Samantha Christopher | October 22, 2023 (7:45 a.m.)

We give thee but thine own, whate’er the gift may be; all that we have is thine alone, a trust, O Lord from thee.

Over the past few weeks, we have been making our way through Jesus’ final week in Jerusalem before his eventual torture, crucifixion, and death at the hands of the Romans. Along the way, we have encountered a familiar cast of characters: The disobedient son, who at first refuses to work in his father’s vineyard, but eventually relents and does the work anyway. The wicked tenants, who kill a vineyard owner’s slaves and his heir, and finally in last week’s reading, a King who invites all to a wedding feast only to throw a guest out who is not wearing the proper attire. This week, we finally turn to Jesus himself.

The last time we made our way through these readings was October of 2020, a time when we as a society and world were working through an age-old problem in the midst of pandemic fall: What do we owe to each other? What do we owe to each other?

Now for those of you who either love moral philosophy or are fans of the hit 2016 comedy drama series The Good Place, this question may be familiar to you. T.M. Scanlon, in his seminal work What We Owe to Each Other, asks this very question. What do we owe to each other?

Now, at its publication, Scanlon’s decision to ask this particular question was considered radical in academic philosophy circles. Instead of asking “Do I owe anything to others,” or “Am I obligated to be in relationship with others,” Scanlon begins his argument by answering both questions with a “Yes.” We are both obligated to be in relationship with others, and we do owe certain things to those people.

Now as the good church-going Christians we are, this set of questions may seem superfluous. Of course we are to be in relationship with one another, after all, “Wherever two or three are gathered…” And, we are naturally obligated to do things for others—to feed the hungry, take care of the sick, visit the lonely, those corporal works of mercy as our Catholic friends would put it.

But I believe, or, at least, I would like to believe, that the question, “What do we owe to each other,” should only be a starting point, the bare minimum, for our life not only together in Christian community, but as individual Christians.

The question asked of Jesus by the Pharisees and Herodians in our Gospel for this morning, “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not,” was designed to alienate Jesus from his followers at best, and to provide the Romans with cause to charge him with sedition, at worst. The tax in this narrative is not part of some esoteric micro or macroeconomic theory, but was a head-tax, a very real and tangible reminder of Roman imperialism to those living in ancient Judea, and a major cause of the First Jewish War, which would end with the destruction of the Temple in 70ce. No matter how he answers, it seems, Jesus is cooked. He’s done for. Yet his answer seems to satisfy both sides: just give each what belongs to them.

Jesus’ statement, “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and unto God what is God’s,” appears to neatly divide existence into two spheres—the earthly, or temporal realm, and the spiritual realm. The logic naturally follows: The emperor, Caesar, earthly rulers, etc. are put in charge of earthly affairs, and God is concerned with those things spiritual. The Pharisees and Herodians get to interpret his answer in the way most pleasing to them, and we get a neat turn of phrase to emphasize the separation of church and state and the importance of obeying earthly leaders. Easy, simple, end of story.

But what if Jesus’ statement, like most of his statements if we’re being honest, isn’t so simple. What if, instead of providing us with two sides of the same coin, two kingdoms, temporal and spiritual, coexisting peacefully, but instead he is trying to show us an alternative to the death-dealing, blood-soaked kingdoms of our fallen, broken world?

The disciples experienced life under the cruel thumb of Rome as vassal subjects, forced to pay a head tax using a coin bearing a blasphemous inscription, “Caesar Augustus Tiberius, son of the Divine Augustus,” implying that Augustus Tiberius, the first emperor of Rome and the stepfather of the then-reigning emperor, had been deified after death.

Look, it seems to say. Look upon the face of your God. Render unto Caesar what is Caesars. All they have been given by Caesar is hardship and cruelty and horrifying execution at the slightest whiff of treason or sedition. This is your God, the coin says. This is your lot, and you will not just abide by it, you will bow down and worship it.

And yet, Jesus knows that the death-dealing forces that seek to maintain the status quo, those forces and powers and principalities that say, “this is the best you’re going to get, so suck it up and deal with it” are not the final word. We know that the forces of wickedness and oppression, the forces that look at the status quo, at racism and sexism and homophobia and transphobia; at homelessness and income inequality and food insecurity, the forces and powers that cast aside any hope for a better future in favor of the unstable peace and comfort of what we know, we know those death-dealing powers and dominions do not have the final say.

We are trapped by those powers, we are bound by the forces of sin and death that try to lull us back to complacency, and try as we might, there is nothing we can do to break free. Time and again, we fall away from God, we miss the mark, and we sin. No good work, no perfect deed, no prayer said with precisely this wording at precisely this number of times will save us. We are only saved through Christ’s death on the cross, by and through which he draws us into his saving embrace.

The alternate Kingdom shown to us by Christ is one wherein God, the Lord of life and light himself fights on our behalf, of his own free will, and out of his boundless love for us. Jesus offers himself freely as a sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, and it is through his death and resurrection that he breaks the bonds of death and sin and brings the entirety of the world to newness in him.

It is in his crucifixion that God shows us what type of God he is. Our God is a God who comes to earth not to reign in splendor and majesty, but to empty himself, voluntarily taking on human form through a real, embodied earthly mother. Our God is a God whose very nature required him to take on the vulnerability of human existence, our frailty and struggle, and to truly and earnestly live as one of us. The greatest expression of his glory is not a military overthrow of the Roman government, but his crucifixion—his willingness to take on and undergo the most humiliating and degrading form of punishment possible to him, in order that the forces of death and destruction may be broken. God takes on all human existence, throughout time and space, so that we may find eternal life in him.

All that we have is God’s. Our salvation is a gift, freely offered to us, unable to be repaid. So then, what have we to offer God? What have we to render unto God that which is Gods? We have ourselves, our souls and bodies to present to God as a reasonable and holy sacrifice. In that offering to God of our selves and our lives, we allow God to use our lives and facilities to the benefit and glory of God. Our good works flow from our faith in God, as a natural response to God’s goodness in our lives. Therefore, our answer to that question, “What do we owe each other?” is everything. We are called to give of our worldly goods and possessions according to our ability so that all may be given according to their need, not by weighing our merits, or the recipient’s worthiness, but keeping only in mind their status as a beloved child of God.

I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God to present yourselves as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

Amen.