Exodus 13:12-23; Matthew 22:15-22

[Jesus said], “Show me the coin used for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius. Then he said to them, “Whose head is this, and whose title?” They answered, “The emperor’s.” Then he said to them, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

These words have been causing Christians problems pretty much ever since Jesus uttered them. What exactly does belong to the emperor? What exactly does belong to God? And what if the emperor claims something that really belongs to God? It wasn’t long before Christians decided that the emperor did not in fact have the right to be worshipped as a god. And a lot of them suffered mightily for refusing to accede to something that the emperor thought belonged to him. And ever since, preachers and theologians and plain church folk have been debating about where to draw the line. What are we going to do with this? 

The first thing I want to do is point out what you probably picked up anyway. Jesus is making a joke and pinning his interrogators down in a very deft way. Who were these people who were questioning him? Pharisees, who were widely regarded as the most influential authorities on maters of religion, and Herodians, who were supporters of the Jewish royal family. So you have the influential people of both church and state ganging up on Jesus. And they figure they have the perfect question for getting him into trouble. If he says “Pay the emperor’s tax,” he’ll anger all the radicals in the audience. If he says, “No, don’t pay it,” he’ll have the Roman governor on his back pronto.

Jesus asks to see a denarius—no doubt with a wide-eyed look of innocence on his face, as if he’d never seen one before. Then he says, “Well, it’s got somebody’s picture and name on it, doesn’t it? You’d better give it back.” That kind of sounds like an endorsement for paying the tax. But then Jesus opens a whole new dimension to the question when he adds “And give God the things that are God’s.”

And it’s really hard, isn’t it, to sort out where to draw the line? The emperor wants us to pay taxes to support the military. God wants us not to kill. The emperor wants us to embellish his palaces. God wants us to take care of the poor and needy. The emperor wants us to be his partisans. God wants us to love one another–oh, and our neighbors—oh, and even our enemies. But, if it comes right down to it, is there anything in this world that doesn’t belong to God? The earliest Christians refused to burn incense to the emperor. But they prayed for him anyway. Things do get really tangled up here.

And it’s not just that you can’t really make clear lists of what belongs to God and what not or clear rules for telling the difference and making sure that everybody’s doing what’s right. And if others don’t agree with me about the rules, well, they still need to follow them, which is why I need to acquire some political power, which is why I may just be willing to play the emperor’s games. Oops! Why does Jesus make these quizzical statements? They leave us hanging out there in uncertainty so often. 

It’s at this point, that our story today about Moses becomes instructive because it reminds us that it’s not just what belongs to God that’s difficult to get a grip on; it’s God’s own self. Moses so much wanted a bit certainty in his chaotic life. He appealed to God for reassurance that the people of Israel would make it to the Promised Land. He’d been worried about this all through the Exodus: How could he possibly know it would work? (Not that I blame him for his anxiety!) He was looking for assurance from the start, even at the Burning Bush: 

“Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” [he asked]. [God] said, “I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain.” (Ex. 3:11-12)

Not very reassuring, is it? After he’s done the job, then he’ll get the sign.

Of course, Moses’ problem is one we all share. We all learn, sooner of later in life, that there are no guarantees. Our faith, whether it’s in God or the market or Marxism or the weather or Hollywood or ourselves or whatever sort of faith one can have, is never a guarantee. Our faith in God can be a source of strength and insight and direction and hope. But there is no specified quid pro quo—at least not in advance! As Soren Kierkegaard said, all faith starts with a leap into the unknown, however carefully we may disguise it with some array of factoids. Moses had a good piece of evidence in front of him—the bush that was burning, yet not consumed. But was that enough for him to take up this task of leading Israel out of Egypt with confidence? Well, he did it, but he was never completely certain.

And, in today’s reading, he’s looking for another whole level of certainty. He actually wants to know God face to face: “Show me your glory, I pray.” But God answers:

“I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you the name, ‘The Lord’ . . . but you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live. . . . See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock; and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen.”

It’s a stunning passage—stunning because it’s a point at which the deepest spiritual desire touches the mortal limits of human existence, stunning because the immense power of God is arrayed before us, stunning because God actually decides to agree to Moses’ dangerous request, albeit in the one way that won’t kill Moses. 

There’s a parallel between Moses’ request for certainty and his request actually to see God’s glory. The parallel is that God fills both requests, but only, as it were, after the fact. Moses will get his sign for the Exodus only after it’s happened, when Israel has crossed the Red Sea and journeyed into the desert of Sinai. Moses can witness the glory of God, but only after its greatest refulgence has passed. He’s still stuck with faith and all its uncertainties.

And this is indeed the way God works with us, too. God does not overwhelm us with signs at the expense of our own freedom. God does not grant us the face to face knowledge of God that would be so far beyond us that it could only lead to despair. We find God’s revelations so often in the aftermath. We see the rays of God’s glory only as it passes by. In a time of anxiety like the present—anxiety over health, over livelihood, over the state of our nation—this may be a very important thing for us to hear. God doesn’t rescue Israel solo; God does it only with Moses’ voluntary participation. God doesn’t reveal more of God’s presence than a person can stand, but allows us to glimpse God’s footprints around us, God’s fingerprints on the work as God moves onward, God’s back.

We are not the first Christians to find ourselves in troubled times like ours. Indeed, many have suffered worse than we. It was out of the horrors of the Black Death that the Lady Julian of Norwich had revealed to her those famous and astonishing words: All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well. Yes, even if it takes some years in the wilderness first.

Still, couldn’t Jesus at least have given us some idea of how we could recognize what belongs to God? Well, he wasn’t prone to offering definitions. He tended to teach more by indirection, by parables, by puzzles. He wanted to provoke us into a change of mind, surprise us with a new vision of the world. But one of his key themes in Matthew’s Gospel is love—love for God and for our neighbor. He draws his words from the scriptures of Israel and declares that they’re the heart of everything. He even takes it a step further and tells us to love our enemies (5:43-44). Everything that God loves belongs to God. Everyone that God loves belongs to God. We render to God what belongs to God by loving the people God loves, however unlovable some of them may seem to us.

Not an easy task! But it’s why the early Christians kept on praying for the emperor, even when the emperor was intent on killing them. They were somehow seeing their ruler through the eyes of God’s love, God’s desire to seek and save the lost sheep.

But maybe you’d like something more direct, something that sounds more propositional. Well, there’s a passage from 1 John that helps me understand it: “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” (4:16b) God is love. And everything God made was made for love’s sake. We humans have a seemingly unique capacity to rush off in other directions, to make other things the measure of our existence—things like certainty, glory, wealth, self-aggrandizement, power over others, emperor’s business. But the only true way to know what belongs to God is to look at the world around us with the eyes of God’s love. 

For the ordinary purposes of life, we do owe some things to the emperor. We pay our taxes even if we feel they’re not always well spent, even if we recognize that Nero has gone from being a bit dotty to out and out crazy. But the love we owe to God—and to the world around us and to one another and to our neighbors and even to our enemies—this love takes precedence over everything else. And as we practice it in our troubling times, we, like Moses may grow in courage and understanding and the ability to trace God’s presence among us—and in so doing we will be fulfilling the commandment: Give to God what belongs to God.”

Preached at Good Shepherd Episcopal Church, Berkeley, California

10/18/2020