A Sermon for Sunday
We are at a point in Jesus' ministry – in this morning’s Gospel reading – where opposition to his ministry has finally crystallized. He now has opponents and they are waiting for one wrong move on his part which will allow them to pounce. They continue to take part in discussions he is having with disciples and enquirers. They are there on the sidelines. Their questions are not designed to enlighten or inform. There is no genuine information being sought out. They are questions designed to trip Jesus up and embarrass him. We see such questions asked in political debates – questions which have passed through a committee before one candidate ever gets to ask them of the other. Questions designed to be unanswerable without cost. We see such aggressive questions asked in civil court as well. In this case the question is asked about the payment of taxes to the occupying Roman government. Is it permissible to pay taxes to your political and religious opponent and still remain faithful? In order to answer the question Jesus asks for a coin to be handed to him. Everybody waits for his answer – much will depend on his answering the question correctly.
I have such a coin at home – a silver denarius. It’s surprisingly small – smaller than a UK penny. My coin has the head of Trajan on it. The coin which Jesus was handed would likely have had the head of the Emperor Tiberius stamped on one side. Printed around the head would have been a few letters – abbreviations, really – which read “Tiberius Caesar – Son of the Divine Augustus”
And so Jesus is being asked here whether or not a piece of propaganda used to proclaim that Tiberius was the son, if not of God, then of 'a god' could be used by Jews, disciples, followers of Jesus or not followers of Jesus to pay their debts. A trap, certainly. What sort of trap is it?
Jesus has been proclaiming the imminent reign of God – the presence ahead of us, around us and within us of the Kingdom of God. It’s something which pious Jews had been expecting in the future but which Jesus proclaims as something which is already being revealed in tantalizing tidbits. It’s within us, or among us or around us but it is definitely present whenever and wherever Jesus is present. But Kingdom is a loaded word. Herod the Great initiated a massacre because of the rumour of a king being born in Bethlehem. When Pilate is asking Jesus whether or not he is a king he has a clipboard out with a piece of paper on it with a question and two little boxes – one of which should be ticked by the questioner: Does the accused claim to be a king – yes or no. At this point the Pharisees are losing patience with Jesus and their relationship with him has passed some sort of threshold a few chapters back. They are no longer his friends and are wanting to set up some situation where he will be either revealed to his own disciples and followers as a fraud or to the authorities as a risk. Much is at stake. Tax revolts were not unknown and the Roman response was swift and deadly.
If taxes can be paid to the emperor using a coin with the emperor’s head and a phrase denoting that the emperor is the son of God or at least the god Augustus then the religious life Jesus must be promoting is a privatised sort of thing which intersects only lightly with the real world. Believe in God and follow me, Jesus might be saying, but let life go on as it usually does. Jesus could then quite rightly be accused of trying to promote a hobby – something which let life go on largely as it did before and his positive answer to the Pharisees’ question – yes, everybody should pay taxes, even my disciples - would reveal this to be the case. Let’s see if he answers yes, say the opponents, and then we pounce.
But if he says no – my followers should not pay their taxes with a coin that declares the Emperor to be the son of God then he’s gone the whole hog with the idea of kingship. He’s like the radicals who have gone before and who have led the nation into disastrous conflict with Rome. His followers are members of a kingdom which is not part of the Roman Empire. Their allegiance belongs to God alone and to the Kingdom of his Christ and not to Tiberius Caesar. We can pass his name on to the relevant authorities. He can be arrested in the night as a tax rebel and a dangerous character. Either way we win. Either way he’s finished. We’ve got him
Jesus hands back the coin. Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, he says. Render unto God the things that are God’s.
It’s a trap cleverly avoided. But it’s not merely clever. Our children respond with clever phrases. I said I would do my homework but I didn’t say exactly which homework I would do and when. I said I would clean my room but I didn’t specifically mention the part of my room which is under my bed. Jesus is not merely being clever. He is not merely ‘dodging’ the question.
Jesus has always maintained that the Kingdom is like seed cast into a field. It is like yeast hidden inside a lump of dough. In like manner his followers are cast into the world – are part of village life – are part of the world’s life - unconformed to it but living within it. Eventually, to Pilate’s great frustration, Jesus will tell him that his Kingdom is not of this world. It is not Kingship as the world understands it – neither the authority of the reigning King or the rebellion of a pretender to the throne. Jesus wants no standards, no armies, no coins printed with his face. It is something other.
In this ‘other’ understanding Caesar’s coin will be returned to him to pay for roads and navies – returned freely as something owing him. You will pay your taxes though you are a follower of Jesus and a believer in God. And – in 2008 you will avoid the temptation to withdraw into the close confines of the sect. As Christianity may well have reached Great Britain in the person of Roman soldiers who were Christians so christians from your church will serve as elected councillors in local government. The Christian will wheel out his bins on a Tuesday morning shoulder to shoulder with the neighbour who is not part of the community of faith. We understand not only our responsibilities to the larger civic community around us we understood that it was intended that it be this way – that we be sent forth into the world to bring the message of God’s salvation into the marketplace, the school we attend, the workplace we frequent.
No clever dodge whatsoever on Jesus part but an explanation as much to the disciples as to his opponents that we are more than rebels. We are disciples.
Graham Kendrick makes the list!
Though it's the list today in the Daily Mail of the 50 people who ruined Britain.
Hymns such as "Shine Jesus Shine" can be variously described as either 'tepid bilge' or 'really worshipping Jesus'. They've certainly run afoul of Quentin Letts who includes the author of many such hymns on a list of people he holds responsible for Britain's downfall. Mr Kendrick occupies space #39 - between the present head of MI6 and Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister.
Mr Letts' taste in hymnody clearly runs in a different direction
The sturdy hymns of England, musical embodiment of the stoicism, resolve and undemonstrative solidarity of our nation....In other words 'Jerusalem' or some other old chestnut - the sort of hymns a schoolboy could belt out in full voice while being flogged with a cane at school - back in the days when Britain was great.
A Sermon for Sunday
Sermon for Sunday the 5th of October
In the episode ‘you shall not covet…’ two brothers inherit a valuable but incomplete stamp collection from their estranged father and become obsessed by both the wealth they have inherited and the fact that the missing stamps in the collection are owned by other people’
In the episode based on the commandment “you shall do no murder” – the brutality of a disadvantaged killer is contrasted with the cold efficiency of the state in its preparations to take his life on the gallows.
In the film ‘honour your father and mother’ a child’s relationship with her father becomes complex and muddled when she discovers that he is, in fact, not her biological father.
I can lend it to you if you’re interested and are over the age of 18.
One of the critics notes rather innocently, that viewers should not take the connections to each commandment to be literal but rather that they are used as a reflection upon the complex nature of moral decision making. 'Please take this as art' – he seems to be saying – 'and not reality – because this is complex and not simple'.
But – we want to cry out – Life is not simple! Moral decisions are made in complex relationships – rarely are things simple and clear-cut.
Complex and not simple: If we keep to the simplest reading of the ten commandments then we will admit that it possible to keep all ten of them.
I, for one, expect to end my years not having killed anybody – I regard that as a reasonable hope. I would expect my family and members of my congregation to be genuinely surprised and dismayed if it were ever revealed that I had committed murder.
Surely there is no necessity to stray from the marriage bed. People remain faithful to each other within the covenant of marriage quite regularly.
I would even go as far as to suggest that with a certain degree of childhood formation in both humility and generosity that it might be possible to fulfil the plainest personal meaning of not coveting your neighbour’s goods.
And I have met folks who do, in fact, say ‘Darn, Shucks, or Fiddle when they bang their thumb with the hammer.
And so, for example, when the rich young ruler announces with cheery self-assurance to Jesus that he has kept all these commandments from his youth we have no reason to suggest that he is either a lying toad or some rare breed of human. It is within the realm of reasonable discipline to keep the Ten Commandments in the simplest and most ordinary way that they can be read.
Now if you were really cheeky you might interject that we are not all equally advantaged when it comes to law keeping. Some of us have stronger drives than others and straying from the matrimonial bed is easier. Some of us were raised with very little and so coveting the goods of others is harder for us to avoid than it is for you who were raised with much. Some of us are quick-tempered or live in violent communities. Raising our hand against another man is not so great a stretch.
So what about that one over there on his donkey with a cheery face talking to Jesus: is he a law-keeper merely because his drives are low and his needs met?
But that’s sort of a side-line, isn’t it? We were saying that it is possible to end one’s life having kept the Ten Commandments.
When Jesus launches himself into his ministry after the death of John the Baptist he finds himself constantly bumping into the Pharisees. These were men who had taken up the challenge of teaching ordinary Jews how to keep the law and affirm their identity as God’s people. Not only Jews living in Jerusalem but as was more often the case living in the midst of Gentiles – in the homeland but also abroad – in Asia Minor or Egypt - ordinary Jews living complex lives and not simple ones. And the law they were to keep was not merely the Ten Commandments but the whole of the Levitical law as it governed food and marriage, work and religious observance.
But the Pharisees believed it could be done and they also treated this as a reasonable hope and intended to be successful in what they taught.
We’re used to thinking of the Pharisees as Jesus’ opponents but they were practical and often very popular teachers. It might have even seemed to them to that the failure of partnership between themselves and this new rabbi was a great tragedy. For their part they initially looked on Jesus as one of their own – a teacher of righteousness who was gathering disciples around him. They showed genuine interest and unfeigned offers of fellowship - though somewhat tinged with curiosity because of the sorts of people who Jesus was beginning to gather to himself.
Jesus will part company with the Pharisees on this point – taking both a greater and lesser emphasis on law keeping. The Sabbath was made for man – he says – and men and women can be healed on it. God desires the return of his people and God’s servants must maintain contact with lawbreakers. There will be no shunning of sinners but, rather, contact and engagement. And yet the commands of the law are even greater than we imagine.
If you could only see – Jesus tells his disciples – that murder is not merely doing another to death but is a part of the whole cycle of anger which we cannot and regularly do not avoid. Adultery is part of lust and exploitation. It begins in the heart and not the bedroom. Bearing false witness merely the promotion of an unwinnable point in the face of much evidence.
We might call it spin! We’d pay someone to do it on behalf of our company or our government.
Ultimately the law will tell me what sin is. The deeper I look the more I will find myself implicated and culpable. And I will come to recognize the violence that is within me when my anger boils over.
The law will tell me what sin is and I will begin to recognize that the half-truths I speak are covered by the heart of the commandment relating to false witness.
So what will I do? This is the question which is ultimately asked in plaintive tones by the disciples when Jesus gives them some home truths about the full weight of the commandment. 'Who then, can be saved', they ask.
In the long run I shall not ask for a certificate of my compliance from my Creator. I will not say that I have done all these things from my youth because I have not. I will not begin to pretend that I have fulfilled the demands of honesty which the law truly requires or that I have kept myself completely apart from the network of exploitation that is part of our world.
I shall not presume to have fulfilled the law’s demands.
I will do what the law of God and the judgement of God give me no alternative but to do which is to ask, ultimately, for grace and for mercy.
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The whole service is HERE. Sermon starts at 12:57 on the counter.
".....husband, father, missioner, youth worker, musician, blogger, priest, disciple...."
A congregation gathered in St Mary's Cathedral in Edinburgh this afternoon for the funeral of The Rev'd Tom Allen who had recently taken up a post with the Mission to Seafarers in Scotland and was living with his family in the town of Linlithgow, outside of Edinburgh.
Tom had only been in post for a few months and so he was a newcomer among us. He had already made himself known to many of us as Big Bulky Anglican and as Bishop David states in the sermon (which appears below) Tom's interests were many and the accumulation of experience and insight over his years as a musician, a youth worker and a priest were really quite remarkable.
The majority of Tom's contacts will have been outwith the Scottish Episcopal Church. A number of colleagues and friends with broad northern accents were in attendance including one young priest (there with his wife and little baby) whose vocation had been nurtured during Tom's time as a youth worker.
There were two hymns sung at the funeral: "Come down O love divine" and "My song is love unknown". Steve Butler was present as well and sung "Hill of the Angels"
Sermon at the Funeral of Rev Tom Allen
St Mary’s Cathedral, Edinburgh,
17th September, 2008
Rt Revd David Chillingworth,
Bishop of St Andrews
Chair of the Scottish Council of Mission to Seafarers
"Death is not an unforseen accident, not something left out of the scheme of our Creator. Rather it is something natural in the sight of God. … As we give thanks today, we are also given a blessed opportunity. We are each given a loving invitation to trust in God, and let him turn our fears into faith, our sorrows into joy, our loneliness, into divine companionship." Tom’s words not my words.
Anne has asked of us two things today: that we should remember Tom with thanksgiving and that we should worship God as Tom would have wished. So we put death in its place – something natural in the sight of God. We give thanks for Tom. Through our tears, we glimpse death not just put into its place but destroyed in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
But we are only human. We begin by offering our deep sympathy and our love to Anne, to Katherine and to Matthew – to Tom’s father John – and to Tom’s wider family and friends. We who shared with him in ministry are bereft. Our loss is but the outer edges of yours. You are held at this moment within the prayers of a wide community – all sorts of people whom you have never met but who knew of Tom and what his coming here promised.
My first meeting with Tom was a virtual one – when I met Big Bulky Anglican in the community of bloggers. What impressed me about Big Bulky Anglican was the breadth of the agenda – his music, his reading, his reflections on his ministry.
When I began to get to know Tom, I realized that he was big in every sense. There were many parts to his life and he lived very intensely in each of them.
In the family, he was Do Do – beloved husband and adored father. This was the family life of the priest in which all were committed and sacrifices were shared.
As a youth worker, Tom adored children and young people and he held their affection and admiration in return. And always, he wanted to offer them more.
And that’s how he was in life and love and ministry. Restless energy and incisive mind. Music, theology, communication people. Parish and community. Taking people where they didn’t expect to go – and isn’t that just what Jesus did? Giving people the courage to step out of the conventional, the ‘what everybody does’ – so that they might grasp the fullness of life which is God’s will for each of us.
And those who, as Anne says, ‘Got it’ – were inspired and led and opened up to the Spirit of God in new ways. Tom was new wine – and he sometimes made the old wineskins look a bit frayed and tatty. To mix the metaphors, the word ‘dinosaur’ did cross his lips occasionally. But it was kindly meant. And Tom was unusual because he had a majestic God-centered vision – but he read and understood the small print as well. So he was deeply theological and intensely practical at the same time. He was usually – and sometimes infuriatingly – right.
It was the love of the sea which drew him to Mission to Seafarers. It was about seafarers but, above all, it was about mission. He was going to lead us too in directions where we didn’t expect to go. ‘Do you mind the traveling?’ I asked him. ‘No it gives me time to think’ was the reply. He was already reshaping our whole approach to chaplaincy and that would have had an impact not just on maritime ministry but on chaplaincy in many other areas of life.
But the righteous, though they die early, will be at rest. For old age is not honoured for length of time, or measured by number of years; but understanding is grey hair for anyone, and a blameless life is ripe old age.
Death came to Tom in the midst of life. He lived intensely, richly, completely the journey of his own love of God and of his family.
"When we have done everything, and said everything, we realise it isn't enough. At death we come to the end of human knowledge. We are left to the mercy of God. Comforting it is, therefore, to have a God to trust in, and one who has perfect love, absolute knowledge, boundless forgiveness and infinite patience. God is love, and that is a glorious fact to lean upon now. "
Not my words – Tom’s words.
Tom – husband, father, missioner, youth worker, musician, blogger, priest, disciple. May he rest in peace and rise in glory.
There are worries that the new Large Hadron Collider thingy buried under the French-Swiss border will generate tiny black holes which might somehow manage to exist on their own, grow in size and suck the planet earth inside out before going on to swallow the solar system,
etc etc.
Other less worried sorts have pointed out that the sorts of particle collisions being generated by this large gizmo occur naturally when gamma rays enter our atmosphere and so that the only difference here is that these collisions will be measurable and therefore useful for understanding the conditions of the universe several seconds after the big bang.
I dunno. It's all too much for me. Too many details.
The machine was turned on yesterday and particles are now whipping around the long circumference of the machine. At some point in the next few weeks a lot of clever people will begin aiming particles at each other and getting them to collide.
It's promising to be a busy few weeks here in Penicuik. I'm not looking forward to everything which needs to be done. It would be just my luck to have the world end after my upcoming Vestry meetings and not before.
Our sister in Christ over at Get out of Jail Free has a link to the following website where you can have the fundamental question answered without getting too bogged down in the details.
