+Z’ev

Today’s assigned readings:

1 Samuel 1:21-2:11, Acts 1:15-26, Luke 20:19-26

They asked Jesus, “Is it lawful for us to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” But he perceived their craftiness and said to them, “Show me a denarius. Whose head and whose title does it bear?” They said, “The emperor’s.” He said to them, “Then give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”
Luke 20:22-25

You wanna ask the Pharisees in the temple why they had a pagan coin… but, ok… we’ll let that go.

Despite the seeming cut and dry answers from the Pharisees and from Jesus: can we parse them differently? Can we honestly say that just because the Emperor’s head is on the money, the money belongs to the Emperor?

The first Advent after I joined the Orthodox Church I went to Fr Victor, of Blessed Memory, and asked him how I should fast. He showed me a calendar filled with obscure rules - no meat, no dairy, fish wine and oil permitted. No fish but oil and wine are ok. Caviar today. He said, “This is for monks…” he asked me if watching TV made me angry, or reading the news paper: “Den stoyp vatchingk telebishon!” This is my fast: to avoid the things that, ultimately, make me unloving. I’ve tried for years to maintain that fast - and I’ll keep trying long after now.

But politics is my Waterloo: I have the damnedest time staying out of political discussions!

All I need is to hear a discussion or even a casual comment (preferably one with which I most vehemently disagree) and I can *feel* my stomach tighten. Not even just a little bit, either. It’s a visceral sense as if I’m tensing for a punch. I get the same feeling in religious discussions sorta… but I don’t care if you and I disagree on theological minutiae - or even big things. Is there a God? Is Jesus him? Feh. But don’t use your religion to broach a political issue! Gay marriage? Abortion? I mention those because I’ve held a position on many sides of those issues. Just DON’T disagree with me, OK?

What belongs to the Emperor and what belongs to God?

It’s easy for me to imagine that God has a One-Right-Answer for every situation - usually, of course, he and I are picking the same one. I like the big guy upstairs because we never get into political fights. You, on the other hand, might well pick the wrong side and, clearly, since God and I are on the same side, you’ve picked the side that is not God’s side. Clearly.

What belongs to the Emperor and what belongs to God?

Maybe I’m asking that the wrong way - and maybe the Pharisees did. Try this one on for size:

What belongs to the Emperor that does not, already, belong to God? What has God simply loaned to the Emperor?

And, more importantly - for what reason were those things loaned?

St Paul makes much of the secular authorities’ power to punish evil and protecting the God, but elsewhere we are counselled by scripture that each us must “work out our salvation in fear and trembling”. These tool here - our poverty or wealth, our position or station in life, our friends, our family, our lack of them, there is not one person or thing or event in our life that is not there for us to better work our our salvation.

When we “render unto Caesar”, as the King James Bible puts it, the taxes, the duties we owe to those above us are the tools God has given them by which they may be saved. Withholding from engagement is more than a simple “political” statement. Think about it: it becomes almost a denial of communion.

Beyond that, Augustus Caesar or Nero or, for us, George W Bush, is not only a ruler: Mayor Gavin Newsom (SF), Mayor Terry Bellamy (Asheville), former Mayor Ed Koch (NYC) Tony Blair, Richard Nixon, whomever you want to pick: beyond rulers they are very icons of the living God. Which makes for an interesting question: if one “renders unto Caesar” is one not, really, rendering unto God?

This attitude colours my politics or, to be honest, it can colour them when I allow it to do so.

Hannah sings, The bows of the mighty are broken, but the feeble gird on strength. Those who were full have hired themselves out for bread, but those who were hungry are fat with spoil. The barren has borne seven, but she who has many children is forlorn… He raises up the poor from the dust; he lifts the needy from the ash heap, to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honor.

Depending on your political attitude you may be inclined to read “the mighty” as “bad” and that their bows are broken as “good”. This is because we tend to imagine “good” = “comforting”. But if you step further back (or rather imagine that you can step so far back), the Lord who grants us both life and death (as in v6) might have a different sense of what is “good” and “evil”: what is good is that which saves us.

So, again, depending on my political attitude, clearly someone might be wrong. But do I know they are? And even if they are, really, clearly, wrong: they are still living Icons of the living God working out their salvation - their wholeness - in fear and trembling. That clenching in the gut, however, and the surge of adrenaline that leads to a good argument - online or off - that’s more about my ego than their salvation. Who am I - commanded by God to exactly not judge - to step in and judge?