THE COMPLEX MATTER OF GOD AND CAESAR Jobs M. Buchanan
Matthew 22 Broad St. Presbyterian Church
October 28, 1984 (Reformation Sunday) Columbus, Ohio

I received a telephone call on Friday: A friend wanted to wish me luck,
He had read the sermon topic in the bulletin - and observed that in recent weeks
Mario Cuomo, Geraldine Ferraro, Archbishop O'Conner, President Reagan, Walter
Mondale, and George Bush had all tried to say something about religion and politics
and that all probably regreted it. So he wanted to wish me luck, At least, he
said, I'd be in good company.

When absolute religious certainty is combined with political power, something
happens in history which is rarely good. The founders of this Republic knew that.
They knew their history. James Madison wrote that religious establishments “have
been seen to erect spiritual tyranny...they have upheld the thrones of political
tyranny...in no instance have they been the guardians of the Liberty of the people.”
(New York Times, 9/16/84, E. 23, Henry Steek Commager, “Public Morality, Not
Religion")

Religious certainty and political power, when combined, seem almost always
to be the enemy of liberty. They also produce a capacity for intolerance and
violence which, at this moment, is on the increase around the world.

New York Times Bureau Chief in Beirut, Thomas Friedman, has become
an expert on the subject. "People often ask me what was the most frightening
moment I lived through in my four years in Lebanon," he wrote recently. He men-
tions many terrifying incidents but the most frightening happened while he was
sitting in the restaurant of the Commadore Hotel.

“The Shiite Moslem Amal militia had siezed control of West Beirut...groups
of militiamen, 'The Party of God,’ were ransacking heathen bars. I heard a ruckus...
turned and saw a tall, heavy-set Shiite with a black beard, a wild look in his eye
and an M-16 in his hands, heading for the bar...He shoved the bartender aside and
began smashing every bottle and glass with his rifle butt. When he was done,
he strode out, leaving behind a small lake on the floor. The reason the incident
was so profoundly disturbing to me was that ] was confronted that day with some-
thing I had never seen so close-up before - the face of violent religious extremism.
That militiaman could just as easily have been smashing human beings as bottles,
I don't think it would have made a dime's bit of difference te him. He was from
the party of God, he had truth with a capital T, he had his M-16, and he was not
about to let anything stand in his way." (The New York Times Magazine, 10-7-84,
"The Power of Fanaticism," p. 32ff)

It is not a new phenomenon, of course, The late Phyllis McGinty, delightful
and witty poet, wrote about two very adamant Reformers, Zwingli and Muntzer,
under the title “How to Start a War." The two were strong and outspoken and
one of their major differences was on the mode of haptism ~ sprinkling or total
immersion,

"Said Zwingli to Muntzer,
Tl have to be blunt, sir,
Idon't Hhe your version of
Total Immersion,

And since God's on my side
And Tm on the dry side,
You'd better swing ovah

To me and Jehavah.'

“Cried Muntzer, ‘It's schism,
Is Infant Baptism!

Since I've had a sigh, sir,
That God's will is mine, sire,
Let all men agree

With Jehovah and me,

Or go te Hell, singly,

Said Muntzer to Zwingli,

As each drew his sword

On the side of the Lord,”

The media is telling us that there is more religion in this presidential campaign
than at any time since the middle of the last century, and that much of it is strong,
narrow and very sure of itself. “Parson Thwackur religion," someone called it
recently. Thwackum is the cleric in Hemry Fielding'’s Tom Jones, who says: “When

I say religion I mean the Christian religion, and when I say the Christian religion
Imean the Church of England.”

if you have tried ta have a rational conversation with a religious zealot
on any one of the complex political issues before us you know what that means.

The relationship of religion with Hfe, the tension between people who see
the truth very differently but must Hve in the same saciety, the dynamic between
theology and politics, church and state, Gad and Caesar, ig complex and important
and troublesame and relevant.

It appears many times in the Bibley the prophets Amos, Jeremiah criticizing
the king and being told to stay out of politics. Isaiah commenting on foreign allian~
ces, Paul disturbing the economy and political peace in Ephesus. And, of course,
Jesus, who lived in uneasy tension with the authorities in his society and who one
day was put directly on the spot. The context is Jesus’ noisy Palm Sunday entry
to the city, an act which the Roman authorities were persuaded, was overtly politi-
cal. What follows in Matthew's Gospel is a continuation of the running verbal
skirmishes Jesus has been having with the Scribes and Pharisees. The format
is ordinarily a question ~ a trick question, in fact - posed in order to entrap him.
On this day it was, “Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar?" The head-tax, 25¢ a
year for all residents of a Roman province was a symbol of Israel's humility and
oppression,

A revolutionary organization called the Zealots held that the tax was illegal
and should not be paid. It ts easy to imagine that many ordinary citizens secretly
admired the Zealot’s courageous position. If Jasus had said simply “Yes, the tax
is legal, Pay it,” he would have been dismissed: by the people as a collaborator.

Faw

If he said, "No, do not pay," he would have been arrested as a revolutionary. Either
way the Scribes and Pharisees would have succeeded in discrediting him.

The brilliance of Jesus’ response is that he avoided the trap, He asked for
a coin. One was produced with the head of Caesar on it. In the ancient world
the coinage was the property of the Emperor, “Render to Caesar what is Caesar's."
What Jesus said was “It's his money anyway. Pay the tax." “But render to God
what is God's," No one who heard that concluded that Jesus had just divided society
into two compartments, church and state. The very essence of the God whose
name he just invoked was sovereignty over all of life. That was the uniqueness
of the Hebrew idea of God. God is Lord of Babylon as well as Israel, God is above
all earthly power. God is Lord of all of Hfe. "Render ta God what is God's" every-
one understood, included the rendering a man or woman does te the political state.
God is Lerd of that, tao,

The incident is commonly misinterpreted. Typically we use it to advocate
the American experiment of separation of church and state. And although I am
devoted to that constitutional principle, I believe we miss the point of this vignette
if we limit its interpretation to that.

What Jefferson had in mind was not the separation of religion from politics.
That thought would not have occurred to him, What was most dramatic about
the American experiment was that here there would be no official state religion.
People here would be free to be religious, but most dramatically, free From any
coercion or pressure to be religious at all, That had never been tried before. It
is one of the abiding wonderments of histery that it worked. Almost nobody at
the time thought it would, and mary people today still don't see how fragile and
precious and dynamic that liberty is.

There is another way for the tension between God and Caesar to he resolved.
ft is the camplete divorce of state from church - but also religion from politics.
Kt sounds like what Jesus taught and the way things should be. It is a deceptively
appealing idea which divides society into mutually exclusive departments, Tyranny
always uses it, It suggests that we are two people: an inner-spiritual person,
and an onter-political social person. And if that is true, we ave free ~ as the $.5,.
officers were, ta operate Auschwitz with patriotic efficiency six days a week,
and go to church on Sunday morning, with no internal discomfort.

The Constitution of the German Christian Church, founded in 1933 by the
Nazi government, contains a chilling phrase which is similar to well-meaning advice
extended to prophetic Christians in every age: The church was ordered to devote
itself to “the inner mind of the German people." In January of 1934 Reich Bishop
Ludwig Mueller ordered all German pastors to confine themselves to "preaching
the pure Gospel" which meant avoiding anything having to do with the way Hfe
was lived.

One of the banners depicting the Confession of the Presbyterian Church
represents the Theological Declaration of Barmen, a brave affirmation by the
group of German church leaders which defied the Nazi effort to drive a wedge
between religion and politics, Fifty years ago they declared, "We reject the false
doctrine, as though there were areas of aur life in which we would not belong
to Jesus Christ but to other lords." Mitler knew exactly what that meant. Some

of the people who signed that declaration died for it. Tyranny has never been
able to abide religious freedom and a church that worships a God who transcends
the nation.

Our particular roots are in the Reformation, the 447th anniversary of which
we celebrate today. It was October 31, 1517 that. Martin Luther nailed 95 theses
to the Castle Church door in Wittenburg. The theological topic was grace, Politi-
cally the agenda was the faint beginning of the idea of political liberty. Luther
was no democrat. He was a medieval man and historians know that be did not
comprehend the long-term political implications of his actions. When the German
peasants revolted and used his words to justify thei cause, Luther came down
hard on the side of the princes, urging them to slaughter as many peasants as
possible, But listen for the beginning of the idea of individual freedom - when
Luther talked about who had authority to interpret scripture. "I wish to be free,"
he wrote, “I do not wish to become the slave of any authority, council, university,
or Pope. 1 shall proclaim with confidence what I believe to be true, whether it
is authorized or not. (Great Voices of the Reforination, H. Fasdick, p. 100.)

When Luther appeared before the Holy Roman Emperor at the Diet of Worms
and refused to recant saying, “Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise. God heip
me,” he was reflecting his Lord's declaration ahout God's sovereignty over Caesar's
realm, and he was sowing deeply the seed of Hberty.

Our particular parentage is in Geneva, the 16th century theocracy of John
Calvin. Like Luther, Calvin was a medieval man, an age which universally dealt
with heresy by executing heretics, And so he did condemn the humanist Servetus
to death for wrong belief. Yet John Calvin is one of the major factors in the
evolution of liberty and democracy in the West. He wrote: "We are subject te
those who rule over us, but subject only in the Lord, If they command anything
against Him, let us not pay the least regard to it." (ibid., p. 200)

There, again, the tiny seed of liberty which would germinate and grow and
be articulated theoretically by John Locke, and expressed practically in a new
nation with the radical courage to declare that its citizens are free from its own
coercion, that their consciences are sacred, accountable, untimely to no earthly
authority, free - radically, that is to say ~ to be given to God.

The matter of God and Caesar is complex indeed. To separate the two realms,
tempting as it is, is to violate the very essence of the Judeo-Christian tradition.
A totally private faith which has nothing to de with the life of the whole society,
is trivial, But on the other side of it, we must be equally careful not to claim
too much truth and moral rightness for any candidate, any party, any ideology.
A good Calvinist gets very nervous when anybody claims absolute moral rightness
and consequently absolute moral wrongness for any who disagree. The Presbyterian
genius is to keep affirming God's sovereignty alone and the relativity, the humanness
and thus the limits of all our political systems and parties and programs.

I loved discovering a story which illustrates the Presbyterian nuance and
subtlety about religious and moral certainty, Archibald Alexander was a stubborn
19th century Presbyterian clergyman who taught at Princeton. His colleague Charles
Hodge once said that “Alexander as a general rule never drank wine; but when

the use of wine came to be pronounced sinful, he would sometimes, in company,
take a glass for conscience sake." (Martin Marty, Context, 8/1-15/84, vol. 16.,
#15 from L. Loetscher, "Life of Archibold Alexander."}

Render to God what is God's. That means all of life. All of love and hope,
and economic and political vision. God is Lord of all.

Render to Caesar what is Caesar's. I like to think that Jesus meant that
too. That part of Christian morality is taking Caesar very seriously. Jesus was
not other-worldly, He did not call people away from the everydayness of life.
Rather he gave them love and hope and new life and sent them back into fray.
So it seems a particular distortion to assume, in his name, that politics is nasty,
morally inferior business, to be ignored or laughed at or avoided. Politics is where
love takes shape: where justice is done or not done. Politics has the same potential
for nobility and grandeur as medicine or law or teaching - perhaps more. George
Will in Statecraft Is Soulcraft laments, rightly, that politics suffers a bad press
and that Americans continue to be less than devoted to their own best invention.
In 1960 - 64% of the voters participated in the presidential election. In 1980 it
was 53%. We're not doing as well as we should with the “Render to Caesar" part
of the equation.

I submit that part of our vocation, our calling in Christ, is to be informed) }
astute, and active in the body politic. I submit that we are to bring to that calling |
our penchant for the truth, our willingness to ask the awkward question, our courage |
to question every authority that takes itself too seriously. I submit that our voca~ |
tion is to love the world as pragmatically as we can, and that our model is a God
who sent a son to live in our world, as a member of a family, a part of a society,
a citizen in a political system. I submit that the redemptive, creative, incarnate
love of God in Jesus Christ encompasses the political system by which we order
our life, and that our Lord was altogether serious when he said: "Render to Caesar
the things that are Caesar's and to God, the things that are God's." we

To the blessed and only sovereign, King of kings, Lord of lords, be honor and domin~
ion and glory for ever and ever! Amen,

i

PECULIAR HONORS TO OUR KING John M. Buchanan

Matthew 2633-13 Broad Street Preshyterian Church
November Il, 1984 Columbus, Ohio

Have you ever been so moved by passion for a cause that you opened your
wallet and gave away money you couldn't afford to give away? Have you ever
been so overcome with love that you threw normal prudence to the wind and did
something foolishly extravagant? [1 you have not, that's too bad, because there
is a sense in which you haven't 14V@d fully until you've been made to feel a little
foolish. Which means that surely all of us have, on some occasion, bought a dozen
roses when one would have sufficed, or written a silly love note that still makes
us blush to recall it - even if it was in fifth grade, or shouted "I love you, God"
into a night sky or prayed it or wrote it into a diary, or even in a cocktail party
conversation suddenly turned racist edged ourselves out across the line of socially
accepted and expected behavior because of a burning love for God and all his
multi-colored children which is planted deeply in our heart. } xo A.

Though it may have been long ago, and though we will not ordinarily discuss
it, we know what it means to be a fool for love, and thus we know this impractical,
foolishly extravagant woman who, in those interesting words we rise weekly to
sing - brought peculiar honors to the king.

puppet ecclesiastic, Jerusalem, 33 A.D. | "Jesus must go," they decide. “Enough
is enough. He has come te our city, insultéd us, caused trouble in the temple, is
daily making us look bad. He must go." With that terrible dye cast, Matthew shifts
scenes to Bethany, where he was Staying with his friends, Mary, Martha, Lazarus.
On this evening he is in the home of Simon, who used to have leprasy. They're
sitting on the dirt floor, the men are, cross-legged, eating out of a common bowl,
probably dipping chunks of bread into oil, They're talking, laughing some ~ shading
idmanhikbhes about the look on the Pharisees! faces when Jesus turned over the tables
and the pigeons got loose and the fat salesman tripped over the lambs and fell into
the next booth where the calves were. Without a word she penetrated that clubroom
and walked to where Jesus sat, and looked at him intensely knowing that this festivity
was prelude to disaster, and caught bim extended, dipping his bread in the olive
oil, poured out on him the expensive perfume in the precious alabaster jar she had
treasured for years, given to her by her mother when she became a woman.

The scene is set by a high level B. Pea in the palace of Caiphas, the priest,

The moment, frozen in time, was powerful; at first awkward, embarrassing,
shocking, and as he sat, paralyzed by this peculiar honor - rich, aromatic perfume
running down his neck, soaking into his shirt, her vulnerability was punctuated by
a gasp from the other side of the circle. "What a monstrous waste! Why, if she
had just given that to us, we could have sold it and fed a lot of hungry people."

MADpIeoutate

It is grossly i to use what he said next as a poverty policy. Jesus
spent most of his time with poor people. He was one of them. He was their
advocate. At least part of what is geing on in the Gospel accounts is the eternal
conflict between the haves and have nots, the privileged and underprivileged, the
ins and outs. The common people heard him gladly. That means the poor people.
He said what he said about them here to protect this woman in her foolish

Don

extravagance. And then, he even tried black comedy. Like a cricitally ill person
joking about the funeral, Jesus tries a joke about her annointing him for his burial,
because the other event people get annointed for in Israel is coronation.

It's a vulnerable feeling to have acted foolishly for love, like a three year
old bringing the prize begonia ~- plucked and clutched tightly in his hand - to his
mother as a gift of love. It's much harder to be the recipient of grace sometimes,
Jesus, the lover, loves this woman, honors this woman, by ignoring all that is prudent
and sensible and economically viable. “What she has done is beautiful,” he announces
to her detractors. “She will be remembered forever."

He may have overstated that a bit. She is not, in point of fact, one of the
personalities that we remember much at all. And I think the reason is that what
she did is peculiar and unlikely and we don't do things hke that and the pragmatist
in each of us can hear our own voice expressing concern about this wastefulness.
andekonGrine 2 TOU TOM thatsis cuimeraganthyyppemubianhiynlOOhiGhen

We are inclined to divine value in terms of functionality. What is valuable
is what functions efficiently, is productive, efficient. But, in fact, art is not produc-
tively functional. Money spent on form could be spent on efficient function. But
there is human value to beauty which transcends even the immediacies of hunger
and every artist knows that, thank God. In fact, money spent to keep the church
beautiful in the city could be buying food. But there is a hunger assumed and ad-
dressed by beauty and our love for it that may transcend - not replace - but transcend
and energize our commitment to deal with human need. Episcopal Bishop John
Shelby Spong, of Newark, New Jersey, bastitt nan excellent article in the Chris-
tian Century on the urban church which is very helpful, Bishop Spong observes:

“Urban life is not beautiful. Garbaage collection is generally poor.
Trash litters the streets. Many homes are in poor repair, and some
are abandoned bits of dilapidation. Many city people are so depressed
that they deliberately fill their lives with ugliness, as an unconscious
commentary on the way they feel valued by others. Consequently,
it is especially important that city churches be places of beauty...Money
spent to beautify urban houses of worship is not wasted, for beauty
is a gift. Churches need to bear witness to the power of beauty, and
to the sense of caring communicated by clean, sparkling sanctuaries,
naves and exteriors...Great churches of the past, with expensive mainte-
nance needs, are the legacy we have bequeathed to urban dwellers.
When we fill these churches with poorly prepared liturgies and shallow,
inane preaching, we add to the urban poor's sense of being surrounded
by a non-caring, non-valuing world. Urban church structures need to
shine as centers of beauty, as symbols of hope, as signs of the Kingdom.
They need to be living parables of God's caring."

What about the poor? What is our responsibility? What was the disciple's?
History teaches a hard lesson here. Humanism without transcendence produces
the worker's paradise, as in Ethiopia. is i
love of Jesus Christ andva sense of his lové-fo
generosit? altits goal is an epalitarafism,.e
created ordem=—

vgsults-imgastant, overwhelming
ality of justice —-proundsa@in God's

te C

God blesses the prudent, careful disposition of our resources. But somewhere
in this Good News there is an impetus to lowe and be loved so much that we know
that it means at least to be carried away, to love so thoroughly we are willing to
be foolishly extravagant.

And so the tension: the copflict between a Lord who said so simply one time,
“Where your treasure is, there Mill your heart be also," and a culture which responds,
“When E. F. Hutton speaks eyérybody listens,"

God's word comes in disguise sometimes. I find it with some regularity in
those delightful Wall Street Journal features which simply hold up for investigative
inspection, a slice of contemporary American life. GaGeppembens®iipaionsimskames,
an article appeared on “Yuppie Love - Detroit Auto Makers Try To Increase Sales
To Young Professionals." Yuppies, gjemeneyekwewgeme “young, urban professionals,"
WM are having an enormous impact on politics and commerce and who are already
acknowledged as our culture's next "taste makers." Yuppies are defined variously
s “people who listen to National Public Radio while jogging," or typically, “a child-
less couple, mid'30's, who live in a condo, work hard, do aerobic exercises, canoe
in the wilderness and drive a S@O;0U0 Saab." "We are," one of them told the reporter,
"very into value." 25, ore

Market researchers in the steel and glass towers of Detroit now know that
Yuppies and all of us influenced by that image “prefer cars that befit their new
affluence, reflect their desire to be socially responsible and don't remind them
of their parents." Chrysler and GM have invested more than one billion dollars

in the Yuppie cars Whichewili-appear-dtater-this-vear The Journal's moral and subtly

sermonic conclusion was in this observation:

“Yuppies' fondness for gadgets has revived the turbo charger industry
and given rise to the $3,000 car radio. Affixed to a turbo-charged Saab
seen recently in Detroit was a bumper sticker that read, 'He Who Dies
With The Most Toys Wins,"

Well if we ever got around to understanding and remembering what this extra-
vagant woman did for Jesus one time, we might be saved by a truth deeper than
that bumper sticker. And if we don't hear that Gospel, it appears that we can be
described, defined and celebrated by that blunt epitaph - “the most toys wins,"
Jesus taught that the mast love wins; that is, the most grace, and giving, and extra-

vagance, and occasional foolishness. yp oF Lippe
Of course we must calculate. Someone observed fea tily Gas will

not consider the lilies of the field as monthly payment ~regardiess of how splendidly
they are arrayed. Of course, we have to heat pale light it and balance
the budget and pay the janitors and feed the hungry and clothe the naked and pay
the secretaries and shelter the homeless and buy Bibles for the children and announce

Good News to the oppressed and fix the organ, Se reer 7 anmmmeenaeandesciinidiaaeiy

pitis..2.¥eartodo it andaJot of individual cenerosi . cu-
But it our frrénd Walter Bouman wrote somewhere, to “rememb@r that
the church j firsta buildihg or even a religipus organizatiom Church is a}

what happ
to other pegple."

s to popele when the Gospel is happening to them and through them ~

+ 0

sacha

Of course, we have to get out the financial data and sharpen the pencils and
decide what we can and will give. But somewhere in that there ought to be the
impulse of a love so powerful it will risk looking foolish because that is the kind
of love that starts it all.

Where have you felt that) impulse? Where in your life are you hearing and
responding to God's invitation to live as fully as you can by loving and giving? “Where
do you experience the glory ,of God in your life?" - Professor Thomas Troeger, at
Colgate/Rochester, asks.

“Where is the power and wonder of God" getting through to you, comforting
you, disturbing you, making you disatisfied with yourself, teaching you to love and
to be loved?

When the choir and organ fill this room and your heart with beauty? When
friends pray for you?’ When you are privileged to participate in those passage rites
of marriage, baptism, here with and for friends of many years? When a worship
experience lifts up your heart? Or, when you join your voice with others and sing
in a memorial service for a dear one, “Our God, our help in ages past, our hope
for years to come,"

Troeger writes, “Affirm how you behold God's glory because of this congrega~
tion's ministry and corporate life. Affirpf that in a brutalized and bleeding world
seemingly withdut vision, this old building with a clunking furnace and dim yellow
lights has been a sign of trancendént hope." (The Christian Ministry, November
1984). ;

Of course we must calculate, Byf a greater danger to the church of Jesus
Christ than foolishness agli irrespongfble extravagance is dullness and emptiness
and dryness that prudeye- sometimé@és becomes. Loess Buechner suggests that
"the church is destroyed by people who are afrald to be human, brave, and loving,
and to take chances," and that the church lives where "for Christ's sake we are
willing to look like fools: where we understand that without simplicity and passion
and Py ie no church is worth two cents." (A Room Called Remember,

p. 125) +4 Ee

That's true about us as a church. And it is true about us as individuals. The
invitation of Jesus Christ is to fullness of life. It is to allow the love and passion
within us to be expressed. It is an invitation to tears of joy at God's love for us,
and a passion for the life of the world in God's love. [t is an invitation to music
and laughter and to a freedom on occasion to be so overwhelmed by it all that we
will even risk becoming foolish for the love of Christ. It is an invitation issued
here weekly to every creature - to you, me ~- to rise and bring peculiar honors to
the King. ,

Praise and glory and wisdem and thanksgiving and honor and power and strength
to our God forever and ever. Amen.

tS