Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

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As a boy I liked the way Jesus outsmarted his enemies. He wouldn't be cornered. He wouldn't say, "Yes, pay the Roman head tax" (and infuriate the Jews, who believed that Rome, the occupying army, was the "mother of all evil"), nor would he say, "Don't pay it," and have the might of Empire come down on his head. He's so cool. Asks for a coin, apparently not having one of his own, points out Caesar's image on it, and says, "Give Caesar what is his and God what is his." I still admire his craftiness, but it's not the point of the story.

Thoreau said something very interesting about this narrative. He pointed out that Jesus answered his enemies' trick question with a compromise ("Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's), but, Thoreau said of Jesus' enemies, he left them "no wiser then before as to which was which, for they did not wish to know." It is a momentous question. The enormity of it sneaks up on us. I'm not sure we wish to know the answer, for if we knew it we should have to live by it. The question is much bigger than, "Shall we pay the IRS?" Jesus' answer ("Give Caesar what's his and God what's his.") makes it much bigger. It divides the world into two realms, Caesar's and God's, and asks, "Where shall I put what I have - my time, my energy, my resources - all of which are limited? How shall I divide up the productivity of my life? How much of all I have to offer should go to satisfy the very real necessities of this world, and how much (of my time and energy and resources) should go to others and to nurture and grow the spiritual world within me?

Never in the history of the world was an ordinary hill more important than Little Round Top, at dusk, on that second terrible day at Gettysburg. If Longstreet's confederates had been able to take Little Round Top, they would have turned the Union flank, and could have fired their rifles and artillery down the length of the Union line from above, from higher ground, and that would have dislodged the Union army from its entrenchment on Cemetery Ridge, and Robert E. Lee would have been on his way to Washington. (Little Round Top was saved that day, and the Union was saved, by a remnant of the Twentieth Maine Regiment, with unimaginable valor -- but that's another story.) Jesus saw the evils of the Roman Empire, but he would not, could not fight the Romans face on. They were too powerful. He would, however, eventually, get around their flank, and attack them from higher ground. Christianity would play a large role in the collapse of the Roman Empire, but would do so not by a frontal assault but by changing the hearts and souls of men and women who, who having seen the grace of God, would never again tolerate, or participate in, the cruelties of empire.

Jesus also saw the evils of the local, Jewish leaders, remember. What was the alternative to Rome? The Herods? The high priests? They all were corrupt. There wasn't any good choice. As is often the case with us. We measure out our lives in coffee spoons, giving a little to this and a little to that, and praying for the day when He shall return and all we have to give will be his. In the meantime we are left with the irksome question of stewardship - trying to make the best use of what we have. Striving to give Caesar and God their due in some reasonable proportion.

Next week our financial campaign, called Forward By Faith, begins in earnest. The opening event is "Mission Expo," this coming Sunday, which I have already encouraged you to attend. I think you'll be proud when you see all our church's ministries exhibited in one place. You're going to get some more mailings. Lucky you! Please read them carefully. This campaign is a little more complicated then the one three years ago. (Instead of asking for a three-year commitment to the Building Fund - to pay down the debt -- and then, a week later, sending out another appeal for a one-year commitment to the general budget, the Finance Committee decided to do both in the same campaign. Which makes sense. But it will require each member and friend to read the material carefully and to be sure he or she understands what is being asked.) What's not complicated, yet very hard to answer, is the basic question: what in my life belongs to Caesar and what to God?
And how do we decide? Let's take money off the table. Seriously. (Money is a "hot button" for a lot of people.) Let's suppose that the Forward by Faith campaign was about time, exclusively, and that the church was asking you to consider committing more of your time to God and less to Caesar - assuming that the supply is limited. At first that might seem less objectionable, but I think (if we got into it) it might be worse. Time is very precious today. People guard their time. Suppose we said, in this campaign for more God-time, that you could count not only the time you devoted to working at the church, directly, but also any time you spent in prayer and Bible study, and any time you gave to charities and other good works? Would it come to ten percent? If we pressed that goal, that time-tithe, I don't think it would go down very well. Calendars are crowded. We've become so efficient in our use of time, with computers and cell phones, and the like. But the more efficient we become in the use of time the more time Caesar expects of us. So we're no less busy. We are accomplishing more and enjoying it less. Most of us have even lost the Sabbath - the one day of rest which God provided for us - we are just as frantically busy on Sundays as on all the other days of the week.

Our campaign is based on two principles of Christian giving: First, it should be proportional. The same gift is not expected from everyone. In God's mathematics the widow's mite was the greatest gift given that day - because it was all she had. Second, it should be sacrificial. Our resources being limited, to give something to God usually means to take that something from somewhere else. That's the meaning of sacrifice.
Mary and I are struggling with our decision this year. Our income has been reduced, so proportionately we should give less. Nevertheless, we want our giving to represent true sacrifice. We're going to increase our commitment to each fund - not by a whole lot, but by some.
When you think about it, giving is a hallmark of the higher life forms. Animals don't give. I have two cats, and at times they even seem to like each other (They only like me when it's dinner time.), but regardless of their likes and dislikes, when it comes to their food, all affection is forgotten and, "What's mine is mine and what's yours is yours." People give, when they are at their best. People sacrifice. "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's," is a civilizing rule, it brings balance to our lives. The world and everything in it is God's, not mine, and in recognition of God's creation, life's not simply, "Me, me, me - and whatever I can run off with." That would make me no higher than the animals. It's not what we get but what we give that makes us great.

In Russia the communists did away with volunteerism. They didn't exactly say, "Don't volunteer," but they said, "There's no need for people to volunteer, to give of themselves, because the state supplies all needs." Volunteering made the system look like it wasn't working (which, of course, it wasn't), but nobody wanted to be guilty of saying so. And in seventy-five years they beat the idea of volunteering out of the Russian people. Bill Lovelace, our missionary in Russia, says that even today whenever he asks people to teach Sunday School they want to know how much it pays. Service clubs and charities have had a terrible time getting started in the new Russia. When I was there, nine years ago, I realized for the first time how important volunteerism is in America, how so much of the good life we enjoy comes about not by work nor by government, but by people willing to give of their time, of their resources, of themselves. It is a bleak and gray world when people only trudge off to work each day, and bring home their pay, and spend it on themselves, and repeat the cycle again the next day. Our lives are bleak and gray when we do that. St. Francis' expressed just the opposite approach to life:

O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.