“Sure, Jesus said ‘Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s’ but then he finishes the sentence. ‘Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, but give to God what is God’s.'”
Sermon preached at All Saints Church on Sunday, October 22, 2017, by Mike Kinman.
The Pharisees went off and began to plot how they might trap Jesus…
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The Pharisees were hunting Jesus. The way a predator traps its prey.
Predators take many forms. Predators dress up in many clothes. They speak in many voices. Some wield their power like a hammer, others with the subtlety of suggestion. In Jesus’ case, the hunters, the predators were the church and the state. They had power, and they were doing what predators always do … using their power to abuse, control, and silence their victims. And their power was their ability to get Jesus in trouble with those who could ostracize him, those who could imprison him, turn the crowd against him, discredit him, rob him of his future, ruin his life, even take his life away.
The Pharisees were hunting Jesus. The way a predator traps its prey.
Predators … abusers … trap. Abusive systems trap, too. It’s what they do. And since from before the Pharisees on down the church has been a prime abuser, we should probably say not just it’s what THEY do but it’s what WE do, too. Trapping is coercion. Trapping aims to take those with less power and strip them of what little power they have. It is about domination and control. About seeing the other not as a beautiful human being worthy of dignity and with agency that must be respected, but as an object for manipulation and gratification.
Trapping is what the Pharisees did to Jesus. It’s Harvey Weinstein in the hotel room. And it’s much more than that.
Trapped is the woman who knows she can’t express her natural and powerful gift of leadership because she knows she’ll be labeled a bitch. Who knows she cannot even name the misogyny and abuse to which she is subjected on a daily basis because retribution is real and costly and sometimes even fatal.
Trapped is the black person who knows they cannot let the fury show because they will be dismissed as just another angry black woman or killed because a white man feared for his life.
Trapped is the day laborer who must endure indignities and physical, psychological and sexual abuse because the threat of ICE being called or someone else being chosen for the job is literally the difference between her family being together or split apart, between life and death.
Trapped is the child whose uncle says, “don’t tell anyone where I touched you because you are going to get in trouble if you do.”
Trapped is the Sophie’s choice between dignity and safety. Between keeping your job and keeping your pride. Between saving your soul and saving your life.
The Pharisees tried to trap Jesus. And yes, Jesus masterfully wriggled out of this trap, but the first thing we must recognize this morning is that in Jesus, God knows what it is to be predatorally targeted and trapped, and God makes it clear where God stands and that is on the side of the trapped, not on the side of the trapper.
And so before we go any further, we have to stop. We have to stop and say if you have been trapped, if you have been abused. If you have been assaulted verbally, physically, sexually. If you have had your power and agency diminished or stripped from you. If you have been silenced and erased and made in any way to feel less than who you are as a beautiful, powerful child of God, you are not alone.
God is with you. We are with you.
God hears you. We hear you.
God believes you. We believe you.
God loves you. We love you – and together we are committed to building a community of healing, a community of safety, a community of equity, justice and love.
The Pharisees, the leaders of the church, went off and began to plot how they might trap Jesus, and where they go in their plotting is right to the coin. Because it seems like it’s always about the coin, isn’t it?
The coin is where our aspirations and fears meet. The coin is how we value everything and how the world values us. The coin is how we provide for ourselves and those we love. The coin tells us that whether or not we have freedom, whether or not we have power, whether or not we will have a roof over our heads and food on our table, whether or not we will be treated with respect and dignity depends not on ourselves but on the power of the coin and the degree to which we are able to command it and control it. And the coin is issued by the state and regulated by the state. Our rulers get chosen and influenced, bought and sold, by how many coins get slipped into their pockets and they woo us with dreams of more coins being slipped into our own.
Yes, it is two thousand years later and so little has changed. The coin the still has power. The coin still makes careers and ruins lives. The coin is still our god, and we long for its bestowal and we fear its removal.
The Pharisees went right to the power of the coin. The coin with the face of the emperor on it. The coin that reminded everyone that the power of the state and the power of the coin were one and the same. That the respect of the state came from having the coin and getting the coin came from respecting the state.
The Pharisees went right to the coin and they asked Jesus “is it lawful to pay the tax to the Emperor or not?”
And you have to believe they thought they had Jesus. Because there are only two answers, right? Yes or no. And either way they had him. If he said yes, he was acknowledging the power of the crown, the power of the coin. If he said yes, he was admitting that any resemblance of what he had said or done before to a revolutionary Gospel for the liberation of the people was merely coincidental. If he said yes, he was making his Sophie’s choice to save his life at the cost of his soul.
And if he said no? If he said no, they had him, too. If he said no he was an insurrectionist, a leader of a tax revolt. If he said no, he had committed the worst sin imaginable, which was to take on the power of the state to wield the power of the coin. And they could and would crush him with such force that nobody would dare to make a peep in resistance.
Oh, you have to believe they thought they had Jesus. Jesus was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t, so instead Jesus asked for what was behind Door Number Three. Try to trap Jesus with the power of the coin? Jesus says, “You show me that coin.”
Jesus took that power of the coin and turned it back on the Pharisees, saying “whose image is this on this coin?”
And with confidence, the Pharisees said “Caesar’s.”
And then Jesus said, “Then give to Caesar what is Caesar’s.” And for the tiniest split of a second, the Pharisees knew they had him. Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s. Jesus had actually said that. He had acknowledged the power of the coin. He had admitted that the power of the coin was rightfully the power of the state. His fear was clear. His silence had been purchased. He had fallen into the trap.
But then that nanosecond passed and with those words still hanging in the air “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s” Jesus finished his thought … “but give to God what is God’s.”
You see, you can look at the coin and you can see the image of an emperor or a president. And if your image is on it, it clearly belongs to you. So yes, that coin belongs to the emperor because his image is on it.
But if the coin bears the image of the emperor … what bears the image of God?
The Pharisees knew the answer because they knew their Torah. They knew Genesis, “So God created humanity in her image, in the image of God she created them.”
Sure, Caesar can have that little old coin, but God? God gets all of us.
Sure, that coin has power, the state has power. We’re not going to pretend they don’t. But there is a far greater power, and that is the power of God. And the power of God is the power of liberation. It is the power of love.
The power of God is the power of truth that will not be silenced.
The power of God is a power that is greater than any that might rise up against it. The power of God will not be trapped.
And that power of God is not just out there. That power of God is right here. That power of God is fashioned into bodies. Each one of our beautiful bodies.
And that means our bodies are sacred. That means our bodies are powerful. That means our bodies are meant always to be celebrated and never to be abused. That means that we have holy agency, holy choice over our bodies and that no one can make us do something with or to our bodies that we don’t want to. That means that we can choose to give our bodies to one another and for one another but our bodies can never be demanded of us like a coin from the taxman because our bodies belong to God and God has given them to us not to be commodified and objectified and enslaved and abused but to be celebrated and enjoyed and set aflame with passion and to be offered in labors of love.
Sure, Jesus said: “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s” but then he finished the sentence.
Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, but give to God what is God’s.
Jesus dropped that knowledge and then he dropped the mic.
And when the Pharisees heard this, they were astonished and went away.
And so what is our reaction? Remember, the Pharisees were the church. A church that had bought into the system of plotting and trapping, coercing and controlling, of abusing and silencing. How much has really changed? Our active participation and passive complicity in these systems is not a matter of ancient history. Our objectification, commodification and demand of control of the bodies of women and people of color is a present reality. Our worship of the coin and hunger for respectability continues to thrive.
Jesus’ words are not just for the Pharisees this morning, they are for all of us. As we have been trapped and abused, they are words of solidarity and liberation. And as we have been the trappers and the abusers they are an invitation to self-examination, confession, repentance and reparation. For all of us, they are an invitation to long for and become a different church. To imagine and desire a body positive church, a sex positive church, a trauma informed church and more.
My dear sister, the Rev. Ginger Gaines-Cirelli, senior pastor at Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington D.C. preached this vision of a fully embodied church powerfully when she said:
“What if the church people desire is a church who is not ashamed of its body – because it knows its body is beloved of God? … What if the church people desire is one that shows some skin – that shows some vulnerability, a willingness to expose its wounds and scars – to expose human pain, struggle, fear and sin?… What if the church people desire is a streetwalker, a church whose body is in the world, that shows up in places of need and injustice, offering the warmth of real flesh and blood, being present to the messiness and yearnings of other bodies? … What if the church people desire is one that has ‘skin in the game’ – that is willing to risk some wounds and suffering for the sake of solidarity, love and justice?”
Ginger concludes, “The Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III has suggested ‘The church is becoming a place where Christianity is nothing more than capitalism in drag…’ What if the church people desire is a church that takes off the mask, that confesses and renounces its capitalist indoctrination, that tries to WANT in a different way? This church calls out the consequences of the imperial tendency to objectify, commodify, and use people; it is willing to say that suffering results… when greed, privilege, or perversions of power poison God’s diverse ‘catch of fish.’”
Jesus’ words are not just for the Pharisees this morning, they are for all of us. As we have been trapped and abused they are words of solidarity and liberation. As we have been the trappers and the abusers they are an invitation to self-examination, confession, repentance and reparation. For all of us, they are an invitation for us to desire and become a different church and a different world.
A church where bodies are celebrated and not abused. Where women’s power is embraced and women’s leadership is honored. Where the anger of the oppressed is felt and understood, and the right to work in safety and without fear is respected. Where stained glass ceilings are shattered, binaries are exploded, and the coin of our realm is equity, justice, and love. A church where touch is always consensual, wounds are healed and truth is spoken. A church where nobody plots to trap and where the only guests not welcome are hatred, degradation and shame. Amen.
