Caesar Has It All Matthew 22:15-22 Stacey Steck Preached October 19, 2008 at San José, Costa Rica Well, Caesar has it all now, doesn t he? Well, at least he has substantial parts of my IRAs and my 403b plan. How much does he have of yours? Pretty soon, all we will have left is God s stuff. Caesar will have reclaimed everything, one way or another. The market giveth and the market taketh away. Over the past several weeks, the dominant news story, and indeed, political reality, has been the viral economy. Inextricably linked as global societies are today, the mortgage crisis in the US has had a not-so-subtle ripple effect on the economies of countries all over the world. An estimated 2 trillion dollars of wealth in the US alone has seemingly vanished overnight, and the banking systems of entire countries, like my beloved Iceland, have completely shut down. In recent days, a conversation has begun among world leaders about the need to reconceptualize the world economy so as to prevent such a crisis from affecting all corners of the globe when only one corner is sick. And so, the ideas have been coming forward and a summit has been proposed, and something probably will be done, its future success or failure to be evaluated when the next crisis hits a market somewhere. It will be economists playing God, trying to create order from chaos. Now, I don t know about you, but I think that while the proposal is long overdue, 1
and the approach has some merit, it also has some shortcomings. Personally, I d rather see God playing economist than the other way around. As the powers that be sit down to play God, what will Christians be doing? Will we be advocating that God have a place at the summit? Will we be insisting that the values, and dollars, held by millions of Christians be taken into consideration? And at the very least, what can we take from this crisis even as the crisis is taking from us? You see, for Christians, this financial episode offers us a unique opportunity to take a good hard look at how we organize our societies, and especially their economic lives, and what that says about us. Do they reflect Kingdom values, or Imperial values? Do they square with the Gospel, or with some other religious worldview? Do they give too much to Caesar and not enough to God? And if we were to hand over our economic system to God, along with our spiritual lives, would it resemble anything we already know and think is right? We should not be surprised if it does not, since we frequently find that our view of things is dramatically different than God s view of things. How often do we use the phrase, turned it upside down to describe what Jesus teaching does to our wonderfully preconceived notions? So what might it look like if God played economist? Before we get to that part, let me offer the obvious disclaimer that I am not an economist, but then again, neither was Jesus. It also goes without saying that there may be nothing more complicated than the global economy, and so to try to 2
offer anything resembling a suggestion in these few minutes will of course be superficial at best. But to let the situation go unreflected upon for these reasons is to leave the Gospel aside like an unwanted orphan, and to throw up our hands and leave the new world economic order to bureaucratic number crunchers who have little interest in pursuing God s goals. I think that God does care how we do business, and how we distribute wealth and the earth s resources, and how we care for the most vulnerable in every society. At the very least, I hope to stir up your soul, and perhaps your conversations, as we share tacos latter this evening. It is pretty widely agreed upon that the people who will be most affected by the current, up and down, credit-squeezed economy will be the people who can least afford it. At the upper end, people may lose a percentage of their retirement savings, but most will still have a cushion, and the market is likely to rebound in the not too distant future. These folks will be able to ride out the storm, perhaps with some real discomfort and anxiety, but not true suffering. The majority of people who will lose their homes due to the mortgage crisis are people who probably never should have been in homes that pricey in the first place. And while we may feel for them, it is at the other end of the economic spectrum that these hard times will extract an even greater price, as the last hired become the first fired, as prices continue to rise while wages stay stagnant, as developing economies catch a cold from the sneezes of the north. Costa Rica has not seen many effects 3
yet of the economic crisis, but it very likely will, and it will be the poorest in every community who will suffer the most. It is also rather widely agreed upon that God has a special place in the divine heart for just such persons, a fact reflected in page after page of Scripture, in encounter after encounter with Jesus. And while Jesus did not offer an economic stimulus package for the poor in Jerusalem and Judea, he left us with something much better: a way of thinking about God s design for the world, and for life, which can be applied at any time, and anywhere. Remember that the root word of economy is oikonomia, or the managing of the household. That is to say that the art of economics is the art of keeping one s house in good, working order -- our own, and God s too. And so, to use but one small sampling of that thinking, let us see what we can learn from tonight s passage from Matthew about God s way of thinking that might help our own thinking about the responsibility of keeping house. For starters, a new global economy may be a lot less competitive than what we employ these days. The heartbeat of the globalized economy is competition, an acute economic Darwinism of the survival of the economic fittest. Right now, those companies who weathered the meltdown better than others are not loaning other companies money; they are buying them at discounted prices. They are taking advantage of the weakness and mistakes of others to become even stronger. Right now, they have a competitive advantage in terms of capital, and are making 4
good use of it. If company A wants to stay alive, it will have to sell part of its soul, and its assets, to company B. The question here is not whether such an approach makes good business sense; of course it does. What should concern us is whether it makes good divine sense, whether the intense competition that characterizes modern economies resonates with the ancient wisdom we celebrate. In our story tonight, it is competition which is at the heart of the question posed by the Pharisees and the Herodians. Each wants to have a leg up on the Romans, and each other. Each is seeking from Jesus his view so that their own position may be strengthened, even while Jesus would be weakened. If Jesus answers that paying taxes is legal, the Herodians have not only made Jesus look bad in the eyes of the Pharisees, but they have one more public figure affirming their position. The Herodians, you see, were those who had decided that cooperation with the Roman empire would see them through the occupation better than resistance. And so they turned their backs on their nation, and got in bed politically with the powers that be, earning themselves some profit, no doubt, but also the enmity of the Pharisees. On the other hand, if Jesus answers that it is not lawful to pay taxes, the Pharisees will have struck a blow both against Rome, and its co-conspirators. The Pharisees knew their hopes of nationhood hung in the balance under a Roman occupation, and so wanted to circle the wagons and keep Rome as separate from Jerusalem as possible, religiously or otherwise, in hopes of outlasting the occupation with their traditions intact and keeping mingling to a minimum. If they 5
could get Jesus to affirm their position, they could not only make him look bad in the eyes of Rome, as a tax dodger, but also perhaps gain the support of the disciples and the crowds for their efforts. Each side is trying to use Jesus for their own ends, instead of God s ends, lacking the perspective that Jesus imparts as he holds up the coin and utters his famous line, Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor s, and to God the things that are God s. With one simple statement, Jesus undercuts competition as the primary motivation within the kingdom of God. Yes, paying taxes and following just laws are important for order and society, no matter who is governing, but more important is allegiance to God, something that both sides had forgotten. In the midst of their competition, they had lost the balance necessary for authentic human life. Both sides were leading their followers into a confrontation with their brothers and sisters in the faith that neither could win. And in fact, the nation of Israel lost everything when the Romans had enough of this internal bickering and destroyed Jerusalem in the year 70. Another characteristic of a new economic order would be one in which people are neither asked, nor forced, to make false choices, the kind Jesus competitors tried to foist off on him. For too many people in the world, the daily choice between food and medicine, or medicine and education, or education and food, is a real one, and one with devastating consequences. In countless countries and communities, the concept of an economic retirement savings plan is as foreign as champagne and caviar, and yet these savings plans are what most North 6
Americans are focused on as the markets are in chaos around the world. How much did my portfolio fall today? Will I be able to retire at 60 after all? But in the Malis and the Vietnams and the Haitis, the only markets people are worried about are the ones which provide the food which is everyday further and further out of reach of their pocketbooks, and therefore the mouths of their children. But as real as these choices are for the vast majority of the world, they are truly false choices, for there are enough resources so that no one need starve, nor suffer from treatable illnesses, nor remain illiterate. Study after study has shown that ending poverty and starvation is only a matter of political will, rather than a lack of economic development or available resources. But poor countries are routinely imposed upon by the false choices of paying the debt service or providing social services, of being open to foreign investment, or providing for their own citizens. It is the false choices which kill, both in Jesus encounter with the emperor s coins, and the poor s encounter with no coins. But gracefully, Jesus sidesteps the false choice and concentrates on what is really important, the right stewardship of God s gifts, according to God s desires, known only by offering up everything, including our economies, to God s sovereignty and judgment. Finally, let me suggest that the Pharisees own words provide us with some excellent wisdom about a restructured global economy. Teacher, they butter up Jesus saying, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people 7
with partiality. The world s wealthy nations and their international monetary institutions have, alas, not learned from the witness of Jesus life. Despite the best of intentions, and much wisdom and learning, they have indeed shown partiality to those nations and programs which conform to the prevailing model of competition and capital, and discouraged nations who would try a different approach, forcing upon them those false choices I just mentioned. Surely, as even Jesus says, it is a bad idea to through pearls to swine, and it is understandable that lenders want their loans to bring the success and prosperity all are seeking, but who bails out the poor when those strategies fail, as they have both historically and in recent days? For all the talk of diversified economies, there is really little variation. The stronger countries rule the weak and impose terms of trade which disproportionately benefit them. But with the power to be partial comes the responsibility to moderate one s power to be partial. As God s own son, Jesus had the ultimate power to be partial, and yet chose to remain impartial except to God s desire for shalom. Far from being apolitical, Jesus chose a stance of advocating a politics that showed no deference to anyone, least of all the emperor. His only interest was directing to people to the divine order which would make God s blessing available to everyone impartially. Yes, our modern economy is complicated, and yes, Jesus taught two thousand years ago. Yes, there are corrupt regimes, and famines, and wars that help keep people poor. Yes, every economic system is imperfect. But is that reason 8
enough to leave matters in the hands of those who created the current mess in the first place? Would not surrendering everything to God, including the balances of our retirement plans, should a new economic order favor everyone equally, would that not bear a greater witness to the power of God in our lives, than compelling a multitude to compete where there is no real competition, to choose between the lesser of two awful evils, and to know that others are exercising the power to keep them poor when they have the power to make them rich? Do we see Jesus compelling his disciples, and the crowds who followed him, to those kinds of conditions to enter the Kingdom of Heaven? And if not in the kingdom of Heaven, why here on earth? Do we not ask God each time we pray the Lord s Prayer, Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven? Call me naïve, but I do believe we can do better than we have done. I believe it because, like those who heard Jesus teaching that day, I am amazed. I am amazed at God s abundance, and God s desire to share. I am amazed at Christ s compassion, and his invitation to become yet more compassionate. And I am amazed that the Holy Spirit flows more freely than money through capital markets, and is calling us to share with the world God s wisdom on our housekeeping here on earth, as it is in heaven. May we truly give to God all of what is God s, including our economy, even if the economy we receive in return is neither kinder, nor gentler to us, than everyone else. Amen. 9