God's Currency

I remember getting a brand new baseball mitt in junior high school, only to have it stolen out of my P.E. locker the next day. It was eventually recovered, taken off of a kid who had written his name, letter by letter, across the back of the mitt as if to reaffirm his ownership. The rather ostentatious claim to ownership notwithstanding, the mitt was mine.

Such is the claim made by Caesar (Tiberius) in today’s gospel. In Jesus’s famous dictum: “Then render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and render unto God what is God’s, ” he avoids the tricky situation of answering the question of the Herodians and Pharisees as to whether or not it is in accordance with the Law to pay the tax required by the Romans of all citizens. If Jesus answers “no,” then he will gain favor with the people but commit a treasonous act and be punished by the Romans. If he says “yes,” he loses favor with the people and affirms he supports the Roman occupation. Instead, Jesus suggests that the coin’s temporal worth is owed to the temporal leader, Tiberius Caesar, and that God is entitled to what is His. Of course, what is God’s is also “stamped” with God’s image: humanity.

            The coin might belong to Caesar, but Caesar belongs to God. What we lay claim to so often has our image, in one form or another, all over it. But likewise, all that we are should have God’s image revealed. In Acts 17, St. Paul proclaims in the Areopagus, defending Christianity to the philosophers by proclaiming, “In him [God], we live and move and have our being”; as even some, your own poets have said, ‘For we too are his offspring.’ Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals.”

              St. Augustine’s sermon on this passage from Matthew develops this idea: 

“Just as Caesar seeks his image in your coin, so God seeks his image in your character. Give back to Caesar, he says, what belongs to Caesar. What does Caesar look for from you? His image. What does God look for in you? His image”(Sermon 113A).  

 What we possess is God’s image as our true character; we are the coinage of God, each and every one of us, ultimately rendering our lives back to God, having either spent God’s currency wisely or foolishly. God's currency, of course, is love. This is our true wealth and is inscribed indelibly in God's image. When we love, we gift others with God's wealth and, in turn, render unto God what is God's.

Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost

 

God's Wages

These parables over the last few Sundays are part of the “Five Discourses” of Jesus that help define the structure of Matthew’s gospel. The other discourses are The Sermon on the Mount, The Church, and the End Times.  Today’s parable is unique to Matthew’s gospel. 

Remember, parables were not so much moral lessons that we are familiar with in Western literature (i.e., Parable of the Tortoise and Hare, etc.). These parables were designed to convey a particular experience of our relationship with Christ/God. It isn’t so much striving to “get them” as letting them “get to us,” as theologian Robert Farrar Capon discusses in his book The Parables of Grace. Capon argues that the parables of Jesus are an icon of himself. They are “lights shining out of the house of faith itself, inviting us home” (3).

In today's parable, our landowner (God) seems to be acting strangely by paying workers hired for a few hours the same wage as those working a full day.  As in many of Jesus’ parables, there is something weird in the story. There isn’t anything particularly unusual about workers feeling they don’t get a just wage, but the practice of paying workers a full day’s wage for those working considerably less than a full day is strange indeed. Also, the landowner goes himself and hires workers towards the end of the day who everyone else has passed over; he is scraping the bottom of the barrel without seemingly needing to. And what’s more puzzling is that he feels the need to entice these workers with a full day’s wage. I think it would be safe to say the landowner isn’t a very good businessman. And this gives us our first insight into the parable: The landowner’s actions are representative of God’s irrational generosity. Think of the Parable of the Sower: the farmer who broadcasts the precious commodity of seeds recklessly, with some of the seeds falling on good ground, some on rocky soil, and still others on hard dirt adjacent to the field; a pretty poor farmer!  God’s apparent foolishness is also on display as the father welcomes home his prodigal son with open arms and throws him an extravagant party after squandering his inheritance and turning his back on his family.

All of these parables tell us something essential about God, which Jesus highlights once again in today’s parable: God is hopelessly in love with his creation, evidenced by his divine, dysfunctional behavior we call God’s mercy.  The common denominator in these parables, and especially in today’s parable, is God’s grace. A grace that pushes back at our notion of being able to justify receiving God’s love.

The really good news in our parable today is that the kingdom of heaven is not what you have achieved with your life’s work or how much of a failure to achieve moral goodness you have been; it's about where you are with your relationship with God right now. God never stops reaching for you; the moment you accept His embrace, you enter eternity.  

Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost

  

The words of passion from Jeremiah in his love affair with God remind me of the “burning” of Pablo Neruda’s poem “Ode to a Naked Beauty”: “As if you were on fire from within./The moon lives in the lining of your skin.”  Jeremiah complains that loving God puts him at odds with the world and causes him to suffer; he is not a willing sufferer but has been seduced by God. The usual translation is “duped,” but a mystical tradition within the Church that renders patah as “seduced,” and I think it is appropriate, especially for this passage.  Jeremiah’s love for God is all-encompassing. He is in love with a being, caught up in a passion that will not be denied.  Indeed, these lines could have been taken from the lover’s complaint of a Shakespearean sonnet.

“I say to myself, I will not mention him,
I will speak in his name no more.
But then it becomes like fire burning in my heart,
imprisoned in my bones;
I grow weary holding it in; I cannot endure.”

            This intensity finds its resonance in today’s gospel reading from Matthew, where God’s love for humanity is likewise intense and “foolish” in the person of Jesus, who realizes that he will soon suffer and die because of this passionate love for humanity.  That is why he sharply rebukes Peter, whom he had praised just moments before, and suggests that seeking to avoid suffering is an inclination from Satan. Clearly, Peter loves Jesus and wants Jesus to avoid suffering and death. Peter wants the Triumphant King, not the Suffering Servant, but clearly, Jesus is the Suffering Servant, and many who followed him equated him with Jeremiah, for whom the Suffering Servant was likely penned (some thought Jesus as the resurrected Jeremiah).

            Of course, in word and action, Peter was perhaps the most passionate of all the disciples. I think Jesus realized that what is essential for the continuation of the mission was passion, not administrative acumen (though we need not find them as opposing qualities). Peter’s passion needed to be directed toward God’s mission of embracing humanity. Our purest expression of love for God is our love for those whom God has created.  Jesus makes falling in love with God less of a mystical affair and one of flesh and blood reality. Jesus’ Great Commission (John 15:12) isn’t about loving God directly but loving one’s neighbor. It is in loving one’s neighbor, then, that the love of God becomes flesh and blood. Like God, our love will be often rejected, and we will indeed pay a high price for having been “seduced” to love the God we can see in each other because our love of Christ compels us beyond the love of family, or nation, or tribe, and seeks the love of God in all, not just among the "lovable.

Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

 

 Jesus’ action with the Canaanite woman in Matthew’s gospel is troubling for us who experience the universalism of the Church and the belief that God has offered salvation to the entire world. However, Matthew’s community was Jewish, and the Canaanites were well outside God’s covenant with the Jewish people, and it seems Jesus sided with the popular understanding of such a separation. Although this story is also present in the Gospel of Mark, the change in Matthew to a Canaanite from a Syro-Phoenician woman speaks of Matthew’s desire to emphasize how much outside God’s covenant she was. Add to this Jesus’ words of rebuke, and the stage is set rhetorically for what comes next.

The woman’s response to Jesus’ rebuke of “It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs” with, “Please, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps
that fall from the table of their masters” is a coup of a well-tempered response that upends Jesus’ harshness; it is a moral drama being played out in front of a crowd who sides with Jesus. So what does Jesus do? He proclaims her daughter is healed because of her great faith to see beyond what the crowd saw: an insurmountable barrier to God’s grace. This event is on the heels of Jesus proclaiming in front of the Pharisees and scribes, “…it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles” The Canaanite woman is yet another instance of Jesus proclaiming God’s reign isn’t localized, or dependent upon the traditions of “the elders”, but upon compassion and justice, making a strong connection with the first reading from Third Isaiah, which asserts that God’s justice and mercy is also a function of allowing “foreigners” to serve at the Temple if they agree to keep the Sabbath and the Law of the Covenant. To do so would be a great act of faith not only for the foreigners but also for the Jewish people.

Contempt for “the foreigner” is a cultural characteristic, it seems, for many. Most recently, children and young adults seeking refuge in this country have had to endure not only exile from their homes and families but also the contempt born of fear from many in our country and some in our church. Jesus’ morality drama played out to staunch the flow of animosity for the Canaanite who represented the consummate foreigner. Jesus’ clear message to the crowd: Faith trumps creed because faith is the foundation of creed, not the other way around.

We worship a living God, not a living document. Too often, text takes the place of a living faith. Where the community’s faith is strong, the “traditions of the elders” are always held accountable by living faith. When creed runs contrary to the living faith, it is discarded or altered to reflect the current reality. Ours is a living relationship with God, not a relationship with a text; that is simply another more insidious form of idolatry. Our true worship is as old as Isaiah in establishing justice and righteousness and calling brother or sister all who nurture faith in a living God.

Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

 

    Weeds in the Wheat: Stay Out of the Garden! 

 This parable is part of a series of parables Jesus continues to use, which develops Matthew’s theme of fulfillment (“I will open my mouth to speak in parables; I will proclaim what has been hidden from the foundation of the world” --Psalm 78). Indeed, this parable is part of a series of parables about the acceptance and rejection of Jesus. This theme of acceptance tinged with rejection is especially relevant for Matthew’s community, which, at the end of the first century, is experiencing rejection within the Jewish community.

 Today’s parable suggests the “weeds” appearing among the “wheat” represent those within the Christian community who are subverting Christ’s kingdom, “the field.” On another level, the field is the landscape of the human heart where the Christian must pursue the spiritual life while struggling against the evil from within.

In response to the “weeds among the wheat,” Jesus counsels patience and tolerance. It is the Son of Man who will oversee the final judgment and separation of the weeds from the wheat. We are asked to refrain from weeding the fields lest we destroy the good with the bad. Christians on a weeding tear have historically done a great deal of damage. Think of the Inquisition and the Crusades as a couple of notable examples. In considering the substantial damage done to the kingdom by zealous gardeners, best we leave the wedding to the pros (ref. The Trinity). But what can we do with our itch to weed? 

Perhaps our zealous weeding should first be practiced within our hearts, where the Holy Spirit and mature spiritual direction can bring about a more excellent purification. Put away your weed killers and trowels; see what the weeds look like first that lie sprouting within your heart, and by the time you have finished that job, God’s judgment will surely have been visited upon the world.

Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

 

A Little Seed Goes a Long Way

Today’s gospel presents us with a striking parable. For us, we are part of the “inner circle” of Jesus’ disciples who get it and wonder why Jesus wouldn’t be willing to explain it to the crowds but rather seems to dismiss them as being blind and deaf. Why, then, speak to the crowd at all? Jesus was not trying to win over crowds, but to call individuals to follow him; Jesus wanted people to walk with him, not for him.

The crowd is the landscape, and Jesus is the farmer sowing himself, giving himself as the Word of God with the power of words to germinate in the hearts of those who are listening and whose hearts are fallow, but not sown.

In Greek, Jesus is the Logos, or word of God. In Hebrew, dabar, the essence of logos. But both terms suggest much more. Logos suggests God’s reason, His willed purpose revealed in Jesus. Dabar is the essence of the speaker contained in the word, much as the potential of a plant is hidden within the seed.

Jesus’ interpretation in the more extended version of today’s reading was not, however, likely part of Jesus’ first discourse. It was added to allow the reader to be part of the inner circle rather than the clueless crowd left scratching their heads. The purpose of interpreting the Gospel in this manner was to emphasize ultimate success despite what appears to be a complete failure. This is why Jesus suggests that the harvest of the small number of seed that falls on fallow earth will reap a harvest of “a hundredfold”; the good average yield is sevenfold.

God’s ultimate purpose for humanity as embodied in The Kingdom---the community of believers as the living word of God’s sowing---is that despite what appears to be crucifixion and death is resurrection and life. Our hearts, as landscapes, have captured little of God’s Word; but this is sufficient for building the kingdom. Tend to the small patch of fertile heart, and don’t allow the vast fields of barren soil to dishearten you. If faith is a mustard seed, you don’t need a lot to realize a spectacular harvest.

The Body and Blood of Christ

 

Become What You Receive

St. Augustine’s famous admonition on the Eucharist, “Behold what you are; become what you receive,” reveals the dynamic between the taking and becoming the blessing of the Eucharist. 

In the Eucharistic celebration, the priest’s actions are taking, blessing, breaking, and giving; the part that is often left out of the discussion is the taking and becoming of all who receive. But we who receive are also taking, and rather than blessing the bread, the bread becomes a source of blessing for ourselves so that we might be a blessing to the world—the world yet to be transformed by Christ. Also, rather than breaking the bread, we become broken in our blessing. In Augustine’s saying, “Behold what you are” comes before “Become what you receive.” Approaching the Body and Blood of Christ sacrificed for us, we behold our great need for God’s grace because we experience blessing. The image of brokenness works on two levels: to be shared, the substance must be divided and broken. In the sharing of ourselves, we freely distribute the blessing we have been given and have become. Broken also suggests the suffering of Christ’s sacrifice, the “way of the cross.” We must become true flesh, accept we are not gods, break our egoism to bless and celebrate our humanity.

We then, in our common priesthood, in our lives, do what the priest does at the altar: We take, bless, break, and give, stripped of our false humanity, and reveal a great blessing that God has sanctified what He has created and found very good.