Pentecost 19A (Matthew 22:15-22)  10/19/2014

“Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” (Matt 22:17), said the disciples of the Pharisees, along with the Herodians, to Jesus as they stood in the temple. An interesting question posed by an interesting group of people; a strange group of “friends” you might say. The Pharisees were more concerned with religious “correctness” and righteousness, while the Herodians, supporters of the royal family of Herod, would have been more concerned with political power. But these strange friends found common ground in their challenge to Jesus…a question that by its very nature had a lose-lose response: if you suggest paying tax to the emperor, you are a friend of Caesar and the Roman empire which was set against the Jewish people; and if you suggest withholding your tax payment, well you are a religious zealot and a dangerous insurrectionist. These Jewish authorities had been listening to Jesus teach the crowd about the kingdom of God and they seem to have had enough of his rhetoric…they were determined to entrap him with a unanswerable question. The problem for the Jewish authorities, however, was that the question is only a trap if you think in black and white, right and wrong: the Roman empire or the kingdom of God, devotion to my worldly life and its success or devotion to God and all that God invites us to be. In this black and white world, the question posed to Jesus was fraught with challenges beyond belief! Jesus’ response to their tricky question might appear black and white in our hearing: “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” (Matt 22:21b) But Jesus does not live in this black and white, earthly or divine world; Jesus lives in the fullness and abundance of God’s creation, and his response amazed the authorities and sent them away as they considered all that was given to them from God; and how their lives would change if they listened to Jesus.

I recently saw a short video that described the changing natural world of Yellowstone National Park.[i] The video piece is centered on the re-introduction of wolves to the ecosystem of the park. For the past several decades wolves have been nearly absent from the area, which allowed the deer and elk to roam uninhibited and graze the surrounding vegetation until it had nearly vanished. As the wolves reentered the area, the predatory relationship between the wolves and the deer caused a complete change in the deer’s behavior…no longer could they roam wherever they wished. The deer now cautiously traveled in safer areas of the park, staying away from the open valleys and narrow gorges where they could be easily captured by the wolves. The results of the deer’s new behavior were amazing: in the barren valley areas, vegetation grew in great abundance (aspen, willow and cottonwood trees and bushes filled with berries), beaver began to flourish with the new tree growth and the engineering wonders of the beaver created inviting environments for others, several species of land animals and birds returned to the valleys due to the growth in trees and the new behaviors of the coyotes, and with the solid growth of vegetation along the river banks, the entire pattern of bank erosion changed and the path of the rivers changed as well. The video dramatically captures the complexity of God’s created world and provides us with a living example that our world is not black and white, earthly or divine; we are connected in ways and means that we cannot begin to appreciate. As members of God’s abundant creation, when we seek our own path and portion our gifts on our own schedule, the impact is felt both near and far. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, well known spiritual leader and author, wrote of our living and giving in this way: “Living is not a private affair of the individual. Living is what [one] does with God’s time, what [one] does with God’s world.”^[ii] The idea that our time and our world are gifts given to us from the One living God is at the root of Jesus’ reply to the Pharisees and the Herodians…all that we have and all that we are comes from God; this is the context in which Jesus commands, “give to God the things that are God’s.”

Throughout the coming weeks, we will be considering the many ways we are invited into a life of living and giving our gifts. The stewardship team has sent letters discussing different aspects of our stewardship at St. Francis and this coming week you will be receiving a letter with a request to participate in the financial support of this place, and I want to be sure you hear that the financial support of this community is only one part of a life of giving. And this belief is why the stewardship team has made a commitment to invite our community partners to discuss how our connection with them, our sharing of gifts with them, is an important part of our mission at St. Francis. We all lead busy lives and sometimes we can become so busy we only see our world in black and white; our view of life can sometimes be reduced to a collection of open spots and busy appointments on our calendars. I pray that this fall season of stewardship can be a time of reflection, a time for us to take up a new understanding of how our lives, our commitment to a life of living and giving, can impact God’s world. If a few wolves in Yellowstone National Park can change the course of a river, certainly a few of God’s children can change the course of God’s world. AMEN.

[i] “How Wolves Change Rivers,” by Sustainable Human, accessed online 10/17/2014; http://bit.ly/1fpWu6C.

^[ii] Abraham Joshua Heschel, I asked for Wonder, (New York: Crossroads Publishing Co., 1983), 79.