A Christian in the Voting Booth, Part 2: God and the Government

 

Service of Worship

Eastern Parkway United Methodist Church

October 18, 2020

Rev. Natalie Bowerman, Pastor

 

Let us pray:

 

Loving God, I ask you to guide me during this important election season:

Help me to understand the Gospels, in which Jesus Christ reveals his path of love, mercy and compassion, especially toward those who are poor, sick or struggling in any way.
Instruct me on what the church teaches on the important issues of our day: abortion, racism, migration, war and peace, health care, the death penalty, economic justice, care for the environment and on all those questions that I must ponder with your help.
Enable me to form my conscience so that I may vote wisely.

Loving God, I ask you to help me to live peacefully with others:

Allow me to be open to the opinions of others with whom I disagree.
Fill me with a spirit of charity toward those who may oppose me.
Give me patience in times of struggle.

Loving God, I ask you to help me stand with those who are marginalized or persecuted:

Increase my courage so that I can stand up in times of danger.
Create in me a new heart that I might be brave in times of turmoil.
Make me someone who is ready to care for, advocate for and suffer with those on the margins.

Loving God, I ask you to aid our civic leaders:

Grant them good health and a spirit of wisdom.
Open to them paths of reconciliation.
Teach them your ways of love, mercy and compassion.

Loving God, I ask you to bless our nation:

Crown it with your compassion.
Support it with your care.
And nurture it with your love.

Amen.

 

Matthew 22: 15-22 (NIV)

 

Then the Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap him in his words. They sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians. “Teacher,” they said, “we know that you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You aren’t swayed by others, because you pay no attention to who they are. Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not?” But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, “You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me? Show me the coin used for paying the tax.” They brought him a denarius, and he asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?” “Caesar’s,” they replied. Then he said to them, “So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” When they heard this, they were amazed. So they left him and went away. 

 

A Message

 

A Christian in the Voting Booth, Part 2: God and the Government

 

Only a few weeks left until Election Day, friends. And it’s a very controversial season. We can’t avoid the constant strain on our heads and hearts while we navigate such a contentious time in our country, it’s everywhere. If you’ve turned on a TV recently, if you’ve used the internet at all, if you’ve gone anywhere near a newspaper, or heck, if you’ve walked up or down your own street, you’re getting bombarded with political advertisements that demand you pick a side. To that end, I noticed something really interesting a few days ago when I was out driving in Clifton Park. On a busy street of signs that said TRUMP! BIDEN! TRUMP! BIDEN! I found one that said JESUS CHRIST FOR LORD AND PERSONAL SAVIOR 2020. That really caught my attention so I did some research and discovered that our nondenominational evangelical friends at the Arise Church in Clifton Park bought a bunch of those and put them up around the neighborhood. I’m guessing they had 2 goals: bring the name of Jesus out into the world and invite people to join them at church. It was incredibly clever. I did some internet research and discovered that Arise didn’t make up these signs all by themselves, there’s companies that mass produce them and then just change the year to fit this election season. You can buy one on Amazon, and Prime shipping will get it to you in 2 days, so I could stick one on the front lawn of the parsonage if I wanted to. It opens up an interesting thought—when you invite Jesus into your heart and your life, does that feel to you similar to hitching your wagon to a political party in this election season?

 

Either way, what we see here isn’t a new phenomenon. People have always wanted to see Jesus as a political figure, as a guy who would take aggressive stances on controversial issues in such a time as this one. This phenomenon goes back to Jesus’ lifetime. We see the people around Jesus challenge him to politicize himself in this morning’s Gospel message from Matthew, especially where it concerns Palestine’s complicated, painful relationship with Rome, the oppressive foreign power who ruled them from far away. Rome’s occupation was particularly damaging to Palestine’s most vulnerable residents: the widows, the orphans, the poor, the sick, and the disabled. The people Jesus loved and defended the most.

 

In this morning's Gospel reading, we see the Pharisees taking yet another crack at Jesus, and we also see them finding an unlikely and somewhat bizarre ally: the Herodians. The Herodians, as you might guess from the name, were the party of people who supported the foreign occupation of Palestine by Rome, under the reign of King Herod. The Pharisees, on the other hand, as devout Jews, were very concerned with abiding by the letter of God's Law, and fiercely resented King Herod and wanted the Roman officials out of Palestine. So why on earth are the Pharisees hanging out with the Herodians this morning? It would be like Tucker Carlson and Stephen Colbert getting together for brunch.

 

Well, the reason why we see the Pharisees and the Herodians together this morning is because they're under the influence of the old proverb, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. They have only one thing in common: they can't stand Jesus. So they've figured out that if they teamed up and picked the right trick question to stump him with, they could bring him down.

 

And they had no trouble at all picking the right question, the one question that would get to the very core of the differences between the Pharisees and the Herodians: Should the Palestinians pay their census tax to Rome? The Herodians believed the Palestinians absolutely owed this money to Rome, in exchange for some of the kickbacks that a small but powerful contingent of people enjoyed as a result of belonging to the strongest empire in the world. The Pharisees strongly resented paying the tax. Jesus couldn't possibly agree with both sides on this one, and if he even tried to answer this question surely he would make some people very angry.

 

Why was this tax such a big deal? Well, because the Pharisees didn't just resent the annual census tax of one denarius per person just because that was a lot of money for a community struggling greatly with poverty. It was, but there's more to it than that.

 

The denarius was a silver coin with a graven image of the Roman emperor on it. The writing on one side declared the divinity of the emperor, and the writing on the other side proclaimed the emperor as the High Priest of the empire. Paying your census tax made you use this coin. Paying your census tax made you use a coin that declared that the emperor of Rome was not only a god, but your God. The Romans occupying Palestine were forcing the Jews who lived there to blaspheme every time they paid their taxes. Rome's oppressive rule over Palestine was making the Palestinians betray not only their own human dignity, but also their God.

 

So who's side is Jesus going to take? Is he going to side with the Herodians, say that the Palestinians should pay their census tax, and incite the rage of all of his followers, who desperately wanted to see Jesus defy Rome? Or, was he going to publicly declare his disobedience to Rome by telling everyone not to pay their taxes, and likely be arrested and executed? The Pharisees and Herodians could only see just those two ways of answering this question. Jesus had to pick one side or the other, and either way he went, he was gonna die today.

 

But Jesus was not naive enough to fall for this trick. He knew he had adversaries, he knew people were out to trap him, and he lived on the lookout for those people. So he could smell a trick question coming from a mile away in this morning's story, especially after he heard the Pharisees and Herodians try to lull him into a false sense of security by buttering him up. Teacher, we know that you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. Yeah, okay. Jesus heard that and thought, Oh boy, here we go.

 

Unintimidated, Jesus calls these people on what they're trying to do to him, and he's especially hard on the Pharisees. He asks a Pharisee to show him this coin, a denarius, that the Palestinians use to pay the tax. Whose picture and inscription is that? he asks. When the Pharisee answers that that's the emperor's picture on that coin, he also knows that Jesus has just pointed out his hypocrisy. The Pharisees are the ones walking around buying things with these blasphemous coins. If the denarius offends them so much, they may as well pay the tax so they can get rid of them.

 

Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's.

 

But, lest the Herodians smugly walk away thinking that Jesus agrees with them, or, much worse, that Jesus sides with Rome and doesn't have compassion for his friends and neighbors who are suffering under Rome's tyranny, Jesus adds,

 

And render unto God what is God's.

 

Doesn't everything belong to God?

 

Jesus doesn't take a side on this controversial issue, to the disappointment and amazement of the Pharisees and the Herodians. And it probably cost him his life--a few chapters later, when Pontius Pilate offers to release Jesus instead of crucifying him, the people insist on executing Jesus and freeing Barabas, who was arrested for rebelling against Rome.

 

Jesus doesn't take a clear side here, not even to save his life. But instead he leaves an interesting example for us. Because so often, living as a person of faith, we get presented with tough moral and ethical questions that pull us in multiple different directions, and show us that the expectations of our faith don’t always line up with the expectations of American society. And that list of tricky questions gets longer every year, but here’s just a few.

 

Should our tax money go toward providing food, shelter, and healthcare for people who can't afford them? Should we support SNAP, universal healthcare, and public housing? Should kids have a time of prayer in their public schools? Should public, secular meetings be opened in prayer? Should the Ten Commandments be posted in schools and court rooms? Should undocumented immigrants be granted amnesty? Should our country go out of its way to welcome the stranger, especially when they face oppression and persecution in their homeland? Should same sex couples have the right to get married? Should they get married in our churches? Should they have the right to adopt children? Should a pregnant person have the right to decide whether to carry their pregnancy to term or terminate it? Should life legally begin at conception or at birth? Should churches pay taxes?

 

You might feel very strongly about the answers to those questions. Or, you might feel like some of those questions have no clear, good answer. You might be hoping that I'm going to answer some of those questions, but I’m choosing not to in this sermon. Trust me, I have very strong thoughts. Most of all you might turn to your faith, to Jesus, to tackle these questions. In fact, when some of these issues come up, you might be sure that Jesus would align with one clear side.

 

I assure you, he has strong beliefs, too. At the end of the day, living in a society with its own secular government means that the law of the land may have little to do with our faith beliefs, and may even contradict scripture. When we find a way to make it work, we render unto Caesar. But when we pray for God to give us the wisdom to navigate these controversial waters while keeping our integrity, we render unto God what is God's. And, at the end of the day, at least where it concerns our own actions, we need to understand that, even though our government may make the laws, it's God who rules over us, and we need to serve the world as God would have it.

 

In other words, Jesus for Lord and Personal Savior 2020.

 

Amen.

 

Friends, I invite you to receive the benediction: Our God, our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, will guard our going out and coming in from this time on and forever more. And as all God’s people we say together: Amen.