Preached by the Reverend Canon Durrell Watkins at the Sunshine Cathedral on Sunday, October 15, 2006.
The grace of our Master Teacher — the love of God in the unity of Spirit — be with you all.
In you, God, we trust and thank you for giving us the opportunity to live in a country where we can worship freely. Where our religious traditions are protected by the separation of church and state.
Yet we do at times confuse the role of the state with that of the church. Lord have mercy.
When it comes to issues concerning justice and peace, we find it difficult to know the boundaries between church and state. Christ have mercy.
There are times when we let our political beliefs stand in the way of our religious beliefs. Lord have mercy.
God of all creation, help us to know and respect the difference between church and state. May we be respectful of all religious traditions and their right to worship freely in your name as we remember Jesus when he said, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.” Amen.
The Phoenix Affirmations: # 7
The Path of Jesus is found where Christ’s followers honor the role of the state in maintaining justice and peace, so far as human discernment and ability make possible. We affirm the separation of church and state, even as we endeavor to support the state in as far as Christian conscience allows.
Spiritual principle must intersect with the forces of the world, or we fail the challenges of history. The challenge is to create on Earth as it is in Heaven. If ideas remain in the womb of consciousness and are never given birth in the world, then we’re pregnant too long.
13The Pharisees got together with Herod’s followers. Then they sent some people to trick Jesus into saying something wrong. 14They went to him and said, “Teacher, we know that you are honest. You treat everyone with the same respect, no matter who they are. And you teach the truth about what God wants people to do. Tell us, should we pay taxes to the Emperor or not?”
15Jesus knew what they were up to, and he said, “Why are you trying to test me? Show me a coin!”
16They brought him a silver coin, and he asked, “Whose picture and name are on it?”
“The Emperor’s,” they answered.
17Then Jesus told them, “Give the Emperor what belongs to the Emperor and give God what belongs to God.” They were amazed at Jesus.
Poor old Uncle Warren. That’s what we called him, anyway. I don’t think he was anyone’s uncle, really, but in the rural south, you make stuff like that up. So, Uncle Warren was our neighbor and friend, and apparently, our chosen uncle.
Uncle Warren was not known for his decorum. If something popped into his head, he’d say it. In St. Edward’s parish we were accustomed to boring but mercifully short homilies. 7, 8 minutes, 10 at the longest. One year we got a new priest who didn’t know our church’s history of the short homily, and he took the liberty of going on a bit. Probably no more that 12 or 15 minutes, but to us it seemed quite long at the time. So at around the 11 minute mark, Uncle Warren grabbed his stomach and just bellowed out loud, over the preacher’s droning voice, “Lord, I wish I had a tater.” Had nothing to do with the sermon or the theme of the day, but it must have accomplished something because the next week we were back to boring but mercifully short homilies.
Now Uncle Warren went to church every Sunday. Wore overalls and a straw hat. Every Sunday. Overalls — pressed, clean — and a straw hat. That was what my grandmother would call his “Sunday go to meeting” attire.
One day, Uncle Warren arrived to mass without his straw hat. He thought he had lost it, but he had a plan. There were other people who wore straw hats and would leave them in the narthex before worship. He thought he would just swipe one and hopefully get away with it and if he was caught, just say he picked up the wrong one by accident. However, serendipitously, the lesson that day from the Hebrew bible was the Decalogue, the 10 commandments, and the homily focused on those same commandments. After mass, Uncle Warren went to Father Anthony and said, “Father, you saved me today. I misplaced my hat and I came to church planning to steal a somebody else’s but because of your homily I didn’t.” Father Anthony said, “After hearing the commandment, thou shalt not steal, you just couldn’t do it.” And Uncle Warren said, “No, after hearing the commandment, thou shalt not covet your neighbor’s wife, I remembered were I left my hat.”
The point of all that is that Fr. Anthony learned to preach short homilies and Uncle Warren learned something from Fr. Anthony…well, sort of. We come to church for many reasons, and one of those reasons is to learn. We learn about ourselves. We learn about our potential. We learn about our mission as Christians in the world. We learn about our traditions, our history, our sacred stories. We learn that we are powerful and that we have a responsibility to use our power for the good of our world. In the gospel reading this morning, we witness a learning opportunity. And what can be learned from that story can then be applied to our lives and for the good of our world.
In the gospel reading today, we heard that some religious people (Pharisees) and some political people (Herodians) work together to accomplish a rather nefarious end. Religion and government are conspiring against Jesus in the passage. Now, to be fair, I don’t know if the Pharisees are the bad guys we have been led to believe over the course of our religious instruction. Mark’s gospel is written about the same time the Temple in Jerusalem is destroyed. Most of the sects of Judaism at the time were tied to the Temple . The two strongest Jewish sects that did not depend on the Temple were the Pharisees and the movement called The Way, later to evolve into what we now call Christianity. So, after there is no Temple , the Pharisees and The Way are both poised to become the dominant strain of Judaism…because they are already meeting in synagogues and associations and house gatherings, relying more on the written word and daily living than on Temple sacrifices and ritual. Both the Pharisees and the Way believe in the resurrection of the dead, in angels, and so on. They are very similar in many ways and are fighting for dominance in a post-Temple Jewish world. This is why I believe they clash so often in our stories and why our ancestors have so little to say about them that is very encouraging. Still, when we hear the stories about the conflicts between the Jesus movement and the Pharisees, it is important to remember that these are two Jewish groups who have a lot in common and this is why they collide so furiously. You are always more likely to have a spirited debate with your first cousin or your sister-in-law than you are with a stranger on the subway. It’s the people with whom we share a history that get under our skins. I’m sure Muslims and Hindus and even Atheists can be sexist and racist and homophobic…but its when Christians show these unseemly traits that we become so upset, right? Because we are Christians, too. The biggest fights are always within the family.
So, we find the Pharisees and the Herodians plotting against Jesus. And Mark tells us that they are being hypocritical. How so? Well, Jesus exposes their hypocrisy right away. He says, “Show me a coin.” Now, in Luke’s version of this story, all of this is happening at the Temple . When Jesus is alive, there is a temple. When the gospels are being written, there is not. So, we see post-Temple feelings being read back into Temple history. The Jesus Movement of the last 3rd of the 1st century who are in conflict with the Pharisaical movement of the same time are reading their conflict back in time to when Jesus and the Temple were both around. And remembering this conflict back to the time and even place of the Temple casts the Pharisees, the opposing group, in a very bad light.
If this is happening at the Temple , then guess what. There can be No Graven Images in the Temple . It would have been scandalous to bring an image of Caesar, who was considered in Roman paganism to be divine, into the Temple of Yahweh . No other gods and no images of gods before the Judaic god. That’s the rule, right? So how is it that these religious people happen to have on them a coin with Caesar’s mug on it? This argument is over the minute they pull out the coin. But they don’t get it. We sophisticated hearers of the story do, though. And we gasp in horror as the coin is produced.
The question is asked, in the story, should we pay taxes or not? Jesus, a bit of a sage or wisdom teacher in the Christology of some, has an answer. He knows if you don’t pay your taxes, you’ll get in trouble. He also knows that if he says in front of the more legalistic of his religious contemporaries that you should legitimate this deified emperor by willingly complying with his laws, that could be construed as being disloyal to the monotheism of his faith. And Jesus just doesn’t fall into that false dichotomy. He shows their hypocrisy by showing they have already brought Roman coins into the Temple , so why would they have problem using that same Roman money to pay their taxes? And, he says, you can honor your God and be a good member of a secular society all at the same time. Give God what God wants — time, talent, and treasure and the effort it takes to treat one another fairly. And give the government what it wants, our participation and our compliance with laws that don’t violate human dignity or conscience. And that’s that.
Jesus is saying just what the 7th Phoenix Affirmation is saying today. We affirm the separation of church and state, even as we endeavor to support the state in as far as Christian conscience allows.
Our government is ours. We need to participate in it with our voice and our vote and our taxes. And, when it violates human rights, when it attempts to limit civil liberties, when it launches unjust wars, when it allows the demonization of same-gender loving people or when it conspires with religious extremists to maintain power, we should protest. We should support our government as it promotes liberty and justice for all. And we should challenge the state, and religion for that matter, if they ever try to deny liberty or justice to any. We affirm the separation of church and state, even as we endeavor to support the state in as far as Christian conscience allows. Or, put more simply in the words of Jesus, Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s. Amen.
I support justice.
I support peace.
I support hope.
I support healing.
I support goodwill.
And I welcome these blessings in my life.
Thank you, God. Amen.
