “Tiberius Caesar Augustus, son of the divine Augustus.”
So make your choice, dear friends, between who you will render yourself and your life unto. Will you give your ultimate allegiance to the god Augustus whose image is etched in the coin…or will you give your allegiance to the one true God whose image is stamped on your SOUL??
And right there, Jesus transforms the issue from taxes to salvation, from politics to faith.
Who is your God going to be?
This is the question God’s people have been confronted with in every generation. It is the question Moses and the Hebrew people had to face as they struggled with God’s call to freedom against Pharaoh’s call to return to the comfort of subservience. It is the question that provides context for the first of the Ten Commandments that tells us to place no other gods before God. It is the question that Jesus had to struggle with in the wilderness when the Devil offered him food, riches and power if he would just bow down to him.
And it is the question that has been behind every great story of every great person who has ever stood up against the crowd, against the status quo, against the conventional wisdom, against the prevailing opinion, and against the political tide to say, “This is wrong!” or “This is right!” and there to make a stand no matter what the consequences have been.
There is in Israel today an organization called Yad Vashem. It’s mission is to preserve the memory of those killed in the holocaust. Among its many projects, Yad Vashem has collected stories of those non-Jewish people who risked their lives and the well-being of their families in the effort to rescue Jews from the Nazi authorities. These heroic people are referred to as the Righteous Among the Nations and to date there are about 18,000 men and women who have been given that title.
One such group of righteous people were the residents of Le Chambon, France. Organized by their pastor, Andre Trocme, they took in countless Jewish refugees from all over Europe. Pastor Trocme wrote in February, 1943:
...in the course of the summer we have been able to help about sixty
Jewish refugees in our own home; we have hidden them, fed them, plucked them
out of deportation groups, and often we have taken them to a safe country You
can imagine what struggles—with the authorities—what real dangers this means
for us: threats of arrest, submitting to long interrogations...
Hanne Liebmann was one of those Jewish people who was saved by the good people of Le Chambon. She wrote:
“We came to Le Chambon, and we were received very
wonderfully with a good meal, with stuff we hadn’t seen in a long, long time.. . . When the French came to round up Jewish
people in August-September, 1942. we were hidden by farmers, they took care of
us, they protected us. I don’t think any of them were ever reimbursed. And food
actually was very tight….Le Chambon was a very poor farming village, nothing
much grows; so whatever they had, they shared with us. And if you are a family
with small children and you take in one or two more mouths to feed, it is a
sacrifice. And they didn’t mind sacrificing, or even putting their lives at
risk for us...”
But why would these French Christian people give away their resources, share their scarce food, and defy the governmental authorities to do what they did? Magda Trocme, the pastor’s wife, explained why the people of her community risked their lives to protect the Jews:
Those of us who received the first Jews did what
we thought had to be done—nothing more complicated... How could we refuse
them?... The issue was. Do you think we are all brothers or not? Do you think
it is unjust to turn in the Jews or not? Then let us try to help![1]
In other words, “Render unto _____ what is _____’s, and unto _____ what is _____’s.”
This is more than a question of which God will you follow. Ultimately, it is a question of who you believe you are. For Jesus is reminding us here that we are not simply a creation designed to pledge allegiance to the false gods of this world whose images are plastered on billboards, played on television, taught in school, enforced by society, legislated by government, and even inscribed on coins.
No, we are human beings MADE IN THE IMAGE OF GOD.
And while the people confronting Jesus that day were all caught up in thoughts about the image on a coin, the message of Jesus is clear to all who will listen:
THERE IS ANOTHER IMAGE THAT IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN ANY OTHER. IT IS THE IMAGE THAT INFORMS US AS TO WHAT IS RIGHT AND WHAT IS WRONG, WHAT IS GOOD AND WHAT IS BAD, HOW WE SHALL LIVE OUR LIVES, TREAT OUR NEIGHBORS, AND SHAPE OUR GOVERNMENT.
COINS MAY BE MADE IN THE IMAGE OF CAESAR, BUT HUMAN BEINGS ARE MADE IN THE IMAGE OF GOD.
NEVER FORGET WHO YOU ARE! NEVER
FORGET WHO YOUR NEIGHBOR IS!
As Andre Trocme, the pastor in Le Chambon, told the authorities when they came looking for the Jews, “We do not know what a Jew is. We know only men.”[2]
And so the people
of Le Chambon took a stand and saved some 5,000 lives. Their names now are
inscribed alongside other heroic souls in the list of the Righteous Among the
Nations.
People who
remembered who they were, and rendered to God…what is God’s.
As you go out to
live in the world this week…as you raise your family….as you perform your
work…as you prepare to vote…as you live your life to the fullest…
... render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and unto _____ what is _____’s.