Republic and Responsibility

Trinity Presbyterian Church of Bethesda
10.19.08; Rev. David Williams

Scripture Lesson: Matthew 22:15-22

I enjoy blogging. I am, as many of you folks know, a fairly compulsive blogger, and it’s not for the fame and the glory. There are now over 100 million blogs in the world, and the way I figure it by my dismal technorati numbers, I’m probably number seventy-five million, four hundred and thirty seven thousand, nine hundred and twenty two. Not that I’m keeping track or anything.

Still and all, there are many good reasons to put myself out there.

First, I like to write. It’s good mental exercise. Keeping an online journal of my meditations and reflections on life helps me to explore ideas that are too random to make their way here on Sunday. This helps me avoid the pastoral temptation to just ramble on and on and on about everything I’ve thought about this week. That keeps most of my sermons under that magic twenty minute adult attention span mark, and for that, I’m sure you’re all truly grateful.

Second, I think that if pastors are going to study scripture and society and reflect on it as part of a daily discipline, they should do so publicly...so that everyone and anyone who has the inclination can see the results of those reflections. Pastors are supposed to be public thinkers. And, yes, it’s just a tiny drop in the great global slopbucket of blogorreah, but it’s still worth doing.

Third, and most important, it means that when I write, I’m going to be called on what I write. People who don’t agree and who stumble across my page are going to let me know about it. Sometimes, the folks who comment are just trolls, small hairy beings who live under bridges who couldn’t care less about getting into a real exchange. They just want to spell badly at you and snap angrily at your ankles. But other times, those disagreements develop into fascinating conversations about the tensions within our society. Even though the disagreement is intense, you find yourself getting to know that person. Even though the disagreement may seem irreconcilable, you find yourself liking and caring for the soul that hides behind their cartoonish avatar.

Over the last year or so, I’ve engaged in some intense but almost invariably civil disagreements with a deeply conservative young woman. She’s a navy officer, fervently Christian, and as sharp as a tack. While we’re on the opposite sides of the political spectrum, I respect her formidable intellect and her writing ability. Though I’m often frustrated at her inability to see the world as I do (which as we all know, is correct 142% of the time), I still appreciate her as a daughter of Eve. Though I wish she bore less anger in her heart, I know she’s a basically decent and honorable soul.

I keep track of her writings through my feed reader, and when I took a look at what she’d posted this week, I was compelled to challenge her.

She’s given up on the election this year. She’s convinced that neither major party candidate reflects her profound conservatism, and isn’t going to vote at all. Now you might think I’d be pleased at this. Y’all know where I stand politically, and might assume I would be pleased with this. Booyah! Another one bites the dust! But hearing her cast aside her vote in cynical resignation, I felt that I had to do a little witnessing. Why?

Because a significant majority of Americans do exactly the same thing. In this great democracy, most of our citizens have allowed cynicism or apathy to stand between them and fulfilling that basic duty at the polling booth. Some might say: why is that bad? Isn’t it our right to not vote if we so choose?

For a partial answer to that, let’s turn to today’s interesting little story from the Gospel of Matthew. Jesus is having another run-in with the Pharisees, who are trying to get him into trouble with the law. After buttering him up a little bit with flattery, they ask him a question that they think can have no correct answer. That question is simply this: Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar?

It was a very well conceived 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. Given the choice of saying yes or now, he didn’t say either. 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. I’m not sure any modern day politicians could have done better. The trap his enemies 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? Both in this passage and in the Apostle Paul’s discussion of Christian citizenship in Romans 13, we know that we do have a duty to the government of the nations we inhabit. We don’t have an emperor, of course. We’re not an Empire or a Kingdom. Here in America, we’re a Republic. What do we owe, when the “emperor” is us? What do we owe to the emperor when we the people are the emperor? We don’t just owe just our taxes. All that an empire needs is for people to think of themselves primarily as taxpayers. But this is a democracy, and what a democracy needs from it’s citizens in order to thrive is participation.

Our duty in a democracy is to pay attention. It is 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 this passage in that way in our lives as citizens of our counties, of our states, of our nation.

But if we fuse that with what we owe Christ, it becomes a different thing. If we recognize that rendering unto God what is God’s means living a life of gracious forgiveness, showing lovingkindness and mercy and forbearance even to those who oppose us, we have to be citizens in a different way. We can stand firm on our political beliefs, but only if we are - first - standing firm on our faith.

It was that fundamental duty that I reaffirmed to my conservative blog-friend. No matter where we stand as Christians, no matter what our political orientation, we are each of us required to view our participation in the processes of the republic as a central and fundamental duty. It’s our task to remind each other of this, and support one another in this.

It’s what we owe.

We’re just a few short weeks away...so remember what it is you owe.

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.