It is always a special privilege to welcome people who may be here for Bring-A-Friend Sunday as well as people who may be new to the congregation without knowledge of that occasion. I'm glad you are here, all of you, visitors, members, and friends.
At the beginning of the service I made some remarks about worship as we practice it here at Rutgers Presbyterian Church. In terms of the sermon, we work our way through the Bible week by week, reading some verses from different parts, connecting what we read to the realities of life as we live it in the present. The Presbyterian way of preaching can be overly intellectual, relying on rational analysis and thought. The fact that I am standing here in a fixed place, reading some words that I wrote a couple of days ago can be challenging for people more used to communication that is visual as well as aural and emotional as well as rational.
For that reason I try to keep my sermons relatively brief, and I make an effort to connect at the level of feelings. A few days ago I read something a radio disk jockey in Chicago said. Lin Brehmer of station WXRT commented that "I absolutely think that teenagers or young people are as much affected emotionally and spiritually by the music they hear as by any sermon they hear in a church. Part of the reason I have trouble going to church and staying in church is feeling like the sermon some minister is espousing wasn't connecting with me in any way, whereas a good four lines from a John Hiatt song could mean so much more to me."
I don't know much about John Hiatt's music, but I vividly remember the first time I heard a particular Barry Manilow song:
All the time I thought there's only me,
Crazy in a way that no one else could be.
I would have given everything I own
If someone would have said, "You're not alone."
All the time I thought that I was wrong,
Wanting to be me, but needing to belong.
If I had just believed in all I had,
If someone would have said, "You're not so bad."
All the time I thought there's only me,
Crazy in way that no one else could be.
I can't believe that you where somewhere too,
Thinking all the time there's only you.
All the time, all the wasted time,
All the years, waiting for a sign.
To think I had it all,
All the time.
I remember feeling that the world was a little warmer, that it was okay to be me—as I am. But I also know that for me there is a dimension of life that I can best call holy. I can connect with the holy in a limited way through the words of songs, but I need something more. I need the words of sacred texts and the company of other people who are open to the holy also. I need to develop habits and disciplines that deepen my spirituality. And so I stay with the church, imperfect as it is, and I learn its language, its ways of being and doing. And I touch the holy, and the holy, or God, touches me.
We heard some verses from a letter of Saint Paul, and I just read some verses from Matthew's Gospel, some verses in which Jesus of Nazareth responded to an attempt to entrap him. Some religious leaders of his time who didn't like him or approve of what he was doing proposed a question to Jesus, a question designed to get him into trouble. The question was, "Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor?" In context the word lawful meant, "Is it appropriate for a godly person to pay taxes to the emperor?"
Jesus and his fellow Jews were living in a country occupied by a foreign power, the Roman Empire. Most Palestinian Jews detested the Roman invaders and hated supporting them financially. If Jesus had approved the paying of taxes to the Roman emperor without qualification, he would have risked alienating the people he was trying to reach with his message about God's unconditional, inclusive love. If he had encouraged not paying the tax, he would have been open to the charge of treason.
There were times when Jesus more than matched wits with people who tried to ensnare him. On this occasion he asked if anyone had one of the coins used for paying the toll or tax imposed by the Romans. One of his questioners produced such a coin, which bore the likeness of the emperor and the inscription in Latin "Tiberius Caesar, august son of the divine Augustus, high priest." Most Jews would not carry such a coin, since Jewish Law forbade making images or likenesses of any kind—the second of the Ten Commandments. The fact that one of Jesus' questioners could produce the coin used for paying taxes weakened their position.
Jesus asked whose likeness was on the coin and whose title was on it. They answered, "Caesar's." Jesus said, "Then give to the emperor what is the emperor's and to God the things that are God's." Hearing his answer, his questioners went away in amazement—and frustration.
Jesus' answer to his would-be entrappers has sometimes been misconstrued over the centuries. Some people have understood him to mean that there are two descrete aspects of reality and they should remain separate—the sacred and the secular. Jesus didn't think that way at all. For him there was no aspect of reality that was beyond the realm of God, beyond the realm of the holy, beyond the realm of the sacred. The evidence is in the second part of his answer, "Give to God what is God's." Jesus knew the Psalms and quoted them often. He knew Psalm 24, which begins, "The earth is the Lord's and all its fullness, the world and everything in it." He knew the Genesis creation stories, in which woman and man are created in God's image.
To follow Jesus is to know that the holy is always breaking into reality as we experience it. Have you encountered the holy in your life? God meets us in the ordinariness of living as well as in the special times and places given to worship and meditation. Jesus was not creating a dichotomy between the sacred and the secular. And he certainly wasn't advocating the separation of Church and State, an idea or doctrine that entered the political vocabulary in the eighteenth century. Personally I believe in the separation of Church and State as it was advanced in the formative years of our nation. It was about the separation of institutions, the government and the church. The government was not to use taxation or laws as ways to suppress the church, and the church was not to co-opt the powers of the state to enforce the practice of religion.
Just this past week a college professor in California argued that churches should not be advocating the passage or defeat of Proposition Eight, a ballot initiative to end the right of gay and lesbian people to marry in California. She referred to the separation of church and state as the basis of her argument. But the separation of Church and State has never meant that religious bodies or church leaders should be silent on ethical and moral issues. If I were in California, I would be advocating from the pulpit for the defeat of Proposition Eight and anything like it. Since I am in New York, I can say, "Why don't gay and lesbian people have the same access to marriage that everyone else in New York has?" For me it is a justice issue, and advocating for justice is part of the Christian faith.
Jesus was teaching a new way of understanding God, a new way of living life as God intends it. He taught that God is love—love above and beyond all else, and he taught that godly living means loving God and loving other people the way we love ourselves—healthily and generously. As I have said many times, living that way involves caring for the common good as well as for our own personal good. It is hardly compatible with what has been called rugged individualism.
When I heard President Kennedy say in his inaugural address, "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country," I had the same feeling I told you I had when I heard the Barry Manilow song. It was a moment of connection. It was as though someone was calling me to see beyond myself, not to ignore myself, but to expand the horizons of my world, the larger world the Gospels tell us God loves.
For that reason I agree with the recent Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman, who recently wrote that in our current financial crisis, our highest priorities should not be balancing the federal budget and reducing taxes. It should be using tax money for better education, creating jobs, repairing our crumbling infrastructure, extending unemployment benefits and health care, and developing energy sources other than oil, not just other than foreign oil. Personally I will not object to paying more taxes if the increases are equitable and imposed on people above a certain income. The private sector has demonstrated conclusively that it cannot and will not do the things that need to be done if we are to have a healthy economy and a just society. We need the help of government, and government needs taxes.
Obviously we will need to be as vigilant in monitoring the performance of government as we will need to be in scrutinizing the way financial institutions spend the eight million dollars you and I and our fellow citizens are giving them.
By way of ending this sermon, I remind you that I give you my thinking and feeling on the basis of my study of the Bible and my knowledge of the modern world. Some of you may agree with some or all I have said. Others of you may disagree. I welcome disagreement as well as agreement, and I encourage discussion, at the coffee hour or at other times and places.
At least once every two or three months I say about my preaching, take what you like, and leave the rest. Thanks for listening. And keep coming back. It works if you work it.