What Is God's

Matthew 22:15-22

The story we hear this morning is one of my favorite gospel stories, because it is just so very Jesus: You ask the man a question – a question that very reasonably has a yes or no answer, and instead of answering it, he turns around and asks you something. And then he teaches – tells a story or pronounces a moral, and it’s a great answer, obviously. It all makes sense now…

Give to the emperor what is the emperor’s…coin of the realm, okay…Give to God what is God’s…got the budget sorted out now…except…Give to God what is God’s… that’s… everything! Wait. waitaminute…Jesus? Jesus, come back here!

what do you mean, give to God what is God’s??

Everything is God’s, how do you give it back? Jesus…wait!

I have had that conversation with Jesus myself, more than once, reading scripture, praying.

“This makes sense, yes, got it….wait, WHAT did you mean?”  I’ve wrestled a lot with today’s question about how exactly you give to God what is (already) God’s. And the closest I have come is, well – remember how Jesus shows the Pharisees and the crowds what belongs to the emperor in this story? 
“Whose image is this?” he says, looking at a Roman coin.

“Well, if the emperor’s image is on it, give it to the emperor.”

So – where do we find the image of God?

Yes, us. You. Me.

We are “made in the image of God.” It’s imprinted, molded in our flesh, our being.

WE are God’s. And Jesus says: “Give to God the things that are God’s.”

So: Give yourself.

Give your relationships with other people, too.
Give your self generously, whole heartedly, without holding back, to God.

That’s a big deal. And while it’s fundamentally a spiritual process, giving yourself to God involves a multitude of practical choices, from the food we choose to eat, to who we spend time with, to the decision between iPhone and Android or paper and plastic.  Choices about financial giving, too.

If you’re giving to the United Way because doing so deepens your relationship with God, that’s part of biblical giving. If you’re giving to the church out of guilt, fear, shame – those motivations that tend to close our hearts, and make us feel further from God – then it’s not biblical giving.

The choice that helps me give myself completely to God these days is to tithe my income to God’s work and mission in the world through this congregation.

I didn’t start out that way. I gave as a child and young adult because I was supposed to, (public radio taught me that) and because I wanted to feel like part of the congregation. It’s just what we do, I thought, and how much doesn't matter.

And then I discovered that I liked giving, and I wanted to do more.

About that time, someone at my church started talking about tithing.

“Ten PERCENT???” said my 25 year old self. “You’ve got to be kidding! That’s a LOT of money!”… but… I could do – maybe? – 2.5? three percent? And it turned out I could.

A year or two later, I thought, well, maybe four percent… until some years later, I realized that five percent had started to feel comfortable.

Because somewhere in there I started to realize: the more I gave, the more open I felt when I prayed, and the more I saw God at work, not just in the church, but at the office, in the grocery, even in world events. I became more aware of the inspiration of the paramedics at a traffic accident than angry at the bad driver whose carelessness made me late for work; it became easier and more life-giving to support a struggling (even irritating) colleague, the beauty of God’s creation just kept washing over me, even on slushy days in the concrete jungle.

I didn't want that to be about money, honestly. And there are always other things at work in our relationship with God. But money is an emotional and spiritual thing, and reluctant though I was to realize it, money was what was filling me with a sense of how God’s grace could flow through me as well as around me.

So I kept trying to give a little more. It wasn’t always easy. There were times when I was angry at the church, days I didn’t much like what God was doing, and times when I felt, well, stupid about how much I was giving, and the way that choice limited other choices that might have made my home or work better, or my family life easier.

There was the year my car was totaled, the insurance was barely enough to cover the towing, and I didn’t know where the money for a new car would come from. So I pulled back a little on my giving. I focused more on my expenses. Until I started to feel I was missing something.

I could feel it getting a little harder to pray. I felt crankier about God. I felt…well, lonelier. Less willing to keep up my relationships with other people, and with God. I began to learn how much love needs intentional generosity to stay healthy, and grow.  There are lots of ways to practice that generosity – practicing with money just helps make it clear and concrete. I took a chance to step up again.

I started to feel like giving money was a way to practice giving my whole self to God, like Jesus talks about today. To stretch the emotional and spiritual muscles I need to seek and embrace God’s will in all the big and little decisions in my life. To practice letting go of the anxiety I so often feel: that there’s not enough of me to go around – to be a daughter and a sister, a friend, a pastor; to do the work I love and the work I just have to do.

So I keep trying to practice unreasonable generosity with my cash and my budget, to keep my spiritual muscles strong and flexible for joyful, loving, abundant choices in daily life— and I admit, it does take me a lot of practice—and to hang on to that sense of the river of God’s grace flowing through me, so that I alone don’t have to be enough.

Maybe for you that sense of grace started flowing when you were giving about one percent, or the first few pennies. Maybe you’ve been giving ten percent for years and still haven’t felt your heart open with that flow of grace that makes you know you’re God’s.

Either way, any way, I think Jesus is asking us all to use financial giving: to Caesar, or to the church to help us give to God what is God’s: To give our bodies and lives, marked with God’s image; to give our whole selves wholeheartedly and joyfully to God.

The Opposite of Anxiety

Exodus 32:1-14; Philippians 4:1-9

Is this glass half-full, or half-empty?

You know that old chestnut, supposed to tell you if you’re an optimist or pessimist.

But what you see also depends on what else you know about the glass – about its history, about its ordinary state. If the glass had been full a moment ago, and I just drank a lot of water, then the glass is half empty now. If it were usually empty, and you’d watched me pour some water in, you’d probably tell me I’d gotten it half full.

What we know about the glass depends on what we expect, and what we have experienced.

And so does what we know about God.

That’s what’s happening in the story from Exodus that we hear this morning. The people of Israel have gotten used to the experience of having Moses right in front of them, right among them. They’ve come to expect that symbol that God is right there, too, leading them and paying attention.

Now Moses has been up a mountain with God so long they’re starting to forget what he looks like. He’s gone.  God now seems far away, and we want – no we need – something to show that God is here. It’s important enough to sacrifice some of their treasure for, and they do.

And the result is – as you well know – a golden calf. An image that takes the place of God, even though what we were looking for was the assurance of the God we know.

That’s often what lures us into idolatry. Whether it’s money, or self, or righteousness, or freedom, or security or any of those other good things that winds up replacing God in our hearts and minds, it’s often because we were focused on looking for something we had once experienced with God.

I’ve been known to go looking for the feelings of trust and confidence that have assured me of God’s presence, thinking that I’m looking for God, only to wind up with a fragile and rigid kind of independence, a shiny but lifeless substitute for the presence of God that I thought I was looking for.

With the help of a few wise friends, I’ve learned that one way to spot this mistake is anxiety: Worry. Over planning. Perfectionism. Maybe for you it’s sleepless nights or sudden anger; long to-do lists or bouts of panic.

And I know I’m there when the shiny thing I wanted – the bright gleam of freedom or security or cash or rightness – is right in front of me, but I still worry that I’m going to lose it.

Anxiety is – not always, but so often – the signal flag of idolatry. And idolatry – so often – is at heart the belief that God has gotten away from me, and I have to chase down or create what’s gone missing.

So, then…

Rejoice! says Paul, Rejoice! The Lord is near.

Paul writes this from prison, locked up for his zeal in proclaiming the gospel, not sure if he is going to die or to live – you’d think this would look like evidence of God’s absence – but Paul’s letter to his friends in Philippi bubbles and drips with the words “rejoice” and “joy”, and with his conviction that God is near. That Christ is both coming soon, and already present, vibrant in the community of faith and worship.

Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I say rejoice.

Let your forbearance be visible to everyone: The Lord is near.

Do not worry about anything.

Joy, it turns out, is the opposite of anxiety, the signal flag of the presence of God,

the indisputable evidence of a heart, and a community, that knows and lives the presence of God, here, and now, and always.

Joy is what people see in us, together, when we know that God has taken up such permanent residence in our hearts, in our relationships with one another, that we cannot be lost from God.

Joy is not the feeling of happiness (although they go together a lot). Joy is an attitude of the heart, a deep orientation toward God, that persists in the midst of grief, and pain, and the boring ordinariness of the everyday.

Joy is a signal and effect of a deep sense of God’s presence, but it doesn’t just happen to us. We can choose joy, by acting on a trust in God’s presence and care even before we feel it. By embarking on ministry in the confidence that the funding and the volunteers will come. By giving more of our heart and self than we believe we have to give. By loving the apparently unlovable, we can – as a community – choose joy.

This is what Paul tells his friends when he reminds them to focus on “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just… pure… excellent…”

It’s a shift in perspective, from looking for the signs of God’s leadingor God’s presence that go missing; to a perspective of accepting the presence of God even when all the evidence points to God’s absence: at the cross, at the empty tomb, in the face of tragedy, and greed, and loneliness, and failure.

It’s the perspective that looks at this half glass of water, and says, “Well, actually the glass is always full. One hundred percent full: with 50% water, and 50% air.”

You can see the partial evidence of the presence of water, or the absence of water, and on that evidence decide whether the glass is half full or half empty. Or you can know the unseen fullness of a glass that has any amount of water, drink what’s in front of you, and rejoice.

And the peace of God, that surpasses understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, in the fullness of joy.

Amen.

In the Face of Violence

Matthew 21:33-46; Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20

It’s been a rough week, hasn’t it?

The news has been hard to watch; the whole country has been thinking and praying. Maybe you’ve also spent the week struggling with the question of how to respond, faithfully, to unprovoked violence. Maybe you’ve come to some conclusions about how we should respond, how God should respond. Maybe you haven’t.

Either way, you’re in good company.

The question of how to respond faithfully to violence is vividly raised, and not fully resolved, in Jesus’ story today. A story in which a landlord sends out staff to collect rent, and those staff are brutally beaten and killed. By normal people, who seemed just like us. People who you would never guess would turn violent in a perfectly normal situation.

And it happens again. Same exact thing, except more people are beaten and killed.

And then again – tragedy upon tragedy – the heir of the vineyard is killed.

“Now when the owner of the vineyard comes,” Jesus asks, “what will he do to those tenants?”

What do you think, Jesus? The only fair thing: He’ll put those wretches to a miserable death, and give what they had to someone who deserves it.

Violence. Met with more violence.

Sure, it solves one problem, when the bad guys die. In the movies, in the allegories, it’s closure. And everyone is supposed to learn their lesson. Crime and violence doesn’t pay. You get what’s coming to you, so be good.

Matthew tells this Jesus story to make it clear to his original audience that if you keep on rejecting and killing the messengers of God, it’s not going to go well for you. “You’re the bad guys, you selfish religious authorities,” he’s implying, “so you’d better watch out.”

The “chief priests and the Pharisees” get that point pretty clearly.

So what do they do? Plot to kill Jesus.

Violence begets violence in this story. In the parable and outside the parable.

Violence feeds itself, and does not stop.

Is this for real?
Is this the gospel?

Is this really what Jesus came to teach? Why Jesus came to die, and rise?

Well, yes – sort of.

Jesus is serious about the fact that ignoring God has consequences. Miserable, even deadly consequences. Jesus is entirely serious that greed and selfishness – an attachment to our comforts, to our self-determination, or our preferred way of life,  which exceed our attachment to God’s commandments, God’s justice, or the kingdom of God – lead to loss and pain and even death.

That’s idolatry. It’s the first thing the people of God are told NOT to do.

But I don’t think Jesus is telling us that God endorses violence in return for violence; or that God habitually reaches out and smites bad tenants, or even murderers and thugs.

I could be wrong.

But I take a little comfort in the fact that it’s the error-prone human listeners who announce that the proper end of the story is for the landlord to murder the bad tenants and give their property to some good guys.  

It’s small comfort, but I will take what I can in a week like this one, a story like this one. A story, a week, in which violence plays the lead, and it seems pretty clear that violence is not going to miraculously yield to peace any time soon.

Commentators, satirists, and ordinary citizens have asked one another this week: What will we learn from this? Will we ever learn from this? Have we learned, simply, to shrug our shoulders as we grieve, accepting the sad fact that no one is going to stop the violence, and all we can do is weep, and pray, and expect it to happen again?

I do not know how this is going to unfold in our country and century.

I do know that despair and helplessness is not what Jesus taught.

I know that Jesus taught us to see “the other” as ourselves – to see the tax collector, the sinner,

to see both the Pharisee and the prostitute as ourselves, made in the image of God

I know that our failure to do that – in the parable, the gospel, our daily 21^st century lives – is an idolatry that is killing us.

It killed people in that parable, because the tenants saw the messengers as tools of the landlord, the son as an obstruction to their own needs and desires; while the landlord saw the tenants as tools of business. None saw fellow children of God, collaborators in the nurture and enjoyment of the fruits of the earth.

It’s killing people today, when self-protection and the need to trust in our own rightness prevent the political left and right from being able to see each other’s rightness and make common cause, instead of seeing ourselves in the other “side’s” proposals: fellow children of God, longing to shape our society to support our best selves.

It’s killing people today, when we find ways to write off any shooter as not like us, when we try to deny our own engagement with a culture that accepts violence, when we fall into the familiar and well-prepared trap of believing that someone else can fix this but won’t, rather than seeing our shared complicity and shared power.

This story can still end differently.

When Jesus asks us what happens next, can we imagine an ending in which the owner of the vineyard and the tenants all agree that the property and the fruit belong to God, and cannot be claimed by either human party?

Can we imagine both tenants and landlord so moved by the tragedy of the violent killings that they repent of their old assumptions and work to make peace across the land in new and creative ways?

It’s not easy – not easy to imagine or to do.  It’s never easy to break free of the divisive effects of violence, in stories or in our lives. But I believe that a future free of this division is the future God loves to imagine: for us, and for all God’s people.

I believe that if Jesus had gotten to tell the parable he wanted to tell, it would go more like this:
There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a winepress and built a watchtower. Then he leased this well-equipped vineyard to tenants and went to another country.

When the harvest time had come, he sent messengers to collect his produce. But running ahead of them by another way, the landowner came first to the vineyard, and made for the tenants a great feast in thanksgiving for the harvest. And all ate, and were filled.

How can we learn to tell that story, in the face of all the violence in our world?

How can we learn to live the story of generosity, when the whole world counsels indifference and despair?
How can we, together, make this terrible week one in which we have fed others with God’s gifts, have seen one another as ourselves, have learned to see all creation as God’s not our own,

so truly that the cycle of violence simply cannot restart?

I do not know how it all ends, but it begins with the story we choose to tell.

So I will choose to tell the story of grace, and learn see others as myself; to trust “the other side”, until there are no sides at all.

What will you choose?