Yes, many preachers would make today’s Gospel all about the importance of giving your money to the church. Others might line Jesus up behind a political agenda of unquestioning obedience to ruling authorities. Still others might portray Jesus as a rebel who urges us to withdraw from worldly matters entirely.
I’m not going to do any of those things today, though. I’m persuaded that Jesus’ response to the Jewish leaders goes beyond our neat boxes—whether they are boxes around church finances or around the separation of church and state. Jesus’ response is meant to do more than just make the preacher squirm today. It is meant to make us all squirm, just as he discombobulated the clever Pharisees and Herodians who put him to the test.
In Jesus’ day, the Jewish people lived in an occupied land and paid a heavy tax burden to the Roman Empire, to a regime they both feared and despised. On the coins that they used daily to buy the necessities of life, they were constantly brought face to face with the symbol of this hated power: On one side, they saw the face of Tiberius Caesar, “son of the divine Augustus.” On the other side, they saw his mother Livia, the divine “high priestess” of Rome.[1] These coins were therefore blasphemous objects for the Jews, examples of the idolatry that God forbids in the commandments. Jesus cleverly gets one of his questioners to pull out one of these Roman denarii from his own pocket. Right there in God’s Holy Temple, he shows the coin to Jesus and proves himself a hypocrite, part of the Roman system. And then, instead of answering the men, Jesus cleverly evades their question. In his response, he refuses to take sides. “To whom do you and your lives belong?” he pushes the crowd to ask themselves, “to the emperor, or to God?”
To whom do we and our lives belong?
I asked myself this week, what pervasive and inescapably oppressive power marks my days, like the Empire ruled the lives of first-century Jews. It didn’t take me long to find the answer. I would have to say that it is Covid-19. Right? The Pandemic follows us relentlessly everywhere we turn; it affects our relationships with other people, with God, with our work, with our schools, with our parish. It threatens our economy, our very way of life. It makes us feel helpless and out of control. Moving out here this past month, the Pandemic loomed behind every plan, dogged every step. “Did you wash your hands?” became our family refrain. Covid-19 looms behind our joys and threatens so much that we value, even our very lives. I can finally begin to understand the pervasive fear and trauma that the Empire brought to the lives of Jesus and his people.
So—this realization made me think. What if a bunch of Democrats and Republicans, intent on finding out whose side Jesus is really on, corner him one day in front of St. Ambrose. Trying to draw him into controversy, they ask, “Should we close schools, churches, and our economy down for Covid-19, or just go about business as usual?”
Jesus,
aware of their malice, answers, “Why are you putting me to the test, you
hypocrites? Give me one of your masks.” One of the men had posted on social
media that Christians didn’t need to wear masks or take precautions. Without
thinking, though, this very man pulls out a well-worn mask from his pocket and
hands it to Jesus. Then Jesus points to the purple-spiked microbe decorating the
front of the mask and asks, “What is this?”
“A Corona Virus,” they all reply.
Jesus then says to them, “Close down, therefore, the things that spread the Corona Virus, and open the things that spread the love of God.”
Careful! Please don’t fall into the trap in which Jesus wraps this response! This is not an answer to the question. Neither my imaginary Jesus nor I are saying that churches and economies should throw caution to the wind and open up so that they can “spread the love of God.” What I’m trying to illustrate here is that Jesus’ “answer” is not a plan of action: it is a riddle to ponder. It is a response that is meant to re-focus our attention on our loving God, on the true power and breath of life in this world. Jesus’ re-framing asks us today: “In the midst of the pervasive fear and loss of agency that this powerful Pandemic brings us, how can we stay open to God’s even more powerful and pervasive love? How can we participate in bringing God’s continuous breath of life into this suffocating Pandemic world?”
I invite us to ponder that question over the coming months. I have already seen, dear people of St. Ambrose, that this parish is a place filled with God’s powerful, life-giving Spirit. This is a place that is ready and able to spread the powerful love of God in new ways, even while the virus rages around us. I have already seen how you have been given the kind of faith, love, and steadfast hope that Paul describes among the persecuted little body of Christians in Thessalonica. Like St. Paul, I have heard the people of this region report what kind of welcome they have had among you. My husband Don and I have experienced that welcome ourselves already—with the amazing baskets of gifts and photos that I found on my desk! I have seen how you imitate one another in love and kindness. In what will certainly be trying months to come, I pray that we will consider together Jesus’ call: the call to focus on the Life and Truth found only in our one true God. I pray that we will continue to move forward in the steadfast hope that God provides for us in Jesus, our healer and our guide.
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