In the Gospel lesson for next Sunday (Matthew
22:15-22) Jesus answers some local Pharisees, who were religious leaders, and
Herodians, who seem to have been part of the court of the Roman puppet ruler,
Herod Antipas. They were trying to catch
Jesus in sedition. If he even hinted
that the Jews should not be paying the Roman tax he was in big trouble. As we know, Jesus asked for one of the coins
in which the tax had to be paid, held it up to show Caesar’s image on it – and
decreed, Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s,
and to God what is God’s.
…and I remember thinking, as a teenager in
church: Everybody thinks that’s neat and
clever, but I still don’t get it.
Presumably we pay our tax – that is what belongs to Caesar – but what
belongs to God? Preachers and
commentators seemed to think that was obvious.
It wasn’t obvious to me. What is
God’s? what do I owe God? Do I owe God
my gratitude for good food, for warmth and shelter, for security, for life, health
and my next breath, for the love of family and friends, for a peaceful land and
all the moods of Kawau Bay…? No doubt I
do – but there are plenty who do not have these things, living in squalor, or
danger, or cold. What do they owe to
God?
And indeed Jesus said this in an occupied
country, repressed by a brutal military, to people replete in daily life with
misery and terror, starvation and disease.
Perhaps he meant something a bit different… or on the other hand, as old
as the Prophet Micah: What does the Lord require of you but to do
justice, to love mercy, to walk humbly… That
is what is God’s, it seems to me, that we do justice, love mercy, walk
humbly.
What does it mean in the attitudes of my heart
that I do justice, in my judgements, for instance…? What has to change in order that I love
mercy…? What might I have to relinquish
before I walk humbly…?
But this is not some rigorous reform of self,
amendment of life, which has to take place before we are as we ought to be in
God’s sight. It is what starts to happen
in our hearts as we are still and silent, when we set aside the study group
chatter, shut the books for a while, give ourselves a rest from worthy activism,
and recover the space of waiting and consenting.
Christian Meditation is the simplest of all
disciplines, the spiritual practice which asks us first to cease, for the time
of meditation, every attempt to change ourselves and our world, let alone our
church. It asks us to be still, making
space for God to do in us and around us what God is always seeking to do, but
blocked and hampered by all our best intentions, plans and motives. What we owe to God is what the Bible calls
μετανοια, change, conversion, returning to where we truly belong, consenting to
love and grace.
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