The Currency of Grace (Sermon)

"The Currency of Grace"

Matthew 22:15-22

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

10/18/20

 

¹⁵Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said.¹⁶So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality. ¹⁷Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?”

¹⁸But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? ¹⁹Show me the coin used for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius.

²⁰Then he said to them, “Whose head is this, and whose title?”

²¹They 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.”

²²When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.  (NRSV)

 

         The Pharisees have set a trap for Jesus, and they send underlings to do their dirty work. Maybe they think that Jesus is more likely to fall into the trap that way. Maybe he’ll wag his tongue a little more loosely with servants than he would with the guys wearing long robes decorated with tassels and fringes. So, the hapless minions approach Jesus and ask, Should we, the people of Israel, the chosen ones of God, who is King of the Universe, pay taxes to Caesar?

Dealing with messengers rather than the senders of the message, Jesus turns the encounter into a teachable moment. Speaking sharply yet with love for God and neighbor—even these neighbors—he makes a subtle but crucial distinction between those things which claim to bind us by worldly obligation and those things to which we bind ourselves in gratitude and love.

You frauds, says Jesus, show me a coin that Rome will accept as tax payment.They bring him a denarius, and Jesus says, “Whose head is this, and whose title?” The answer to both questions is the same: Caesar’s.

When citizens of Rome see the face and utter the name of Caesar, they know that they’re expected to regard the emperor as a god. Even the Jewish people are obliged to speak the name of Caesar with the kind of reverence reserved for the name so holy and unique in the universe that to speak it is to diminish it. Thus, did God’s people speak around Yahweh’s name, saying things like Jehovah, Adonai, or simply the LORD.

I imagine Jesus holding up that tiny coin and twisting it so that it catches and reflects the light of the sun. Then he says, in effect, Sure. Give this thing to Caesar. It’s his, and it has a lot in common with his deity. It’s nothing but an idol—a thin piece of metal, in and of itself devoid of value, and a source of more problems than solutions because to want and to own such things inevitably makes people treat each other like objects, like adversaries to overcome rather than neighbors to love.

With that, Jesus clears himself. If he yields to Caesar’s tax laws, he can’t be arrested for treason. Then, raising the stakes, Jesus says, Give Caesar his due, and “give…to God the things that are God’s.”

All those empty praises the messengers heaped on Jesus bear witness to reality. Jesus is truly sincere, truthful, and unmoved by flattery because he doesn’t get his worth from human affirmation or from some other outside source—like money. Money has value only when it’s backed up by something external to itself like gold, silver, or a nation’s economy. Jesus, and all who trust and follow him, know that human worth comes from the indwelling of God’s eternal presence. The image of God shines through them, through you and me, as a light from within. By grace alone, the beauty, creativity, and holiness of God are inherent in all that God has made. And because these gifts both permeate and transcend the whole Creation, we are free to value the earth and all that lives in it as sacred and ablaze with the presence of the Creator.

Whether they agree with Jesus or not, the messengers know that Jesus has spoken the truth. So, they leave him alone.

Caesar does have the political power to make taxation a matter of legal obligation. He can enforce that law with punishment for those who forget to pay or who try to evade the law. However, he has the authority to do so only as long as the coins with his name and face engraved upon them have value within and beyond the empire. Jesus juxtaposes that obligatory relationship with an alternative. Reaching into the realm of gift, gratitude, and response, Jesus’ authority challenges us to trade in the currency of God’s eternal grace. In the economy of Jesus, we exchange the God-faced coins of faith, hope, and love rather than the legal tender of selfishness and greed.

 The Stewardship and Finance Ministry Team has been working to change the way we manage congregational investments. Last Monday the ministry team met with the second of two representatives whom the committee is interviewing as prospective financial advisors. This particular person asked an extremely important question. He asked what kind of ministry goals we have in mind for our investments. I’m embarrassed to say that we had no good answer for that question, and much of that is on me. If a church’s leadership has no clear plan for the financial resources that people have given so freely and generously, then we’re just hoarding them. And to justify that, we call it a “safety net.”

When our Sunday school class worked with this passage last week, someone asked another good question: How big does a congregation’s safety net have to be before it becomes a buried talent? That person was referring to the parable of the talents recorded in Matthew 25 and Luke 19. In that parable, one servant buries his talent rather than using it for some purpose that furthers the interests of the man who entrusted his wealth to servants while he goes on a journey.

As a church, the obligation of taxation doesn’t apply to our income. However, if all we do with our investments is accumulate them—by taking advantage of laws that allow us not “to give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s”—then are we really giving to God “the things that are God’s”? In the coming months, discerning how to unearth and offer our talents will become a principal focus for the session.

The struggles of a community almost always mirror the struggles of the individuals within it, especially those in leadership. And we’re a congregation of primarily retired persons, people who were raised in a very different era and culture than we live in now, people who live on investments, and who recognize that their time is dwindling. And while investments are important, the God-created resource of time holds indescribable value because it is, for everyone, a gift that is both non-renewable and non-transferable.

Giving to God that which is God’s is about living gratefully, joyfully, and generously in the moment but with an eye always trained toward the future on behalf of generations yet to come. Because the present moment is saturated with the fearful and insatiable appetites of all manner of Caesars, it swarms with overwhelming human need, need created by relentless injustice and profound grief. When we as individuals and as a Christian community face that omnipresent need, our charge is to see Jesus’ own need—Jesus own face—manifested in the needs and the faces of “the least of these.” Responding to that need through loving word and servant-hearted deed is giving “to God the things that are God’s.” And while we do give from storehouses of dwindling time, unique talents and interests, and limited financial resources, God receives these God-given gifts, blesses them, and transforms our collective, mustard-seed offerings into a great hedgerow of abundance.

Three weeks from today we will consecrate the pledges we make to God through this congregation. As we think about what we will give—without obligation or entrapment—may each of us remember two things:

First, what we give and what we keep is God’s already.

And second, as followers of Jesus, we are dealing in the currency of grace, which, through the power of Resurrection, is non-taxable because it is inexhaustibly transferable and eternally renewable.

A Common Purpose (Sermon)

"A Common Purpose"

1 Corinthians 3:1-9

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

10/11/20

 

And so, brothers and sisters, I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but rather as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. ²I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food. Even now you are still not ready, ³for you are still of the flesh. For as long as there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving according to human inclinations? ⁴For when one says, “I belong to Paul,” and another, “I belong to Apollos,” are you not merely human?

⁵What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you came to believe, as the Lord assigned to each. ⁶I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. ⁷So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. ⁸The one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose, and each will receive wages according to the labor of each. ⁹For we are God’s servants, working together; you are God’s field, God’s building. (NRSV)

 

      So, for some reason!^*, I’ve had babies on my mind. Because of that, I feel some cognitive dissonance when Paul uses “infants” as an image of derision. Still, I have to understand his deep frustration with the Corinthians who are caught up in a cycle of petty “jealousy and quarreling.”

After planting a church, you see, Paul turns much of a new congregation’s nurture over to someone else while he moves on. During a visit to Ephesus, Apollos, an Alexandrian Jew whom Luke describes as a teacher of great eloquence, keen understanding of scripture, and “burning enthusiasm” had learned about Jesus through Priscilla and Aquilla. (Acts 18:24-28) Paul entrusts this gifted new disciple with leadership of the Corinthian church. And now, divided loyalties are causing a rift in the congregation. Some have so closely identified with Paul and others with Apollos that they no longer identify with God who had created all of them, and whom Jesus had revealed in a unique wholeness.

Calling the Corinthians to the carpet for their childishness, Paul says, You all still need to be nursed and bottle fed. You’re not ready for real food. You’re not ready for a meal you have to chew on carefully, savor gratefully, and share intentionally. You just want your bellies tighter than a tick on a bloodhound!

The Corinthian Christians’ hunger is a desire for power. One side thinks Paul offers the best chance to gain and hold authority, while the other side puts all its eggs in Apollos’ basket. Maybe one reason Paul is so frustrated is that he knows how that will play out. He knows that when the winds of change blow, human loyalties tend to shift, because people motivated by greed and fear will go wherever they think the milk will flow the easiest, and where they will get the most for themselves.

Playing authority figures against each other is a ploy as old as humankind itself. So, when Dad says No, the child pouts and walks away. Then he puts on a smile and says, Mom? Dad said I should ask you if we could get a puppy.

While that’s nothing more than childish manipulation, it’s also calculated espionage! Ben and Mercedes have done a good bit of rafting through the technical waters of the Nolichucky Gorge. Maybe some of the lessons they learned there will equip them for navigating the even trickier waters of Porter’s wily charms as he grows and encounters personal desires that pit his will against that of his parents. And there’s the rub: Their will. A shared will. Paul calls it the “common purpose.”

As Porter’s parents plant the field and water the crops of their offspring, they, like all parents, will need to find ways to commit themselves—lovingly, firmly, and, when necessary, sacrificially—to the “common purpose” of their son’s well-being. In parenting that may be a set of things more than any single thing. For Paul, however, when he writes to the Corinthians, he refers to a very specific common purpose: Faithfulness to “God who gives the growth.” Faithfulness is the purpose of the new faith community.

         Matthew’s gospel is known for drawing parallels between Jesus and Moses. It seems to me, though, that Paul has more in common with Moses than Jesus does. Paul is trying to help establish the new community, and he doesn’t have four gospels to study and to teach. He doesn’t have a narrative record of all that the first apostles said, did, and experienced. He doesn’t have an anthology of pastoral letters that have been accepted as inspired and authoritative, letters reflecting theologically on the life and ministry of Jesus, letters written to guide intentional communities based on faithfulness to God by following Jesus.

What Paul does have is an oral tradition. He has random and subjectively-remembered stories recalling Jesus’ remarkable presence. Paul also has his own transformative experience, including a kind of burning-bush encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus. He has the memory of receiving care he didn’t deserve from a stranger named Ananias. Paul’s whole journey from sight-to-blindness-to-new vision has filled him with the conviction that Jesus is alive and present through the power of the Holy Spirit. Those experiences have kindled in Paul a new passion; he wants to live in faithfulness to God by helping to create a new, Christ-centered community, and to help lead that community into its own identity and place in the world. And it’s just inevitable that such a job will often feel like raising fussy, greedy children.

I think Moses could easily relate to Paul’s frustrations of trying to lead people in faithfulness to God while the people’s appetite for comfort and control sends them chasing after whatever seems to offer the best deal and the easiest meal. When a “common purpose” is reduced to everyone seeking their own best interests, “jealousy and quarreling” are only the beginning. Bitterness and chaos will soon follow because the people will be driven by an economics of scarcity rather than faith in God’s abundance. There will also be entire groups who will not simply be left behind in the pursuit of self-interest; they will be forbidden to seek their own well-being. Think of serfs in medieval Europe, African slaves in America’s antebellum south, and women around the world and throughout history.

Faithful commitment to a “common purpose” is always complicated. A common purpose requires the whole community to focus itself on a particular goal, both in the moment and for the future. That purpose also requires that each individual in the community claim and develop his or her or their own particular gifts. It requires that they be given room to process their own journeys of discovery, joy, and pain, and then to offer their unique perspectives to help broaden the community’s identity and deepen its mission. That’s why Paul will, more than once, compare the church to a body with many parts, all of which are integral to the common purpose of faithfulness to God through love of neighbor and earth.

         The common purpose to which Paul refers challenges us to celebrate both individuality and community. And there will always be tension between those two. The trick is to avoid entering that tension as competitors looking to defeat opponents, or selfish children looking to play a zero-sum game. One sign of authentic maturity is the ability, indeed the commitment, to understand tension as integral to any creative process. Tension is a central element of the Christian life, says Richard Rohr who defines “hope…[as] an ability to hold creative tensions.”¹

         So, to live the Christian hope means learning to trust that all our human efforts, as vitally important as they are, are simply acts of planting, watering, and nurturing. “God [gives] the growth,” says Paul. Growth, life, existence itself, these are mysteries God does. And as people of faith, we celebrate them, call attention to them, wonder at them, give thanks for them, and steward them. In things like music, poetry, medicine, engineering, and parenting, we even participate in them as co-creators through Christ; but we are not God. We witness to God and serve God when we speak and act gratefully, lovingly, humbly, and with a commitment toward justice and wholeness for all people and for this one and only one planet on which we all depend.

Indeed, we are merely the field. God is the infinite array of purposeful relationships and mysteries within the earth that make the field fertile.

May your life be as rich as a God-cultivated field. And may your most precious gift to the Creation be your love for the Creator.

 

^*Very early the morning of this sermon, October 11, 2020, my wife and I became grandparents for the first time.

¹Richard Rohr, The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See. The Crossroad Publishing Company, New York. 2011. P. 158. The complete paragraph is worth quoting: “In short, good leaders must have a certain capacity for non-polarity thinking and full-access knowing (prayer), a tolerance for ambiguity (faith), an ability to hold creative tensions (hope), and an ability to care (love) beyond their own personal advantage.”