Who Is In Charge Here?

 

Who Is In Charge Here?

The question this week really is, who is in charge here? Paul’s letter to the church in Thessaloniki is believed to be the first of his letters that have survived to be included in the Christian Bible. This makes it the earliest example of Christian writing about Jesus and the emerging community of his followers.

Evidently, they have written to Paul with several questions: believers who have become idlers, non-productive members of the community just waiting for Jesus to return; some have returned to worshipping idols; a concern that some have died before Jesus’s return in the end of days and what will happen to them when he does. There also seems to have been some who question Paul’s authority, which was not unusual as there were other competing evangelists of all kinds traveling around all claiming to be in charge. Even as early as the year 50ce the diversity of the emerging Christian community was profound and confusing.

Before addressing the issues, Paul butters them up as he compliments them for their “work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ,” which contradicts the existing problem that some have stopped working at all! [1 Thessalonians 1: 1-10] Note his emphasis on “work” and “labor.” Paul knows what we all know: Faith and Love and sustaining Hope does not come easy. Ongoing hard work is an important component of the life of Faith grounded in Love for others – all others. Not to mention work of all kinds: cleaning house, washing dishes, etc. As we have learned this week in our Daily Noonday Prayer, “Work does not distract us from God. It brings the reign of God closer than it was before we came [into God’s world]. Work doesn’t take us away from God. It continues the work of God through us…I must work as if the preservation of the world depends on what I am doing in this small, otherwise insignificant space I call my life.” [Illuminated Life, Sr Joan Chittester, OSB, p 125]

 Paul knows there is no time for idlers on the harvest plain, and no time for worshipping idols either. These days idols tend not to be made of wood and stone overlaid with silver and gold, but are distractions of all kinds like money, greed, envy, consumerism, hatred of those not like ourselves, inflexible ideologies, and even our obsessions with religion and politics can become idolatrous!

 Religion and politics are both highlighted in our ongoing narrative of Jesus on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, and his ongoing confrontations with various authorities – this time the Pharisees, concerned with keeping Torah faith in the midst of the Roman occupation, and some Herodians, those who support the Ruling Family of Palestine, and therefore support the Roman Empire since no one could rule without such allegiance. Odd that they would be joining forces, but we know politics and religion both often make for strange “bedfellows!”  [Matthew 22: 15-22,]

 They set about to test Jesus in public as yet another attempt to discredit him. The issue is both religious and political: paying the tribute tax to Caesar. If he says Jews ought not pay the tax most people would agree with his sticking to Torah ideals, but not his sense of what is practical to survive in the Empire. But were he to say yes, the practical answer will cost him politically and religiously and possibly lose the support of his followers. What could go wrong?

Plenty as it turns out. After listening to them butter him up like Paul does in Thessaloniki, all Jesus has to say is, “Show me the coin used for the tax.” Gleefully, they produce a denarius – which shows an image of the Emperor on one side, and an inscription on the reverse to the effect, “Caesar is God.” Such coins were not permitted for offerings at the Temple, thus the money-changers or currency exchange in the Temple court yards. The coin itself is a forbidden idol. That the Pharisees could produce such a coin on the Temple Mount exposes them as hypocrites, from the Greek word for “actor.” Jesus exposes them as religious role players or posers! Jesus could stop there, but no. Once getting them to say whose image is on the coin he replies, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

 Try to imagine a long pause after the first half of the epigram - let it linger before driving home the indisputable second clause, which although is a parallel construction, does not suggest the realms of Caesar and God are of equal significance. The realm of Caesar is vastly inferior to the significance of God’s realm. Jesus does not suggest there is a religious realm and a political realm that deserve equal respect. The second clause all but nullifies the first! Since the earliest days of the church interpreters have surmised that Jesus is saying, “We are God’s coins. We bear God’s image. Women and men are created in the image of God. We belong to God as surely as your coin belongs to Caesar. Have you already forgotten what I said in my sermon on the mount at the beginning of all of this: You cannot serve God and mammon! You cannot serve God and money! [Matthew 6:24] So, go ahead and toss Caesar a few denarii, but remember life does not consist in wealth and possessions and power, but rather in living according to the will of God – working on faith, laboring in love and sustaining the virtue of hope in a world that often provides little evidence that such hope is justified. There’s work to be done. No time for this idle chat.”

 Snap! “When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.” I guess so!

 Jesus, and Paul after him, have one point and one point only: The answer to the question, “Who’s in charge here?” is, YHWH, the Lord God of the Exodus, the God of the Wilderness, the God of Return from Exile, and soon to be the God of the Resurrection and New Life! Not Caesar. Not Herod. Not idols. Not idlers. Not posers and schemers. Only The God who commands,

Come, labor on!

Who dares stand idle, on the harvest plain

While all around him waves the golden grain?

And to each servant does the Master say,

“Go work today.”   [Jane L. Borthwick, 1859, 1863]

 We must work as if the preservation of the world depends on what we are all doing in this small, otherwise insignificant space we call our life. For our life is God’s life. God’s life is ours.

Amen. It is so. It is truth.