OCT. 9, 2005 PASTOR SCOTT FULLER
IS 45:1-7; PS 96:1-13; I THES 1:1-10; MT 22:12-22
American Idol-atry
Prepare our hearts, Lord, to receive your Word. Silence in us any voice but your own that in hearing we believe and in believing we obey your will revealed to us in Jesus Christ. Amen.
Dear friends in Christ: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
O.K., true confessions: I titled my sermon American Idol-atry not because I have anything against the t.v. show…truth be told I’ve never seen an episode of American Idol. Mostly I just liked the obvious play on words. Yet, I do see something of a connection with our Gospel lesson for today: our American culture is filled with idols that we are constantly being tempted to worship and adore, to shower with gifts of fortune and fame.
Just like the coin that Jesus held, ours too are stamped with the likeness of an idol, some important person in the history of our nation. Yet unlike the coin of the ancient Romans, ours are also stamped with the phrase, In God we trust. It’s almost like we’re protesting that though we value money and honor our American idols, we really want to trust in God!
The coin that was handed to Jesus had only the likeness of Caesar on it. No words about trusting in God were needed because, well, most people couldn’t read, but, more importantly, Caesar expected to be worshiped as God-on-earth! So these enemies of Jesus were very smart – they knew what they were doing when they tried to trap him with their question.
If Jesus had said yes, it’s lawful to pay taxes to Rome, then two groups would have been angry. Pious people were sure that giving any money to Caesar was to worship a false god. Others just resented the Romans for occupying their land and taking their money.
But if Jesus had said no, it’s not right to pay taxes to Caesar, then his enemies would have turned him over to the Romans for prosecution.
I like this text…for a couple of reasons. First of all, it proves Jesus’ precept that we must be sly as foxes when dealing with enemies of the Gospel. We cannot be babes in the woods while making our way through in the world.
I also like this text because the good guy wins this round. It’s the bad guys who end up looking foolish, the stinkers who are left smelling badly, the tricksters upon whom the tables are turned. How often does that happen in your life? If you’re like me – almost never! You usually think of the appropriate answer, the perfect riposte…hours after you needed it.
But here Jesus hits the nail on the head and drives it home with one swift blow. His famous reply has echoed around the world and through the ages:
and to God the things that are God’s.
So what did Jesus mean?
-Pay the emperor but honor God?
-Reject the emperor and give everything to God?
-???
In his Crossways! Bible Study, theologian Harry Wendt asserts that no area in life is off-limits to God. There is nothing about creation that God does not already own, no aspect of our lives from which we can banish God. Yet that is not the message of our culture. In spite of the fact that we have In God we trust stamped on our money, I’m afraid it’s less a declaration than a dream. As the Apostle Paul said, The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil (I Tim. 6:10).
In our Gospel, Jesus issues a challenge, forces us to work at making a clear distinction between the kingdoms of the world and the kingdom of God (a la Martin Luther’s Two Kingdoms doctrine).
It’s not simply a matter of choosing between the two, paying homage to one and honor to the other, taxes to one and tribute to the other, duty to one and devotion to the other. Nor can we blend the two together: no country or creed can support the claim to be God’s absolute representative. It wasn’t true for Caesar, nor for the Holy Roman Empire…nor is it true today.
Instead, we who hear God’s call are meant to be like the ancient Israelites – wanderers in the wilderness; hearers, believers and doers of God’s Word; servants of the Spirit not slaves to idols. So it’s constantly a challenge to figure out how we give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.
In truth, this statement is very liberating…for a couple of reasons. It helps us see that while some of life’s stuff may be controlled by the emperor (our obligations to the government, our jobs, our families) the other part - the spirit, the totality of life really does belong to God. And when we are spiritually centered on this truth, when we are convicted by God’s call to serve the Lord with all that we have and are and do, then the glitter of life’s idols tends to dim even as the Light of the World brightly shines.