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Sermon 366 St. Martin’s 122 (Big Church) 10/20/24
Later they sent some of the Pharisees and Herodians to Jesus to catch him in his words. They came to him and said, “Teacher, we know that you are a man of integrity. You aren’t swayed by others, because you pay no attention to who they are; but you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not? Should we pay or shouldn’t we?”
But Jesus knew their hypocrisy. “Why are you trying to trap me?” he asked. “Bring me a denarius and let me look at it.” They brought the coin, and he asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?”
“Caesar’s,” they replied.
Then Jesus said to them, “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”
And they were amazed at him.
Mark 12:13-17
Church in the Field
It is rare that I am left speechless. Just ask my wife.
Earlier this month I went with a group from St. Martin’s to Church in the Field which is a ministry that serves low-income and housing insecure folks in Houston.
It’s a great ministry. They offer worship and dinner every night of the week, rain or shine. Talk about a faithful presence in a community.
When we go once a month, we usually do a short communion service for the 30 or 40 people there. At the end of the service, the director of the ministry usually says a few words and then he takes up an offering.
This is a church after all, and you know how churches go: where two or three are gathered in his name, an offering with be collected.
I’ve always thought it a little odd that Church in the Field takes up a collection. Here we are in an abandoned field. Most of these folks have been walking around the streets all day or working at a very low-paying job; they have come out to hear a good word preached and get a meal before it’s too dark.
Lord knows that ministry does not have a huge savings account, but do they really need to be asking for what little these people already have?
As I sat there, being my typical “I know better,” somewhat judgmental self, I began to watch as a handful of men and women got up from their metal folding chairs and walked to the front to add their few coins or dollars into the offering bag.
It struck me what an act of faith that was for a group of people who honestly don’t have much to spare.
And then the leader said, “Now sometimes we have money to give and sometimes we don’t. And if you can’t give tonight, come up and at least touch this offering bag as an act of trust that God will provide and when you can, you’ll give to his work in this place.”
It took a second, but then a few of them walked up and touched the bag, eyes looking at the ground, possibly embarrassed they didn’t have anything else to give, but they got up anyway to make that promise in front of everyone.
The only thing they could give that day was themselves; their presence and their promise…that would have to be enough, and it was actually more than enough. There are moments in life when you behold something—something beautiful that is happening right in front of you—that the participants are not always aware of if—and it’s as if the Gospel is on full display. The veil has been lifted, and like Jacob, we say, “Surely God is in this place and I did not know it.”[i] So subtle and yet so grand, if only you catch it in time.
Mark 12 As I sat there, the story of the widow’s mite came to mind, but so did our passage from Mark 12 this morning. A denarius was a Roman coin, used throughout the empire. For the Average Joe in Galilee, you could bank on getting one denarius at the end of a hard day’s work.
But there was one small issue if you were a faithful Jew at that time. Stamped on the coin was the image of a man’s face, and letters that read: “Tiberius Caesar Augustus, Son of the Divine Augustus.” And on the back, it said, “Pontifex Maximus” (which means: High Priest).
Tiberius was then king and priest of the Roman empire, and at his death, he could be confident that he’d be proclaimed a god—at least that’s what they had done for his stepfather, Augustus when he died. Until then, Tiberius would have to settle for the title: Son of god.
When Jesus asked the Pharisees and Herodians whose head (meaning whose image/icon) had been pressed into this coin, it was a complicated question. A son or daughter of Abraham shouldn’t have any graven images of foreign gods rattling around in their pockets.
But this is how you bought your daily bread and paid those steep Roman taxes—either you used a denarius or…well…there were going to be consequences.
You see, it was commonly understood that whoever’s image was on the coin actually owned the coin. In the process of taxation, Tiberius was simply asking for a portion of the coins that were all ultimately his. His image. His coin.
And so what did Jesus mean when he said, “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and give to God what is God’s”? I know what is Caesar’s because it has his face on it. What really belongs to God?
God’s Possession The Bible seems to offer a convincing answer: Genesis tells us that God created all there is; Job is reminded personally by God that it is he who set the limits to the seas, gave orders to the morning, provides horses with their strength, and lions and ravens their food. The psalmist tells us that God knits each of us in our mother’s womb, and there is nowhere we can flee from his Spirit: ascend to heaven, descend to the depths, God is there.[ii] So, Scripture gives us a broad sense of God’s expansive estate.
The Doxology that we sing before the Eucharistic prayer goes: “Praise God from whom all blessings flow!” All blessings—every one of them are from God. And because he created it all, he owns it all.
The Pharisees and Herodians would have been all on board for that. They were adamant that there was one God and he created all things. But they would have never expected that the man they came to trap with this question was the icon of the one true God.
Again, Paul said of Jesus, “He is the image [He is the icon] of the invisible God.” It’s the same word used for Tiberius on the coin. Whose appearance is stamped on this coin? Whose image is stamped on creation?
If this was an old Western Jesus would’ve flipped that coin back to the Pharisees and said, “Go ahead and give that fella Tiberius his little coin back if that makes him feel better, cause look in any direction—it’s all mine.”
That coin had been marked with the emperor’s image; it was rightfully the emperor’s…but what has God marked as his own? What has he laid claim to?
Wax Seals Around Christmas, there’s a parishioner here at St. Martin’s who will write me a note, and they will use a wax seal on the back of their envelope. The notes are always kind, but I’m equally excited about which seal they’ve chosen. People just don’t use wax seals like they used to—it’s an added touch—but we don’t write notes like we used to either.
The early Church Fathers likened our souls to wax. When wax is warmed it becomes malleable and takes on the impression of whatever is stamped upon it. We are more impressionable than we sometimes like to admit.
But the Church Fathers continued by talking about an instrument called a khar-ak-tare'[iv] that would be used to make the impression on the wax.[v] This khar-ak-tare' would be the image sealed into the wax. Believe it or not, it’s from this Greek word that we get the word character.[vi]
Our soul will take on the shape of whatever character we allow to be impressed upon us. We are wax being formed in the image of whatever we truly love. No wonder the church says things like, “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ’s own forever.”
You have been marked. Each of us has been claimed by the true Son of God as his own. Not only is “all this” his, but you are his just as I am his. Through Jesus’ death and resurrection, he has claimed each of us, and we have united ourselves to him through faith and baptism.
What does that mean for us and how we navigate this world? A world that desperately wants to impress us with another image. Honestly, any image but God’s.
Well, it begins with the realization that everything is God’s possession, everything from the grandest galaxy to each electron pulsating through our bodies. It’s not ours to begin with. All is God’s and because we are God’s possession—and inheritors of his kingdom— in some strange way everything is ours.
But we can let that get to our heads if we focus on “everything is ours” rather than starting with “everything is God’s.” The story of Adam and Eve is a cautionary tale of children who are given a brand-new Ferrari and think they can drive it without any guidance or guard rails. It didn’t take them long to end up in a ditch in need of being rescued.
Everything was theirs’…if only they trusted God. Instead, they let the serpent stamp his mark of fear, jealousy, and pride onto their souls. It’s a mark that has haunted us ever since. It’s a fear that there is never enough—you have yours and I have mine.
But when looking at our life and our faith we shouldn’t begin from a place of scarcity or lack. Actually, we should think in terms of great abundance. It’s not what you have but whose you are that informs how a Christian goes about their life.
The inheritance we are set to receive is unfathomable because everything is God’s and we are God’s possession—sealed by Jesus’ cross—and so…everything is ours.
When we come to embrace this, and live with this freedom, we are taken up into the life of the Holy Trinity where there is no taking, only giving a gift that never gives out. The well does not run dry, the tank never gets empty; there is only more and more and more.
The mark of a Trinitarian-inspired life is one that gives, knowing there is always more. The storehouses of heaven have yet to run low.
And you know, I think that’s why those folks at Church in the Field could walk in front of everyone and touch the offering bag even if they didn’t have anything else to give. In that abandoned field, all they could give was themselves, knowing that the circumstances may not show it right now, but everything is God’s and they are God’s possession and so, everything is there’s.
When you look around at the people in this place, the beauty that surrounds us; let alone the people in our community and in this city, whose image do you see? “Sealed by the Holy Spirit. Marked as Christ’s own.”
And so, I say the same to you: Everything is God’s, and you are God’s beloved possession thus everything is yours.
[i] Genesis 28:16
[ii] Psalm 139
[iii] Romans 11:36, NRSVUE.
[iv] χαρακτήρ
[vi] Context Matters Podcast: What Shapes Your Imagination? With Dr. Lanta Davis 9/26/24. S8 E1.
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