Politics and religion do mix. This is true whether we like it or not. And it’s true for two reasons:
Reason one: the mixture of politics and religion is inevitable. They will always be intertwined. Religion deals with ultimate human questions, the big ones, questions like “what does suffering mean?” or “what does death mean?” or “what is our relationship with money?” or “should we choose mercy or justice?” or better: “can we have both mercy and justice?” or even better: “can we even have justice without mercy?” … and so on. All of these questions will carry us into the political sphere. Polis: a root word that means people. Politics is about people; religion is about God and God’s people. Politics and religion: to speak of one is to speak of the other.
Reason two why politics and religion mix: it would be inexcusably bad if they did not. Pick your religion: Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, dozens more … or pick none: agnostic, atheist. No matter what your take is on the big questions, you are making a claim about what’s important. You are an ethical, thinking, feeling human being, and whether your involvement in politics touches every corner of your life, or you’re just an infrequent and distracted voter, your take on religion, spirituality, and ultimate meaning is going to come right along with you, no matter what you do, or what you choose not to do.
And our religion, which is Episcopal Christian, a branch of the Anglican river system — our religion pretty much pushes us into the public square. Our baptismal identity compels us to join conversations with others about what government should be like, what schools and cities and the countryside should be like, what freedoms humans should enjoy, what we should do when my freedom clashes with yours, what role gender should play in how we organize our society, what we should do about systemic racism, and so on.
Our religion demands — no, God in Jesus demands — that we enter the fray. Our religion cannot exclusively be about a faraway heaven. And even if it were, even that religion would have an effect — and probably a negative one — on the political world around us.
So, to sum up, our religion pushes us into politics. And God likes it that way.
“Show me the coin used for the tax,” Jesus says today, revealing the hypocrisy of his opponents: they were trying to trap him for collaborating with the empire, even as they carried around with them the coins of the realm. Jesus lives in a world of politics, a world with minted coins in the pockets of political opponents.
They had tried to set a trap for him: if Jesus says it is lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, they can charge him with supporting the emperor’s god-like status, because paying taxes to the Roman Empire isn’t a simple matter of parting with some of your money: it is also a signal that you support the emperor’s claim to be a god. If you are a Jewish person in first-century Palestine and you pay your taxes, you will be hard-pressed to demonstrate that you truly do worship one God, the God of Israel. In our own time, this looks like the adoration some of our fellow citizens show for one or the other presidential candidate. It’s a form of idolatry. They want to catch Jesus mixing politics and religion in an idolatrous way.
But … if Jesus says it is not lawful to pay Roman taxes, well, he’ll be in hot water with the regional Roman-backed government. Either answer could get him in big trouble.
So Jesus gives a “yes, and” response, and skillfully evades the trap. Yes, pay your taxes. And, worship the God of Israel alone. But this exchange is told so briefly! The scene is barely sketched, and it can be hard for us to understand why the response Jesus gives is so devastating, so effective.
Let’s unpack it a bit.
To open it up, I invite you to turn to Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians. It is probably the oldest “book” of the New Testament, the earliest letter, written years before the first Gospel was written down. We heard its opening paragraphs today. Maybe they didn’t seem all that inspiring: it’s the heading of a letter, naming the person writing it. He greets them, blesses them, and basically tells them how wonderful they are. What’s so interesting about that?
But notice this phrase: “For we know, brothers and sisters beloved by God…” Brothers and sisters beloved by God… Paul calls the Thessalonians “brothers and sisters.” (In the Greek he only says “brothers,” but the English language doesn’t capture Paul’s expansive meaning of that word — he is speaking to women and men, both. So we rightly add “sisters.”) And Paul can’t stop talking about love: the bonds of affection and love that join that community, and keep them tethered to Paul — these bonds are created and held by God, who loves them all so much. And we read this letter because God loves us, too. God creates us and holds us together. “We are a family,” Paul seems to be saying. And he keeps coming back to this, throughout the letter. “Brothers and sisters,” we hear, over and over.
When we hold this letter next to the little encounter Jesus has with the Pharisees, it can shed some light on things. “Render to God the things that are God’s,” Jesus says. Paul opens that up: to render things to God means to be a loving family together. Caesar wants your tax payment; God wants you to be a loving family. Caesar wants your loyalty and obedience; God wants you to love one another as you would a sibling.
Family: that’s who brings you to church for your baptism, and teaches you your values, and tells you who you are.
Family: that’s who rushes to the hospital when you’re in the ICU and things are touch and go.
Family: that’s who tells the doctors what to do, and if you die, that’s who carries out your wishes, and cares for your widow or widower, and remembers you with love.
So basically it works like this: pay your taxes, vote, participate in our democracy, be good neighbors, practice sound ethics in the public square. All of that is what we “render to Caesar.” Then, come to church to worship God, and to be a family. I have always had a bunch of siblings in my family of origin, but you, all of you at Grace, you are my family too, in Baptism. So it’s not just my job to care about you, and pray with you, and ask your forgiveness when I make a mistake, and listen to you, and in general be one of your priests. I do these things because I am your sibling in Christ. We are family.
Now, there are some complications with all of this, as I am sure some of you have already been thinking. Family can cut both ways, am I right? Family can be where abuse happens. Families can be torn apart by conflict. Some of my queer friends have been harshly rejected by their families of origin, and by their churches. (Church families have a rap sheet, too.) Families can be the place where people really get hurt.
Even the phrase “sisters and brothers” is complicated in our era, when we are discovering more and more about gender diversity, and the limits, and even grave dangers, of binary thinking. And then there’s racial injustice: too often, “family” in church looks a lot like people sorting themselves into insiders and outsiders, with all the insiders looking and behaving alike.
So it’s messy, like all families are, and it’s not very safe, or very easy. “Render to God the things that are God’s” is a command we still struggle to understand, let alone follow, twenty centuries after Jesus first said it.
And so I propose this to you, my siblings, beloved by God: I propose that we take on this hard work of building a healthy family together for the sake of those who are outside our family. Let’s do this for them: for other families, other faiths, other communities. Let’s be a good and loving family so that we can interact better, and just generally behave better, out there in the public square, where people from all the different families come together to teach children, to vote, to care for those who are sick, to build and drive on roads, to restore rivers and forests, to secure equality and fundamental human rights, and so much more. Let’s be a good family for their sake.
When we love one another, forgive one another, and share God’s love together, as a family, the whole world gets better. It’s not about making the whole world Christian! God is bigger than that, and so is the concept of “family.” It’s just about making the world better, this world, the world around us that is so beautiful, and so beloved of God, and so deeply torn and troubled.
My siblings in Christ, I love you. I try to show that love in my words and actions with you, and in what I do when my words and actions don’t do justice to the love I have for you. This is our shared calling, our shared identity, marked on our very bodies by God:
We are a family.
***
Preached on Sunday, October 18, 2020 (Proper 24A), at Grace Episcopal Church, Bainbridge Island, Washington.
Isaiah 45:1-7
Psalm 96:1-9
1 Thessalonians 1:1-10
Matthew 22:15-22
Art: Fresco, the Holy Eucharist, on the wall of the Catacombs of Santa Priscilla, outside Rome. (Note: is the person in the center, breaking the bread, a woman? Go here for more.)