Pentecost 18: "We are No Longer Children..."

Isaiah 45.1-7
Psalm 96
1 Thessalonians 1.1-10
Matthew 22.15-22

The enigmatic nature of the Jesus’ statement, “Give…to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22.21) is matched only by its versatility. Historically, the verse has been used both to support allegiance to the government, as well as to claim a license for revolution. The Church herself has used it to argue her superiority over the state, and therefore the state’s subordination to ecclesiastical power, while governments have used it to remind the Church that there are limits to her power, in short to tell her to mind her own business. The very ambiguity of the verse has left its readers, as I am sure it did its original hearers, wondering still where the lines are to be drawn between our duties to God and our duties to the state. Yet, this kind of ambiguous response is characteristic of the person of Jesus. A vast majority of the kinds of scholars I refered to last week believe that these specific words of the Gospel Jesus, can be traced to the historical Jesus. Not only do these words appear exactly the same in all three of the Synoptic Gospels – Mark, Matthew and Luke – but they also appear in the non-canonical Gospel of Thomas, a collection of Jesus’ sayings which, like the canonical Gospels, was written somewhere between AD 70 and AD 100. One scholar writes with regards to this verse: “[Jesus] responds to the question without answering it; he turns the question back on his interrogators, just as he often does in telling a parable without a conclusion. His audience is supposed to supply the answer themselves.”

“His audience is supposed to supply the answer themselves.” You see, that is what was and is so frustrating about our encounter with Jesus, our encounter with the gopels. So much of his sayings and teaching simply leave his audience, and not only his immediate audience, “to supply the answer themselves.” How much easier it would have been, and clearer too, if Jesus had not spoken in open-ended parables or in enigmatic one-liners, but rather set up clear-cut and readily understandable rules and regulations. Yet he didn’t. Although Christians in the years after him have worked almost desperately to fill in the gaps with a host of rules and regulations, we must always come back to the reality that the Jesus presented to us in the gospel narratives is not a person of very many rules. And when pressed to make a ruling on this or that, he more often than not responded with a parable. Remember the story of the Good Samaritan? It was prompted by someone asking Jesus, “Who is my neighbour?” (Luke 10.29) At the end of the story Jesus presents the questioner with a question himself: “Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” (Luke 10.36) When asked by one of his disciples how many times to forgive, he returns with the cryptic answer: “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy times seven times.” (Matthew 18.22) Jesus’ consistent teaching method was to allow those around him to make their own decisions, come to their own conclusions. He never forced an interpretation on those who came to hear him speak, and only twice in the gospels is he recorded as actually explaining the meaning of a parable. What is most commonly recorded at the end of a parable or discourse are the words “Let anyone with ears to hear listen!”(Mark 4.24, et al) “Let anyone with ears to hear listen!”

In the second letter to the Corinthians, Paul writes that “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself.” (2 Corinthians 5.19) But, it can be argued that in Christ – in Jesus –God was telling the world to grow up. You see, so long as we live by rules and regulations because they are rules and regulations, so long as we consistently look to others to supply for us the answers to life’s questions and the resolutions to our own dilemmas, so long as we follow uncreatively and unimaginatively the instructions of any teacher, we carry out our lives in a childish existence unworthy of a people created in the image of God. The problem is that we human beings are not comfortable with uncertainty, we are not comfortable with the grey areas of life. We want someone not only to guide us through them, but to define them for us. We want simple, clear-cut, black and white answers: “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” (Matthew 22.17) How many times exactly must I forgive the one who sins against me? (cf Matthew 22.16) Tell me now, who is my neighbour? (cf. Luke 10.29) It is for this reason that fundamentalist religion, whether Christian or otherwise, is so appealing to people. They do offer black and white answers. They do give to their followers clear-cut interpretations of reality, and seemingly dispense with the grey areas of human experience. The problem is that that way of doing things is not true to human experience. More often than not the issues in our lives and in our world dwell in the grey areas, and not in clearly defined black and white landscapes; and while a series of clearly-defined rules and regulations may make us feel safe, they will never encourage us to grow up.

No doubt, Jesus could have offered those who gathered around him precise and succinct answers to their questions. He could have offered black and white rulings on any number of issues. But he did not. Jesus asks of people more than mere acquiescence, more than an obedience to a system of rules, but rather he asks them to think for themselves according to particular principles – love, compassion, forgiveness, mercy, justice. Jesus knows that simply to supply answers does not encourage real growth, development or maturity among those who ask the questions. Any good teacher or parent knows that. From the gospel accounts it seems clear that Jesus did not want groupies or mere disciples who simply hung on his every word. He wanted mature individuals to share in his ministry. The gospels record that even during his lifetime he sent out many of his disciples to proclaim the Good News of God’s reign, and in his final dialogues in the Gospel of John he says, “I do not call you servants any longer, but I [call] you friends.” (John 15.15) Part of the process of enabling people into maturity and autonomy is allowing them to come to their own conclusions, indeed encouraging them to come to their own conclusions, and thereby to discover their own centre of authority. At the expense of dressing Jesus up in the garb of a respectable member of the Anglican Communion, we might say that, like a good Anglican, he trusts human reason and the ability of human reason to discern the right, the true, the good, the just, the beautiful.

Again, looking at Paul, we find he writes to the Ephesians, “The gifts [Jesus] gave were… for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to…maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. We must no longer be children…But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.” (Ephesians 4.11-15) The world of black and white, clear-cut answers is the world of the child. This is not meant pejoratively, but it is the simple fact. Children rarely have the deliberative skill or the insight of enough experience to give them any real understanding into the complexities of human life; and they only grow and develop emotionally and morally as they gain more and more ability in discerning life for themselves. Yes, they need guidance, support, encouragement; but they do not need to be told what to think or believe, have all their questions answered and all their experiences mediated by another, if they are ultimately to become responsible, individuated adults.

The gospel accounts tell us that those who asked Jesus the question about the tax were trying to trip him up, but whether they were or not it is highly unlikely Jesus would have offered a different answer. He would not have offered a different answer, because he wanted people to come to their own decisions. He wanted people to grow into the full stature of adult responsibility. Simply handing down rules and regulations cannot do that, neither can supplying all the answers. A great part of according human dignity is allowing human beings to think for themselves. Jesus seems to do this consistently.