What belongs to God?

Today's gospel reading from Matthew invites the question, "what belongs to God?"  The answer - well, just about everything.  We are invited to consider the world and our lives and how we are called as Christians to relate to governments.  We are called to witness even in Washington and on Wall Street to God's vision of justice.

18^th Sunday after Pentecost (Year A) – Sunday, October 16^th, 2011

Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church, Lancaster, PA

Text: Matthew 22:15-22

Today I would like to ask you a simple question. What belongs to God? If you heard Jesus' clever reply to the question of whether it is lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, then you might have a guess as to why I'm asking.

Jesus' answer is one for the ages. “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's.” It's one of those jaw-droppers that must have left the Pharisees and Herodians wondering how he wiggled out of yet another trap. Indeed, we are told “they were amazed.” But what does Jesus mean?

Instead of being “amazed,” people today often read this passage as very straightforward. Obviously, Jesus is talking about total separation of church and state, some say. But Jesus, nor any of his disciples, nor Matthew, nor anyone for whom Matthew was writing in the first century, had any idea of what we mean by “separation of church and state.” In their day, religion and government were one and the same. There was no separating them. So what was Jesus talking about?

Maybe he was making a point about what exactly belongs to God. Do worldly things matter to God? There is a lot riding on this question, because our world needs a lot of help. The Lancaster newspaper ran a front page story a few weeks ago about how over 10% of people in Lancaster County are now below the poverty line. That's a scary statistic, but how about this one – here in Lancaster City, over 26% of residents are living in poverty. We could also consider that there are 925 million people who are officially hungry in the world, a number which has actually risen in the last 10 years. We could pause and think about the fact that 30,000 children have died from hunger in just the last 3 months in East Africa, where they are experiencing the worst drought in 60 years. Or we could simply remember the community meal here on Thursday nights, where we've been feeding on average almost 200 people for the last several weeks. What does God have to do with all that?

So often, our religion is reduced to nothing more than getting into heaven and avoiding hell. You hear it on the airwaves, you see it on TV and in the religion best-sellers at the bookstore. But if we worship the God of Israel, the God revealed in this Bible, then we worship a God who cares about a lot more about the here and now than many would think. We worship a God who in the beginning created the heavens and the earth – all of it. We worship a God who rescued the Israelites from slavery and provided for them in every way – water from a rock in the desert, food called manna from the sky and judges and kings to protect them. This same God raised up prophets who spoke against unfair distribution of wealth and exploitation of the poor, and dreamed of a society in which “nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.” This same God became human in Jesus Christ and lived among us, feeding the hungry, healing the sick, and declaring the kingdom of God which is here and now.

Everything in creation, and everyone, belongs to God. This is the reality the Pharisees and Herodians might not have realized. We often miss it too. In baptism, God puts the cross, his stamp, on each of you, declaring that you belong to him alone. No government, no corporation, no person can claim ownership of you. On the cross, Christ guaranteed that your future and the future of all creation will be wrapped up in God's grace. We don't know all the details, but we can cling to the everlasting promise that the end of the story has already been written. God's love has won and we only wait for the completion of that victory. Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, alone is Lord of the world.

So where does the government come in, you might ask? The mistake is to look at God and government as equals when they are not. If Christ alone is Lord, then government is not – but that doesn't mean government is bad or not important. Our Lutheran tradition has always seen government as a gift of God for the purpose of helping us protect and provide for each other. Therefore, we ought to be good citizens, and yes, we ought to contribute our part in taxes to support that government. But we have to remember that our government is a tool, a means to the end of a just and peaceful society. Government must never be confused with God, and it must never become an object of worship. We must never think that we can make it perfect or that what's good for a particular leader or regime outweighs what's good for God's people somewhere. God and government are simply not the same thing – they're apples and oranges.

But since we know from the Bible that God hears the cries of the 26% of our neighbors living in poverty, and loves infinitely the 925 million hungry people on this planet, we know that God cares about government, and the economy, and the decisions that are made in Washington and on Wall Street. It's not that these worldly institutions have value in and of themselves, but that they impact the lives of God's people. They can either allow hunger and poverty to continue or begin to replace them with God's vision of justice. All of us, the baptized people of God, have been set free by Christ's death and resurrection so that we might serve our neighbors. One of the best ways we can serve our neighbors is to raise our voices to hold our political and economic structures accountable to the biblical vision of justice.

We can demand to know why the gap between the rich and poor is as high as it's ever been. We can proclaim that the federal budget is a moral document, and that the most important factor in decision-making should be what happens to the least and the lost among us. We can witness that our Lord desires a world in which swords are beaten into plowshares.

Today is World Hunger Day and this afternoon, people will gather at the Barnstormers stadium for the 39^th annual Lancaster CROP Walk. This event is organized by all different types of churches working together to bring about God's vision for a world without hunger. We won't end hunger this afternoon, but we will declare with one voice that God is on a mission to bring justice to his people, and that the way things have been going is not the way God wants them to be. Christ Lutheran will be hosting a rest stop on King Street right outside (and we could use your help with that!), and by welcoming our brothers and sisters as they walk by, we will be adding our witness to theirs. As Christ tells us in the gospel of John, we are a people in the world, but not of the world. By giving our time, our money, our talents and our hearts to serve others in this world, we give them back to the God to whom everything belongs, to whom we belong, and from whom all blessings flow. Amen.