Stark Choices

Gospel: Matthew 22: 15-21

At first glance and in the majority of sermonizing on this passage, Jesus seems to provide everyone with a happy compromise when presented with this question of loyalty to Caesar.  He tells us to give Caesar what is his, and give to God what belongs to God.  Seems simple, and everyone walks away apparently satisfied.  Upon deeper reflection, there are important considerations on both sides of the ledger in this apparent detente.  

Caesar has claimed divine status, meaning in the mind of the omnipotent state there is nothing that does not belong to it.  The financial world of money makes the same claim over all things, having the power to control all people and all things.  These powers of the world desire no compromise and will concede not an inch to God or anything else.  Fealty to them will result in the death of the spirit within people and within a society.

At the same time we are reminded the words of Paul: what do we have that does not come from God? Our entire existence and identity as His child come from God.  All on earth that we have to sustain us come from God.  Yet God is not a dictator - God invites in love to accept his mercy and to extend it to others.  The invitation remains ever open to us throughout life.  God waits for us as the father waits for his prodigal son who had given himself to the powers of the world that always leave us barren and forlorn.

Christ in Others

Gospel: Luke 12: 8-12

We have been conditioned over the years to believe that to deny Christ before others is an intellectual assertion, a denial of some credal truth about Jesus in Christianity uttered aloud to other people.  Yet, so little in the realm of belief or non-belief in the scriptures has to do with what we say.  It consists more in what we do or not do.  Belief or lack of belief has to do with our actions in the world visible to others, and less to do with what we say.

To deny Jesus is to reject his presence in the person of other human beings.  It is to treat another human being not as an image of Christ himself, but to debase and dehumanize that person.  To deny Jesus is to treat other human beings in the same way people treated Jesus while here on earth.  It is to mock them, torture them, and publicly execute and demean them just as was done to Jesus.  How often are such actions very public and deliberately so!

In the Christian tradition we believe every human being is made in God's image and likeness, that they are images of Christ, and temples of the Holy Spirit.  When we dehumanize and maltreat other people both in word and deed we deny Christ, we sin against the Holy Spirit, and we commit the greatest of blasphemies.  It is a denial of God's creative presence in us and the redemptive act of Jesus for all people of all times and places.  

Be Not Afraid

Gospel: Luke 12: 1-7

People are afraid of many things: snakes, spiders, clowns - the list is endless.  Regardless of the particular item feared, they all have as their root the fear of death.  Throughout our lives this is our greatest fear - that we will die.  As such it is the one topic we do not discuss, we do not think about at all.  We avoid the topic of death in any and every conversation.  Yet, dying is the one thing we will all do at some point.  No one escapes our sister death.

When illness comes to us, even when that illness is terminal, we seek to fight it with everything in our arsenal.  We become religious, bargaining with God and praying for miracles.  Many people were given miracles by Jesus, a few even raised from the dead.  Yet the commonality in all those who received these miracles is that they all died - every single one of them.  Not a man or woman who was healed by Jesus walks this earth today.  

We might well ask ourselves why we are afraid of death.  Do we fear the judgment of God? Do we fear to miss out on things in this life? Jesus invites us not to fear anything, and this is possible by accepting the mercy of God offered to us and to extend mercy to others.  Freedom from that fear of death enables us to see, to walk again, and to be released from the constraints of our demons so that we might live for the love of God and others.