Living in Two Kingdoms
Matthew 22:15-22
Georgetown Presbyterian Church
Rev. Stephen H. Wilkins
October 16, 2005
I need to say something about the sermon title printed in the bulletin. I submitted that title on Wednesday; since then, I have changed the focus of the sermon, so today’s sermon won’t really touch on the issue of God’s political party. Hear now the word of God as it comes to us in the Gospel of Matthew, the 22nd chapter, beginning to read in the 15th verse. . .
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Two women were walking around a somewhat overcrowded English country cemetery, and they came upon a tombstone that had this inscription: Here lies John Smith, a politician and an honest man. "Good heavens!" said one woman to the other. "Isn’t it awful that they had to put two people in the same grave?"
A carpenter, a preacher, and a politician die and go to heaven. They are met at the pearly gates by St. Peter. Peter tells them that he can’t let them in because the gate is broken. "That’s no problem," says the carpenter. "I’ll fix the gate for $10—five dollars for the parts, and five dollars for my work."
The preacher then chimes in, "I can do it for $10, too—five dollars for the parts, and five dollars to give to the hungry."
Then the politician pulls Peter aside and says, "I can do it for $110—fifty dollars for you, fifty for me, and then I’ll get the carpenter to do it for $10."
Certainly there’s an uneasy relationship between church and politics. From the pledge of allegiance, to the ten commandments, to prayer before football games, to the words "In God We Trust" on our currency, the battle to remove God from the public sector goes on continually. As soon as one battle seems settled, another battle erupts elsewhere.
Just last week there was an article in the paper about the City Council in Anderson. It had to do with people using the name of Jesus in the prayers that open council meetings. I was at a meeting the other day where Georgetown Mayor Lynn Wilson said that a number of city councils in the area have been put on notice by the ACLU for similar issues.
There has always been a less-than-ideal relationship between government and religion. Certainly that was the case in Jesus’ day, when the Romans occupied Israel. There was a good deal of tension between the Jews and the Roman authorities. The Romans not only occupied the territory with their army, but they also levied taxes on the people, a matter of great resentment. It was a great insult to those who worshiped the God of Israel that Jerusalem would be ruled by a foreign power. The Jewish religious authorities considered it a disaster that any authority other than Yahweh would wield power over Israel. And the issue of taxation not only has political implications, but religious ones, as well, for by giving money to Caesar they were supporting the idolatrous religious system of Rome.
The trap is then set for Jesus: If he answers that the tax ought to be paid, then he runs the risk of alienating himself from the masses who oppose the tax and resent the Romans; if, on the other hand, he answers that the tax ought not be paid, he then is guilty of encouraging rebellion against the state. They demand from Jesus an either-or answer to a question that defies that kind of exclusivity.
Paying taxes and obedience to God aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. Jesus understood that, and he refused to fall for the trap set by the questioners. And so he gives one of those classic one-liner answers that virtually anybody can quote today: Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and unto God that which is God’s.
It’s a brilliant response to evade the trap. Only, he doesn’t really get rid of the tension that the question addresses, does he? You see, it might be possible to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, AND give unto God that which is God’s, but how do you handle it when it seems that the claims of God and Caesar conflict with each other?
Jesus’ answer goes much deeper than the issue of church versus state; it does apply to the church-state debate, but it also goes well beyond that. Jesus’ answer underscores the reality that as the people of God we really live in two kingdoms, and sometimes it’s hard to separate our loyalty to one from our loyalty to the other. The fact is, it’s a pretty gray world, with very little black and white. We live our lives pulled between the conflicting claims of the kingdom of this world and the kingdom of God. You can’t avoid the conflict. "Maybe the need to put bread on your table might lead you to be silent in the face of tainted business practices, even though your personal moral code, shaped by the Christian faith, conflicts with it. Teenagers may waver between loyalty to family and the pressure of peers with conflicting moral standards. People are torn between life-threatening addictions and the knowledge that those addictions threaten their health and well-being." The tension is there, and Jesus’ answer doesn’t eliminate it for us.
But by his answer he does remind us that there is a priority, that in a world that wholly belongs to God, then we render unto Caesar only within, or subordinate to, the rendering of ourselves to God. We address the claims of the world only as a part of our submitting to the claims of God. Our rendering unto God does have priority over rendering unto Caesar.
In my mind, we run afoul with the tension between God and Caesar --between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of this world -- when we do one of three things. We go astray when we try to create an artificial separation between God and Caesar, as if they existed in independent spheres. We go astray when we try to blend the two in such a way that there is no distinction between the realm of God and the realm of Caesar. And we go astray when we withhold, both from Caesar and from God.
Some people try to pit Christ against the prevailing culture in an adversarial stance. In their view, everything in culture is antithetical to Christ. Earthly political authority is to be shunned, military service is to be avoided. The world is bad, and Christ is good. The Amish might fall into this worldview. The ACLU would certainly support the extreme separation of the two.
American politicians profess to be able to separate their faith from their politics, only to discover that it’s impossible to do so. When John F. Kennedy was running for President, people were concerned about the role his Roman Catholic faith would play in his presidency. He promised that his faith wouldn’t make a difference in his presidency. The same came up when Jimmy Carter ran as a born-again Southern Baptist (who also admitted to having lust in his heart); he promised that "he would govern just like a person who had never set foot in a church. . ."
But the reality is, it’s impossible to separate your faith from who you are. It’s artificial to say that you can keep your beliefs and your public life separate, as if you can turn one off and the other on.
We also get into trouble when we try to harmonize Christ and our culture to such an extent that there is no distinction between Christ and culture. Christ accommodates himself to culture. What happens is that people seek to resolve the tension between God and Caesar by so blending the two that you can’t tell one from the other. The problem here is twofold: The authority of God is usurped and co-opted by the culture, and the culture or the state ends up being the entity that defines good and evil, moral and immoral, instead of vice-versa. Hitler’s Germany was an example of an instance in which Caesar co-opted the authority of God. Hitler forced the church in Germany to go along with his agenda. The result was that the church served to validate Hitler’s mandates. The word of Hitler became the word of God.
In a democracy such as ours, where there is a somewhat tolerant and cozy relationship between the church and the world, the church’s agenda and theology ends up being more defined by the world’s ideologies, when it should be the other way around. Instead of taking the gospel and using it as an agent of transformation of the world, the church ends up being conformed to the world. It’s easy to blend God into Caesar so that Caesar ends up becoming God.
Give unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.
The fact of the matter is, it’s tempting to think that everything we have is ours, and so we resent the claim of the government on things we consider ours. Yet we forget that Paul describes the government as God’s servant for our well-being. To show respect for government is to show respect for the order of God’s world. There’s an important distinction that Jesus makes, and it isn’t clear in the English translations. Jesus uses a verb that means "Give back to Caesar," which implies that Caesar has already given to us. In other words, the state that provides for protection and basic services is due something in return. "Giving back" to Caesar is part of our discipleship.
The verb "giving back" also applies to what we owe to God. In a way, it’s easier to pay our taxes than it is to give to God that which belongs to God. After all, the IRS will gladly tell you how much you owe to Caesar. But how do you appropriately give to God what is God’s? The coin that the Pharisees gave to Jesus bore the image of Caesar, meaning that it belonged to Caesar. But giving back to God is more than a matter of dollars and cents. You see, you and I bear the image of the God who created us and to whom we belong. How do we render unto God everything that belongs to God, when we ourselves belong to God, body and soul?
It’s a good question to ask as we move into stewardship season, because it is a stewardship question. It’s a lifestyle question. It’s a discipleship question. Jesus’ answer to the Pharisees is a reminder that all of life is to be lived out as a debt of gratitude that we owe to God for the life he has given us. Every day is to be a giving back. Every day, as we wake up, our prayer ought to be, "Thank you, God, that I am awake. Thank you for this new day you have given to me. Let everything I do, everything I say, even everything I think be a gift to you. I am so grateful for the life you have given me. Let me live my life so that this day is a day I give back to you." For you see, if you’re going to render unto God that which is God’s, you’d better not hold anything back, because it’s all his in the first place.
Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and to God that which is God’s. It’s not an easy balance to live in our lives. It forces us to think through every decision, every action. Elsewhere Jesus gives us another command that helps us prioritize our lives in such a way that faithfulness to the dual command to render to both God and Caesar will be a little less difficult: Seek first the Kingdom of God, and his righteousness. . .
Seek first the Kingdom of God.
Render unto Caesar.
Render unto God.
That about covers it all, doesn’t it?