2011-10-16–Missional Talent
Missional Talent
It’s difficult to imagine because we’re not reading the Gospel at one sitting. We’re reading it in small chunks interrupted by a week. Or longer. But we need to try to imagine that we’re still at this one conversation between Jesus and the Jewish leaders in the Temple Courts right after Jesus threw out the money marketers and sacrifice sellers and began to teach.
The conversation began with the Sadducees asking a question about Jesus’ authority and continued with Jesus telling a series of inter-related, tension-increasing stories about just how murderous the Sadducees intentions really were. It seems that the Sadducees have given up in their attempt to entrap Jesus because now two new groups come forward with a new trick question: the Pharisees and the Herodians.
We’ve met the Pharisees before. The guardians of the Law, the Prophets and the Writings. The experts in biblical application and the guardians of the synagogue. But now a group you might not have heard of has joined them: the Herodians. They were as unlike the Pharisees as you can imagine. These were the politicians who, having taken their name after King Herod and his family dynasty, believed that securing a measure of political independence for the Roman province of Judea meant collaborating with Rome as much as possible. They were the advocates of peace, order, and good government and were willing to make any number of compromises to attain that goal.
A more unlikely pairing are you likely to find. The Sadducees and the Pharisees disagreed, but at least they both believed. The Herodians—they were first century Machiavellians who were interested in keeping the peace, not following the commandments of God.
What brought these strange bedfellows together was the economy of the Temple that Jesus had just, with a whip and some words, destroyed. The people would come to the temple with their coins—minted by Rome and bearing Caesar’s image—to the Temple. There, they would first change their money into Temple currency (remember the money marketers?) and then buy their sacrifice (the sacrifice sellers). And there were gradations of sacrifices—poor people could by pigeons or doves, lambs were for more wealthy families. And of course, the Sadducees who over saw it all took their cut, too. The point is, there were two functioning economies—the everyday and the Temple—each with their own currency. Their own money. The people lived trapped in two worlds.
So, the Pharisees and the Herodians want Jesus to comment further about money. Tell us Jesus, is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar at all? If Jesus says—as the Pharisees would like—it is not lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, the Herodians will have him on charges of treason; if he answers that it is, then the Pharisees will have him on charges of impiety. It looks like a lose-lose situation for the Lord.
So, Jesus takes a coin and asks a question of his own. He holds it in front of his questioners, asking, “Whose image is this and whose epigraph?” That’s my own translation of the Greek and it’s important. I’ll tell you why in a moment. For now, just remember, Jesus did not say “Whose head is this?” but “Whose image?” “Ceasar,” they answer. “Then give to Caesar what belongs to him and to God those things that are God’s.”
What is going on here? Well, perhaps a good way to begin is to clarify what is not going on. Jesus, with this cryptic remark, is not a modern liberal Canadian. He is not segmenting life into the worlds of public duties—where Caesar rules and optional private commitments—which is where God belongs (or not—it’s up to you). This is not a first century expression of the public/private sequestering of our lives that we take for granted. Jesus—and here Jesus really is like the Pharisees and not the Herodians—believed that the Kingdom of God was a public, political, soon to be upon us reality. The Kingdom of God was as this-worldly to him as Mexico is to us. It’s not quite where we live, but we know it exists and how to get there. For Jesus, life lived under God’s reign is public life. It embraces all of us.
Well, what is he doing then? Here, we need to go back to Jesus’ question. Remember what he asked? “Whose image is this?” Image is an important word. He’s calling to mind for both the Herodians and the Pharisees the words of Genesis. “And God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image and let them take dominion over the birds of the air and the fish of the sea, all livestock and everything that creeps on the earth.’ So the Lord God made humankind in his image; male and female he created them.” The coin—it bears the image of Caesar. So it’s his. Give it to him. Caesar is part of the old order that’s about to pass away.
When he adds, give to God’s what belongs to him, he’s still talking about images. It is as though, having put the coin down, Jesus has pointed to his questioners and asked, “And whose image are you? Well then, give to God what belongs to him.” Caesar can claim your cash; God claims your life for you are made in God’s image. All of you—inner, outer, private, public, every little bit belongs to God. So give it to him.
Don’t fret about currency exchanges and taxation codes and having the right money to buy the right sacrifice. For there is no line to be drawn in which Caesar’s rule ends and God’s begins. Even Caesar rules under God. Even Caesar belongs, body and soul, to the One in whose image he is made. So give Caesar his money. It will pass away with him. Who do you really belong to? And what difference does it make? No wonder they went away confounded!
Whose image are you? Who do you really belong to? And what difference does it make? The questions provoked by the first century rabbi echo through millennia such that when we encounter them today, they are as fresh and frustrating as they were when he first said them. And they bring us round to our reflections about mission.
Last week, we spoke of one of the ways we think about time—we think of it as a commodity. We think of it as ours. Remember—we can save or spend, waste, lose or use as we wish. We need to be productive with our time. Last week, we saw how Jesus parable refuted that metaphor by replacing it with another—Time is the space given to us by God to respond to the Gospel and to announce it to others. Much the same thing is going on here with talents—our abilities, our strengths. Pick a word that works for you. I stuck with talents because it kept the alliteration with Time and Treasure.
Anyway, we would like to think that, like our time, our talents are ours to use as we please. We can develop them, we can hide them, we can take them public, we can keep them private. They’re ours. And nobody can tell me what I can do or not do.
And then walks in this Galilean Rabbi with his unnerving questions. “Whose Image Are You? Who do you really belong to? What difference does it make?” If we are made in God’s image—bearing in our bodies and souls God’s stamp, designed to cooperate and extend God’s reign—then, our talents are not our own. Just as our taxes go to Caesar, our talents (along with the rest of us) go to God.
How might our life as disciples change were we really to come to believe that? How might our community change as we began to look at it as belonging first to God? What differences might be made were we to come to see ourselves designed by God to announce his Gospel and placed by God in this parish to do just that?
Questions that again I cannot answer. Questions that, again, I would ask us to guide our prayers for the coming week.
So yes, we’re still talking about prayer. And we’re still talking about being transformed by the Gospel. And that’s because mission is not really about “doing things.” At least not in the first instance. As a parish, we do lots of things! Come into the parish office and look at the calendar. It is packed. The Epiphany This Week announcements seem only to get longer. For every one that expires, it sometimes seems to me like four are added. So, the point of these sermons is not that we need to be doing more. Maybe we do. Maybe we need to be doing less. May be we need to be doing differently. Until we become serious about aligning our intentions and efforts with God’s, none of us will know.
Mission, in the first instance, is about that—about aligning our hearts and minds with the heart and mind of the heavenly Father who sent his Son anointed with the Holy Spirit to save the world. Mission, in the first instance is about calling God’s people to pray for God’s eyes (discernment), for God’s space (time), for God’s gifts (talents and treasure). As we do, the going, the doing, the missioning (if that’s a word), will look after itself.
Thus far, the Scriptures have invited us to pray that we might come to see the opportunities for mission that are here in our parish. They have invited us to pray that we might see time as the space we have been given in which to bring the Gospel to those people and events. Now, those same Scriptures are calling us to see ourselves as the ones placed here by God to bring God’s Gospel invitation in ways that no one else can. They are calling us to re-think our talents.
I love the movie, The Incredibles. In fact, I think it is one of the finest family movies ever made, whether by Pixar or anybody else. And one of the themes in the movie is that we live in a culture that so celebrates mediocrity that anyone with a talent is compelled to mute it lest they offend those who lack it. Remember the line, “If everybody’s special, then no one is”? It comes up twice. The first time, Mr Incredible says it to his wife, Elastigirl as his reason for not wanting to attend his son Dash’s “graduation” from 4th to 5th grade. It’s not a milestone. It’s not a right of passage. It’s not even a graduation. If we make every transition special, then none of them are anymore. The second, Syndrome—the villain—says it to Mr. Incredible as his reason for inventing technologies that will give ordinary people—provided they’re wealthy—the abilities to mimic the powers of superheroes. Syndrome’s goal—in addition to making himself fabulously wealthy and powerful—is to destroy all superheroes and with them, the notion that some people really are special.
What’s the point, Perry? Well, here it is. When it comes to mission, all of us are special and none of us are special in just the same way and this is true of us as believers and us as a community. The Holy Spirit has blessed his people with natural talents and supernatural gifts and then placed those people where he wants them to be. He has already matched the people and their parish to the mission.
How might our life together change if we came to see ourselves and each other—and disciples and as a community—as specially placed here in downtown Sudbury by God to do something that no one else down here can do?
So suppose you’re with me. Suppose you find yourself saying, “Yes, Father Tim, I want my time, my talents aligned with God’s mission. How do I discern?” I have a prayer for you that I’m going to pray as we close and post on the church website. But before I pray, there’s another group of people here who might be saying something different. They might be saying, “Father Tim, I’m spent. I’m tired. I’m old. I can’t. Please don’t put another burden on my shoulders.” Here’s the Gospel for you—you are the image of God and will always be. Our parish has been blessed by your work, is strengthened by your prayers, and will benefit from your wisdom. Part of our mission is to bless you in your rest. There is no burden here for you.
Whether you would place yourself in either group—or another altogether—however, we all can pray this prayer which was first prayed by John Henry Newman:
“God has created me to do Him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission. I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall do good; I shall do His work. I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it if I do but keep His commandments. Therefore, I will trust Him, whatever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him, in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him. If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. He does nothing in vain. He knows what He is about. He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me. Still, He knows what He is about.”