“The Things That Are God’s”

Matthew 22:15-22, I Thessalonians 1:1-10, Exodus 33:12-23

Stewardship Sunday

Exodus 33:12-23

¹² Moses said to the Lord , “See, you have said to me, ‘Bring up this people’; but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.’ ¹³ Now if I have found favor in your sight, show me your ways, so that I may know you and find favor in your sight. Consider too that this nation is your people.”

¹⁴ He said, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”

¹⁵ And Moses said to the Lord , “If your presence will not go, do not carry us up from here. ¹⁶ For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people, unless you go with us? In this way, we shall be distinct, I and your people, from every people on the face of the earth.”

¹⁷ The Lord said to Moses, “I will do the very thing that you have asked; for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.”

¹⁸ Moses said, “Show me your glory, I pray.”

¹⁹ And the Lord said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you the name, ‘The Lord ’; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. ²⁰ But,” he said, “you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live.”

²¹ And the Lord continued, “See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock; ²² 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; ²³ then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen.”

1 Thessalonians 1:1-10

Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy,

To the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ:

Grace to you and peace.

² We always give thanks to God for all of you and mention you in our prayers, constantly ³ remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. ⁴ For we know, brothers and sisters beloved by God, that he has chosen you, ⁵ because our message of the gospel came to you not in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction; just as you know what kind of persons we proved to be among you for your sake.

⁶ And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for in spite of persecution you received the word with joy inspired by the Holy Spirit, ⁷ so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia. ⁸ For the word of the Lord has sounded forth from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but in every place your faith in God has become known, so that we have no need to speak about it. ⁹ For the people of those regions report about us what kind of welcome we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God, ¹⁰ and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath that is coming.

Matthew 22:15-22

¹⁵ Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said. ¹⁶ So 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. ¹⁷ Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” ¹⁸ But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? ¹⁹ Show me the coin used for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius. ²⁰ Then he said to them, “Whose head is this, and whose title?” ²¹ 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.” ²² When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.

The Sermon

What of yours belongs to the Emperors and authorities of this world, and what of yours belongs to God?

If you had never been born, the universe would still be incomprehensibly vast, more inconceivably distant and physically empty than any human mind can comprehend. It would be, basically and to a great extent, the same universe.

Without you ever having emerged from the extremely unlikely circumstance of being birthed into infantile human life—if you had never had the chance to set foot on this soil, and breathe this planet’s air into your lungs, miraculously converting oxygen to carbon dioxide with every thoughtless breath—

the earth would still orbit the sun, would still spin on its axis, would still have an atmosphere that makes it uniquely suitable to the development of animal and vegetable life forms, would still have massive tectonic plates beneath its outer crust, moving slowly but inexorably into one another at rates too slow for any human being to sense, but whose results are so gigantic that every human life is affected.

This would be our sky, our world, our universe, whether or not God had chosen you to have been born, to be here now, to have the capacity to remember; to think and love and know; the capacity to dream and hope into the future.

God made a decision to cause you to exist, to give you life, to include you in this universe that was functioning just fine without you. For reasons known in the heart of the one who created it all, God wanted you to be part of it, and so called your soul into being.

How much of your life belongs to God? What part of it, what percentage, is God’s?

The Pharisees and the Herodians, two groups who were opposed to Jesus, went to him and said, “Tell us what you think: is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?”

Many of us are so sick and tired right now of ham-fisted zingers and gotcha questions substituting for responsible public and political discourse, we may be more attuned, at the moment, to the real intentions of Jesus’ opponents.

As Douglas Hare [no relation] says in his commentary on Matthew, “Their intention is to place Jesus on the horns of a dilemma. If he argues against paying the tax, they will be able to accuse him to Pilate of anti-Roman activity. On the other hand, if he supports the tax, he will be bound to lose some of his support in the general population, for whom the tribute was not only an economic burden but also a hated symbol of lost freedom.” [1]

I can imagine these questioners were just salivating at the possibility that they had found a way to back Jesus into a verbal corner that he couldn’t get out of without losing something, without giving up at least some of his message, that was so earth-shaking that they were starting to lose some of their places of privilege, as the people learned that God loves them all, regardless of who they are, or what their station in life is.

And now, they’re standing there with those smug, self-righteous smirks on their faces, and I can also imagine myself, not too far removed from the encounter, craning my neck to see and hear this conversation. Because if this guy is who he seems to be, that changes everything for me, too…and that’s kind of exciting, and kind of scary.

“Teacher, tell us what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?”

And Jesus said, “Why do you hypocrites put me to the test? Show me the coin used for the tax.” And they handed him a denarius. And he said, “Whose head is this, and whose title?”

A-ha! They had him now! They answered, “The emperor’s.”

And he said, “Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s—and give to God the things that belong to God.”

This is life. The total meaning of life isn’t about the coinage and the taxes and the emperor, he said. That’s little stuff, ultimately.

How much of your life belongs to God?

We who are disciples—followers of Christ—are charged with an acute awareness of who and what we are, and to some extent, why we are, but first and foremost, we know whose we are.

Being a disciple means you are intimately involved in the only important story in the universe.

You are on a first-name basis with the One who created all that is. God knows you. And beyond that, God has gone to enormous lengths on your behalf, and not as some unknown, distant relative, but as a parent who every second is watching over you, willing the best for you, thinking about you all the time.

The God who made every star, every galaxy, every grain of sand and every molecule of every leaf on every tree—that same God is intimately concerned with your well-being. God knows you, and to address the Creator God, you don’t have to try to communicate with some life form in the far reaches of outer space. You just talk, and God is right there next to you, listening.

Being a disciple relieves a lot of the burden of decision-making. Disciples have a clear sense of priority for a lot of things that people who aren’t disciples could toss back and forth forever.

A disciple doesn’t have to decide whether or not to treat someone fairly, or with forbearance, or with the respect that is due anyone who was made in God’s image.

When everybody else in the room is tossing around epithets against people, a disciple isn’t afraid of being accused of being “politically correct.” A disciple says, “Talk that way about my brother or sister, and you’re talking about me. And you know who else you’re talking about? I don’t think you want to be calling the Almighty Son of God the things I just heard you calling that man of a different race, that pregnant teenager, that person whose life and relationships you find abhorrent. And I don’t think you want to be treating anyone that way, because Jesus said, when you do it to the least of these, my brothers and sisters…”

A disciple is not afraid of the truth. You don’t have to decide whether to speak out against violence, injustice, hatred. You don’t have to decide whether to stand for what it true, and right, and good, and just, and beautiful. A disciple just does that. And if you’re even instructed to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, imagine how forgiving and welcoming your relationships with the people closest to you can be.

And to be a disciple is to be able to find a way to live with yourself—with all your failings, with all the idiosyncrasies that make you who you are; with all the temptations that only you know, and only you can overcome; with all your blessings, the gifts that only you really know how well or how poorly you have used them—or how often, or how rarely. A disciple knows that being accepted by God, for all these things, means we can accept ourselves.

That’s all review, by the way; it’s all been said before.

Her name was Wendy. She was a young teenager. She had been staying home from school, because, she said, she was sick; she didn’t feel good; she had a headache; she had a cold. It was different every day, but really, it was the same every day.

Wendy used to ride the school bus, but one day somebody made a comment about the clothes she was wearing. She didn’t wear very good clothes because she didn’t have very much money. And after one person said something about it, everybody said something about it, and it wasn’t in sympathy, but ridicule.

She didn’t tell her Mom about it because she knew instinctively that Mom was doing all she could, being a single mother in the only available job she was qualified to get, which took a lot of long hours, and didn’t bring in a whole lot of money, and Wendy was conscious that the days were turning her mother’s lovely, youthful features from the flush of springtime to the dry leaves of autumn.

Wendy wasn’t a great student but she wasn’t a bad student, but one day she decided she never wanted to go to school again, and for a few days, she got away with it, but her Mom was onto it, and she said to Wendy, “I know you’re not too sick to make it to school.”

And Wendy had tears in her eyes, and said, “Mom, when I’m waiting for that school bus to come, I just want to die.”

Wendy could use some new clothes, and somebody out there, if they knew about it, could get her some new clothes, but it’s not about the clothes.

Wendy needs to know that she has a place in this world too. She needs to know that God has said to her , “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”

And Wendy deserves a chance to say to God, just like Moses said to God: “If your presence will not go, do not carry us up from here.”

If you’re not going to be there with me, don’t send me out to wait for that bus. Don’t send me to school in these dirty, outdated rags. Don’t put me in this world to feel ugly and self-conscious and stupid and worthless and directionless if you’re not going to be there with me, if I can’t see you, standing there on the rock of ages, cleft for me.

Wendy needs to hear that God is saying to her, “You have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.”

Wendy needs to know the only important story in the universe, which only the church, for all its failings, can give her. And as long as there are Wendys out there who are dying those little deaths every day, this church and every church of Jesus Christ has its mission.

You are part of that mission. You are here for a reason, and so is Wendy.

When she does not come to church, we reach out and find her. When she does come to church, it has to be not only a place to learn about the story, but a place where she and all of us who are just like her become part of it.

The story is about a man named Jesus, who was God’s son, and who lived as one of us; who taught us how to be human, how to embrace life, demand life, fight for life, and share life, even as he moved toward the cross, upon which he, in his perfection, gave his life for our countless failures to live up to our own humanity.

It’s about a man who fed those who were hungry and looked after the poor, who saved the lives of the loved ones of people who in other circumstances would have had nothing to do with him.

It’s about a man who with every waking breath, and in everything he did, taught us that God is love and that God made the world and everything in it, including us, in love.

The church exists to teach that story and to live that story. That’s what we’re doing here. That’s why every time you turn around it seems like, you’re being invited to share—time, expertise, money, whatever you would like to contribute to help share and live that story.

You were called into being in this universe to be part of this story.

What part of your life belongs to God? How would you most like to show it?

“For we know, brothers and sisters beloved by God, that God has chosen you, because our message of the gospel came to you not in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction.

“And you became imitators of the Lord, for in spite of persecution you received the word with joy inspired by the Holy Spirit, so that you became an example to all the believers.”

Keith Grogg

Carolina Beach Presbyterian Church

Carolina Beach, NC

October 19, 2008

[1] Douglas R.A. Hare, Matthew. Louisville: John Knox,1993; p. 253.