Matthew 22:15-22
“God’s Things”
October 18, 2020
An apartment,
a fox,
a tree, and
a coaster.
What, you are asking, do they have in common?
If you have a pen and paper handy – even the Order of Worship – handy, you may want to jot these things down. Again – an apartment, a fox, a tree, and a coaster.
File those images away in your head and we’ll come back to them in a bit.
The Pharisees and Herodians here have joined forces to slip up Jesus because they think he’s at least a fraud or at worst a threat to the status quo and their livelihoods and perceived positions of power. This is an era of upheaval. The emperor has occupied Israel for years at this point promising to protect the people there from outsiders but leaving them to wonder who will protect them from the emperor.
Of course, it costs money to occupy this place and so the Romans figured that the Israelites should pay for their own occupation. They get to fund their own oppression. The icing on the cake was the indignity of having to pay with a coin that had the emperor’s image on it along with declaration of his divine status so they basically had to go against the laws of their own faith which said they would have no other God but Yahweh.
Jesus offers them salvation by assuring them that the current system of corruption and treatment as less than is not all there is. Jesus is presenting a path to salvation that turns the power structure upside down with the downtrodden and forgotten rising to the top in the Kingdom of God and those who’ve been thought of as powerful and mighty will find themselves no longer on the top of the human hill.
Jesus has been able to show that the emperor’s coin only has value for the emperor while everyone bears the image of God, even those who have been relegated to the lowest rungs of society. Their land may be occupied but they – their hearts and souls and entire beings – are not. No matter what happens to the empire, they will keep their value. They are seen and Jesus wants them to know whose they are. Even the Pharisees and the Herodians who have teamed up against Jesus have value because they also belong to God. They are indelibly etched with God .
We don’t belong to anyone but God. In this divisive election season when a button or bumper sticker or lawn sign can provoke harassment, verbal abuse, or vandalism forcing many to swallow their ideas, Jesus is for everyone. Whose image do we bear?
Oh, those 4 things I mentioned earlier. When I thought back on this past week, these were just a few of the things that bore the image of Jesus to me – lover of the underdog, promoter of wonder and kindness, giver of refuge.
The apartment is the one my nephew Kevin, whom we have prayed for off and on for the past 7 or 8 years, finally has moved into. Kevin has been in and out of jail and battled drug addiction since his teens. At last, he has his first full-time job, continues with drug treatment and this past week moved into an apartment of his own. I’m thinking God is hard at work in Kevin and Jesus would have meant for him to overhear his lesson to the Herodians and Pharisees, too.
The fox was actually, mercifully, unseen. The other day our next door neighbor knew that I walk down Ice Pond Road every day and she made a point of coming over and alerting me to a fox that had approached she and her dog, which is unusual. It had also been spotted lying in the middle of the road and moving oddly. It could have been rabid. To have a neighbor reach out and then follow up with animal control and Fish & Game was reassurance that God brings goodness and kindness through a host of different image bearers every day.
I mentioned “a tree” on the list but it was really many trees that seemed marked with the image of God this week. In fact, they seemed to be everywhere I turned. Filled with joyous color and beauty that perhaps seemed even more important and life-giving in this time of COVID isolation and lack of human contact. It felt like God was filling in some of the empty spaces and sorely missed interactions with a spectacular palette of burnt sienna and gold and red, contrasted with the green of fir trees. Maybe I just noticed them more than past years but isn’t that the point with God?
And the coaster? Here is the image (bring image up) – made by request from our daughter Selene with her Cricut machine and sewing machine. It’s an image of Jesus. I didn’t select it – this is what Selene found – and I’m convinced it’s just one of many all around us. God comes in many forms – within each of us – bearing a never-ending love for us, every one of us, even the ones we disagree with – even you, even me. May we be vigilantly on the lookout for God, this week and every week. And don’t forget to look within yourself – God is there, too. We are God’s, to have and to hold.
Let us offer then this prayer from the Reverend Taylor Meador Fuerst:
God above all nations, you created us in your image, and you have claimed us for yourself. When the empires of this world seek to claim our lives and our greatest allegiances, remind us that we are yours alone, and give us the grace-filled courage to give our lives to you, for the sake of the world you love so much. Amen.