20th Sunday after Trinity 2023 St. Andrew’s Milngavie
Today we welcome Abigail once again to play for us. After the service we held the AGM, thank you for supporting this and to everyone who played a part in the meeting.
This Week
Tuesday 10am – Prayer Group in the Garden Room
Thursday 10am – Said Holy Communion followed by coffee in Friendship House.
Readings for next Sunday – 21st Sunday after Trinity – Bible Sunday – Nehemiah 8:1-4,8-12 Colossians 3:12-17 Matthew 24:30-35
Today’s readings – Isaiah 45:1-7, 1 Thess 1:1-10, Matt 22:15-22
This year pound coins saw a new head on them, King Charles. It’s been over 70 years since this has occurred and it will seem strange to observe a coin without the head of our late queen on it. But then, of course, it seems strange to handle money at all these days.
A coin with the head of a ruler features in today’s bible passage. The coin was a denarius, a coin of the Roman Empire. The story starts with the Pharisees setting out deliberately to set a trap for Jesus by asking him if it is right to pay taxes to Caesar.
The question, as in this context, used as a weapon is one of the oldest techniques of argument. We hear it exercised to perfection frequently in the media. The art is to find a question to which there is no acceptable answer, so that any response simply digs the answerer into deeper and deeper trouble. This of course changes the whole nature and purpose of a question, since the point of most questions is to achieve an answer, with the assumption of the one asking the questions does not know the answer and is then, in some sense, dependent upon the one who does. But the point of the unanswerable question is to put the questioner in a position of power.
And this is what the Pharisees are trying to do by asking Jesus. “Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” Matt 22:17
Jesus knows that if he says that paying taxes to a pagan conqueror is permissible, they can denounce him as spiritually unworthy, someone who does not respect the higher authority of God. However, he also knows if he says that paying taxes is not permissible, the Roman occupiers could intervene and arrest him for inciting a revolt. So, Jesus must come up with a clever response but his reply to the question is more than just an intellectual get out remark, it is a profound comment on the relationship between the physical and the spiritual.
“Give to Caesar’s the things that are Caesar’s And to God the things that are God’s” says Jesus. Matt 22:21
Here Jesus urges us to give due attention to the secular and the material and proper attention to the sacred and spiritual in their turn. He does not suggest that we attempt to divide the two and to live entirely in the physical or completely in the spiritual domain, like a hermit. Rather Jesus warns that as human beings with bodies and souls we cannot afford to disregard either. To do so risks either the emptiness of our souls or at the other extreme neglect of our bodily requirements.
The Pharisees seem to have fallen into a trap of attempting to divide the physical from the spiritual, as we often do.
But the temptation to compartmentalise our lives into physical or spiritual is strong, work and home can become a purely physical realm where money is earned, and tasks carried out without consideration of the other dimensions of our faith which might apply. We can mistakenly imagine God is not interested in this aspect of our lives or in the mundane household business of living.
Jesus reminds us that God is interested in all that we do, asking us to deal wisely and thoughtfully with the material as well as the spiritual aspects of life. God wants us to pray and worship but he also cares about how and where we spend our money and how we go about earning it.
When Jesus challenges us to give back to God the things that we owe God, there is something about this being much more than anything we can do or say or be. Giving back to God is not a lifestyle of servitude and asceticism. It’s about giving our heart and soul to God. In the same way we might consider what we may want from those who love us and it’s for them to love us too.
Jesus had his conversation with the disciples of the pharisees and the Herodians in the final days before he was to be arrested and killed. Many people had seen him at work and heard his teaching, they had recognised God in Jesus, and their lives were changed.
It is because of Jesus that we too can recognise God in the world. And it is because of him that God’s image can become more recognisable in our lives and as we live filled with his Spirit, others therefore can recognise God alive in us.
All of us.
Two points we can learn from this exchange, firstly how do we hold in tension the secular and the divine aspects of our life, neither being mutually exclusive? and secondly having received the gift of faith, how then do we give back to God?
These are questions we might consider when we reflect on the life of our church at the AGM this morning.