Pledge Your Allegiance to Government and God
In the Gospel lesson from Matthew 22:15-21 Jesus shows us how to Pledge Your Allegiance to Government and God by giving the government the respect it deserves and giving to God the faith he desires. October 12, 2008.
So what about voting this year? We’re probably all a little weary of this presidential race, but we know we have to pay attention. We have big problems in our country: economic problems, military problems, ethical problems…a lot more than I can mention here.
So will what you believe as a Christian influence how you vote as a citizen? It probably will. You can’t really set your faith aside when you fill out a ballot. The trouble is it’s pretty certain that one candidate is never going to stand for everything we believe in. Obviously, we believe in the value of human life and the sanctity of marriage, but we also believe in helping the poor and the less fortunate. We know that God gives us an income and money to bless us, but he often warns against greed and urges us to use our money for the benefit of others. Until Jesus puts his name on the ballot (and he’s not going to do that), it’s never going to be as easy as some people think to choose a political leader on the basis of Christian faith.
God makes it pretty clear in the Bible what he considers his role is in the world and what the government’s role is. And the truth is that Christians have gotten themselves into a lot of messy situations over the centuries when they’ve had trouble understanding that difference. There’s been a lot if ink spilled on this issue, and not all the ink is legible. I mean, it doesn’t all say clearly what God says in his Word.
I didn’t make the decision to talk about God and government this morning. This Gospel from Matthew 22 has been read in Christian churches at this time of the year for more than a thousand years, long before Americans ever started voting on the first Tuesday in November. But we are facing an election—what is it now, 24 days?—and it’s important that we hear what Jesus is telling us in today’s Gospel. This is his point: Pledge Your Allegiance to Government and God.
Give to government the respect it deserves
It’s Tuesday of Holy Week. By late Friday Jesus would be dead. But nobody knew that on Tuesday. Well, the Jewish leaders were hoping he’d be dead. Jesus had become a real problem for the leaders of the nation, and they needed to do something to shut him up. If that meant they had to kill him, well, so be it. But it would be better if the Romans killed him and it would be best if the people simply stopped listening to him. So this is what they did: The Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap Jesus in his words. They sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians. “Teacher,” they said. “Tell us, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” This seemed to be a pretty good trap. There were a bunch of conservatives in Israel who absolutely insisted that paying the tribute tax to the Roman government was admitting that Rome had a right to govern the people of Israel, and these people believed passionately that only God had that right. If Jesus said, “Pay the tax,” this group would label him a traitor to the cause. That would ruin his popularity with most of the people. If Jesus said, “Don’t pay the tax” the government would find out…and you can guess what would happen then. Well, Jesus wasn’t about to be trapped. He had the perfect answer: Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.
It was a pretty simple answer, but it shut the religious leaders up real fast. And ever since, these words of Jesus have served as a summary of what God wants us to believe about the relationship between government and God. What Jesus said here, Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, is God’s own statement that government has a right to expect honor, respect, and obedience from believers. Jesus didn’t go into detail here; he wasn’t delivering a dissertation on church/state relationships. But when we connect what Jesus said to what St. Paul wrote to the Romans (you heard Paul’s words in the Second Lesson) and to other words in the Bible, we understand that God considers the various governments of our world to be his representatives on earth. God never loses control of events on this planet or on any other planet. No star explodes in the universe, no hurricane makes landfall, no stock market crashes, and no president sits in the White House without God’s knowledge and permission. We may not always know what God has in mind when he allows this king to reign or that president to be elected, but then, there are a lot of things about God that we don’t know. Here’s something about God we do know: Jesus sits at God’s right hand far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church. The church--that’s us. And we also know this: We know that in everything God works for the good of those who love him.
The way our country works, we have the right to vote for the candidate we desire, and we have the right to disagree. The way God works we have no right to make scorn or scoff at our leaders, no right to dismiss their leadership or disobey their laws, and certainly no right to assume that God will not or cannot guide his world and our nation with them in control. When Jesus said, Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s he was echoing God’s will. God wants us to pledge allegiance to the government he has established and he expects us to give our government the respect it deserves—even if we disagree with it.
Give to God the faith he desires
Truth be told, the issue in Jerusalem on that Tuesday of Holy Week was not the relationship between government and God. Those Jewish leaders weren’t interested in church/state issues. They were already paying taxes; they had the tax coin in their pockets when Jesus asked to see it! You heard Jesus; he called them hypocrites. The real issue was not what the people gave to Caesar; the real issue was what these people were giving to God. When these young Pharisees and the followers of King Herod let themselves became the pawns of the Jewish leaders, they were rejecting the Savior God had sent them. What Jesus meant to tell them was this: You need to stop thinking abut what you owe Caesar and start thinking about what you owe God, and what you owe God is to repent of your sins and put your trust in his Son.
When God began to carry out his plan to release us from the awfulness of sin and the eternal death we all deserve, he didn’t gather an army or appoint a general or amass an arsenal of weapons. He sent Jesus, and Jesus did what no human person could do: he lived for us and he died for us so that God wouldn’t hold our sins against us anymore or punish us in hell. As God continues to carry his plan, he doesn’t raise taxes or make laws or appoint supreme court justices. He sends his Holy Spirit who works faith in our hearts with words from an old book, with plain water, and with simple bread and wine. God wants us to pledge our allegiance to him. God wants us to believe in him. He wants us to live our lives as his children. He wants us to pray, to love our spouses and our children, to live at peace with one another. And God wants that for everyone. But God makes that work his business, not the government’s business. Earthly governments are made up of human beings, and no human being can do for us or for anyone else what God does. Only God’s Son, our Lord Jesus, can provide forgiveness for our sins and only God’s Spirit can lead us to believe in that forgiveness. And finally what God desires more than anything else is that we have faith in his forgiveness and love.
When you go to the polls on November 4, let your Christian faith guide you as you vote. But remember this: God’s good and gracious will is going to be done no matter who wins. That’s God’s promise. And this is God’s promise, too: His Word and sacraments have all the power they need to change hearts and minds and lifestyles. Be the kind of citizen God expects you to be: respectful, obedient, diligent, faithful. Then be the kind of Christian God wants you to be: A Christian who loves Jesus and his Word, a Christian who rejoices in the freedom God has given us in this nation, and a Christian who uses that freedom to spread the gospel of Jesus to everyone. Are you looking for change, brothers and sisters? Share the good news about Jesus, and our world and our nation will change. Amen.
Preached at Grace Lutheran Church, Milwaukee, WI (http://www.gracedowntown.org/) on October 12, 2008
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