“You Are the Light of the World”

November 6, 2005

Scripture Readings: Matthew 22:15-22 - Matthew 5:13-16

Rev. Dr. Carol L. Kerr 

Blue Point Congregational Church

 

Jesus told the people, Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s and give to God the things that are God’s.  He raises the question that some things are the emperors and some things are God’s.  But, he never really answers the questions.  Exactly which are which?  Jesus leaves it to us to answer that questions. 

We find this passage in the middle of a series of passages where people are asking Jesus very tricky questions in order to trip him up, get him to say the wrong thing, and that was there chance to pounce on him.  In this situation there were two groups present.  These were two opposite groups.  There were the Pharisees who were conservative, anti-Roman Jews and there were the Herodians who were liberal, pro-Roman Jews.  Strange bed fellows.  Like Pat Buchanan hooking up with Ted Kennedy.  But, they did it to raise the question of whether a faithful Jew should pay taxes to the Roman occupiers.  No matter which way Jesus answered their questions he would be wrong.  One group would be offended and out to get him.  Choose your poison Jesus.

But, Jesus was not dumb.  He said, show me a coin.  They brought him a denarius which was a Roman coin that would be equal to about $100 today.  On it was stamped the image of the Roman emperor and it carried the inscription that declared the Cesar was a god.  This made carrying it for a Jew sacrilege.  It would mean that the Jew was disobeying the commandment you shall have no other God but Yahweh. 

Holding the coin up Jesus asked whose head is this and whose title is this?  They all responded that it was, of course, the emperor’s.  Then Jesus said to them, give therefore the things that are the emperors and to God the things that are God.  They were amazed and left.

Jesus got out of that one by the skin of his teeth.  Who knows, maybe both parties were satisfied with his answer.  Probably, both were offended but didn’t know what to do next.  For us, though, Jesus leaves us with the question, “O.K.  we will do what you tell us.  We will give to the emperor’s what is the emperor’s and to God’s what is God’s.  But exactly what are those things?” 

If this same thing happened today Jesus’ answer would be even more ambiguous.  If Jesus was given a dollar bill instead of a denary he would  have asked what does this dollar bill say?  On the one hand it says, “The United States of America.”  But, then just underneath that it says, “In God We Trust.”  Render to the United States what is the United States and to God what is God’s?  O.K.  So which does this dollar bill belong to?   The question goes way beyond who do we pay taxes to.  For one thing it can be generalized to what do we spend our money on?  Do we spend it on secular things or on spiritual things. 

The minister holding a dollar bill in front of a congregation can only mean one thing.  The Stewardship drive is upon us, and it is that time of year for you to pledge to the church.  The stewardship committee is asking everyone to consider increasing our pledges 10%. 

Now if you were holding this dollar bill and you had your accountant on one side and your minister, me on the other side and you asked the question who does this dollar bill belong to?  I will fast forward to the end of the sermon and tell you your accountant is going to loose.  It belongs to God.  We all know that.  Everything belongs to God is a big way.  But, the devil is in the details.  One broad sweep doesn’t help us make the every day decisions of what to do with our money or exactly how much to pledge to the church. 

Imagine you are at a check out counter and going to use this dollar bill to buy a candy bar.  You look at the words, “The United States of America” or “In God We Trust.”  Which are you going to choose.  Are you going choose the first and spend the dollar?  Or, are you going to choose the second and save the dollar for your offering?  It might be easy.  After all chocolate has a lot of cholesterol and calories.  It is definitely not good for you.  Put it back.  Put the dollar in your pocket.  But, you are really hungry!...  How about the cup of coffee at Starbucks.  That costs more than just one dollar, maybe four dollars.  “In God We Trust,”  “In God We Trust”, “In God We Trust,”  “In God We Trust.”  Feeling guilty yet?  But, you are going to drink it with a really close friend.  This isn’t about coffee it is about friendship.  This is important.  The decision gets harder.  How about shelling out $30,000 for a really nice car instead of $20,000 for a not as nice car?  Should you give the $10,000 to the church?  Would that make God watch over you in traffic more?  Of course your accountant might say to keep the money for yourself and save it and then invest it in order to get more money.

 Many of us here have pretty good incomes.  Just where do we draw the line?  How far do we go with this?  The issue can be generalized even further than just about spending money. It is about how we spend our time too.   What we do with our lives?  Think about a church having a Stewardship drive not for money but a Stewardship drive for your life.  Are you going to spend your life doing things that don’t add up to much, and don’t contribute to the betterment of humanity?  Or, are you going to spend your life wisely?  And what is wisely?  The questions go on and on.  Should we be living among the poor, how much plastic or paper should we be using for ecology?  Should we help out those soldiers in Iraq and volunteer for the army?  Does that mean you can’t ride in your motor boat but are suppose to rake the church yard?

Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God’s what is God’s.  What does God want from me?  I really wish Jesus had told us the answer to that question.  But, he didn’t.  There is a reason why he didn’t.  Jesus didn’t tell us the answer because the truth is that we have to decide on the answer dollar bill by dollar bill, moment by moment of our lives. 

Take the time when Jesus says, You are the light of the world….Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven (Matt 5:14)

“Let your light shine!”  Is the motto for this year’s Stewardship drive.  (And it is a good one!)  The problem is that it can give us the idea that a shining light is a passive thing.  Just stand there, don’t do anything, and shine.  In the same passage Jesus also says that you are the salt of the earth.  When we use the phrase, “She is the salt of the earth.”  We usually think that that person is exceptionally ethical or good.  That person is an example to others to emulate.  But, the phrase “You are the salt of the earth” had a very different meaning to those who were listening to Jesus back then.  It originally sounded much stranger.  We can catch the idea better if we substitute another seasoning such as “You are the red hot pepper for the whole earth!”  The salt is not just about sitting there for everyone to look up to.  The salt is actively taking part in the thing.  Likewise, to be a light of the earth is not just about sitting around being perfectly good.  Being the light of the earth is about fireworks exploding in a dark sky.  Or perhaps a better analogy is a light house on the coast seeking out the lost and showing them the way to go.  It is a fire-y salt and an active light. 

Last week, as a sort of fore shadowing of the stewardship sermon, I invented a term, “hope activist.”  I like it because we usually think of hope as a sort of passive thing.  At best hope is taking a deep breath and sighing.  But hope can be and should be an active thing.  Hope activism works moment to moment.  Hope activism shines a beam on any given situation and looks for the possibilities that could be shrouded in darkness.  A hope activist is a light and salt at work. 

What is Caesar’s and what is God’s?  We have to actively search for the answer.  You can’t go to a seminary or to a text book and find out the answer.  Even the Bible can’t tell you what to do in each and every situation.  This is because each life is unique.  The circumstances we encounter are unique.  We have to figure it out for ourselves afresh and anew.  The question comes up for each and every dollar bill, because each time we spend it is a unique time.  Is this a time for Caesar?  Or is this a time to trust in God?  Where to shine the light?  Where to sprinkle the salt?  What we are talking about is a daily spiritual practice.  I am calling it the practice of hope activism.

I would like to share with you two wonderful examples.  First is Rosa Parks.  She found the right moment to do the right thing.  She died October 24 just a few weeks shy of the 50^th anniversary of her Dec. 1, 1955 arrest for refusing to surrender her seat to t white man on a segregated bus, an event that sparked the 381 day bus boycott and the rise to national prominence of her pastor:  Martin Luther King Junior of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Alabama.  It was just an ordinary day.  She was coming home from another day at work as an ordinary seamstress.  She was tired.  It was an ordinary bus ride.  Except that Rosa was not passive in her ordinariness.  She was asked to get up and go to the back of the bus.  It would have been easy for her to say to herself, “Oh, I’ll make a fuss some other day.  I’m too tired today.”  She could have rendered the moment to Caesar, and the laws of the United States.  But, she rendered the moment to God.  She refused to get up and move.  As such she injected hope into a hopeless moment, in a hopeless bus system, in a hopeless state in a divided country whose name is “The United States of America.”

The thing that strikes me about her is how much her faith played a role in her courage.  In her book entitled, “Quiet Strength” Parks says her belief in God developed early in life.  Every day before supper and before we went to services on Sundays my grandmother would read the Bible to me and my grandfather would pray.  We even had devotions before going to pick cotton in the fields.  Prayer and the Bible became a part of my everyday thoughts and belifes.  I learned to put my trust in God and to seek Him as my strength.”  Isn’t that what is says on the dollar bill, exactly that?  “In God we trust.” 

Speaking of the moment she wa arrested she said that she knew to get up would be wrong and she refused.  Since I have always been a strong believer in God, I knew that He was with me, and only He could get me through the next steps.  It sounds to me that she not only rendered the moment to God instead of Caesar, but she also rendered her life to God instead of Caesar. 

The other point is this.  Rosa Parks was an ordinary woman.  She was like you and me.  She insisted people know this.  What made her heroic was her practice of deciding each moment which is was going to be God’s or something else.  This gave her the insight and the courage to act just at the right time.

We all have heard of Rosa Parks.  But, let me tell you about another hope activist that you haven’t heard of .  Rev.  Bob Dykstra a seminary professor in his sermon “Gods” tells about a student of his Craig.  Craig had just graduated from seminary that summer and he had just been hired by his first parish when a week later a doctor told him in no uncertain terms that he had a form of cancer that most likely would be terminal.  He had only a few months to live.   Bitter irony isn’t it?  Timing is everything.  It makes one see just how little makes sense. 

Craig a few weeks later was ordained.  In spite of his physical discomfort he described it as the best day of his life.  He told Rev. Dykstra that shortly afer he had arrived at his new parish a delegation of elders and deacons came to his bed side specifically to tell him that although this was not the ministry they ahd in mind when they called him there they just wanted him to know that all in the church was convinced that his was the ministry that they now wanted and needed.  They said it was just the ministry that they believed God had in mind for him and for them.  Craig was moved to tears.  What ministry were they talking about?  The ministry of dying?  The ministry of receiving his parishioners’ care?  A ministry of almost total helplessness and incapacity? 

Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.  This moment could have been rendered to Caesar.  As such it would have been rendered to death, and fate, and hopelessness.  But, the congregation must practiced of all things hope activism.  They rendered the moment to God.  They let a light shine and they let its rays show them the best that they had in them.  The beacon showed a capacity of love, of caring and deep community in that church.   Like Rosa Parks, this church was an ordinary church, just like us.  These were normal people, just like we are.  Only they practiced hope, just like we can too.  They found a depth of character and faith they didn’t even know they had.

You know what?  They took on this ministry and this minister in the fall right when they were launching their stewardship drive.  I am sure that each one of them held a dollar bill in their hand before they dropped it into the offering plate read the word “The United States of America” and read the words “In God We Trust.” And believed in the latter.  I don’t know, but my bet is that their stewardship increased at least 10 percent. 

All Craig had to do after the diagnosis was to show up at the church office, which he could only do occasionally and with difficulty.  He could tell the people were blessed by his presence.  He could tell that they felt moved not knowing what to say to hi, but knowing that they were in the midst of something terrible and yet holy.  Hope activism, against all the obvious reasons not to ordain him and not to employ him because he had only a couple of months of life left in him.  They trusted God.  A foolish and extravagant hope. 

Jesus says,  You are the light of the world….Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven (Matt 5:14)

Next week we are asking you to bring in your pledges for this year’s Stewardship drive.  You have to make the decision.  We can’t make the decision for you.  Jesus can’t make the decision for you.  But, when you do we ask you to trust in God.  To render to Caesar only what is his, if there is any that is his.  Whatever you decision is.  Make sure it is one that actively promotes and brings hope to our church and the world.