God and Country
Matthew 22:15-22

I want to begin my sermon today by asking you if you’ve seen the political signs out on the roads?  Just a few of them, huh?  And we fuss about them, and we talk about all the trees that have been used to make them.  Have you noticed the controversies in all the politics lately?  Is anybody throwing mud and slinging it at different people?  Some people say, “Well, politicians are that way and that’s why I don’t vote and things like that.”  Are they usually the things we say?  It really is, isn’t it? Let me think.  We want to go back to the good old days when politicians were statesmen and they always did the right thing—back when democracy was this very clean, black and white thing.  This was all back before all the interviewing, right?  That’s what we are hoping for.  Well, just a few weeks ago I finished reading Abigail Adams’ biography, and by the way, she was John Adams’, our second president’s, wife and probably one of the brightest first ladies that we had in American history.  She influenced her husband in some very profound ways.  For the good, they balanced one another.  They had a very, very close relationship. Interesting enough, as I was reading this biography, I was reminded of something.  I have to tell you that one of my childhood heroes was Thomas Jefferson.  And I still admire him and the things that he did well.  I held him in such high esteem that I thought there was nothing that he could do wrong.  Later I found out, and I don’t know how many of you know this, that Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were very close friends.  They worked in France during the war to try to get French support for the revolution.  The Adams took care of one of Jefferson’s daughters for a period of time.  Back in those days, when you voted for a president, who ever came in second got to be vice president.  You can understand how interesting politics can get when your rival ends up second in the end.  Of course we have since made some changes about that.  Anyway, John Adams was George Washington’s vice president, and Adams served very well with him.  Later John Adams and Thomas Jefferson ran against each other, and John Adams came in first and became the second president of the United States.  Thomas Jefferson spent most of John Adams’ administration undermining him—most of the time behind his back.  And when they both ran for President the next time, Thomas Jefferson paid off a guy who was the equivalent of our gossip columnists to spread rumors, slander, and lies about John Adams.  One of the major reasons Thomas Jefferson became president was because he had soiled the line of John Adams.

Now I tell you that story because I want to say to you, that if you want to be cynical about democracy and politics, then we need to understand that there were no good old days.  There never was a time when those kinds of imperfections were not in the system. And I think that we still need to demand high standards of our politicians regarding how they conduct themselves in campaigns and whether or not they focus on issues and things that are relevant.  You also need to understand that the human factor is always going to be involved in political systems.  If we choose to become cynical, and by the way I think that cynicism is the greatest destroyer of democracy, then we may become so cynical that we refuse to participate in the democratic system.  Then we have only ourselves to blame for our system’s not working.  So we look at the next two weeks, and we think about the election coming up.  We have all these issues before us, including propositions and people for whom we must choose to vote.  Sometimes our vote becomes more than an issue of our candidates’ being liberals or conservatives.  Our vote becomes more than an issue of the candidates’ being democrats or republicans or libertarians.   The heart of the matter is really a question of what our values are and how our participation in the democratic process factors into the greater sense of who we are as God’s people.  Some of the issues are pretty straightforward regarding how people of faith might vote.  I would think that most of us as good Methodists would know that when it comes to the gambling issues that are up there, that we probably are going to vote “no” on all of them, right?  Because we are good Methodists, we don’t believe in gambling.  Maybe an issue about legalizing some illegal drug will find us voting “no” because it’s not a good thing either.  But the truth is, some of those other issues, when we live in the subtlety of a democracy, are not always clear when we want to make a godly choice.  Just a couple of weeks ago, our council of bishops sent out a letter strongly condemning President Bush’s stance on the Iraq situation.  And as I listened, it’s with great humility that I say to you that I’m not sure myself what is the right thing.  We all live with this shadow of our world’s having changed so dramatically since Sept. 11^th.  Should we pursue a war in the Middle East or wait it out to see if other things might work?  My passive side says we should never have a war.  I’m also reminded of Hitler in WWII and how our country lagged behind until it was almost too late before we took a strong world stand and went and tried to help defeat the man who, by the way, came that close to defeating all of Europe.  Who knows what would have happened if we hadn’t become involved. 

The difficulty in living in a democracy is this—we are always looking for the person who knows the right answer to all the questions, right?  And if this person knows those answers and can give them to us, then maybe we can be comfortable knowing that our future is secure.  The truth is, in a democracy there are always lines, shadows, and uncertainties. And the minute that someone seems like he or she has all the answers is the time in a democracy that all of us should become scared.  Each of us, no matter how passionate about how we may feel about any given issue, knows what the things are that really matter.  There has to be in that democracy a degree of humility that allows us to allow other people their opinions.  One of my greatest fears for society today is that we could become so polarized that we don’t know what it is like to live in a community anymore.  When we become so concerned about defending our particular position on controversial issues, we may want to wipe out any thought that another side may have—even when people expound upon their ideas with relevancy and sincerity.  A democracy can only work when we not only respect our ideas and notions of what is right and wrong, but when we respect the ideas and notions of those who have different opinions.

I want to go back just a moment before I end the sermon and let you out of church a little early, since you’ve been late the last two Sundays.  This is my gift to you.  I want to go back to the passage that was read to you from Matthew’s Gospel.  By the way, in choosing the selection of the text, I thought—boy do I want to talk about politics right as we move to the new building?  And then I thought, why not?  It’s interesting as we look at that passage of scripture and we see it in the rare context of the world in which Jesus lived.  When these people tried to stump Jesus and ask him about taxes, there was a much bigger issue at stake than what there would be for us in this country.  Have you heard of the pax romana (and that is with a West Virginia accent)?  That is Latin and means the peace of Rome.  From one end of the Mediterranean to the other, there was a common culture and language, and commerce could take place easily from one end of the empire to the other.  The so-called peace of Rome came at a very heavy price to the vast majority of people living within its confines.  While the people who actually lived in Rome benefited greatly from all of that commerce and all of that alleged peace, the people who lived in other countries saw themselves as heavily taxed, and there wasn’t such a thing as freedom of speech.  If you didn’t like what was going on, and you said something about it—it was the end of your life! When you look back into Jesus’ day, we realize that 90 percent of the income an average person of Jesus’ time made was taken out in taxes of some form.  People literally were starving to death because they didn’t have enough money to feed their families, because nearly all the money was going somewhere else.  The question was frequently asked, “Do you pay those taxes to the emperor?”  That was a heavy question to people in Jesus’ day.  Rather than getting caught in the trap, Jesus said, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God those things that are God’s.”  Had he said the wrong thing, then he could have been killed on the spot.

When you live in the way we live, we have to give our allegiance to many different things.  Certainly it is much easier for us living in a democracy to give our allegiance to our government, even when we disagree with it at times, than it would be in a country where freedom was less likely.  I think it’s important for all of us to remember something.  This is the heart or pivot of Jesus’ fairly foxy statement: We must never forget that what is central in our life is that God has revealed himself to us through Jesus. And that is our first and most important allegiance.  Our most important allegiance is not to our country.  It is not to our families, our spouses, our jobs, or what clubs we belong to.  Our first allegiance is always to God who has been shown to us through Jesus.  Whether or not we are participating in democracy by voting or by writing letters or by calling up representatives, and whether or not we are participating in our greater society by giving to it through our time and our gifts, the real question always comes to this: Is what we are doing reflecting God’s will?  And even when we vote in a few weeks, do we seek God’s will in the people that we vote for?  Or do we seek our own best interests?  Now I know that it would be really nice for me to stand up here and tell you what the Christian thing is on all these votes.  And you can take notes, but then you don’t have to do any thinking on your own, and I could influence quite a few hundred votes.  But what I want to tell you is that it doesn’t work that way.  My job isn’t to tell you what to think or for whom to vote.  My job is to tell you that you must give to God that which is God’s.  And you must vote in ways that reflect God’s greater will for the world in which we live.  But it is up to you to struggle with those issues.  You must decide on your own for whom you will vote and to what proposition you will say yes or no.  Ultimately, it is each of our responsibilities to decide what it is that we owe God and what it is that we will pay to the rest of the world in which we live.  We must understand that we give to God our first allegiance.  Our responsibilities are to God’s kingdom and to God’s will on this earth.  These are the most important aspects that we must consider when we act as citizens of a free country.  We must, in the end, leave it up to God’s grace how it is that our world will continue to live in times in which there is much strife.  Render those things that are Caesar’s that are Caesar’s and to those thing that are God’s to God.  And we give our thanks to God who has given us love in Jesus.  As we act in the next few weeks as citizens of a free society, may our actions reflect God’s grace in us.  Let us bow our heads for a word of prayer.