The Gospel portion cited here is Matthew 22:34-46.
Circling one another like fighters in a ring or fencers set to parry and thrust are Jesus and a whole bunch of very religious, very spiritual, very upright pillars of their society, the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Each of these groups is trying to catch Jesus in his own talk, setting him up to make a very public mistake that might cost him the people’s respect. They are circling around him like a street gang, craftily trying to limit his options and squeeze him into saying or doing something that will be picked up by the first-century version of Fox News. These are perfect Gospels for the last days of a presidential campaign.
Last Sunday, we heard the Pharisees hoping to trap Jesus with their tricky question, “Is it right to pay taxes to the emperor or not?” He handled that by calling for a coin and asking “Whose head do you see?”
Try that with a quarter and who’s there but George Washington. “Being a citizen carries its demands,” Jesus might say. “So does belonging to the kingdom of God.”
With that, Jesus demonstrates a skill that he teaches to all who seek truth: Don’t let other people dictate the terms of your choices. They may tell you that you have to choose between this and that. Truth may require you to hold both in balance, as you see through the veil of opposites to the unity that requires imagination.
And in the case of taxes, we can see why. God does not work solely through what we might call the sacred; God works also in the realm of the secular. In a few short moments we will renew our baptismal vows, including God’s call to strive for justice and peace among all people, and to respect the dignity of every human being. The just ordering of human society, says the Bible in countless ways, is a chief priority of God and a chief responsibility of each child of God. Respecting the dignity of every member of society is costly, requires our investing in the common good, including the payment of taxes.
In today’s portion, a lawyer starts another dance of death around Jesus. “Teacher, reveal your bias: there are many commandments in our law—which one is greatest?” Picture the resulting headlines: Would-be messiah preaches against graven images but appears uninterested in stamping out adultery!
Don’t let them dictate your choices, Jesus demonstrates again as he answers this lawyer not by citing any of the thou-shalt-nots, but by using the positive voice of his ancient and brilliant Hebrew tradition: “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” Or, as we hear it in The Message, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.’ This is the most important, the first on any list. But there is a second to set alongside it: ‘Love others as well as you love yourself.’ These two commands are pegs; everything in God’s law and the Prophets hangs from them.”
And everything Jesus says about God shows him revealing this truth: that God is not a subject to be studied or a tribal power to be claimed. God is One to be known through relationship, through loving, through serving. Pharisees and Sadducees, like very religious and very spiritual people in all ages, may prefer to reduce God to a subject to be studied, a tribal power to be claimed and owned. That is less than God.
We are about to baptize Nina, a child of God. That title recognizes God already at work in her life, always at work in her life. God doesn’t partner up with Nina because of what we do this morning: we are running to catch up with God who bestows gifts of faith, hope, and love. We are gathering around her to watch with awe as these gifts of God grow and blossom in her, and, because it is the Church’s responsibility to do so, to pray that God will keep increasing in her these gifts of faith, hope, and love—and not just to pray that, but to coach her to recognize her gifts, encourage her to practice and exercise them, model for her what those gifts look like when they are put at the service of God, and share with her our own gifts.
What a time she has been born into! Apocalyptic predictions meet us every morning as we hear the news, many an evening as we hear the closing bell on the Exchange. Daily, we learn what we have been taking for granted. On a good day, we recall who and whose we are. Every now and again, we may recognize that what is happening to us is truth, the clearing away of so much that has been so false for so long and the immersing of our world for a time in the cold bath of truth.
Made clear today is the truth about who Nina is, made clear in such a way that we would have to be very stubborn indeed not to realize and welcome the same truth about ourselves: that by the generous and gracious gifting of God, each of us is a citizen of the kingdom of God, a living member of the Body of Christ in the world, an honored member of his family with a place at his table, united with him in his death so as to be joined with him in his resurrection, an instrument of peace, a defender of justice.
Nina’s baptism will help us recall who and whose we are: people called to, and privileged to, know and love and serve God through relationship with the one who teaches us how to seek and embrace truth.
His lessons, from two thousand years of market cycles, economic spirals, and global calamities, are a fresh fit for right now.
Don’t let others dictate the terms of your choices. They may tell you that you have to choose between this and that. Truth may require you to hold both in balance.
As tiring as it gets, consciously choose to pay attention so that you discern the spirit within what you’re hearing about the future, then choose to invest your faith and hope and charity where you sense the positive energy of truth.
Welcome the adventure of life that must be lived on new terms. Embrace the truth you are learning, and be patient with it. In a period of decrease, focus on the increase of God’s gifts to you, gifts of faith, hope, and charity—gifts of trust, courage, and love.
“‘Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.’ This is the most important, the first on any list. But there is a second to set alongside it: ‘Love others as well as you love yourself.’ These two commands are pegs; everything in God’s law and the Prophets hangs from them.”
