(Delayed posting)Listen here
Sermon Preached at
St. Aidan’s Michigan Center, MI
October 22, 2017 Proper 24A
20th Sunday After Pentecost
The Rev. Vicki K. Hesse, Director of Whitaker Institute
Episcopal Diocese of Michigan
For readings click here
I speak to you in the name of one God
Source of all being, incarnate Word and Holy
Spirit. Amen
Good
morning! My name is the Rev. Vicki Hesse
and I
bring greetings from the Diocese of Michigan
in my
new role as the Director of the Whitaker Institute.
The
Whitaker Institute is the teaching arm –
the Christian formation department - of
the Bishop’s office.
How many
of you have participated in a Whitaker program?
Our
vision is to provide learning opportunities,
beyond
what individual parishes can,
in developing
and forming disciples
who do
God’s work in the world.
Whitaker
offers three main programs:
First,
Academy for Vocational Leadership –
a
monthly “weekend” seminary run collaboratively with
Dio E
Mich and Dio W Mich.
The
Academy provides theological training
for
people seeking ordination (deacons and priests)
with
Saturday bible, history and theology classes
open to
anyone who wants to learn more.
Second,
Exploring Your Spiritual Journey – EYSJ
a
twice-monthly circle of people
listening
with the ear of their heart
how God
is calling them to serve in the world.
Third,
Safeguarding courses –
regular
courses designed to teach church ministers (lay and ordained) about protecting
the safety and dignity
of
children and vulnerable adults.
Whitaker
offers other enrichment courses
that
arise through commonly expressed needs –
such as
the Epiphanies Conferences
a
speaker series for church geeks
who love
to wrestle with meaty theological topics
OR
Such as
pilgrimage to provocative places
for
people seeking to refuel their spiritual life,
such as
the Holy Land tour offered
last
November (and will again in 2019).
All
these programs are supported by scholarships so that money is never a stumbling
block to participation in learning.
I would
like to thank David Hite, Sr. Warden,
for
inviting me here today to be with you
and to
worship God together.
~~~~~~
Today
is the National Observance of Children’s Sabbath-[1]
A day
to join other faith communities
in
commitment to care, to protect and
to advocate
for all children.
A day
to learn from children about God.
Several
years ago, I heard this story of
a
three-year-old girl,
firstborn
and only child in her family.
When
her mother became pregnant again,
the
little girl was very excited
about
having a new sibling.
Within
a few hours of her parents
bringing
a new baby boy home from the hospital,
the girl
made a request:
she
wanted to be alone with her new brother
in his
room / with the door shut.
This made
her parents a bit uneasy,
but
they had an intercom system
so, they
listened in from another room.
There
they heard their three-year-old daughter
pleading
with her three-day-old brother:
“Tell me about God,”
She
said,
“I’ve
almost forgotten.”[2]
This
“haunting and evocative” story suggests
that
while we know
we come
from God early in life,
we
somehow, eventually forget.
We know
this from our own experience
and we
know this from a research study
asking young
people the question
“Have you at times felt that God is
particularly close to you?”
The
study found diminished recall:
84% of 1st
graders said “yes”,
Only
47% of 11th graders said yes… less than half.[3]
This is
not just a modern phenomenon.
For in
today’s Gospel,
Jesus’ response
to the entrapment question
suggests
that his opponents
might
have forgotten about God.
Jesus
listened with the ear of his heart to the
“the
question behind the question”
that his
opponents ask –
something
like the 3-year old’s plea,
“Tell us about God – we’ve almost forgotten.”
The Pharisees
in this case
took
initiative to conspire with the Herodians.
These
strange bedfellows cooperated
only
because of their mutual desire
to remove
Jesus.
So they
asked the now-famous question:
“Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor or
not?”
We can
learn something from the context of the time:
See, the
Pharisees were committed
to
every detail of the Jewish law.
They
resented and resisted
the
“census” or “head” tax that
Rome
had imposed on Judea -
not
only for the occupation the tax represented,
but
also because the tax could only be paid
with a
coin minted by Rome.
The
coin itself had this inscription,
“…Tiberius Caesar,
august son of divine Augustus, high
priest,”[4]
thus violating
the first and second commandments:
the
ones about having “no other gods” and
having
“no graven images...”.
Then we
have the Herodians,
followers
of Herod Antipas, Governor and
ruler
of that region.
The
Herodians, needless to say,
supported
paying the tax to Caesar.
So the
plot thickens, as we know:
*The Pharisees
hoped Jesus would say yes,
(proving
to the Jewish community that he was a
Roman
sympathizer and blasphemer).
*The
Herodians hoped Jesus would say no,
(proving
to that he committed treason or even sedition –
inciting the people to rebel
against Rome).
And therein
we find Jesus in a dilemma.
It
seemed he was trapped.
But
wait! This is
not just a first century challenge.
Our
“opponents,”
whether
society or culture or family,
confront
us with dilemmas all the time,
making
it seem that we are trapped.
What do
we do when allegiance to our
“Caesar”
conflicts
with our allegiance to Christ?
What do
we do when the God we serve
and the
government to which we have sworn allegiance
pull us
into divided loyalties?
How shall
we Christians (who follow the Prince of Peace)
respond
to calls for war?
How shall
we Christians respond
to
immigrant refugees and their families,
now
split up, who wait while their asylum case
lingers
in the courts?
What do
we do when the God we serve
and the
family of which we are a part
pull us
into divided loyalties?
We are
faced with these dilemmas all the time.
It
seems we are trapped, like Jesus was.
Well, the
solution that Jesus offered amazed them.
“Tell us about God – we’ve almost forgotten.”
Still hung in the air…
Jesus reminded
them
about
God and God’s sovereignty –
about
the breadth and depth of God’s creative power.
“Give
(more accurately, render) …
to the
emperor the things that are the emperor’s
and to
God the things that are God’s.”
In
Greek, the word for “render” apodidomi means
“to
give what is due by obligation.”
Thus,
Jesus suggested a dual allegiance –
to give
to both what is due by obligation;
the
obligation to live fully
into
the teachings and commands of God
and
the
obligation to live lawfully
with
the government under whose laws
they
live.
Neither
side could be dismissed.
Neither
side could be “right.”
For in fact, it’s all God’s.
Jesus reframed
the whole issue
With a “both/and,”
not “either/or” solution.
Jesus
reminded them about God,
the
creator of all things,
who
also created Caesar.
Jesus transfigured their perspectives.
And Jesus
transfigures our perspectives.
Jesus reminds
us, in this text, that
God
is the creator
and
we are the created.
By
living fully AND by living lawfully,
giving
what is “due by obligation,”
we
become citizens of both
an
earthly realm
and a
spiritual realm.
And, in
the midst of those dilemmas that contradict,
God, in
Jesus, is right here.
God, in
Jesus, places us in a position
to
dance with these choices.
God, in
Jesus, empowers us
to
choose wisely as we can or
to
sit
and wait
until an
answer arises from the Holy Spirit.
(speak slowly)
Trappist
Monk Thomas Merton once wrote,
“God
makes us ask ourselves questions most
often
when
[God] intends to resolve them.
God
gives us needs that [God] alone can satisfy
and awakens
capacities that [God] means to fulfill.
(go slowly)
Any
perplexity is liable to be a spiritual gestation,
leading
to a new birth and a mystical regeneration.”[5]
Any perplexity is liable to be a spiritual
gestation
Merton juxtaposed
the moral and the mystical life
By
recognizing contradictions.
He said,
“When we
move ourselves as [humans],
we end
up hanging on one horn of the dilemma
and
hoping for the best.
But when
we are moved by God,
mystically,
we seem
to solve the dilemma in ease and mystery,
by
choosing at the same time both horns of the dilemma
and no
horn at all and always being perfectly right.”[6]
Do you
have dilemmas in your life? We all do.
When we
invite Jesus into our dilemmas,
Jesus
transfigures our perspectives
with
the sovereign presence of God.
Today’s
Good News is that God, in Jesus,
often
appears
in the
midst of dilemmas,
in the
midst of trick questions,
in the
midst of a child’s plea,
in the
midst of –
well, the
stuff of life
that we
humans can’t solve
and
can’t make sense of.
God resolves
contradictions,
which
are not just our dilemmas, but God’s too.
It’s all
God’s.
And in
God’s abundant, creative and generative love,
solutions
are found.
Joy is spread.
Hope is
at hand.
Suffering
is transformed.
If you
don’t believe that,
Just
find a child and plea to her:
“tell me about God, I’ve almost
forgotten!”
Amen
[2] Story excerpt from Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a
Life of Faith (San Francisco, HarperCollins, 2003) p.113, note 21. Borg
gives additional credit to a couple who first shared the story with him and to
Parker Palmer who tells a similar story in one of his many, fine books.
[3]
Borg, ibid., p. 114, note 22: K. Tamminen, “Religious Experiences in Childhood
and Adolescence,” in International Journey for the Psychology of Religion
4.61-85 (1994), 61-85. This study is reported in Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi
and Michael Argyle, Religious Behavior, Belief and Experience (New York: Routledge,
1997), pp.149-150.
[4]
Richard E. Spalding, “Pastoral Perspective,: Feasting on the Word: Year A, (Louisville, Westminster John Knox
Press, 2011), p.190
[5]
Thomas Merton, The Sign of Jonas: The Day
by Day Experiences and Meditations of a Trappist Monk, (Garden City, Image
Books Edition/Doubleday, 1956), p. 186
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