Sermon - Matthew 22.34-46 The Sound of Silence

Matthew 22.34-46

·         Thanks for the 24-7 Prayer Room experience. Hard to explain unless you were there to experience the context and interpret the silence. A very positive experience of a rich silence, filled with faith and love and the presence of God.

·         Silence also begins and ends our Bible reading, but a different kind of silence, thick with  tension. There’s  a lot of unspoken emotion  – a bit like a couple who are angry with each other and heading for a big row. Different groups are trying to discredit Jesus in front of the crowds. Verse 34 tells us he has just silenced the Sadducees. By verse 46 (read it out) he has also silenced the Pharisees and all his other opponents.

·         On the surface, not much happens. Two fairly standard questions are asked; the first by a Pharisee to Jesus, the second by Jesus to the Pharisees. Each question  receives the normal, expected reply and it all seems quite low key. Yet the tension clearly escalates, setting up Jesus’s lengthy denunciation of the Pharisees in ch 23 and paving the way for the events leading to Jesus’s arrest, trial and execution  a few chapters later.

·         So what is going on? Is it possible for us to understand the context and interpret the silence which ends this pivotal passage of scripture? Let’s take a look…

Question 1 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

·         From the Pharisees’ point of view, Jesus was both a lawbreaker and a maverick teacher with no qualifications or authority. Yet the crowds of common people loved him and followed him. How frustrating that must have been for the Pharisees and other experts in religious law, especially when Jesus told parables which turned the crowds against them! So their question is designed to expose and undermine Jesus in front of the crowds.

·         But the question is not a hard one. And the answer Jesus gives, linking the commandment to wholeheartedly love God (from Deuteronomy 6.5) and the commandment to love your neighbour as yourself (from Leviticus 19.18), is the exact reply which any respectable Jewish teacher would give. We see this in Luke 10, when the same question was posed by Jesus, and a Legal Expert gave the same answer.

·         Jesus answered correctly; so what’s the problem? What is going on in this uneasy silence? Well, perhaps Jesus is implying a criticism of the Pharisees who, as he will spell out vividly in the next chapter, did not practice what they preached. Many in the crowd would have experienced the lack of love and mercy which marked the way that the Pharisees imposed the Law on their fellow Jews.

·         And of course their definition of who counts as a neighbour was not very wide. In the Luke 10 passage, the Lawyer wanted to limit the extent of his responsibility for others, but Jesus

·         challenged him, through the parable of the Good Samaritan, to see that all people were his neighbours, especially those in need and even including sworn enemies.

Question 2 “What do you think about the Christ (or Messiah)? Whose son is he?

·         The question Jesus puts to the Pharisees is also quite straightforward and presents no difficulties. Whose son will the Christ, the Messiah be? The son, or descendant of King David, of course. The standard, text book answer comes back, quick as a flash!

·         The crowds and people hoping to be healed have already been calling Jesus Son of David, and perhaps they are hopeful that he will now directly claim the title for himself – opening himself up to arrest for treason against the Roman occupiers.

·         He doesn’t do so directly, but indirectly he goes even further, reminding them of Psalm 110.1 in which David is inspired to refer to his coming descendant, the Messiah, as his Lord. Just as he did in the parable of the wicked tenants, Jesus is claiming to be none other than God’s son. This challenges the very foundation of the Jewish faith – “Hear O Israel: the LORD our God, the Lord is one” (Deuteronomy 6.4). It either has to be true or the most preposterous lie ever told. The Pharisees understand the implications of what Jesus is claiming and are stunned into silence.

·         If this is God standing in front of them, they need to love him with all their heart, soul and mind. Well, you know how the story ends…

Application

·         We need to know God’s love for us so that we can truly love God and others.

·         God’s love for each one of us is unfailing but it is not a soft love which just overlooks all our faults; it is a tough, challenging, purifying love. It homes in on our deepest weaknesses and rebellious character traits and heals us of them or burns them away, over time.

·         The best comparison I can come up with is that God is like a Best Friend who we have known for a long time and trust completely. A friend who can say “that hairstyle really  doesn’t suit you” or “you need to do something about your smelly feet” or “You were rude to that teacher and you should go and apologise” or “you have to stop using alcohol or people the way you do” – Best friends can say these tough things to each other and still be completely secure in their love for each other. Knowing the friendship will never die even when tough, corrective things have to be said – in fact it will get stronger.

·         If you have a best friend like that, you are very lucky. But only God is willing and able to be the perfect best friend to each and every one of us. To every person sitting here today. And

·         to Col Gaddafi … and to the man who fired the shot that killed Gaddafi. God is the best “best friend” possible.

·         The Pharisees reduction of holiness to a rule-based separation from others had actually taken them away from God’s friendship. To the point where they couldn’t recognise God, even when he was standing in front of them. I like a recent comment by an American Pastor called Steve Brown, to the effect that “ The only people who get better are people who know that, if they never get better, God will love them anyway.”

·         Maybe the Pharisees, and others like them (which can apply to any of us), just didn’t trust God enough and came to trust themselves and their ability to follow rules, too much.

·         But the commandments were never just a set of rules. If you try and reduce them to that they become cold, harsh and empty. They can only be understood in the context of God’s love. “I love you. Remember how I rescued you from slavery,” says God, at the beginning of the commandments, “So trust me, live my way. Be my people by living in a distinctive way in the world – so that I can use you to rescue other people and make the world what it should be.”

·         That is what holiness really means – not separating from the world but living distinctively as God’s people in the world, as salt, as light, as a hopeful sign and a healing presence.

·         Jesus loved his neighbours, the Pharisees and Lawyers and all the rest, enough to challenge them and tell them the truth – but they refused to accept his tough love. It seems that sometimes the only way to show people how much you love them is to let them crucify you. And he loved them and us enough to go even as far as that.

I want to end with a quote from Marcus Borg: “The christian life is as simple and challenging as this: to love God and to love what God loves.”

I hope Richard Dawkins does turn up

Paul Vallely: God knows why Dawkins won't show http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/paul-vallely-god-knows-why-dawkins-wont-show-2374659.html

Sermon - Matthew 22.15-22

Matthew 22.15-22 Paying Tax to Caesar

Introduction

When studying a Bible passage it can be helpful to try and picture the scene in your imagination, in order to help understand the thoughts, actions and motives of the people involved. Some Bible stories are very difficult to visualize (Balaam’s donkey, Ezekiel’s visions, John’s Revelation), whereas today’s episode from Matthew’s gospel is something we see re-enacted almost every day, thanks to the wonders of television…

A FOOTBALL COACH comes off the field after his team has just lost to a late penalty. Before he reaches the safety of the changing room he finds himself in a pool of intrusive television lights and a microphone is pushed under his nose. “Another defeat Jim and you can’t be happy about that refereeing decision which cost you the match.” The reporter tries to draw the coach into making some rash statement that may get him into trouble but will in any case make a good TV clip.

A POLITICIAN  is having an easy day opening a village fete when suddenly the ever present news reporter appears from nowhere and asks an apparently harmless question about the stock exchange. Apparently harmless but actually loaded with dynamite.

OF COURSE the stakes are much higher for Jesus, but the situation plays out in a similar way. His enemies try to soften him up with flattery, then they spin him an apparently innocuous question which is actually designed to trap or entangle him. Fortunately he sees through their hypocrisy, wards them off with a brilliant reply and lives to fight another day.

Our football coach and our politician also need to be aware and quick-witted to survive, but the key to success these days is not so much wisdom or integrity, but IMAGE, pure IMAGE. Those with a good image, the Tony Blairs, David Beckhams and Madonnas of this world, succeed. Those with a poor image, the Michael Foots, Neil Kinnocks and Stan Trouts, fail (you’ve never heard of Stan Trout? Exactly!) None of their other qualities count for anything because their image is poor. TV news presenters are chosen primarily for their looks, their image, advertising agencies are skilled at persuading us that buying product X will instantly give us a cool, sophisticated image … even the church is having to pay more attention to its image. We live in a culture which is obsessed with image – I know this is true because my children were until recently TEENAGERS…

‘Dad, you can’t go out of the house wearing those clothes’

‘Please don’t come to my football match wearing your dog collar’

‘Dad, can you park your car round the corner, so my friends won’t see it!’

I get it wrong every time. I am the man who owned several Skodas, excellent cars by the way, and put up with all the usual jokes for years (eg why do Skodas have heated rear windows?.. How can you double the value of your Skoda?) FINALLY, soon after selling my last Skoda and buying a Rover, my son showed me a newspaper article announcing that Skoda had at last shaken off its joke car image and that the most unfashionable car to own was now… (guess!)

But this obsession with image is no joke. It is a deadly serious problem and perhaps one of the key issues facing the Church in western nations today.

Theologian David Wells puts it like this…

“Image and appearance assume the functions that character and morality once had. It is now considered more important to look good than to be good. The façade is more important than the substance – and, that being the case, the substance has largely disappeared. In the centre there is now only an emptiness. This is what accounts for the anxious search for self that is now afoot.” (page 14 David F. Wells God in the Wasteland Eerdmans 1994.)

The Church has to address its own and our society’s current obsession with image – a problem inside as well as outside the Church. I believe that Jesus has the answer and that in this brief confrontation with the Pharisees and Herodians he reveals the key to a true and healthy understanding of image. Jesus’s reply, ‘Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s’, which silenced them also strikes to the heart of our own worldliness, as we shall see.

The Context

But before concentrating on Jesus’s reply, it is worthwhile to look briefly at the context. The alliance of convenience between the Pharisees and Herodians for instance is a surprising one, as these two parties hated each other. The Herodians were supporters of the puppet kings who ruled the Holy Land for Rome and supported the payment of taxes. The Pharisees hated Roman rule and any form of subjection to Gentiles and especially hated the denarius coin with its idolatrous image of Caesar and its inscription describing him as the “son of a god”. This alliance for evil purpose seemed to put Jesus in an impossible position. It was a case of ‘heads we win, tails you lose.’

Is it LAWFUL (that is, in accordance with the Jewish Torah, the Law of Moses) to pay taxes to Caesar or not?

YES or NO?? Where does Jesus stand on this issue? If he answers YES, he will be accused by the Pharisees of betraying his people and will turn most of his supporters against him. If he says NO, the Herodians will have him arrested for treason!

The irony of their flattering opening words should not be missed either. As they say, Jesus is indeed a man of integrity who teaches the way of God in accordance with the truth. They didn’t believe this, or they wouldn’t have been trying to get him killed, but what they said was absolutely true.

Jesus’s Reply

Now Jesus asks take a look at the denarius coin and then takes the initiative by asking his opponents a question.

Whose image is this? And whose inscription?

Caesar’s

Then give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.

When they heard this, they were amazed. So they left him and went away.

(A pity their amazement didn’t lead them to repent and follow him!)

BUT, what did Jesus mean?

One interpretation could be that he was suggesting a separation of life into public and private compartments. ‘Pay your taxes to Caesar. Live your life by the prevailing society’s rules and values… but on the inside, in your private spiritual world, give your allegiance to God. You should believe one way and act another. It’s a survival strategy.’

This interpretation is attractive, especially in a liberal pluralist society like ours. Each person’s religion is a private matter and should stay private so we can all live together in peace and harmony. But that doesn’t seem to match reality and it surely cannot be what Jesus meant. He rightly denounced his opponents for their hypocrisy and so he would hardly suggest a kind of watered down, demeaning hypocrisy in those who would be his followers.

NO, Jesus must have meant something far more fundamental than dividing life into two parts; the public part for Caesar and the private part for God.

The Key Point

To discover the true meaning of what Jesus said we need first to look again at the coin. Whose image and inscription is this? Put it another way – what is it about this coin that gives it its value, its dignity, its meaning and its purpose? The image and inscription of Caesar. Therefore it belongs to Caesar. A blank coin or a counterfeit coin or a coin with an image of a bunch of flowers on it would be virtually worthless, no monetary value, no use.

That’s the coin, now listen to this verse…

Then God said, ‘Let us make human beings in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’

So God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

(Genesis 1.26-27)

What is it that gives human being his or her value and dignity and meaning and purpose? Simply the image of God!

All God’s creatures have significance and value, but the human race has a unique dignity, value and purpose because of its creation in the image and likeness of God, the pinnacle of his creative self-expression.

The coin then belongs to Caesar; but the whole person, the whole of humanity in fact, belongs to God.

Of course, just as coins get dirty and scratched and worn by the every day usage of life – so do we! The Bible calls this sin, as the image of God in us is hidden by our own and other people’s words, actions and attitudes. But no matter how much grime is covering a human life, its value is still the same – at least in the eyes of its maker, and it can be washed clean today.

The New Testament teaches that Jesus has given each of us the privilege of being restored into a right relationship with God, a wonderful gift which we accept by faith. As St Paul explains:

For those whom God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.

(Romans 8.29)

Later in the letter he draws out the implications of this:

…offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is your true worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

(Romans 12.1-2)

In these words Paul accurately interprets what Jesus meant by ‘give back to God what belongs to God.

Conclusion

In these days when everything around us screams out that image is the only thing which matters, Jesus says to the Church “YES”… image IS the most important thing – not a superficial skin deep image to impress people, but the true image and likeness of the creator, the redeemer and the Spirit who convicts the world of its sin. Shine like stars, like newly minted coins and draw others to the love of Christ, washing them in the waters of baptism so that the image of God will be seen afresh. The Church should be a people of integrity and wholeness with no hypocrisy. We are called to become what God has made us to be, a holy people set apart for him. A people which reflects the image and likeness of God.

Bible Study - Luke 12.13-21

Bible Study – Luke 12.13-21

First, read 12.1-12 to get the context. Notice who is present and what Jesus is teaching about.

Now read through verses 13-21 and discuss the following questions.

Q1          Why would someone come to Jesus with this kind of request (v13)? Why did he ask publicly and what outcome was he hoping for?

Q2          Jesus responds with a question (v14) but does not wait for an answer. What is the answer to Jesus’s question?

Q3          What does the warning of verse 15 say to modern society? Why do companies spend so much money on advertising?

Q4          How do you respond to the constant pressure to buy things?

Turning to the parable itself (v16-20)…

Q5          What is wrong with the rich man’s understanding of his problem (v17)?

Q6          What biblical principles are relevant to someone in the same position as the rich man in the parable?

Q7          What is most noticeable about the solution the man decides on (v18-19)? In what ways is his reasoning faulty?

Q8          Why do you think God describes the man as a fool? Would you be shocked or surprised to hear God describe you in this way?

Q9          Is it wrong to save money or make provision for your retirement? Can we do these things without neglecting our responsibilities to God and other people (v15 and v21)?

Q10        Would it be fair to apply the teaching of this parable to organizations and countries, as well as individuals? What challenges would that raise?