THE THINGS THAT ARE GOD’S

A Sermon on Mark 12:13-17

You see they were trying to trip Jesus up. Get him in trouble. Trap him in a rhetorical corner from which there was no escape.

Should we pay taxes? Simple enough. A yes or no will do. They asked him. Now these are the same taxes were driving Jesus’s own community beyond the brink of poverty. The taxes that were funding the Roman legions walking their streets, harassing them, mocking them, and sometimes worse.

These are the taxes that paid for crosses—and the hilltops where they stood.

So, if Jesus thought the people should pay those taxes, surely they would turn on him.

Of course, if he said not to pay, if he incited the people to disobedience and revolt, well, that too would be curtains for the troublesome Rabbi. Enough of a charge to shut him up for good.

And with a simple question, they had him. Until Jesus found another way, doing what he so often does. Not accepting the premise of the question, but asking his own, deeper question.

“Whose face is on that coin?”

And with a simple question he escapes the rhetorical trap. But, more importantly, he plants an important question in our hearts. What belongs to the emperor? And what belongs to God?

In common use, Jesus’s teaching here is often truncated to the single admonition: “render unto Caesar.”

Yet it is important—perhaps especially in this political moment—for us to focus on the second half. "And give to God, the things that are God’s."

Let’s imagine the scene. What might belong to God? To start—we have a crowd of people, each of whom scripture tells us is made in God’s image, God’s children, each and every one of them. Standing out amidst God’s creation, trees and rocks, and rolling hills, beneath God’s firmament, a bright blue sky.

There are the lilies whom God clothes. The sparrows whom God feeds. The hairs on everyone’s heads, which do not fall to the ground without God’s notice, not a one.

That is what belongs to God.

And then there is this coin. It is about the size of a dime. It has the emperor’s head on it to be sure, but if you were more than a few feet away, you probably couldn’t make it out.

Jesus holds this tiny coin over his head, and says: “Give to the emperor what belongs to the emperor. Give to God what is God’s.”

One of my great fears in this moment is that are lives are being subsumed by the priorities and the language of our politicians. That our political life is asking for our constant attention and insisting that every one of our priorities and values be fit their propositions, and that we relate to one another only on the terms they dictate.

And I do not think this is an accident. I think it is a strategy.  

I think that some powerful people have discovered that if they can make us all miserable enough, angry enough, tired enough, then we will forget the best part of ourselves.

They have figured out, that if they spew enough hatred, and sow enough chaos, eventually each one of us will each render every scrap of our anxious attention unto them.

And that is when we start to feel powerless. That is when we will let go our neighbors’ hands. That is when we will come to feel that hope is beyond our reach. That is when we give up on our vision of justice, and the fire in our spirits goes out.

Please do not let this happen. Please do not let the best of yourself get swept away in their anxious tide. The hope, the love, the joy in your heart—don’t give it away. It doesn’t belong to them. It belongs to God.

Thirteen years ago, while I was a seminary student, I spent a summer volunteering with a church-related humanitarian organization called along the US/Mexico border.

This group offered search and rescue, and emergency medical care, to migrants along the border in a section of inhospitable dessert where—by the time I arrived in June, 128 people had already died trying to cross the desert.

On a given day we would walk patrols for about 6 hours, calling out into the desolate landscape "Somos amigos de la iglesia, tenemos agua y comida, y ayuda medica.” We are friends from the Church, we have water, and food and medical aid. And in that barren landscape we would meet people five or six days into a twelve-day hike, out of water, and fearing for their lives.

At night, we slept in a small camp, where we had a medical tent, water tanks, and a simple kitchen. Then we would awake with the sun each day and go offer our small measure of care and love in Christ’s name.

One night after I had been at this camp for about a week, a group of us stayed up unusually late, to have a beer, and chat in the back of a pickup truck underneath a canopy of stars the likes of which I have not seen since. This is when I was taught about star-surfing.

One of the other volunteer medics said, try this. Stand here and look up. Pick one star, keep your eyes fixed on it, and start spinning as fast as you can. And so I did. And it was this amazing visual sensation as every star but that one fixed point, became a circle of light, around, and around, and around, until we fell to the desert floor laughing.

I remember waking up the next morning, loading up my backpack with water, bandages, blankets, and cans of tuna, when I felt this sudden wave of self-consciousness about the night before.

How appropriate was it really, to express that kind of unbridled joy, in an environment marred by so much suffering? It feels funny to say about such a little thing, but it haunted me for years. I dreaded the thought that a group of migrants may have been making its way through the shadows of the scrub on the edge of our camp, engaged in such a harrowing and high-stakes journey, only to glimpse through the brush and see us spinning and laughing.

Overtime I came to some peace with the understanding that the human heart simply cannot confront suffering effectively without space for joy. That among the many who spent months engaged in that work to which I had offered mere weeks, held some important wisdom, that even in the midst of the most dire and serious work of discipleship, we need joy, and laughter, and beauty, and love.

But my anxiety about the events of that night stayed unsettled in my heart for a long time until one morning, years later, when I was attending worship at Charles St. AME Church, the oldest historically black congregation in Boston, and I heard a song that we never sang at my suburban congregational church growing up.

“This joy I have. The world didn’t give it to me. The world didn’t give it. And the world can’t take it away.”

“This love I have. The world didn’t give it to me. The world didn’t give it. The world can’t take it away”

“This peace that I have.  The world didn’t give it to me. The world didn’t give it. The world can’t take it away.”

—

None of this means the road ahead will easy. None of this means that grief will not pierce our hearts a thousand times.

But if we do not carry forward the faith that has sustained God’s people through every trial, we will be forsaking the wisdom of those voices who knew how cruel the world can be, when they first sang “this joy I have.”

And it we surrender our capacity for joy, then pretty soon our spirits will be too weary to walk through this wilderness offering the compassion our neighbors will need.

And if we cannot find that still, unmoving point to anchor us when it feels like creation is spinning out of control. We will spend more time in the dust, than on our feet.  

Our hope does not belong to politicians. It belongs to God.

Our love does not belong to politicians. It belongs to God.

Our joy, our freedom, our peace, our power—it is not theirs. It is God’s. Don’t give it away.