Whose Image?

Matthew 22: 15-22 (October 22, 2023)

I watch a lot of animal rescue videos, especially from an organization called Hope for Paws. They’re always getting calls from people who report animals who’ve been stranded or abandoned. Often, the dog they’re rescuing feels cornered and may either be shaking with fright or snarling with aggression. What gets me every time, is that moment when the dog realizes that it’s safe and that Eldad and his companions are there to help. When that moment comes, you can visibly see the dog that was shaking or snarling just a second ago melt into relaxation. And next thing you know, their tail is wagging again. They know they’re safe.

It’s still heartbreaking, though, when they get to the veterinary clinic and scan the dog for identification. More often than not, there’s no chip. There’s no way to know who this pet belongs to. In reading today’s Gospel, I’m ultimately led to the question of identity and belonging.

As I’ve mentioned previously, these stories from the gospel of Matthew happen after Jesus overturns the tables of the moneychangers in the Temple. That results in a series of confrontations with the religious authorities and Temple system. In this story, we return to the question of money and of allegiance. It ends with Jesus saying that we should give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and give to God what belongs to God.

How do we determine what belongs to God? I hope I can give us some ideas for how we might approach that question.

Jesus and the Pharisees

The way Jesus answers the question about paying taxes is brilliant. The Pharisees try to trap him into saying something that would either get him arrested by the Romans or stoned by the people. But Jesus snares the Pharisees in the trap they set for him. After he’s turned the moneychangers’ literal tables over in the Temple, he now turns the figurative tables on the Pharisees by using the very coin for paying taxes to leave them “amazed.” Some translations say “speechless.” Personally, I would use the word “gobsmacked.” I can just imagine their reaction. They’re just completely flummoxed. Bet you never heard a sermon before that uses the words “gobsmacked” and “flummoxed.”

Why is Jesus so at odds with these Pharisees in the first place? According to Brittanica, the Pharisees were a religious party that emerged about 165 years before Jesus’ birth. They were mostly laymen and scribes, as opposed to the Sadducees, who were members of the priestly class. The two parties differed in their views about the Torah (the first five books of the Bible) and how to settle contemporary legal and religious matters in relation to the text.

The Sadducees believed that only the Written law, what was directly in the text, was binding, but the Pharisees also included the Oral law, or oral tradition. While the Sadducees based their views on the letter of the law only, the Pharisees “interpreted the Law according to its spirit.” In other words, the Pharisees were open to an evolving understanding of the law and how it should be applied. We might compare this to current-day arguments over the U.S. Constitution.

Beginning around 100 BCE, the Pharisees fought to empower the Jewish people in matters of religion and not keep those matters strictly under the control of the priests alone. The fact that the Pharisees are the more flexible of the religious authorities makes it even more interesting that they’re the ones Jesus is arguing with here. Maybe Jesus saw them as ultimately the more open of the leadership?

I discovered a writer named Ed Elliott, who describes himself as an “itinerate missionary who travels the world sharing truths about God’s love.” In a post entitled “Jesus vs. the Pharisees,” he gives us good food for thought.

It seems that while the Pharisees may have been open to the evolution of interpretation of the Law, they were still hard liners when it came to following the Law. They seemed intent on exposing the sins of the people and condemning them to harsh punishment, as in the case of the woman caught in adultery and the woman who washed the feet of Jesus. While the Pharisees seem quick to punish, Jesus is always quick to forgive. His focus is on mercy, not legality.

In Matthew 9, as Jesus is sharing a meal with a mixed group of followers, the Pharisees ask his disciples accusingly, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” And Jesus says, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.” Elliot points out that while the Pharisees were required to memorize the law and were completely focused on it, Jesus thought that they had missed the point. In his reply, Jesus is quoting from Hosea 6 where it says, “For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.”

What Does God Want from Us?

Today, we’re no longer sacrificing animals to appease God, thank God. Sacrifice and burnt offerings fall under what we might call “religiosity.” Now, religious practice is a beautiful thing, but it can also be done in a way that becomes rote and empty. When we’re just going through the motions, it’s because we’ve forgotten why we worship in the first place – we worship to know God, meaning to be intimate with God, and to become more merciful, more compassionate, and more loving to others.

It’s not just in Hosea where we learn that God isn’t impressed by our religiosity. One of my favorite passages in the Bible comes from the book of Micah (6:6-8) where he writes,

With what shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings?
Shall I come before him with yearling calves?
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I give my first born for my transgressions, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?

We can see the increasing desperation in the progression of questions. Each sacrifice is more and more costly and difficult. We might rephrase these questions as “What will it take to please you God????” And what is God’s response?

He has shown you, oh human, he has shown you what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

Micah tells us that God wants us to be fair, to love kindness (not just make nice, but to love being kind and merciful to others), and to walk alongside God in relationship. Psalm 51:15-17 gives us even more guidance. It says that God doesn’t delight in our sacrifices and burnt offerings; God wants our hearts broken open and humbled.

The sorrow of the world is devastating. Right now, images coming from Israel and Palestine, from Ukraine, from our own borders and our city streets, are heartbreaking. And often, we harden our hearts in response because we just don’t want to feel it all. It’s like we’re snarling in the corner, and we don’t know where to turn for help. Like dogs without a chip, we’ve forgotten who we belong to. But we do have an inner identifier.

By the Image Engraved

Remember the coin Jesus held in his hand? How does he use it to determine what should be given to Caesar? It’s all about the image that appears on the coin. So, while the coin in Jesus’ hand is stamped with the image of Caesar, we know from the first creation story in Genesis that we are stamped with the image of God. The image of God is like our microchip. It’s our God-given permanent identity. Even in our reading from Isaiah (45:4), God says, “I call you by your name, I surname you, though you do not know me.” We carry God’s image, we carry God’s surname, and so for anyone who is looking, we belong to God.

That is our inner truth. But in order for us to grow God’s Kingdom, our inner identity needs to become our outer reality. I think the process goes something like this: when we allow our hardened and stubborn hearts to be broken open, we allow God to write God’s life-giving and merciful law upon our freshly opened and newly clean hearts. And then we become that “letter of Christ” that Paul writes about 2 Corinthians 3. In his letter to that community, he says that “You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by all, and you show that you are a letter of Christ, prepared by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets that are human hearts.”

With God’s image engraved upon us, and God’s surname as our identity, we can become a letter of Christ to be read by all we encounter. In these last few weeks, we’ve seen that God blesses us with gifts, desiring a good harvest. God comes to us as Beloved, with a desire for union and intimacy. God doesn’t want our sacrifices, our mumbled, joyless recitations.

What God wants is our hearts. God wants us to be open to Love. To listen for that still, small voice that will tell us who we are, who we belong to, and how we are to serve in this world.

It doesn’t matter how many times we’ve fallen. It doesn’t matter how many mistakes we’ve made. God keeps coming to us, seeking our hearts, our trust, our commitment, our love, our mercy, and our service.