29th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Proper 24), Year A

Scott Anderson

Exodus 33:12-23 † Psalm 99 † 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10 † Matthew 22:15-22

Orchestral strings playing, timpani chimes in, a harp glistens. I think, the theme from the Hunger Games, but it is actually the overture to the 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia.[i] And over the music, a voice: “We begin with a story of tribute to a great and dominant empire. Imagine yourself an emissary from a far-off province. What would you offer Caesar in devotion? Something that says loyalty and fealty and also the best features of your home? … Now, what if Caesar was Jeff Bezos and the empire was called Amazon?”[ii]
That intro this week to the segment on the NPR news show The Takeaway caught my attention. It was the day that homework was due for all suitors to Amazon’s second headquarters, or “HQ2.” It brought me to today’s text, of course. Render to Caesar what is Caesars; render to God what is God’s.

It was a clever tease which led to an examination of the give and take, the tensions and challenges that arise in our current culture of complex needs and competing loyalties. We need Amazon. We love Amazon. I am a Prime member, I confess. They have transformed Seattle, perhaps more than Microsoft or Boeing before it, or before them, the European settlers that stripped thousands of acres of ancient forest in only a few years and bulldozed tall hills in a few more to tame this metropolis. And yet, according to some examinations, being HQ1 is something of a mixed bag.

The effect of Amazon’s rapid growth has been called a prosperity bomb with a wide blast zone. Amazon’s story began in the midst of the Great Recession when unemployment was 10% and people were crying out for jobs. The benefits have been widely touted to potential suitors of HQ2: the rapid addition of thousands of high-paying, six-figure jobs, the transformation of the economy, massive infrastructure investment.

Yet, there are downsides. While housing values have shot up, housing costs and rents have doubled. Quite simply, Seattle was not ready for what came, and has not yet caught up. Fifty-seven people move into Seattle every day, while only 18 housing units are being provided for them. Housing values recovered from the recession and ascended here far more quickly than anywhere else, but new buyers and long-time middle-income Seattle residents have been pushed out, magnifying traffic problems since people who work in the core can no longer afford to live where they work. Commute times have exploded, eroding the time workers have with their families, and double and tripling the homeless population along the way.

Critics have speculated that, even before it announced the competition, Amazon already knew where it will locate HQ2. If they are right, then we might simply admire and dread that Amazon just sat down at a Poker table at which all the other players showed them their hands. As of Thursday, Amazon has received a playbook of information from cities all over North America that will not only leverage their advantage in negotiations for their second headquarters; but has given them a competitive business advantage for years to come.

Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s. Render to God what is God’s. To do this is not especially clear-cut, is it? You’ll note that Jesus doesn’t really answer the question. He doesn’t produce an itemized accounting, a spreadsheet with two columns filled in with what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God.

We have included in the worship aid, one attempt at an accounting of sorts. I didn’t produce it, and frankly, I’m not sure what I think of it, except that it captures my attention. It invites me to reflect, perhaps even to make a commitment. Maybe it will you too, so I wonder if you’ll help me out here, by joining me in reading it. And as you do, ask yourself where it gets it right and where it doesn’t.

To whom belongs the flag?
Render unto Caesar/Give it to Caesar
To whom belongs the anthem?
Render unto Caesar.
To whom belongs our weapons?
Render unto Caesar.
To whom belongs our property?
Render unto Caesar.
To whom belongs our possessions?
Render unto Caesar.
To whom belongs my body?
Render unto God.
To whom belongs my soul?
Render unto God.
To whom belongs my work?
Render unto God.
To whom belongs my devotion?
Render unto God.
To whom belongs the power?
Render unto God.
To whom belongs the glory?
Render unto God.
To whom belongs the kingdom?
Render unto God.
My life, my heart, my faith
the power, the kingdom, and the glory.
Render unto God.
 
We don’t know much about the Herodians in the Matthew text, but their name suggests they are loyal to Rome. They support the right of the successors of Herod the Great to rule Palestine, which puts them in opposition to the large population of Jerusalem that bristled under ongoing Roman occupation and rose up in popular insurgencies on both sides of this story.

But the Herodians don’t come alone to this rodeo. They have formed an uneasy alliance with Pharisees, adversaries who were not at all happy about the Roman occupation. They had decided it was a tolerable evil as long as Rome didn’t step on the church’s freedom. That someone was able to produce the coin so easily already indicts the system that was in place. The Pharisees objected on religious grounds to the coin that was produced which had an image of “the divine Caesar” on it, at least a violation of the first two commandments against other gods and graven images. And yet, here it was, easily obtained within the temple walls—things rendered to Caesar and things rendered to God comingled.

If we have any question about this we need only look to our Exodus text that signals America’s conflation of God and country. We read in the promise Moses receives, a suggestion of the chosen nature of the Israelites that echoes the idea of American exceptionalism—that the US, unlike all others, is a country that God has aligned with in a special and unique way, as God did with Israel, ignoring the power, the unknowability, the holiness of the divine presence that will not be domesticated.

This, I suspect, has generated many of the historic challenges we have faced, the simplistic, blanket dualism that imagines Christians as good and Muslims or Buddhists or the people and countries associated with any other religion, really, as bad, while papering over a history of oppression and misdeeds and sins that continue to challenge us for our inability to face them honestly.

Jesus’ answer is both confounding and compelling. “Give to the emperor what is the emperor’s and to God what is God’s.” He not only evades the trap that was laid for him; he throws the issue back on those listening, and onto us, who will have to decide what to render to Caesar and what to render to God in any given time.

And this, of course, is where we must begin. One of the current shifts is that companies like Amazon and Apple and Exxon have taken on some of the power that used to belong to nation-states. They straddle borders, unsettle and redefine how we are connected and where power resides. We always live in the uncertain threshold between God and Caesar—whether Caesar is the nation-state, or the increasingly comingled world in which business and enterprise and non-governmental organization, and online presence redefine the boundaries between us and the nature of our loyalties.

And I suspect, it begins with honesty. Where, really are our loyalties? In what do we trust? And where have we rendered trust that it does not belong? Our answer to these questions marks the beginning of the possible, the threshold of reformation and renewal of new life being birthed by God’s Spirit in the world, with others, and with us.

But never forget, beloved of God, the firm belief that these three remain amidst all of it: faith, hope, and love. Faith that remains amidst our doubt that what has been can be again, hope in the God whose presence is goes behind and before us even as we can never fully know it, and love which binds us together and like a mother to her children, calls us beloved.

So let me ask you again, this time switching the lines that you read previously, to consider what to render and to whom.
 
Litany[iii]
Invite them to switch for second read.
To whom belongs the flag?
Render unto Caesar/Give it to Caesar
To whom belongs the anthem?
Render unto Caesar.
To whom belong our weapons?
Render unto Caesar.
To whom belongs our property?
Render unto Caesar.
To whom belongs our possessions?
Render unto Caesar.
To whom belongs my body?
Render unto God.
To whom belongs my soul?
Render unto God.
To whom belongs my work?
Render unto God.
To whom belongs my devotion?
Render unto God.
To whom belongs the power?
Render unto God.
To whom belongs the glory?
Render unto God.
To whom belongs the kingdom?
Render unto God.
My life, my heart, my faith
the power, the kingdom, and the glory.
Render unto God.


[i] The sample is from the 1962 Lawrence of Arabia – Overture, by Maurice Jarre. See, for example, Lawrence of Arabia (Soundtrack from the Motion Picture), Silva Screen Records America, Inc., 1989.

[ii] “Seattle Warns Cities as Amazon Looks For a Second Home.” The Takeaway, October 19, 2017. Retrieved on October 20, 2017 from http://www.wnyc.org/story/hq2-and-seattle-and-after-amazon/.

[iii] From disruptworshipproject.com. Retrieved on October 18, 2017 from http://www.disruptworshipproject.com/october-22.html.