"Render unto Caesar..." Nothing At All?

Sermon. 22 October 2017. St Michael and All Angels, Little Ilford.

Trinity 19 (Year A)

Matthew 22.15-22

Jesus says; “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” Or as many of us will have learnt it, in and outside of church: “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s” [AV]. I think it is probably still - just - the case, that if you went up to a maybe-more-mature adult in this country, brought up in the medium of English (in whatever country) from childhood, and said: “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s” they would stand a good chance of still understanding the point you were making. 

Jesus said these words in the context of Roman occupation, a military dictatorship. In the earliest generations of the Church, the basic attitude of the Christian communities to that military dictatorship was to have as little to do with it as possible. Such was the risk of persecution or execution. Then, early in the fourth century, things changed. The then dictator, Constantine, was drawn to Christianity, some say cynically, some say sincerely. Whichever, it soon became safe to be a Christian within the dictatorship, and even advantageous, a “career move”. 

How did the Church adapt to this radically new situation. Well, in a variety of ways. But one way was certainly to build on this verse. It is found in Matthew, Mark and Luke’s gospel, in almost identical wording: “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”  Already in the fourth century this was understood to mean: 

some things are the responsibility of the state, and we Christians must “do our duty” so that the state can do what it is called to do; other things are different, are spiritual, and when it comes to these the state must mind its own business. In these ways, both state and church can rub along together in peace, and mutual tolerance. 

If that sounds familiar, well, this is of course an attitude our own Anglican Church has further adapted and made its own. We are the established church in the country. We have bishops in parliament (in the House of Lords); indeed, we have the monarch. But we don’t expect the Church to govern the nation. We resist that. We just want to govern ourselves, through our synod. 

Now, what am I going to say next? I have my script, and so I know. But I confess that if I didn’t have a text, I would not be sure in what direction I was about to move. One thing I might do is question whether it really makes sense to divide up our lives (personal and collective) into the secular/worldly/temporal vs the spiritual. After all, if a person is on the point of dying of hunger, or seriously ill and cut off from all treatment, so that their only prayer is “Help!”, is that a worldly or a spiritual matter? Or if a person is so wealthy that they cannot even see their own privilege, is that a temporal or a spiritual problem? Do we not teach that they are imperilling nothing less than their own soul?

Good questions. But let us leave them and go back to the gospel text. I’ll give a literal translation: “Give back, then, the things of Caesar to Caesar and the things of God to God”. Actually, the word for “things” is not there in the Greek, and the text speaks about “the God” - these idioms work in the Greek in a way they just don't in English. But the real point is… one thing this cannot - simply cannot - mean is this: “the world and its resources can and should be divided up - some bits of it belong to the state and not to God, and some bits belong to God and not the state”. 

It is, I’ll say it again, quite impossible that that is the meaning of this text. It may still be a good argument. But it is not the meaning of this text.

First, we know the context; it has been presented to us in great clarity. The question comes from the Pharisees. Now, I’ve said often enough that the Pharisees are not the simply “baddies” in the gospels we have been led to believe. But the Greek here is unambiguous that on this occasion they’ve had a big meeting, to agree how they might set a trap for Jesus “in word”. The nature of the trap is evident:

• if Jesus says people should pay the poll tax to the brutal invaders, then he is siding with the enemy, a quisling; 
• if he says people should not pay the poll tax, then he is siding with the rebels (we might say “terrorists”), and is a threat to the Romans. 

Either way, he is undermined. 

Jesus, the text continues, is aware of his questioners’ malice. In fact the original is stronger than that: Jesus sees that this particular approach is “evil” (says the Greek). And his first response is: “Why do you test me?” The word is from the same family as that found in the Lord’s prayer - “Lead us not into temptation.” So, “Why do you tempt me?” And Jesus calls them (in this regard) “hypocrites”, for good measure.

So it is strong stuff. It is indeed a trap. The text leaves us in no doubt. So we are already set up to expect that Jesus must be (I don’t think it’s disrespectful to put it this way…) canny. Canny... and so he is! Think about it. On the surface, it looks like he has answered the question. It looks like he has said:

“Look, money has the emperor’s face on it. Just give it back to the emperor when you have to, and then get on with your life.” 

We can imagine that a passing Roman soldier would have heard Jesus as saying something like that. And we can further imagine that it would be hard for these Pharisees to convince the Romans that he had said something more challenging than that. But - make no mistake about it - he was saying something more challenging, radical and oppositional. 

What? Well, here is a question: 

• from Jesus’ point of view, 
• from the Jewish point of view, 
• from the Biblical point of view, 

what is there that does not belong to Gd? 

I ask again: what is there that does not belong to God? 

Show me something that does not belong to God? 

Sisters and brothers, I note that no one is getting out their purse or their wallet. You take the point. As we ourselves may say as a prayer over the gifts on the altar, ourselves quoting the Bible: 

“Yours, Lord, is the greatness, the power, the glory, the splendour, and the majesty; for everything in heaven and on earth is yours. All things come from you, and of your own do we give you.” 

What you may not realise is that this is very close to a biblical - a Hebrew-biblical - text - from 1 Chronicles 29. As such, it would be well-known by the Pharisees, who valued all the Hebrew Scriptures which we call the “Old Testament”. 

So Jesus’ Jewish questioners would have heard something the Romans would not have heard. They would have heard Jesus say this: 

“You are trying to trick me. 

I know this. You know this. 

I am not going to make a provocative statement just to fall into your trap. 

I will say that Roman money is the Romans’ own business, 

as if paying a poll tax to them means nothing at all. 

I will further say that it does mean nothing at all, but for this reason: 

because all even the Romans have is really God’s own property, 

and all even the Romans do is God’s own business. 

You are quite unable to attack me on this, 

because it is what you yourselves believe.” 

We may not be used to thinking of Jesus as “canny”, as saying things in code. But we should be. 


It is actually often what happens when Jesus speaks in parables, in stories. I know we are taught in Sunday school (for fair-enough reasons) that Jesus speaks in stories to make things easier to understand, for the simple folk. But that’s usually wrong. Actually, it is more to make things harder to understand. [Mark 4.12: Jesus speaks “for those outside, everything comes in parables; in order that ‘they may indeed look, but not perceive, and may indeed listen, but not understand; so that they may not turn again and be forgiven’”. Citing Isa 6.9. Cf Matt 13.14f; Jn 12.40.] To put the questions we’d like to put to Jesus back to us. It has been put this way: in Jesus’ words, the world is made strange. Made strange in order that we wrestle with things more, so that we wonder more. Why should the life of faith not be about wrestling for the truth and finding wonder?  And is that not what happens in this reading? Jesus speaks a phrase which is apparently simple, meaningful and, yes, useful. “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s”. But if we pay attention, we come to see that instead it asks us important questions about 

• whether we think Gd’s power and sovereignty are limited; 
• whether there is anything that is not of Gd; 
• whether we too are ready to pray:  

“Yours, Lord, is the greatness, the power, the glory, the splendour, and the majesty; for everything in heaven and on earth is yours. All things come from you, and of your own do we give you.” 

Amen. 

Sermon. The Pharisee and the Tax Collector.

Sermon. 23 October 2016. St Michael and All Angels, Little Ilford.

Last Sunday After Trinity (Year C)

Luke 18.9-14

The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector. Or (we may call it) 'the story of the confident person and the person at their wits' end'. Surely, it is that. And surely that is what makes this story one of the most attractive and accessible in the whole of the gospels. It is good to know that people at their wits' end – and we are all at our wits' end at times in our lives – can turn to Gd and be heard.

And, thank Gd, not the story but the underlying message is one that is found in other traditions which have to do with Gd. You'll find it not only in Christianity, but also in Judaism and Islam and elsewhere. The command: never despair of the mercy of Gd. Or, to put it the other way round: do not despair; the mercy of Gd is limitless, and can be for you, whatever the mess you are in. Or: if you have to be at your wits' end before you turn to Gd, still do it; Gd will hear you. I know that many of us hear can bear witness to that. Perhaps we would not be here if we could not bear witness to that. Well and good.

All of that said, today's gospel remains the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. And one thing you may just have noticed about me is that, when the Pharisees are mentioned in the gospels, I like to make an effort to 'rehabilitate' them, to suggest that the traditional Christian portrayal of the Pharisees as 'the baddies' is too simple, and won't do. This is because the Pharisees were the forerunners of the rabbis and so of Judaism as we know it - but also, so historians tell us, actually the group closest to the Jewish Jesus movement, which became the Church. You might think I have my work cut out this time. But here I go.

The Pharisee offers to Gd a review of his life. He fasts, he tithes, regularly and fully. He also – clearly – prays. Fasting, tithing, praying. This means in terms of the three pillars of Jewish piety as the New Testament portrays things, he is doing it. He is pious, devout, faithful.

Perhaps you think he is showing Gd he has earned Gd's attention? That he believes that Gd is naturally distant, or angry, or both, but if he jumps through the set hoops (of which there are many), he can earn Gd's forgiveness and sympathy? The text nothing about this. And that's worth saying again. The text of the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector does not say that the Pharisee thought he could earn good things from Gd by all his efforts. And we know from other sources – like, well, the Old Testament itself, that that was not what Phariseeism was about.

No, Phariseeism, like other forms of Judaism, was a religion of grace. Gd has graced the Jewish people with freedom, and undeserved love, and with guidance about how to live. Jews are invited to celebrate all of that by making their own the details of the guidance about how to live. By, for example, fasting, tithing and praying.

In other words, when the Pharisee is reviewing his life, he is doing just what people in the Catholic tradition may do today when they prepare for confession. They/we may even get little booklets to guide one through a review of one's life: Have you been regularly to mass? Have you prayed daily? Have you given to charity? And so on. If you have, and you have, and you have, then say it. Tell the truth. Be honest about it. Be glad that you've had the external opportunity and the internal discipline to fulfil some commandments, to be faithful in what you do.

But that is as positive as I can be about today's Pharisee. For to be clear: he does mess up. What does he get wrong? Not in fairly recording what he did right, but in comparing, or rather contrasting himself with another human being, with the tax collector. And also not like thieves, rogues, adulterers and others.

Brothers and sisters, to do that is spiritual death for any of us. The sin of pride, thinking ourselves above others. Underneath which is often fear. It's the fear (probably one we are not conscious of) that, deep down, life is like this. Life is a narrow ladder and we are a crowd, all competing, scrambling up the ladder. We fear that we can only do that by fighting with others, scrapping, climbing over them, pressing our feet down on their heads, to race up the rungs of the ladder. We may think of this as how this economic life, or how bankers working in the City may think about things. But today's message is that the spiritual life can also be like this.

This brings home to us that 'the Pharisee' is not some exotic alien from a couple of millennia. It's that part of us which thinks we have to compare, contrast, and compete. But there is good news here, because there is a way out. We simply have to note when we are led to compare, contrast and compete, and then cease and desist, resist, move away.

A friend of mine puts it this way. You know the phrase: Love the sinner, hate the sin? No! I haven't got time for that. I haven't got time to discern your sins, to hate them. I am too busy discerning my own sins. He's not saying he thinks he's a terrible person, drowning in sinfulness. He's just saying his own life is the own he has to judge, be discerning about. Other lives he is called just to love.

I have one question for you. What do you think happened next? We know what happened immediately, as Jesus tells us. The Pharisee, thinking himself smugly superior to those around him, goes home unchanged by his praying. The tax collector, at his wits' end and so pouring out his heart, knows the change that comes from being heard by Gd. 'Justified', in the rather technical language of the text.

But, then what? Did the same scene play itself out, day after day, week after week, year after year? We hope not. We hope the Pharisee would get the insight he needed to see that his dismissive attitude to others was killing off his otherwise decent-enough prayers. But do we hope that the tax collector might also change? Might slowly, slowly look at all the concrete ways in which he was a sinner, and work out ways, slowly, slowly no doubt, to change his life?

I think that is probably the import of the story as Jesus (as Luke) tells it. But Christian tradition has also done something else with this story. It has suggested that the bald, heart-felt (heart-felt, bald) prayer 'Lord, have mercy', is one we never leave behind. We know this. We know this because it's also our practice.

Lord, have mercy, Christ, have mercy...

Lord, in your mercy...

Here we are in some ways echoing the sinning tax collector of today's gospel.

And some, many (many, especially in the East, but by no means only there) many place this prayer for mercy very close to the heart of their own spirituality. What do I mean? I am thinking of the 'Jesus Prayer'. It has different versions. Two especially popular ones:

'Lord Jesus Christ, Son of Gd, have mercy on us.'

'Lord Jesus Christ, Son of Gd, have mercy on me, a sinner.'

It is the prayer of the heart, repeated over and over again. There's an Orthodox monastery not far from here where they recite it daily. They were told to limit it to two hours a day. It is typically recited in line with breathing:

Lord Jesus Christ Son of Gd (in-breath)

have mercy on us (out-breath).

And a traditional posture is to be seated and bend forward. Some say this is the origin of the phrase, 'contemplating your naval'. It looks that way. But really the one praying is adopting the position of the tax collector in today's story.

And I offer it to you. I will share this from my chaplaincy work: it can work against anxiety, if you repeat it, slowly. Just to add: when we pray for mercy, we are not praying just for forgiveness. This is mercy as a much richer concept. A prayer for grace, for grace in the form we need it. That Christ meets us at the point of our need, as the loving, gracious one He is.

Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of Gd, have mercy on us [repeated ad lib.]

Evidence suggests that if we pray like this (like this in some way – I am not being prescriptive) we will find it that bit easier to pray from the heart when (Gd forbid) we are at our wits' end. Amen. 

mustard seeds, life

Sermon. St Anselm’s Hayes. 17 June

Trinity 2

Ezekiel 17.22-end

Mark 4.26-34

I’ve been thinking a lot about control. How much control do we have over our lives? My own circumstances at the moment seem to suggest: not much. More importantly, I know that is the case for you, in all of the discernment process about the future of this congregation and church. It’s hard to see the future. And we might also have to say: However things do unfold, it won’t be quite as you would like it, were you to be fully in control.

I’ve also been thinking of control in the light of all that stuff in the media over this last week. I am thinking - you’ll have guessed - about the Church of England’s official contribution to the consultation on the proposal for same-sex marriages. I am not going to go into the matters of substance. It just occurs to me that one interpretation is that the Church of England (or these spokespeople) want to be in control over the regulation of marriages. Some would say they just want to be guaranteed control over church marriages. I am not saying what is right or wrong in all of this. But I am saying that my notion is that what will happen is that it will emerge that the Church is not in control of the process. It may think it has great wisdom about marriage and relationships, and of course, at its best, it does. But it is not in control.

And… we know this, don’t we…? We are not in control of our own births. The vast majority of us are not in control of our own deaths. Along the way, many things happen to us, over which we have no, no control. In fact, our language emphasises this. What is it ‘to suffer’? To ‘suffer’ means to be at the receiving end of something else, not to be in control but passive, to be at the mercy of something/someone, typically something/someone you’d rather not be at the mercy of. ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me’? It means ‘let them; don’t control them’. ‘I am suffering terribly’? It means: I am at the mercy of something bigger than me.

Brothers and sisters, I think one theme in today’s gospel is a set of reminders that it is the same with our relationship with God. We are not in control of our relationship with God, neither as disciples, nor as a community. Your first thought might be: Of course not! God is God and we are creatures, how could we ever think that we are control? And that’s right. But… deep down, and if we brutally honest with ourselves, it can feel different. Because we’re not really sure about God, because it’s all a mystery anyway, we can allow ourselves to think that maybe we can be in control.

Maybe, if I say my prayers, and say the right prayers, I can manipulate God, and get my way. Maybe, if I really plead with God, I can get my way. Maybe, if I sign up to twenty church committees, God will feel he owes me something, and I can get my way. I do hesitate to put it this way, as we do not like to think we think this way. Now, most of us, most of the time, do not think this way. But! But we know (don’t we?) that there’s the thinking at the front of our minds (the thinking we share with others), and there’s the thinking at the back of our minds (which we dare not share with others). Well, the Christian gospel is good news. And the good news is this: we are not in control of our relationship with God. This might be hard news, but it is good news.

That is surely one message we learn from today’s parables. Life with God is like working in a garden, or in a field. As any gardener, any farmer, will tell you, when you work with the natural world, you are not in control. You cannot stop the weeds from appearing. You cannot guarantee that the plants you want to grow will actually make it. You can plan, toil, assist, hope, nourish, and weed and weed and weed, and you can make a difference. Yes, you can most assuredly make a difference. But you are not in control. This is (I say it again) what life with God is like.

But I do think that’s only half of what we learn from today’s parables. What we also learn is this: and the kingdom of God is all about life! When we know we are not in control, we can feel small, frightened, endangered, meaningless even. But, when we know we are not in control of our lives with God, we do not have to feel any of that. Indeed, we must not feel any of that. Because life with God is all about life, liveliness and abundance. Jesus himself tells us this, repeatedly, in this morning’s short gospel. First of all he tells us the simplest story of the gardener or farmer. He (or she) plants, nourishes, and awaits the harvest. And it works. Because it’s about God, it is about life. Then he tells us it’s actually more than that. It’s actually like the mustard seed, the smallest seed which becomes this ridiculously large bush-tree-monster. Because it’s about life and abundance.

By the way, I say ‘large bush-tree-monster’ because some commentators do think Jesus is overdoing it here. Yes, the mustard bush is a large one, but not normally the ‘greatest of all shrubs [with] large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.’ In other words, here Jesus is telling a joke.

It is about life and abundance, and it was ever thus. The whole story of God’s choice of Israel is so that there is a people in the world, singled out to explore and enjoy the abundant life of God. That’s actually what ‘holiness’ in the Hebrew Bible means (but that’s another sermon). That’s clearly the message of Ezekiel this morning. Do take it home with you, and read it carefully and expectantly when you have time and leisure.

So, sisters and brothers, let me leave you (us) with this. We are not in control of our lives in the world. That can be painful. We are not in control of our lives with God. That can leave us bewildered at times. But it is also something to give thanks for, to rejoice in (if we can), because it is by our not being in control of our lives with God that life and abundance come to us. We can be that mustard seed. In fact, we can be as many mustard seeds as we want to be. Amen.