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Rez is a community where Jesus welcomes, shapes, and sends disciples for the good of our neighborhood. No matter where you are in life, this is a place for you.
Life Together In The Goodness Of God
Every once in a while, a teenager who starts a new job and gets their first sort of real paycheck. You guys, we all remember what that feels like, right? I'll get this question from teenagers. I get it from adults, too, but they're just less interesting when it comes to this. No offense. But they come to me and ask how tithing works in the church. And they ask always this question. If I'm supposed to give 10 percent, is that before or after taxes? And I really I know where it comes from. It's a really it's math. You know, they're trying to do this well. They're trying to understand how this works in the church. And I think it's actually a really sincere, beautiful question. The problem with it for me is there's not really a very straightforward answer. I think sometimes if I say before taxes, it could sound like I'm fixed on the math and that they need to understand that Jesus is also a mathematician. And it's like watching them. It could feel like that. If I say after taxes, then it sounds like the government gets its cut first and then God gets sort of the leftovers, whatever's left and available for that time. And if I say, well, it's not really about the numbers. And honestly, I do also think it's it is and it is. And it's complicated, right? It's not really about the numbers. Then this young person, very smart, they're all very smart, says to me, well, then why do we keep talking about 10 percent? So is it about the numbers? Is it about before after taxes? What's this really about? They're asking a genuine question. But sometimes, especially around money, those questions don't have just a really easy answer. Sometimes, honestly, for me, it feels like I'm in a bit of a trap. I don't know what to tell you here. I see that a little bit in the question that Jesus is cornered with in our gospel reading, a bit of a trap around money. And for you to understand why it's a trap, you got to understand a couple of things. First, what the tax was, how it functioned in the first century and also who is asking the question to Jesus. So Rome had a bit of context here. Rome had conquered Israel and every year an adult paid a tax to the emperor for the privilege of being occupied by Rome. The Pharisees were the devout religious experts. We've read the Gospels. We've seen them show up, always cornering Jesus, trying to get him in a pickle, right? They hated Rome and the Pharisees. They also hated that tax. So they were one of the entities there. The other party was the Herodians. They benefited from and got paid by Rome, the empire. They worked for the empire. Now, these two factions absolutely hated the guts out of each other. However, they found a common enemy and became friends because Jesus threatened them. That's why they're paired up in this story. And so they come to corner Jesus in this trap and they publicly ask him in front of them and all the people, Teacher, is it right for us to pay taxes to Caesar? Say yes, again, the trap, right? Say yes and the crowds that are being crushed by that tax will abandon Jesus and be frustrated by it and think that Jesus is siding with the empire, even worse, right? But say no and the Herodians run and tell Rome and the emperor everything that this rebellious person has said and it's kicking off some trouble before Jesus is wanting to kick off some trouble. So in brilliant fashion, and I really mean this, spend time with Jesus in the Gospels. Read how he acts. Read what he teaches. You should be as a Christian. Can I say just do it? It's great. But notice how brilliant this person is. Even if you're not sure what to think of Jesus. Is he divine? Is he the son of God? Is he the Messiah? I believe all those things. The church believes these things. But even if you can begin in a place with Jesus as a human being at a certain time and place in tricky situations like this, utterly brilliant. I really believe this. Jesus answers in his typical brilliant fashion, not yes or no. He asks to see the coin. They pull it out of their pocket. Notice he didn't have one to pull out of his pocket. He has show me the coin in your pocket, pulls it out of his out of their pocket. And he says, whose face is on it? It's the emperor's face. Emperor Tiberius, his face on it with the words inscribed on the coin. Son of God. So Jesus holds it up and asks, whose face is on this? Caesar's. So he says, give Caesar what is Caesar's and give God what is God's. Now, the Greek doesn't make this apparent. So I just want to tease this out a little bit. It's not pay back, Caesar. It's give back what belongs to Caesar. Return that thing that doesn't belong to you. Belongs to the empire. The coin is the empire's. Hand it back. That's what Jesus is saying. The Pharisees question has a wish hidden inside it for them. A little bit different agenda than the Herodians. Because if Jesus says, don't pay the tax, then they get to keep their money, which would be really good news to them. So Jesus goes deeper than either the Herodians or the Pharisees really were comfortable with him going. And he says that the problem with that coin isn't the tax or the empire. The problem with it is what that coin does to us. What it does to the soul. What it does to the heart. The way money drives us to use people. In ways that we wouldn't otherwise. It's such a powerful force that our money, we think we possess it, but so often our money possesses us if we're honest. So give Caesar back this tool that helps us to dehumanize or commodify or objectify people and to get what we want with whatever we have. And you might finally be free enough to hear the word of Isaiah when he says to us, On behalf of God, I am the Lord. There is no other. The other part of Jesus's answer, besides giving the emperor what belongs to the emperor, is to give to God what is God's. And everyone knew there what carries God's image. If the coin carries the emperor's image, what carries God's image? This is one of the first things the Bible tells us about who we are. We're made in God's image. We bear the face of God. We are the coin that has God's face printed on it, right? God's image. Caesar gets a coin. God gets everything that God has lovingly created and stamped with his image. That means you. That means everything you are. It means your future. It means your past. It means your body. It means your vote. By the way, early voting coming up. It means your vote. Your neighbor. Your whole life. Stamped with the image of God. Give to God what is God's. Let Caesar have his little coin. So if your money is God's, what do you do with it? If all of your life, the fruits of your labor, everything you do, is imprinted with the image of God, the question becomes a bit different. Not what do I owe God, but what do I do with all this that you've gifted to me, God? I think that a lot of us, if you're anything like me, you approach giving to the church in the same way that I think the Pharisees and the Herodians approach this question about the tax to the empire. Something squeezed out of us, maybe, when we just don't feel like we have enough. Or maybe we're not there yet. Like, I don't know how to feel about this. Something that feels sometimes paid out of obligation. And I want to tell you that without a change of heart, fundamentally, below the surface of our rationale and our bookkeeping, without a change of heart, it will always feel like this arm-twisting obligation. And that's the exact relationship we'll have with our money with God, if there isn't something in our heart that changes. And I think that sort of approach to it is the same approach that we might have to how, maybe the IRS, right? How we pay taxes. How the Herodians and the Pharisees even related to the empire and their money. But the good news about our money, and yes, our money is involved in our lives, and the church is concerned about your money, but not in the same way that a capitalist economy is worried about your money. We have actually good news. We are not our money. We are not our tax bracket, our paycheck, our net worth. We're also not our debt. We're not the ones in the hole in behind. That's not how God looks at us and values us. We're made in God's image. There's something quite different. In Christ, we deal in an entirely different economy altogether. And we're all born and raised capitalists. Well, maybe not all of us. I don't know this. But many of us are probably born and raised capitalists. We have been baptized and discipled in capitalism. So this is going to be really difficult for us to imagine another kind of economy, one that isn't about transaction. I give so that I can get something from you. That's fundamentally how we think of our economy, right? In Christ, we belong to a gift economy. It's a completely different logic. No debts and payments, not a transaction of what you get and what you'll give. Christ gives himself to us when we were in a debt that he didn't make, but we found ourselves in. Christ, when we were still sinners, died for us. He gave us his whole self, his life. He gave us something we could never earn, even our entire lives work and net worth. We could never earn an amount, stock up what Christ has given us. And then here's the thing about the gift economy. It doesn't stop giving there. In Christ, when we are given this gift, we become a gift to our neighbors. The gift keeps moving. It's not just a closed system, a zero-sum game. In Christ, we have this elaborate grand giving upon giving upon giving. It's generous. It's abundant. And this is because of what Christ has done for us. We become gift-givers, too. That's why Paul can say that God loves a cheerful giver, because a cheerful giver is someone who has realized what Christ has given to them and has fundamentally changed the way they relate to their wealth and to their neighbor. Now they are being given such a great gift, they will become such a great gift to others. Not one who gives reluctantly or under compulsion, but one, as our Thessalonians have said, recognizes the difference between the idolatry of money and the one who says, I am the Lord, I alone am God. We can abandon Caesar's coin and the idolatry of money and find our home in a God who gives abundantly and cares deeply for us and to be welcomed among a community that also cares for us and sees our need. It's not a tax, beloved. It's a gift, and it's wildly different. So when the plate comes around and we say we lift up our hearts, I sometimes think, oh, you know, the empire would love to have our hearts. But they belong to God. When we come forward and open our hands to receive this gift, when we say we believe in one God, I think sometimes, oh, the empire is fighting so hard for this kind of allegiance. And here we are operating in a totally different kind of economy, giving to God what is God's in all of our actions in the liturgy. This is why I love that question about before taxes or after taxes. It's the Pharisees question, almost verbatim, you could say, word for word. Is it Caesar's or is it God's? But asked by someone who has already decided in their heart that they want to give to God and they want to give to their neighbor. That question becomes radically different, totally different. It makes all the difference, in fact. You know that we've been in a season of pledging. If you're wondering why we're talking about money, it's because we talk about it whenever the scriptures bring it up, first of all. But secondly, we're also in a season where we're planning for the next year and saying, OK, God, what are we going to do with our money that you've given us? And how are we going to fund and empower this mission that we are called to do here in South Austin? And so when we do this together, this is what we mean by a pledge. This is our intention around a pledge. When you say with your money, before anyone asks, God, I want to do something with this that matters. I want to do something with this with you, God, out of joy and not out of a tax mentality. This is why, friends, when Michelle and I, when we give, we plan to give, we make a priority for it. We say above all of the other bills and demands in our life, and man, the empire wants all of it, right? We're going to say, no, we actually want to give first to the God who has given to us. So we prioritize it. We also plan for it. We try not to be compulsive. We look at our life situation and go, OK, what can we do? How can we grow this year? And we try to keep in perspective what it is that we're giving toward, not just a budget or keeping lights on or paying salaries, but actually empowering ministry and mission in South Austin. We bring up stories of the way that this church has like impacted and changed our lives and the lives of our neighbors, why it matters. And especially now, that's not a hard thing to see. So we prioritize it. We plan for it. But then we also commit. And we say, OK, this is our goal. This is what we're going to try to do. And oftentimes we hit it. Sometimes we don't. Sometimes we exceed it. But those sort of three things, prioritizing, right, planning, committing to a percentage even, these are, I think, really helpful questions for us to ask. And I want to lend those to you as well. And when you do, I think when you approach it like this, again, from a place of joy as a gift, it can become an act of worship, truly an act of worship, where we can say to God, as we say, of your own, have we given you? I like to think, oh, Sean, you think you earn your paycheck. You don't think that God is involved at all in providing for you. Lord, of your own, have I given you? It becomes true in my life when we have that perspective. We do it for the mission of this church. We do it for the people that we want to serve, you included. We do it for the people in this neighborhood who deserve to experience the goodness of God as a community and even through our lives and all of our efforts, everything that we do. In God's gift economy, what we entrust to God becomes good news for the ones who give and for those who are served by that gift. This is the good news. It's more than money. It becomes liberation. It becomes relief. It becomes good news. Where else can you invest your wealth and do that kind of work? There's a man in this church, no names, but he's a good looking dude. And he has become, without ever signing up for it, without ever asking for it, he's become the only person in his neighborhood that is able to care for his elderly neighbor in need. And I hear stories. They're joyful stories. He drives him to appointments. He goes on grocery runs. He takes him to Dan's Burgers when there's a late night craving. He organizes his bills and medical records. He's fixing some really fundamental care structures and systems in this man's life. And I can tell you, because I hear about it all the time, it happens all the time. It's a lot of work. It's like a part-time job. And it costs him. Nobody's paying this dude to do this. The neighbor will never be able to pay him back. The world has a category for his neighbor, his elderly neighbor. It's a case number or a chart or just a number in a system, a social security number maybe. But this parishioner, our beloved brother, sees his elderly neighbor as a neighbor, as beloved, as someone that he sees God's image on, as someone that deserves to receive a gift from someone like him. So when he looks to his elderly neighbor, he sees the face of God. He sees Christ revealed. I know this. Friends, this is exactly what a gift economy looks like when it implants in someone's imagination and their practice. And again, not just in your heart. I see my friend doing this and I'm like, well, that's really impressive. I don't know what I would do there. I hope I would be like that. But I can tell the difference between something that I've intellectually committed to or something I've said is in my heart and then it actually doing something in concrete action. There's a big difference, right? It seems like that distance is the greatest distance for us to cross at times. But that's what it looks like. And when we see it acted out, it's so beautiful. It's a light. Friends, it's good news, isn't it? When we see things like that. And for so many of us, me included, it's due time. Right? That the people of God give back to the empire what the empire owns. But to give to God what is God's. And not just in our hearts. Yes. But let your heart also be brought along with your own actions in your hands, in your generosity, in your giving, in your going out of your way. Give with your hands. Let your hands lead your heart. And when we do, we'll get on that path of generosity, that gift economy together. And there's nothing like it. You will find rest for your weary soul. You will find liberation. And you will become genuinely real good news for others. The way that so many others who give have become good news for you. I wonder this morning, friends, what is the invitation that rests on your heart when it comes to your money? What is God's gentle, loving, good invitation to you? Say, come here. I want to show you something. I want to show you something that you can do with your money that maybe you've never done before. What's the invitation that God has resting on your heart this morning? Would you listen to that? May we be the people who listen to that and respond this morning. Amen.