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This week's gospel was about Jesus' answer to a tricky question posed by his opponents: whether taxes should be paid to Rome. If he said, "No" the Romans would have arrested him for sedition. If he said, "Yes" he would have been supporting a government viewed as unjust and oppressive. Either way he was going to get denounced and hauled off, either by soldiers or an angry mob. Instead he told people to "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's". Faced with a seemingly impossible situation Jesus reminds us to distinguish between that which is temporary and that which is eternal.
This applied directly to the Pharisees and their followers who saw Jesus only as a threat to their way of life and not as the Son of God. They came to him assuming their mindset and worldview were correct. They saw only the God who supported them and their prerogatives. They failed to realize that even if their assumptions were valid and made sense in the moment, they were temporary, a product of their culture and convenience. By stubbornly holding to their assumptions they missed--indeed, made an enemy of--God. This happens every time we elevate our own attributes to the level of the Godly, claiming God is on our side instead of being on his. Jesus embodied the eternal, not only by being God's Son but by holding on to the tenets of grace and goodness which the Pharisees, sadly, had lost sight of because those tenets didn't appear to support their power and position.
The ramifications this gospel holds for our church life are profound. I'm going to illuminate just one here: Just because something works in a church environment doesn't automatically mean it's faithful.
We tend to judge churches with Caesar-like criteria: what's efficient, what brings the best desired result, what supports the status quo and creates the fewest waves. Like the Pharisees, the church tends to define its own existence as the highest good and everything else as subservient. When asked what things are needed for continued health most churches will respond with some variation of, "Money, membership, and a comfortable experience." You'll hear some claiming a church needs to be run like a business to keep the cash flow positive. You'll hear others claiming a church needs to operate like a family where everybody agrees and toes the line. Seldom do we define our health by the eternal presence of God. That's just a given, right? After all, we're a church. Where else would God possibly hang out? Caesar rules. Caesar guides our decision making process. God just comes along for the ride.
As a result most churches end up with a variation of this story: A few people are defined as "leaders". Those leaders define the important tasks of the church. The leaders also define how those tasks will be done. Not so coincidentally, that definition of "how" looks exactly like the leaders themselves do things. Therefore nobody else but the leaders are fit to perform the task. Thus nobody else is ever qualified to be a leader and the same people retain the power in "their" church forever no matter what office (if any) they hold or who else comes and goes. The church becomes enmeshed by Caesar-like details, unimportant and optional procedures become mandatory, grace and spirit take a backseat to preservation and convenience. It works! Everything runs smoothly. But it's not what we were called to be.
One of the most valuable faith disciplines in any church is the ability to differentiate between Caesar's convenience and God's grace. Does it matter how we light the candles, what robes we wear, who gets to choose the carpet color, what Sunday the Christmas tree goes up, or even if we have one at all? It could, but these are not eternal mandates. If somebody wants to lead us in a different direction--finds grace and God in different music, different decorations, or a different procedure--they should be able to express that and we should be willing to follow. A church's identity doesn't rest in how zealously it defends its practices, rather how adeptly it can express an eternal God in all of the different ways he manifests himself. Our directions to leaders should not be, "Lead, as long as it's this way" but, "Lead, as long as it's God's way".
Even while generally being smart in the ways of business, a church will sometimes need to make decisions that don't make good business sense but do make good gospel sense. Even while generally favoring peace among us, sometimes we need to take the rockier road to get to the better destination. Even while loving our traditions, we need to be ready to change them in order to hear a new and inspired voice. We continue to render to Caesar what is necessary--realizing that most of the time practical details and grace overlap--but when forced into a choice we value God higher. When push comes to shove that's the dividing line between a disciple and a Pharisee.
--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)
