A Sunday sermon on Matthew 22:15-22

Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s. But first, I think we need to talk about hedgehogs.

Hedgehogs are wonderful creatures, real jewels in the crown of God’s creation, evidence of God’s joy and love for God’s creatures. Where I grew up, in England and Wales, no garden was complete without a snuffling, spiny hedgehog creeping up to the back door at dusk, looking for cat food or a saucer of milk to supplement their supper of slugs. Gardeners love hedgehogs for their slug-eating ability.

And they’re just so cute – small and round and totally non-threatening, despite their prickly appearance. They have such a soft and smooth underbelly; if you ever want to pick up a hedgehog, you just slide a hand underneath and let them curl around you. One of the more surprising things you learn at college.

Yet last week, despite their almost universal adoration, hedgehogs were the subject of a heated debate in the United Kingdom, because the Bank of England has proposed replacing the image of Winston Churchill on the five pound note with a hedgehog. It’s part of a whole move to replace historical figures, with their complicated reputations and resonances, with images of more universal appeal, like barn owls, puffins, and hedgehogs.

It’s been an interesting cultural debate about the ways in which we choose to show honour, value, and respect, and to whom. It illustrates the hidden dangers of hero-worship: what if our idols turn out to have feet of clay, or hearts of stone? How do we decide who is worthy, and whom do we hide away in collectors’ editions? Does being on a higher denomination bank note mean that the person being portrayed is considered of higher value? Is a barn owl worth more than two puffins, or a hedgehog less? How do we designate value, honour, and respect?

That is at the core of this question in the Temple, and it is both more immediate and far-reaching than we might get from a brief Sunday reading.

It is immediate, because it focuses in on a very local and time-bound controversy in the Jewish community under occupation in first-century Palestine: Should the people of God simply submit to the Roman rule in order to get by and get along?

That’s the solution of the Herodians, supporting the arrangement of a puppet king Herod (the clue’s in the name), providing something of a buffer between the people and the Temple and the governors of Rome, the Caesars and Prefects like Pilate.

Then there were those who looked at the coin and its inscription, the head of Tiberius Caesar and the description of him as son of the divine, as chief priest, using highly religious language to describe the emperor, the political and temporal leader of the empire; there were those, including the Pharisees, whose skin crawled at the thought of the conflation of earthly and heavenly kingdoms, human and divine power, and who still had to live in the Roman world.

This is the discourse of the day, the very immediate controversy into which opposing parties come together in order to entrap Jesus, to try to hem him about with their divisions and factions and fractiousness.

Even without getting into detail, we can relate to their political disagreements and discourse.

But then there is that broader question, and this is the one that Jesus leans into instead; the question of how we ascribe honour and fealty, dignity and respect. Is it through the casting of coins in the image and likeness of idols, or could it be something else?

The inscription on the coin called Tiberius the son of a divine king, but when God, the King of kings, called out from heaven, it was Jesus whom God named as, “my Son, the beloved.” Would you rather be honoured by a statue, or a gold coin, or share a banknote with a hedgehog, or hear the affirmation of God: my child, my beloved, in whom I am well pleased?

How do you define what you value? At Christ Church you have been doing some work defining and describing values of Love, Discovery, and Justice, as part of your strategic planning.

Love of God, the love God has for us reflected back in worship and extended to our neighbours by all means possible – that is at the heart of being a Christian. When Jesus says, “give to God what is God’s”, what is more emblematic of God’s nature, God’s properties, God’s values than love? And to ground that love in worship, to spend time regularly and on purpose to recognize and celebrate and remember that love of God among us – that is vital.

Discovery means that we continue to wrestle with these difficult passages of scripture and the tough calls that Jesus sometimes makes and the delight of sitting with him, like Mary at his feet among the disciples, because he is our model and our guide, and we cannot be Christians without yoking ourselves to him and learning from him, leaning into the beloved, in whom God is well pleased.

And then you have named justice, which can perhaps be defined as the application of love and discovery in the world. It can be as quiet as holding space for a neighbour when others seem to have no room for them, holding open the door and holding their gaze, letting them know they are not alone. It can be as loud as a protest march. It can be as straightforward as declaring that our children’s lives are worth more protection than any right to carry weapons of war around our neighbourhoods; that the right to bear arms is a poor substitute for the right to cradle our children in our arms, as followers of Jesus, who took the children into his arms and blessed them.

Justice requires us to know where our values lie, and love and discipleship will help us get there.

Arguments over banknotes and silver coins can seem arcane in this day and age – who even uses cash any more? But the question that the Herodians and the Pharisees put to Jesus, and the one that he chose to answer, remain: what are your values? What do you value? Whom do you recognize as bearing the image of the living God? How will you live that out, in everyday transactions and in community? Because the love of God lived out, the worship of the Beloved worked out in our everyday lives; that is how Jesus is asking us to show honour, and dignity, and respect to the one who continues to give us life and breath and love.

Render then, unto God, what is God’s.

And as for Caesar, and as for the Pharisees and the Herodians, and as for all of us who may never appear on a banknote or a coin, pray that we may come to know our humanity, in all humility; made in the image of God, made for love, and for mercy, created with the same joy and love and whimsy as the hedgehog, in whom, I believe, God is well pleased.

Today’s readings include Exodus 33:12-23, Psalm 99, 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10, Matthew 22:15-22