Sermon

October 16, 2005

A Sermon Preached at St. Stephen's on October 16, 2005, by the Rev. Cork Tarplee

In the first confirmation class I conducted in the little town of Hamilton , NY, I was explaining to the parents of the teenagers in my confirmation class that I expected the young people to attend Sunday morning worship. "You do understand," one parent responded as if she were speaking to a not-very bright child who had just asked for a pony for his birthday, "You do understand that the children can't be here for church in November and December?" Seeing how perplexed I looked, she went on. "They have Youth Hockey on Sunday mornings. It is the only time they can get on the ice in the college rink." That incident twenty-five years ago helped me a few years back when the Millburn ministerial association began negotiating with the local rec department and school board about the requirements they placed on young people in town. The issue was that it was difficult if not impossible for kids to meet the requirements of sports, school plays and band and still have time to prepare for Bar and Bat Mitzvah or confirmation. As the various interest groups began an intense wrangle trying to work out a schedule that would enable the kids to do everything, I made what proved to be an unpopular suggestion. "Maybe," I said, "we are going about this the wrong way. Maybe we shouldn't even try to come up with a master schedule. As clergy, isn't it our job to help people make difficult values decisions? Maybe we should be helping parents and kids make hard choices among their many options instead of trying to resolve their conflicts."

My suggestion didn't go down well, but I stand by it nevertheless. Whether it is the hard choice between Youth Hockey and going to church or the hard choice between having the lead in the school play and getting confirmed, young people in our world have hard choices to make. In this, they are no different from their parents. We often have to choose between the promotion and spending time with the kids. We have to choose between the new car or the new toy and giving our money to any one of a huge number of excellent charities. Lots of good things compete for our time, attention and money, and we have to make hard choices.

Jesus' questioners in this morning's Gospel tried to get Jesus to make a simple answer to a hard choice. The question about paying taxes was a trick. If Jesus said Jews should pay taxes, he would be committing blasphemy. Caesar claimed to be a god and his image on the coin was considered idolatry to the Jews. On the other hand, if Jesus said that Jews should not pay taxes, he would be committing treason. Jesus' answer side steps these black-or-white solutions in favor of a deeper issue. He points out the image--the actual word in Greek is "eikon"--on the coin and says that the coin is made in Caesar's image. This way of thinking surely reminds his hearers of the creation story in Genesis in which men and women are made in the image--the eikon--of God and therefore belong to God. "Give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar," says Jesus in the famous answer, "and to God what belongs to God."

It is, of course, no answer at all. We can't separate what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God. We are taught that the earth and all that is in it belongs to God, so in a sense, nothing ultimately belongs to Caesar. And yet, at the same time Caesar does God's work sometimes, providing public works and public safety and sometimes public charity, so sometimes paying Caesar is giving back to God as well.

And so it is with our hard choices in life as well. The ability for a child to excell on the sports field or in the music room or on the stage is the exercise of a God-given talent. Aren't these things important just like worship and the rite of confirmation are important? The ability to take a family vacation may be important glue in our God-given relationships. Could it be as important as your pledge to the church that enables your child to attend church school? In the matter of choices--between God and Caesar, between recreation and church, between money for my joy and money for the needy--in the matter of choices, there are no easy decisions. Each of us has to make up our own minds--and perhaps the best we can do is make up our minds in humility and with fear and trembling. As one student put it in studying this passage, "Maybe Jesus wants us to be permanently uneasy."

Permanently uneasy is a godly place to be when it comes to important decisions about time and effort and money. "Give till it hurts," may be good advice when it comes to these decisions. Take enough time away from the job to attend the children's activities that we begin to wonder if we'll have a job to go back to. Give enough to the church roof and to the hurricane victims that it seriously compromises the next vacation. Agonize about the choice between worship and sports or recreation. Be uneasy. By being uneasy we take our choices seriously. We recognize that we are made in the image of God. We recognize that our choices are important and have important consequences. Sometimes we will give to Caesar. Sometimes to the gods of sport and recreation. But may we always, in every choice we make, give our lives to God.

AMEN