What We Owe

Trinity Presbyterian Church of Bethesda
11.11.07; Rev. David Williams

Scripture Lesson: Luke 20:20-26

Last Tuesday morning started out busy. The kids were running a little behind schedule, my wife had a meeting downtown, and the day began in even more of a whirlwind than usual. I had to get the kids fed, clothing choices vetoed...no, you can’t wear shorts. It’s November. No, even boys don’t wear underwear three days in a row. Then it was off to a variety of church duties and calls and errands. It was a typically busy day, with one major difference.

It was election day this last Tuesday, both across that wide wide river in the far off land of Virginia and in Baltimore. This was not a presidential election, not an election for the United States Senate or the House. It was a state and local race...County supervisors and school board members, sheriffs and state Senators and Representative. It’s small scale, rubber-meets-the-road democracy, where much of the nitty gritty of our community life gets done. In the last two weeks, the medians and roadsides flowered with hundreds upon hundreds of wire and plastic signs, proclaiming the names of those who were competing to lead us.

For all the sound and fury and star power of our billion-dollar national election industry, state and local elections are where the choices get made about how we’re going to run our schools. About how we’re going to keep our communities policed. About where our priorities lie.

As I sidled off my motorcycle and walked into the little white Episcopal church on a hill that serves as my neighborhood polling place, it became obvious that our priorities lie elsewhere. There was the usual diligent cadre of retiree volunteers. There were two party volunteers parked out front, handing out voting guides. There were the voting machines, their touchscreens glowing softly behind their privacy shields.

But there was no line. In fact, there wasn’t a single other citizen in there to vote. Not one. I breezed right in. I breezed right out. Wow! That was so convenient! That was so...wrong.

After conferring with my wife, I learned that it wasn’t quite as effortless and empty in the morning, but there was still only a very short line. It was less crowded than a candy store the day after Halloween. How many people bothered to vote? Wednesday morning, I went online, to the Virginia State Board of Elections website. I looked through all of the statistics. Now, America’s supposed to be one of the great cradles of democracy. Virginia was one of the 13 colonies to first ratify the constitution of the United States of America. But this last Tuesday, only one in three Virginians bothered to vote. Thirty four percent. 34 percent isn’t just a a failing grade. It’s the kind of F you get when you take your Political Science 342 final exam after first downing a fifth of bourbon. How’sh thish poshible? I thot I dish sho well....

Now, there are lots of reasons why. Maybe you’re too busy. Maybe you didn’t have time to decide. Maybe you don’t really like the political position of either of the parties. Maybe aliens from the planet M’tang took you from your bed on Tuesday morning, and despite your protests weren’t done with their experiments until after the polls closed. But are those really reasons? Or are they just...excuses? But elections aren’t important, you might say. They don’t really change anything. It’s all just those fat-cats lining their own pockets. Again, those aren’t really reasons not to be engaged. Excuses, yes. Reasons, no.

Well, you might say, fishing a bit, Jesus never told me I needed to vote. Oooh! You’re on to something! Jesus never voted at all! Find me the word vote in the Bible! Ah-hah!

Today, we heard what Jesus said about how we should respond to government. The leadership in Judah had their eye on him as a troublemaker and a rabblerouser. In fact, they were so eager to get this guy off the streets that they tried to set up a sting operation to trap him. It was going to be tough. He was popular, and they were going to have to be crafty about it.

So rather than arrest him themselves, they tried to get him in trouble. Their agents asked him about whether Jews should pay taxes to Rome. It was a cunning trap. On the one hand, if you answered yes, it meant that you were willing to use Roman money on which was inscribed assertions of the emperor’s divinity. It meant that you were assenting to him as a god, and betraying the God of Israel. It also meant you were supporting the hated occupiers of the Holy Land. So you couldn’t answer yes, or you were a traitor to the Jewish people.

On the other hand, if you answered no, it meant that you were a dangerous revolutionary, a threat to the Empire. The Roman authorities didn’t look kindly on people who refused to pay their taxes. So you couldn’t answer no, or you were a threat to Rome.

Jesus was not so easily taken in. He didn’t say yes. He didn’t say no. He just told everyone to look at the coin, and see who was on it. It was the emperor, of course. So give him what belongs to him, and give God what belongs to God. It was a perfect answer, both yes and no, neither yes nor no, and the trap they had set for him snapped closed on empty air.

But as we hear his answer, we have to ask ourselves: what it is that we owe the emperor today? What do we owe? What do we owe to the emperor when we the people are the emperor? Not just our giving. This is a democracy, and what a democracy needs from it’s citizens in order to thrive is participation. What our democracy needs from us is for us to pay attention, for us to be engaged. When we fail to do that, we fail to give to Caesar what Christ told us is his due. We need to hear that passage in that way in our lives as citizens of our counties, of our states, of our nation.

We also need to take that learning about what makes a nation run, and know that it speaks to what we as Christians owe to God and to our gathering here in God’s name.

Give to the emperor what is the emperor’s, Christ said, and give to God what is God’s. If we as citizens of this great democracy need to give it our engagement and our participation for it to thrive, do we owe less to God? Do we owe less to this little cluster of Christ’s people?

Today we’re blessing the gifts and offerings that we’ve all been asked to commit to this church in the coming year. Those pledges of support are what make it possible for us to plan and prepare for all of the activities we need to undertake in the coming months. But in addition to committing ourselves to giving this church the financial support it needs to thrive, we also need to commit ourselves to participate and engage in the life of the church, to be aware of how it works, and to contribute our time and our energy to building it up.

Many of us are are already doing just that. Through music and study and teaching, through mission and fellowship, through making sure that the bills get paid and the building is maintained, so many of you are committing your time and your engagement to the church. But all of you will have gotten...along with your financial pledge form...a sheet that shows you all of the different ways that God could use your gifts in the service of the church. If you know you have something in you that you to contribute to our life together, something that could build it up, then use it. Let that gift light up the church.

If this new thing we’re trying to do for God is to flourish and grow, we owe it to Him to give him what he’s due.