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Phil Blackwell

“Images of Loyalty”
Matthew 22:15-22

Sermon – 2011-10-14

We used to carry photos in our wallets or purses. Remember when someone would say, “Let me show you a picture of my new granddaughter,” and then flip open the plastic sheathes past the credit cards and insurance information to the photo. Last Sunday a member of the church said, “I’ve got a new grandson. Look at him!” as he held up his smartphone to show me the instant after birth photo.

Images which say who we are, which portray our loyalty.

Tattoos, it is tattoos today. I do not have one and am unlikely to get one, but both of our children have them. Tattoos make for fascinating reading on the “el.” People used to spend good money at the carnival to see the “illustrated man,” but now it costs only $2.50 to see more than you have bargained for. Tattoos declaring one’s loyalty to a lover, a nation, a ball club, a brand name . . . I have not seen one for a church, though I did read about a soccer player from Colombia who got into trouble playing a match in Saudi Arabia with a tattoo of Jesus exposed on his arm. It once was that people only wore Old Navy t-shirts, Nike shoes, Levi jeans, and White Sox caps, things that could be taken off and put away at night. We used to wear our loyalty on our sleeve; now it is tattooed to our arms.

You see the young guy walking down the street with the tattoo of a fierce American eagle on his bulging bicep and know that by the time he gets his AARP card in the mail it will be reduced to a scrawny sparrow. Someone told me last week that he thought he would go into the tattoo erasure business because it ought to be a booming industry in the not too distant future.

Images of loyalty . . . they are nothing new. They are at the heart of the showdown which we just heard read from the Gospel of Matthew. This is not a casual conversation between Jesus and the Pharisees concerning an abstract question. This is a trap.

“Jesus, you are such a wonderful teacher and wise man. You are so sincere and always know the will of God.” Beware of such flattery! Jesus knows this. “What do you think, teacher? It is lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?”

Is it lawful? Of course, it is, by definition. It is the law of the land, the law of Israel even if so because it is occupied by a foreign power, Rome. Yes, it is lawful, but the trick behind the question is, “So, where is your true loyalty, Jesus? To Caesar or to God?”

“If you say, ‘Caesar’ then you are in trouble with us, the Pharisees, the keepers of God’s domain. If you say ‘God’ then you are in trouble with the civil authorities for treason.” They think that they have him cornered.

He says to them, “I know what you are up to. Show me a coin used to pay the tax,” and the Pharisees produce a denarius, the amount exacted by the poll tax, the one Joseph and Mary went to Bethlehem to pay on that fateful trip. It was a modest amount, the equivalent of one day’s pay.

What are these sacred men doing with secular money? Why do they need to carry Roman coins around the temple? They do not need it to perform their holy duties.

“You hypocrites,” Jesus gently begins. “Whose image is on the coin?” Well, there was the image of Caesar, with an inscription considered blasphemous by many Jews, “Tiberius Caesar, august son of the divine Augustus, the high priest.” “This must belong to Caesar; give it back to him. And give everything that bears God’s image back to God.”

What bears God’s image? What does not? If we proclaim God to be the “creator of heaven and earth,” as we say in the Apostles’ Creed, “of all that is, seen and unseen,” as we add in the Nicene Creed, “the source of all goodness and beauty, all truth and love,” as we profess in a more modern affirmation of faith, then we must look for the image of God in every aspect of the creation. Not tattooed on the body, not worn on a garment, not minted on a coin, but inscribed upon our hearts.

That is the language of the Old Testament prophet, Jeremiah. In one of the most transitional passages in the entire Bible, Jeremiah says that God no longer is content with writing the terms of the covenant in stone tablets but will “put the law within them and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord” (31:31).

The image of God is written upon our hearts. We will not find that in our MRI results, but we will find it in our lives as we live to be more and more loyal to the image of God. You and I bear the image of God within us, and it is our calling to make that image extant, to move it from “in here” to “out there.”

“Imago dei,” the image of God. Theologians have been talking about it since the beginning of time. Is it something that is inscribed within the soul of every human being, accessed and used by some while obscured and ignored by others? Or might it be real only in those who exhibit in some way the godly attributes of living justly, acting mercifully, loving generously, thinking rightly, always celebrating the beauty of existence?

Well, the theorists can argue back and forth on that; but practically speaking, it is much simpler than that. We have seen the image of God in some people. Some are enshrined here in stained glass windows . . . Matthew and James, I always have liked Philip looking down from up there on this pulpit. And Luther and Calvin, and of course, Mary and Jesus. We have beatified others in our own time, too . . . Mother Theresa, Nelson Mandela, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

But the person I have been thinking about this week has no stained glass window or familiar name, yet he is one of many who I have seen over the years who bear the image of God. Norm was a farmer out in Cedarville, I think it was, near Rockford. When he was in his 40’s he got into his head that he wanted to be a minister. Now, going into the ministry is not the only way to bear the image of God, and not everyone who has gone into the ministry bears the image of God convincingly, but Norm felt “the call.”

But he only had a high school education. So, while he continued his farming, he enrolled at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb and starting taking courses. It took years for him to graduate, with time for only a course or two a semester.

And then, seminary. He commuted to Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, again a course or two at a time, though now he had handed off the farming chores to others and was serving a small congregation near his home. He was good at it, very good. Finally, after all those years and enormous dedication, Norm graduated, but as soon as he was ordained he died from cancer.

Cruel . . . what kind of God would do such a thing? But, in fact, ordination had nothing to do with it. Norm bore the image of God his whole life; his ministry began early on while farming, long before he felt the tug toward serving the church. He just became visible to the rest of us as he went through the process. And his godly living that was such a gift to others needed no credentials, no diplomas, no title. All he had was all he needed, God’s image inscribed upon his heart.

We all are capable of living like Norm Scheider, certainly not having to go to seminary, but giving everything back to God. “All things come of thee, O Lord; and of thine own have we given thee,” sings the old verse.

Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s; render to God what is God’s. But if everything belongs to God, even the denarius with Caesar’s image on it, then there is no trap for Jesus. He puts everything into proper perspective. There is no real separation between the sacred and the secular. It is useful to have a declaration of the separation of Church and State in our culture. It protects the public domain from encroachment by the religiously overbearing and spiritually insensitive. It also protects the Church from governmental prescriptions of what to believe and how to worship. That is an important legal distinction, the separation of Church and State.

But that is not how we live. We cannot separate out our religious convictions from the rest of our lives. We cannot say, “Well, I am a Christian on Sunday, and I am a lawyer Monday through Friday, and I am a parent all the time, and I am a tennis player on Saturday morning, and I am a volunteer at the library on Tuesday night, and I am a bridge player on the third Thursday of the month.” No, we are Christians all the time everywhere or we are not a Christian at all. We are a Christian when we are a lawyer, a parent, a tennis player, a volunteer, and a bridge partner. The image of God, “imago dei,” is written upon our hearts at all times and in all places, and because of that consistency, we render our lives to God in everything that we do.

This is not a passage about taxes. We can talk about taxes, I suppose; everyone else is doing it. It is a popular topic these days. But the Pharisees, not unlike political schemers today, raised the tax issue simply to set a trap. And Jesus escapes by recasting the issue as one about ultimate loyalty. Whose image do we bear, Caesar’s or God’s, and what does our answer say about how we are to live?

If we say, “God’s image,” then there is nothing today that falls outside of God’s realm. There is nothing too insignificant, too routine, too problematic to be cast as “unholy.” All of life is holy, every moment is sacred, every action is sacramental. Certainly now in this sanctuary in the middle of the city, but also when we are back on the sidewalk, back home, back in the office, back in the classroom.

What is our ultimate loyalty? And can we be the living image of it for others to see?

Amen.

Philip L. Blackwell

The Chicago Temple