We belong to God; our government and society belong to us. Now that the order is clear, so is our task.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 29 A
Texts: Matthew 22:15-22 (with reference to vv. 34-40, appointed for next week, if Reformation Sunday texts were not used)

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

“Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

The religious leaders in Jerusalem during that week we now call Holy decide to go on the offensive, after Jesus told a bunch of parables they felt threatened by. They try to get Jesus to say something publicly they can use to accuse him of inciting rebellion, get him on record saying he opposed taxes to Caesar. Then they’d have him.

“Give to the emperor what belongs to the emperor,” Jesus says. “Give to God what belongs to God.” The leaders walk away amazed, because he answered in a way they couldn’t use or understand.

Jesus’ answer has multiple possible interpretations, ground for all sorts of claims and actions. And it’s not just an enigma to them. Jesus says to us: you need to know what belongs to the emperor and what belongs to God, and therefore what is owed. You have to figure it out, he says. I can’t do that for you.

There is a twist for us, though: our political system.

We don’t have an emperor, at least if our Constitution is still the law of the land. Unlike Jesus’ Jewish hearers, who had no control of the emperor, no choice but obedience to the emperor’s edicts, we have the ability to elect our rulers at every level. We have the ability to influence the laws that are made, to make our voice heard by our voting and by our speaking to our representatives. Though it is being severely tested these days, the “emperor” – the government at all levels – actually belongs to all of us in this country.

So the order of things for us is radically different to that of Jesus’ time. Jesus’ hearers had competing rulers – God and the emperor. For we who believe in God, who have been baptized into Christ, we only have one ruler above us, and that is the Triune God. The “emperor,” that is, the government, is below us, serves all people. Or we change it if it doesn’t.

But we still have to sort out what we owe, and to whom we owe it.

Jesus’ summary of God’s will is our guide: Love God, and love neighbor.

That’s your path, Jesus will say on this same day in Holy Week, just a few verses after today’s Gospel, your way to fulfill all that God asks of you. “Giving to God what belongs to God” means that we, who love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, or at least know that’s what we aspire to, that we love our neighbor in such a way that God’s priorities are carried out in this world.

And God’s priorities in the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament never waver: God wants no one to be left on the margins of society. God cares for those who are poor and those who hunger and wants them to be filled. God hears those who suffer injustice and oppression and wants our society to be one where all are free, no one is crushed. God loves peace, and wants a world where weapons of war are converted into implements of feeding and nurturing.

This is what belongs to God. And now we know what we owe and to whom.

Since the government belongs to us – and “us” means all of us in this country, of all faiths and of no faith – then how we all order that government, how we create or reform or structure our society is on all of us. And since we who claim faith in Christ know we belong to God, and know what God wants of this world, Jesus’ riddle today says we live our belonging to God in how we live, act, and think politically.

Calling for an end to racism, for the reform of oppressive systems and abusive laws, for a fair minimum wage and affordable housing, for health care for all, for peace, not war, comes from our trust in the God who desires this for all God’s children.

And we have this joy: many of our siblings who are Muslim, and Jewish, and of other faiths, and of no faith, also say, “Those are things we value, too.”

Unlike the Christian right, who openly declare they want the government to support their institutions, be controlled by their people, in short, who want a theocratic government based on their view of Christianity, what we and so many others who are not Christian believe is that a just, caring, fair society where all thrive is the necessary goal for this world.

We Christians come there from our faith stance, from what we read in the Scriptures. But we’re not threatened if others come to the same conclusions as we do for different reasons. Acting politically out of our faith is not us saying we need to be in charge and the rules need to benefit us at the expense of others. Because we belong to God and know God’s priorities, we know it’s not about protecting our particular faith, or even defending God. It’s about working for God’s vision for this world. And we’ll do that with anyone who shares that vision, no matter how they got there, from faith or not, by whatever political party or by none. Love of neighbor is love of neighbor, however it’s arrived at.

“Give to God what belongs to God.” Now we understand what that means for us.

You love God and your neighbor when you vote. You love God and your neighbor when you pay taxes. You love God and your neighbor when you make clear your priority for those taxes and whom you believe should be helped by them. You love God and your neighbor when you bring kindness and compassion to your neighborhood, when you ask it of your city council and your state and national representatives. You love God and your neighbor when you join with others to make this a just and gracious world for all.

The newly appointed General Secretary of the United Church of Canada, the Rev. Michael Blair, recently said in a podcast, “It is not that the Church of God has a mission in the world, but the God of mission has a Church in the world.” ^[1] That’s us. We’re not the only tool God has, the God of mission inspires people in many and varied ways.

But we’re definitely one of God’s tools. Because we know belong to God. And this civic society and government – the “emperor” – belongs to us. And the God of mission needs us to do that mission, for the sake of all God’s children and the creation.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

^[1] Said in the podcast “Henri Nouwen, Now & Then,” Oct. 8, 2020; henrinouwen.org/now-then-michael-blair/

The Triune God reverses from wrath and enters into the darkness and evil of this world to bear the weight for us, to offer us peace and joy in the love of God that embraces us and the creation.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 28 A
Texts: Exodus 32:1-14; Psalm 106:1-6, 19-23; Philippians 4:1-9; Matthew 22:1-14

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

God’s anger is terrifying in these readings.

The God who rescued Israel from Egypt, carried them through the Red Sea, fed and watered them in the wilderness is now, at the foot of Mount Sinai, threatening to “consume them.” “Let me alone,” God says to Moses, “so that my wrath may burn hot against them.” God will make Moses the new Abraham, once God has destroyed the others.

If we hear today’s parable in the usual way and assume the ruler in the story stands for the Triune God, then the anger of God in this parable equals the anger at Sinai. The ruler sends troops to the city of those who rejected the invitation, destroys them all, and burns their city.

No one disputes that the Holy and Triune God has every right to be angry at whatever God might be angry at. If we, created in the divine image, can and do get angry, of course we have to believe God can and does. It’s just horrifying to witness here.

It’s not a surprise, though.

God’s anger at Sinai is because these people whom God lovingly broke out of oppression and slavery, saved from the Egyptian army, and provided for in their wandering, have created an idol out of gold and held an orgy in honor of it. Only forty days and nights after receiving the Ten Commandments, Israel’s breaking a bunch of them.

And in the parable, those invited to the wedding feast not only reject the invitation, they mock it. Some go back to their own business, but others seize the representatives and kill them. The ruler is justifiably furious about the treatment of the invitation and these faithful servants.

If we assume that the Holy and Triune God can and does get angry over human behavior, we’re surely not surprised that idolatry, unfaithfulness, blasphemy, and murder would inspire such righteous wrath.

Here’s what we don’t see coming: the Holy and Triune God doesn’t act on this wrath.

At Sinai, Moses “stood in the breach,” as we sang with the psalmist today, and said firmly to the God of the universe: “you can’t do that.” Moses argued that God’s reputation was at stake, that Egypt would witness the destruction of these people and conclude that their God was evil and brought them out just to kill them. And God WHO IS changed God’s own mind about the disaster planned for Israel.

But, you rightly notice, if in the parable we see the ruler as standing for God, there’s no Moses here. The ruler simply sends in the army, kills the wrongdoers, and burns down the city.

The problem is that interpretation doesn’t take into account the end of the parable.

Jesus told this parable in the middle of Holy Week. That accounts for Jesus’ anger and strong language. Jesus is, of course, under tremendous pressure and deeply frustrated at the rejection of the elders of God’s people, as his Holy Week parables reveal. But today’s parable doesn’t end here, where we stopped. This is around Wednesday of Holy Week, and within twenty-four hours Jesus will be kneeling in anguish in Gethsemane. Within forty-eight hours he’ll be dying on the cross. That’s where this parable ends.

And there’s your Moses, my friends. The Holy and Triune God doesn’t need Moses to “stand in the breach” on behalf of God’s people anymore. The Incarnate Son of God stands there now.

In Gethsemane Jesus struggles between wanting to destroy the leaders who rejected God’s embrace, and the divine desire to enter fully into the evil and pain and darkness of the world to draw all things back into God.

And we know Jesus’ final decision in Gethsemane. He will not bring armies of angels to destroy his enemies. He will allow himself to be arrested and tortured and brutally killed. He will, in fact, to use his own words, willingly go into the “outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth” himself. That’s where the ruler in this parable is at the end of it.

This all deeply matters to you and me. It’s not just about the past.

Even if our idolatry doesn’t take the form of a golden calf and an orgy, we seek other things to rule us, things that are more comfortable, visible, tangible, than a God who cannot be seen, who challenges us to live in God’s way. That’s undeniable. What we look to for our greatest good – our finances, our reputation, the approval of others, our own way of doing things, whatever– becomes the driving force in our decisions and actions, not God.

And the invitation to join all people at God’s feast of life, to see God’s celebration as the point of this life and the shape of the next, seems too good to pass up. But we humans pretty easily set aside God’s inclusive invitation in favor of a narrow, self-centered, smaller view that we’re what’s important, our needs are what we care about. Everyone else is on their own.

Seeing God’s wrath at idolatry and rejection is terrifying because we know we do the same things.

Yet Paul says to you today: Rejoice. Don’t be anxious. God is near.

We’ve heard Paul tell us these past weeks that Christ Jesus humbled himself and endured death on the cross, that that is God’s plan and God’s loving action. Not wrath. Not destruction.

And so, Paul has told us, that means that belonging to such a God gives you the confidence, as it did Paul, to live in whatever circumstances you find yourself. Paul knows his sin and failing, and trusts that God’s answer in Christ is grace, not judgment, because of the cross. Paul knows torture, rejection, imprisonment, hunger, suffering, because of following Christ. And yet he is at peace, even in his jail cell, because Christ is with him in the darkness.

It’s simple, Paul says. Jesus reveals that God’s mind is changed to love, not wrath.

So, rejoice in God’s changed mind, Paul says. Pray with thanksgiving to the God who is near you, and God will calm your anxious heart. Focus on what is good, honorable, commendable, just, pure, Paul says. It will help you not be overwhelmed by all the problems we face.

And keep on doing the things you’ve learned and received and heard in Christ, Paul says. Keep being faithful. Stand in the breach for others if they need it, because there is pain and suffering in this world, even if we learn to focus on the good and the commendable and the beautiful. You might be needed in the breach as Christ was needed, to offer your life as love to your neighbor and to the world.

And when you do all these things, Paul says, you will find the God of peace is with you. Not the God of wrath. And that’s life for you, and for the world.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen