Sermon for Proper 24, Year A
Reverend Gregg D. Wood
“Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said.”
It’s important to recall that the words of today’s Gospel, and most of the gospel passages we read at this time of the year, were spoken in Jerusalem during Holy Week, a few days before Jesus was crucified. By going to Jerusalem, Jesus had come to the place where the Temple of the Living God, the dwelling place of His Heavenly Father, was located. But it was also the place where his enemies were gathered, the scribes and Pharisees, those whose role it was to resist and suppress innovations to the traditional religion, innovations urged by Jesus and people like him. So Jesus was under constant verbal attack from his adversaries.
“Tell us, then, what you think,” they said. “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?”
Why was this such a tricky question? The Romans occupied and controlled Israel, as they controlled much of the civilized world at that time. For the most part, the Romans left their subject peoples alone. The only thing they really wanted were taxes. They even employed local people to collect their taxes for them, under a percentage commission arrangement which encouraged the tax collectors to collect more than what was rightly owed to them. As a result, tax collectors were hated; they were considered no better than people who collaborated or spied for the Roman authorities.
People wanted to hear that they did not have to pay taxes to the Romans. So this was a trick question, just like the famous trick question, “Have you stopped beating your wife?” If Jesus answered “yes, it is lawful to pay taxes to the emperor,” his own Jewish people would hate him; and if he said “no, it is not lawful to pay taxes to the emperor,” the Romans would no doubt arrest him for preaching sedition.
So Jesus cleverly turns the question around. He takes the coin, points to the image on it, and asks, who is this? They answer, the emperor. So Jesus answers, “Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”
It seems to make a neat division of the world, into the sphere of things belonging to the emperor (politics, military matters, affairs of state) and things belonging to God (moral and religious matters). But if we think about the matter more deeply, we are forced to ask: is there anything that belongs to the emperor, that does not also belong to God? How can you separate the things of God from affairs of state?
This saying of Jesus has always been understood to be saying something about the relationship between church and state. So perhaps this is a good time to think about that relationship, between religious institutions and the political order, or as we say, between church and state.
For most of human history, people felt that you could not separate church and state. They believed there must be one church and one state, and they must work together. Sometimes, as in the late Middle Ages, it was the church that was in the driver’s seat, when the great medieval popes directed the affairs of nations. Sometimes the state was in the driver’s seat, such as at the time of the English Reformation, when King Henry VIII had Parliament declare him, and not the pope, to be the supreme head of the church in England. Under Henry the secular and religious powers were centered in one and the same person.
When the time came to write a constitution for our own country, there were a variety of religions. In New York and Virginia, the Anglicans had the most influence; in Pennsylvania, the Quakers; in Massachusetts and Connecticut, the Congregationalist descendants of the Puritans. And in Rhode Island, there were many religions, with toleration for all and no one of them established as the official religion. The writers of the Constitution decided to follow the Rhode Island model. And so began the great American experiment which we call, religious freedom. No single religion would be established as the official religion, and all religions would be free to practice. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” So says the very first article of the Bill of Rights, which was included as part of the Constitution shortly after its adoption.
Sometimes we hear the term, “wall of separation.” There is a wall of separation between church and state. Thomas Jefferson used this term in one of his writings. And so there has risen the idea that, in our country, there is and must be some great eternal wall between church and state.
But is there such a wall? It seems to shift back and forth. At one time it was ok to have prayers in the public schools. Now that is forbidden, yet in the very seat of our national government, the Senate and the House of Representatives start each of their sessions with a prayer by a chaplain. Again, it is not allowed to support religious schools with tax money, but (in NY anyway) the local school districts must provide buses to transport students to these religious schools. (We don’t pay for the education but we do pay for the buses.) Again, although abortion is a legal procedure, doctors and nurses may legitimately refuse to perform abortions on religious grounds. Furthermore, every church and religious organization is exempt from paying local property taxes, yet it is not allowed to have a Christmas display of a manger scene in a public park. And finally, in one of the most puzzling decisions of all, it is forbidden to display the ten commandments inside a courtroom in Alabama but it’s ok to display the ten commandments outside some government buildings in Texas.
It people are confused about this “wall of separation,” perhaps it is because the builders of the wall are confused themselves.
Now Thomas Jefferson was a great thinker and designer. He designed many of the original buildings at the University of Virginia, which is sometimes called “Mr. Jefferson’s University.” And one of the things he designed was a type of wall, called a serpentine wall. It twists and curves just the way a snake would twist and curve making its way from one point to another. I like to think that when Jefferson talked about a wall of separation between church and state, he was thinking of his serpentine wall. I think he was having a little joke, because he knew that there was no clear, absolute way to separate church and state, and any wall between them would be like his serpentine wall, twisting and turning to forbid one thing and allow other things, with no clear underlying logic.
And yet, even though it is hard to know where to draw the line, even though the wall twists and turns, even though the Supreme Court itself stumbles and falls when it tries to draw this line, I think our Constitution does provide the basis for one clear and valuable idea about church and state. And that is, that the state should not try to control the church, and the church should not try to control the state. That has been a valuable idea, not only for America, but for other countries that have imported it into their own political systems.
There is one more thing that has to be said. Although the church may be separate from the state, God is not separate from either the church or the state. We cannot check our beliefs about justice and morality at the door when we leave the church and participate in the worlds of politics, government, or business. Each of us has a responsibility to witness to the truth of God, the justice of God, and the love of God for all humanity. Separation of church and state does not mean that God is separate from the world, or that we are excused from our moral and religious duties. Usually our duty to God and our legal and political duties are consistent with each other. But not necessarily, and not always. There may come a time when our duty to God calls us to challenge or oppose something that is being done in the political order. There may come a time when we have to stand up and be counted for what is right and just.
Jesus said, “Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” The emperor must mind his affairs, and the church must mind its affairs, but both answer to God. There is nothing that belongs to the emperor that does not also belong to God.
May we be loyal citizens of the state, and good members of the church, but above all faithful and loving children of God our Father.
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