Matthew 22:15-22
Image
Who do you look like? Who
do you favor? It’s one of the first things we ask about newborn babies. Whose
eyes do they have? Whose chin? Whose hands or feet? I remember praying that my
oldest might resemble me in some small way when we were expecting her. Zanna
has my feet by the way.
At any family reunion
we compare relatives to one another, looking for similarities. Searching for
Aunt Wanda’s nose or Uncle Tony’s hair, we comb the room trying to find what
characteristics hold us together, unite us, identify us as belonging to one
another.
Where you are a chip
off the old block, a carbon copy, or a doubleganger a generation removed, there
is comfort in finding a similar trait. Even in adoptive families there is a
need to identify with a personality trait or habit that ties you together.
Image
Image has a different connotation
in our society. People cultivate their image. They want to make sure that what
they present to the world sheds the best light. When we post a selfie online we
rarely pic one that makes us look bad. We cultivate, pick and choose, what we
will show the world, and what we keep to ourselves. We have family friends in
Memphis and Steve often says to me “I wish I had the life Will and Angie have
on Facebook.” It’s not their real life, their real life with two full time
jobs, one serving a church, and three kids in High school, Junior High and
Elementary is complicated, messy and hectic. But the image they have cultivated
is enviable.
Image
In our Old Testament
lesson reading from Exodus, Moses asks to see God’s glory. He doesn’t ask to
see God’s image, that would be too much for anyone to handle, so he asks to see
God’s glory. And the image the writer of Exodus gives us is one of Moses
standing in the cliff, covered by the very hand of God until God walks past and
Moses can see God’s back.
It’s an odd picture,
Moses seeing the back of God. What good does it do to look at something from
behind? It doesn’t do too much good, unless you are following them, then its
exactly the view you need. Moses was going to return to the people and tell
them to follow his lead because he was following God’s. Behind God was exactly
where he needed to be so that he could follow faithfully.
Image
The Gospel Lesson has
Jesus dealing with an image problem as well. He is still in the temple,
teaching and preaching. This is still Holy Week and his death is looming large.
He has been very clear about the fact that the religious leaders and political
leaders of the day were not acting in the people’s best interests. They were
not helping the people live the lives God was calling them to live.
This had upset those in
power, as speaking truth to power often will do, and so they began to plot to
harm him. The Herodians, supporters of Rome, came and stood among the crowds.
The Pharisees sent their disciples over to listen. Politics makes strange
bedfellows, doesn’t it? The leaders of the temple in cahoots with the biggest
Roman nationalists you’ve ever seen, uniting to get rid of this teacher, this Jesus.
This guy whose image has gotten to big.
They begin to ask
questions in order to trap him in something. “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor?”
That seems like a
fairly straight forward question. It’s a yes or no answer. Or is it?
Jesus is in the Temple,
a place set aside for the worship of God. A place where you were to give your
offerings, your sacrifices and acknowledge that God has first place in your
life. That whole first commandment thing was a big deal.
It was such a big deal,
in fact, that you had to change your Roman money for Temple money when you came
through the gate. You gave sheckles to the Temple, special coins, not Roman
ones. Why? Because Roman money had other symbols on it, other images.
So when Jesus asks what
coin is used to pay taxes he is handed a Denarius, a Roman coin. He asks “Who’s
head is this, who’s title.” He actually asks “Who’s image is this? Who’s title?”
Image
The people responded, “The
Emperor’s” It is an image of the Roman Emperor, with the inscription “Caesar Augustus
Tiberius, Son of the Devine Augustus.” A claim of deity. An idolatrous coin,
there in the Temple.
“Give to the Emperor
what is the emperor’s and to God what is God’s” The Emperor can have his Roman
money, it is printed in his own likeness. But what then will be given to God?
Hypocrites, Jesus has
called them. Why? Because they are so concerned with image that they forget the
most important image.
Genesis 1:27 “So God
created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them, male and
female he created them.
Image.
God’s concern is not
with earthly wealth and the power that comes with accumulating that wealth. God’s
concern is for how those with wealth treat the people made in God’s own image.
God’s concern isn’t that taxes get paid or tithe’s get paid, but that the
people made in God’s image give themselves back to God.
Image.
Give to God what is God’s.
We are made in God’s image, every one of us, and we are to see and recognize
that image in others. But too often we choose instead to see the cultivated
image. Whether its one the individual has crafted, like the images we post on
social media, or an image that our prejudices have created; we have a hard time
seeing past them to the God-image inside.
Sometimes we have such
a deep belief in the images other’s share, that we don’t even realize we are
blind to God’s image, in us and in others.
A woman told me a story
about one of her son’s this week. I’ll call her Laura. Laura and her husband
have two biological children, boys, Jack age 9 and James age 11. They love
these boys with their whole hearts. Through some interesting circumstances they
are also raising two other boys, mixed race, Michael age 9 and Patrick age 11.
These boys have made their way into their home and into their hearts. And while
they are not biologically or even legally related, they are family.
One day Michael the
younger of the boys not biologically theirs, came home upset from school. He
had heard another little boy talking about his church and how his pastor had
said that God was black. Michael disagreed with the boy. He told Laura “I don’t
think God is black. I think God is just regular colored.”
Image.
TO this little boy “regular
color” meant white. Something he was not, and would not every be. He couldn’t
imagine God looking like him, he was other, different, not regular.
This is what comes of
praising images that are not God. This is what comes in a world that values
what is the emperor’s over that which is God’s. The world becomes a place that
can dehumanize an entire group of people because of their skin color, their
gender. The world revolves around commodities to the point where even the
people we see are reduced to commodities.
Image.
Think about it. We rank
people’s looks on a 1 to 10 scale. We
send aid quickly to one section of the population, but delay sending it to
other citizens who don’t have the same voice or power to be heard.
Image.
It’s a powerful thing.
You and I are made in the image of God. So is everyone else. What might it look
like to live into that image? What might it look like to truly give to God what
is God’s?
