Loading...Money is a funny thing. It’s one of those “you can’t live with it; you can’t live without it” requirements of life.
“You can’t live with it” is more about how we interpret the purpose of money. We know it is something we need to be a part of society— “you can’t live without it”— but how we prioritize its use tells a big part of our own relationship with money.
Talking about money is taboo in some circles. I was raised to believe we don’t talk about how much money we have. We don’t talk to our co-workers about how much we make. We aren’t supposed to covet what others have or how they use it, so it might be better not to know.
I’ll be honest. I have wondered what some of our closest friends make. I’ve been a little jealous about what they have been able to do, where they have been able to go, especially when our choices—Jeff’s and mine—appeared to put us in a much different tax bracket.
Ultimately, we choose our relationship with money. We choose whether to let money dictate our lifestyle, or to let our lifestyle dictate how we use money. I recognize that we, Jeff and I, may not be rich, but we are certainly not living in poverty, and that privilege gives us the opportunity to have choice in the way money is a part of our lives.
We also understand that living in community means we need to contribute our share towards taxes, dues, contributions to organizations that mean something special to us, or our tithe to the church, all for the benefit of many. So much of the infrastructure we depend on -- and sometimes take for granted -- need our share of taxes, dues, contributions, or tithe dollars to be sufficient for the life of our city, county, state, and country; for the organizations that are meaningful to us, and for the church that is our spiritual home.
And though we also recognize these are imperfect systems, we pay “to Caesar,” to our government, our organizations, our church, a share of what is needed for our roads, schools, and park systems, for our clubs and organizations; for our church, and so much more, because we are a part of the community. It only seems fair to support our neighbors, known and unknown.
I think this is what Jesus is trying to express to the Pharisees-in-training and to the Herodians. We certainly have a responsibility to help the varieties of communities succeed. And paying a portion of our income is one way to help.
What might be concerning Jesus is that we sometimes give money too much attention. It makes me wonder: Is our life focused on what we have or what we do not have in our pockets and bank accounts? How do we prioritize our spending, our giving, and our saving? Have we created an idol out of our money? Do we worry more about money than we do our souls?
Good questions. Hard questions. Real questions. We live in the world, and the world has expectations, we have responsibilities, needs, and desires. We are also people of faith, called to put God first in our lives.
Jesus is reminding the Pharisee disciples and the Herodians of this.
I have a little card with a quote attributed to Swiss Catholic theologian and Cardinal Hans Urs von Balthasar that says, “What you are, is God’s gift to you. What you make of yourself, is your gift to God.” I’ve had it for years; I’ve quoted it in sermons; I believe it; and I strive to do and be a good and faithful servant as my gift back to God.
It’s a personal reminder that I think could be more universal, when we truly consider the depth of God’s love for us—throughout creation, time, and as we discover more about God’s work in this world. When we realize and recognize that everything comes from God, then everything we have, everything we are, everything we do, must be given back to God.
We are given this “one wild and precious life”[1]; as Mary Oliver reminds us in her poem “The Summer Day.” What are we going to do with it? Is only one valid question. The other is “Who are we going to thank for it?”
Give to God, Jesus says, the things that are God’s.
And … newsflash! Everything belongs to God. Including you and me.
What, then, do you think it means to give yourself to God—to give everything we have and are and will have and will be, to God?
When we committed our lives to God, to following the teaching of Christ, to listening for and acting with the Holy Spirit, we made promises, the same promises we repeat whenever we rededicate our lives through the words of the Baptismal Covenant.
We do not make these promises easily, nor do we make them alone. We recognize that we are incapable of living as righteously, as faithfully as we wish we could. We know that the only way we can be all that God created each of us to be is to do it with God’s help.
God gives us that help, and we, God willing, will give it back, through prayer, worship, good stewardship of our gifts and our talents, for and to the world we walk upon.
“Giving to God that which is God’s” means we walk on this earth with compassion, grace, forgiveness, and love for ourselves and for others. It means we give of our resources to the people and places that need our help and to those people and places that help us, teach us, and guide us to be disciples of Christ in the world.
It means we “give to Caesar what is Caesar’s,” but not because we worship the government, or the money printed by the government, but because the people in the government and the people served by the government also belong to God.
At our baptisms we are marked with the oil of chrism with the sign of the cross with these words: “you are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked
as Christ's own for ever.”
We are each a gift from God, marked in Christ’s name as belonging to him, asked only to give to God that which is God’s—to give ourselves, our souls, our bodies, our minds, our talents, our treasure.
This is beginning to sound like a sermon about giving to St. James’…
I know we are nearing the beginning of our giving campaign, and it seems like this Gospel was put in this place to remind us to preach about our financial responsibility to our faith communities. I assure you, that is not the case!
This Gospel is a continuation of the holy week story, where Jesus is trying to do all he can in every one of the places he will go to help people see the depth of God’s love for them, before they are unable to hear it directly from him.
God created everything. Our responsibility is to recognize the beauty of that gift and our responsibility towards it. The fact that we must have currency to survive is something we cannot avoid. But we do have the opportunity to make choices about how our currency is used to proclaim the Gospel of Love that Jesus came here to teach.
We have been marked as Christ’s own, forever. That is part of the gift God gave us. Our lives, our heartbeats, our breaths, every single thing about us is God’s gift to us. What we do with these “wild, precious lives,” the ways we share from all that God has given us to the world God provides for us, is how we give ourselves back to our Creator.
I asked a little bit earlier in this sermon: who are we going to thank for this one life we have been given? Let’s turn to page 101 in the Book of Common Prayer and give thanks to God, our Creator, through the words of The General Thanksgiving.
Let us pray.
Almighty God, Father of all mercies,
we your unworthy servants give you humble thanks
for all your goodness and loving-kindness
to us and to all whom you have made.
We bless you for our creation, preservation,
and all the blessings of this life;
but above all for your immeasurable love
in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ; for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory. And, we pray, give us such an awareness of your mercies, that with truly thankful hearts we may show forth your praise, not only with our lips, but in our lives, by giving up our selves to your service,
and by walking before you in holiness and righteousness all our days; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory throughout all ages. Amen.
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