Sunday, October 22, 2017 | 8:00, 9:30, and 11:00 a.m.

Gratitude and Responsibility

“Always Reforming”
A Sermon Series Marking the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation

Shannon J. Kershner
Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 96
Matthew 22:15–22, 24–40

My heart to you, I offer, Lord, promptly and sincerely.

John Calvin

If you were able to be here in worship last week at 9:30 or 11:00 a.m., then you know I preached on the absolute promise and truth of God’s grace, sola gratia, one of the primary themes that emerged in the protest movement called the Reformation and a bedrock theological tenet in our Presbyterian tradition. One shorthand summary of God’s grace is that God does not say, “If you trust me, I will love you”; rather, God declares, “I love you, so trust.” Near the end of the sermon, however, I also tried to dispel any fears that I was preaching about cheap grace—a grace that calls forth nothing in response, a grace that allows us or encourages us to stay mired down in our own brokenness and write off the rest of the world.

I mentioned how my predecessor once wrote that the two words we always need to hear in a Presbyterian service of worship are a word of grace and a word of responsibility. So since we heard that word of God’s lavish grace that confers value on us and to us last week, this week—as promised—we do indeed turn our attention and focus to our responsibility, a responsibility that emerges when we find ourselves bathed in that grace.

This morning, though, we are going to talk about that second word, that call to responsibility, in a very particular way. We are going to talk about our responsibility through the lens of financial stewardship, what we do with what we often call “our” money. I realize I could easily focus on the time and talent part of stewardship, responses also crucial to our discipleship, but I know I would do that just because I don’t want to talk about money with you. Yet not only did Jesus talk about money all the time, not only does the whole of scripture reference money more than 800 times, but even the reformer Martin Luther, the one who began the protest movement, once stated that humans need to experience three conversions in order to fully live our faith, in order to fully respond to God’s grace: a conversion of our heart, a conversion of our mind, and a conversion of our purse.

The truth is that the act of giving money is as much a spiritual discipline as the act of bowing in prayer. Let me say that again: the act of giving money for God’s work in the church is as much a spiritual discipline as the act of bowing in prayer. It is not simply that this congregation needs us to give our money so that we can fund the ministry and mission we feel God has given us. That is a true statement, but it is not the whole story. Even more than this church needs us to give, we need to give. We need to give our money to God’s work through the church as a concrete way we can continually remember to whom we belong.

This question of belonging is at the heart of this strange conversation between Jesus, the Pharisees, and the Herodians. From what we know, the Pharisees and the Herodians did not normally hang out together. They did not typically have goals that were easily aligned with each other. The Pharisees were religious leaders, and the Herodians were more politically minded. This is exactly why their seemingly innocent question about paying taxes was really not an innocent one at all.

The entire conversation between the Pharisees, the Herodians, and Jesus was a setup, one cleverly designed to get Jesus in trouble with someone—either the religious people or the government. For Jesus, there was no good answer to their question “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor or not.” If he said a flat out yes, he would anger the Pharisees and likely his own kindred, the Jewish people.

This is because after the Jewish homeland was added to the Roman Empire, the Pharisees strongly resisted assimilation into the Greek and Roman cultures. Therefore they despised supporting the Roman occupation by paying taxes. Yet not only did they despise giving the Roman government their money, they also found the actual coins offensive. Roman coins had the image of Caesar on both sides, along with the claim that Caesar was divine. For these religious people, the very coin was blasphemous to their beliefs and offensive to their sense of identity (Marcus Borg and John D. Crossan, The Last Week).

But if Jesus said a flat-out no, the Herodians would have been incensed. Now we don’t know a whole lot about the Herodians, but scholars believe they were watchdogs for the state and supporters of the Herods, the rulers appointed by Rome to be their puppet leaders of the Jewish people. Undoubtedly the Herodians had no problem paying the tax and felt all citizens of the Roman Empire should pay it. No ifs, ands, or buts. Anyone who did not do so was breaking the law and was guilty of sedition. So had Jesus responded, “No, it is not lawful to pay taxes to the emperor,” they would have hightailed it back to the powers that be and reported his answer.

Therefore Jesus’ clever response of answering their question by first asking a question of his own and then offering a statement that could be widely interpreted was brilliant. Give to the emperor what belongs to the emperor and to God what belongs to God. Who could argue with that? Apparently the Pharisees and the Herodians could not. They ended up walking away, trying to figure out where they went wrong in their plan.

But not only was Jesus’ response brilliant because it kept him out of trouble for another day, his response also cuts to the heart of our Christian life, the way we live out our faith each day, the ways we respond to God’s magnificent and expansive grace. Even though Jesus makes a statement, he actually asks us a question. In order to figure out what to give to the emperor and what to give to God, we first have to wrestle with the question of what belongs to each.

To make that task even more pointed, Jesus used a particular Greek word when he asked about the coin with which one typically paid the tax to the empire. The NRSV translated his question “Whose head is on this and whose title?” However, the Greek word translated “head” is eikon. A better translation of eikon is image or likeness. So Jesus’ question was really, “Whose image is this and whose title?” Yet eikon is not only used in this New Testament instance to refer to Caesar’s image on the coin. More importantly for us, it is also used three times in Genesis in reference to human beings created in God’s eikon, God’s likeness, God’s image. Thus, in effect, Jesus was responding to his provokers, stating “Give to Caesar whatever bears Caesar’s image, and give to God whatever bears God’s image.”

So there you have it, our question: what belongs to God? Whatever bears God’s image. In other words, I am looking at it and so are you. We bear God’s image. We are what belongs to God, for we are all created in God’s image. That means that all of who we are, all of who we will be—our lives, our work, our money, our time, our talent, our very being, our hearts and minds and soul and strength—all of it belongs to the one who created us. As we say at the moment of baptism, we have been marked as Christ’s own, forever. We belong to God. But while it is fairly simple thing to say—we said it last week as we remembered God’s claim of grace on our lives—it is a deeply complex truth to live.

That takes us back to why Luther claimed we need a conversion of our purse; why one of our responses to God’s grace, one of the ways in which we live out our responsibility as disciples, is to give money to the work of building up God’s reign, not simply because the church cannot do its work without it, not just because the church needs the investment of our money, but even more because we need to give.

Speaking personally, one reason I need to give money for God’s work through the church is so that I can continually try to resist the power of money to define me, to tell me what I am worth or not worth, and to tell me to whom I belong. My financial giving to the work of the church is often as much an act of resistance as it is of gratitude.

Dr. Craig Satterlee, a preaching professor, has written that in our culture, “Money attempts to frame the way we view others and ourselves by determining our worth. Money becomes the criterion that determines whether others accord us dignity and respect or whether we experience shame and failure.” All we have to do to see that demonstrated is to watch people walk up and down Michigan Avenue, interacting or not interacting with those they pass by who are sitting on blankets or flattened cardboard boxes. Satterlee continues, “Since others use money to determine whether we are worthwhile human beings, we eventually use this same yardstick to measure and define ourselves” (Craig Satterlee, Preaching and Stewardship: Proclaiming God’s Invitation to Grow). This is why we have to talk about money in church.

David King talks about the power of money in a slightly different way but with the same emphasis: “Stewardship is not simply paying our dues; rather it is tending our souls so that we can see our wealth properly as an instrument to invest in God’s kingdom. It is also working diligently to combat the subversive power money can often play in our lives, which causes us to believe that our net worth can be equated to our self-worth” (Beyond the Offering Plate: A Holistic Approach to Stewardship, ed. Adam Copeland, p. 39). Giving reshapes our relationships with one another, with our communities, and with God. It opens up our imaginations as to how we see the world” (Beyond the Offering Plate, p. 46). We need to regularly give some of what has been given to us so we can regularly remember in whose image, in whose likeness, eikon, we are made–God’s, not Caesar’s—and to whom we belong.

Remembering God (knowing to whom we belong) cannot only be an intellectual act. Remembering God, knowing to whom we belong, is also a practical act of managing our money and possessions differently (Walter Brueggemann, Money and Possessions). My husband, Greg, experienced the power of that remembering on a monthly basis in his childhood. Every month, when his parents were getting ready to pay the bills and determine the financial priorities for that particular month, Greg watched as his father wrote the very first check to the church, to help fulfill their pledge, their promise. Every month, regardless of what was going on, that was the routine. First check—always to the church,

Now, I don’t think Greg’s parents ever talked in great depth about it, but Greg knew what they were doing. That act was his parents’ way of teaching Greg and his brothers, as well as remembering themselves, to whom they belonged. It was their way of regularly resisting the temptation to let the power of money tell them who they were, instead of remembering that God had already told them who they were. And watching his parents always make the first check go to God’s work through the church shaped Greg and continues to shape him when it comes to generosity and the spiritual act of making an offering, deciding our pledge as a family. His parents’ intentional decision on a monthly basis embodied a response to Jesus’ question: what belongs to God.

Again, our financial stewardship is not primarily about what the church needs us to do. Our financial stewardship is first and foremost about what we need to do for our own life of discipleship. And what we need to do is give. That act of giving “is a biblical and spiritual discipline by which God enters into our lives and shapes us in a way that our imagination, our thoughts, and our words cannot. Through the discipline of giving, God graciously invites us both to gratefully respond to God for blessings received and to faithfully follow a path toward freedom from the economic powers that bind us (Timothy Olson, quoted by Craig Satterlee in Preaching and Stewardship, p. 68). Again, to whom do we belong? Whose image do we bear? One reason why we need to give is to regularly remember.

As you make out your pledge for 2018, or as the offering plates are passed down your row today, I invite you to reimagine stewardship is an act of resistance. Reimagine generosity is an act of taking a stand against anything or anyone other than the Holy One telling you who and whose you are. It is one way we are called to respond to God’s magnificent and expansive grace. Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, Jesus said. But give to God what belongs to God. Amen.