In case you’re a bit rusty on your medieval church history, I’ll refresh your memory by telling you that Thomas a Becket was the Archbishop of Canterbury in the late 12th century. In a dispute with King Henry II over whether the church should be subordinate to the state, or vice versa, Thomas a Becket refused to budge. King Henry exclaimed in the presence of four knights something along the lines of “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?” Whereupon the four loyal souls rode off, caught Thomas on his way to evening prayer at Canterbury Cathedral, and assassinated him.
Which would have been the end, except that Thomas’ cause survived him. He became the object of veneration among the common people of England. And Henry II finally had to do penance: he walked to Canterbury Cathedral in sackcloth and ashes and allowed himself to be flogged by the monks. As for Thomas a Becket, he became a saint 3 years after his death; his tomb at Canterbury became one of the most-visited and venerated pilgrimage sites in Europe; and his relics were rumored to be the agent of miraculous healings. The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer’s classic collection of short stories, was about a group of pilgrims on their way to pray at the shrine of Thomas’ relics.
So imagine, 800 years later, being a railway pension fund and finding yourself in possession of these venerated relics, this casket that was at one time the center of piety in all England, these bones that could cure the sick and raise the dead. What would you do?
Well, in 1996, the pension fund did the obvious, for the 20th century if not the 12th: it put the jeweled casket on the auction block at Sotheby’s, where it was in the process of being sold to a Canadian who thought it would grace his country home nicely. A national uproar ensued: if no one any longer believed that the casket had miraculous powers, at least it was a treasure of history that didn’t belong in Canada – and the sale was stopped at the last minute, and the casket is still in Britain.
I bring this up because it is an example of what an eminent theologian, Harvey Cox from Harvard Divinity School, called a “reverse sacrament.” If a true sacrament is where God takes ordinary elements such as bread and wine and blesses them to make them holy signs of God’s grace, a reverse sacrament, says Cox, is where ordinary people take a sacred and revered object and transubstantiate it into nothing more than a commodity. A process that is all too common these days, he says.
He wrote this thought out in detail in a 1999 essay in The Atlantic called “The Market as God” in which, somewhat light-heartedly, he opined that the market these days functions as a sort of god in our society. A god with qualities we impute to it such as:
- · Omnipresence – being everywhere, something we can’t argue – the power of economics, our use of money, rules a lot of things in our world, our lives
- · Omnipotence – don’t we somehow have the idea that money can buy anything – even happiness – there is a recent study that correlates optimal happiness with having income of $75,000 or more
- · And even omniscience (knowing all things): in the mid-80s in B-school I had to study the efficient markets hypothesis, which says the market already knows and reflects all publicly available information. The “strong” version even says it also reflects even non-public, secret information – we could say that this strong version says that to the market all hearts are open, all desires known, and from it no secrets are hid.
And yes, the market god includes high priests, saints and holy places of devotion, and reverse sacraments, in which sacred things, like the relics of St. Thomas a Becket, become nothing more than commodities to be sold at auction. I’ve read Cox’s essay, and I’m not entirely sure just how serious he is. I think he is speaking at least half tongue in cheek. But we who live in 21st century America have to admit that money is certainly a kind of god, a god we spend a lot of time revering and serving, if not worshiping.
Which sets today’s gospel in a new light. The famous saying, Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and render unto God what is God’s, is read by many to be a vindication of the principle of separation of church and state. Believe me, I believe in separation of church and state, since I think separating the two is a blessing to both church and state. When religious power is allied with state power, it can easily turn into an unholy alliance, like the alliance that conspired to kill Jesus in today’s gospel. But it is a concept that would have been utterly foreign to Jesus or to anyone in his time: the concept of state religion was as universally accepted in Jesus’ time as Thomas’, when the only question was whether church or state was going to end up on top.
Separation of church and state is not what Jesus is talking about here. What he is talking about is giving our devotion to God, instead of whatever other god we might be tempted to serve. To understand what Jesus is saying, let’s set the scene. It is Tuesday of Holy Week, Jesus has infuriated the temple officials by overturning the tables of the money changers, now he is teaching in the temple, when insincere enemies come to him with a question intended to entrap him.
Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?, they ask him. Of course, if he says no, Rome will have a reason to arrest him – imagine the Herodians hanging on his words, waiting for him to make a mistake. But if he says yes, he will become very unpopular: religious Jews were chagrined at being a conquered country and paying taxes to Rome was unpopular. But even worse, the coin used to pay the tax had an image of Caesar on the front, violating the second Commandment, you shall make no graven images.
And it had the inscriptions: "Tiberius Caesar, August Son of the Divine Augustus" (i.e., Son of God) and "Pontifex Maximus" (high priest) - violating the first commandment: you shall have no other gods but me. Jesus’ disciples, beginning to suspect that Jesus was the Son of God, by saying this out loud were committing treason against Caesar – you couldn’t serve them both, you had to serve one or the other.
It was unlawful for observant Jews to use such a coin; it was unlawful for them to carry it into God’s temple (which is why there were money-changers there, to change the unholy Roman coins into coins that Jews could use in the Temple). And so the minute that Jesus asks them to show him the coin, and they produce it, he has them – they have admitted to idolatry in the Temple.
His answer is masterful – give to Caesar this bit of metal with his image on it. And, listen carefully: Give to God what has God’s image on it. And what has God’s image on it? We do. In the beginning, God created us male and female in God’s image. This is what separates us from all other creatures – the Bible tells us that we bear the image of God.
Those paltry coins, those dollar bills that carry images of Caesar, George Washington, Ben Franklin or whoever – those are small things, not gods at all, though they may lay claim to our loyalty, our reverence, our worship in all kinds of obvious and not-so-obvious ways, we can get trapped into serving them. But what bears the image of God is us – all of us – every part of us.
Which means that Jesus isn’t saying what we think he is saying. Jesus is not telling us to compartmentalize our lives. He is not saying, carve out this 10% for God, and the other 90% can go to whatever Caesar we happen to be serving. He is not saying, allocate 1 hour a week to God, and the other 167 to Caesar. He is clearly and simply saying, it is all God’s.
All we have, all we do, all the time.
It all came from God and it all belongs to God – because we bear God’s image.
Every hour of the 24 that we are given each day, the 168 we are given each week, came from God – this gift of time is to be used in every part of our lives for God. Every dollar we possess came from the gifts God has given us – the talents we are able to employ for our livelihoods – and every dollar is to be used for God. Every relationship – with those who love us and whom we love, with those who trouble us and those we trouble, with those we agree with and those we disagree with – every relationship, every act of service, every interaction with every person is a gift from God.
Jesus is standing in the Temple in today’s gospel, saying that what goes to Caesar is insignificant; what goes to God is no less than everything.
There is no Temple in the 21st century, Jesus is the new Temple, and we are the Body of Christ – every part of this Temple, the temple of our selves, belongs to God.
So this is an opportunity for prayer, and I urge you to pray about it this week: God, how would you have me use the gifts you have given me? How can I use the gift of time, the gift of money, the gift of relationship? How can I use the gift of who I am, this self that is stamped with God’s image? God, help me to use the gift of your holy image stamped on me.
All I have. All I am. All the time.
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