garbage day

Give unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and give unto God what is God's.  So goes Jesus' response to those who ask if it is lawful to pay taxes or not.  And that question for Jesus would have been a little different than it would be today.  For in Canada, the great nation where I live, we're a socialist paradise.  Taxes

pay for everything.  Schools, roads, the police, armies, the fire department, the libraries, all these things are run by our taxes.  We pay for it all though what we earn, and if we refuse to pay taxes, that is, if we all refuse to pay our taxes, then all those services go away.  Then the schools that teach our children fold, the police who protect us go home, and the army that ensures our sovereignty will disappear. 

Good so far, but we have a profound difference between us and the people of the time of Christ.  In

the time of Jesus, in Israel, if you were paying taxes, you were paying taxes to someone else's army.  An occupying army.  An army which has taken over, that rules your people and keeps you from making self-determining decisions.  In other words, you are paying the bully to keep you down.

This is why the Pharisees brought forward this question to Jesus, saying to him 'is it lawful for us to pay taxes to Caesar, or not'.  Can we as Hebrew people realistically pay for the occupying forces? And that question was supposed to trap Jesus in his own words, to have him lose support from one side or the other.  Jesus was supposed to, in his response, either advocate the payment of taxes, losing the support of the Hebrews, or advocate withholding taxes from Rome, and risk charges of sedition from the Roman government. 

But Jesus, as he does, avoids the simple traps that are laid, and he asks them to bring him a coin, which they do.  And when they bring the coin, Jesus asks whose name and inscription are on the coin, to

which they reply that it is Caesar's.  So, Jesus responds, give unto Caesar what is Caesar's and give unto God what is God's. Its all seems simple enough, until we get into trying to work out what it is that God has asked for.  Because honestly, that's just about the last thing that we feel like bringing to God.

What do we bring to God? We bring him our Sunday best.  We bring him an idea of what we think we should look like.  We bring to God the very thing that Caesar has asked for, which is our respectablity, our veneer of goodness.  We bring to God the things that make us look good in front of other people.  We bring our best clothes, our best attitudes, and most importantly, we hide everything else away, all the gross stuff that we don't want anyone to see, we hide it away from God too.  I know for an iron-clad fact that I've mentioned this before, but I'm going to

mention it again, that some years ago, I heard from a parishoner about a man who, when they went out drinking, would drink under a wagon.  His reasoning was that God wouldn't see him under there.

Yes, we hide our actual problems from God.  We hide it away, making sure that he can't see it, and making sure that nobody else can either.  We do this because we know that the scriptures say that we ought to be perfect, just as our heavenly father is perfect.  Are you perfect? No? Then how are you fitting into a church?

Given the gulf that exists between what we know we should do, vs where we actually are, what do we do with it? Most of us cover it up, hide it away, and head into a church service, and look nice.  We do our best to look good to each other, and to God, hoping against hope that he will be convinced, like everyone else might be, that we are as good as he wants us to be.  I know we all had a chuckle at that nice man who exclusively drank under the wagon, but how different to that are you? To parapharse the prophet Nathan 'you are the man........who drinks under the wagon!' You are the same as that man, hoping against hope that God won't discover how you actually live, even though, guess what, he's already well aware. He knows perfectly well who you are. 

This brings us to the cosmic garbage man theory that I posited on Sunday.  Yes I'm going somewhere with this.  Imagine if you were desperatly concerned with what the garbage man might think of you.  Imagine if you felt, however right or wrong, that the garbage man was judging you every time you put out your trash.  Imagine if you wanted him to think well of you, to have an opinion of you that was glowing.  You want that refuse collector to have an impression that you are a good and responsible homeowner, a tidy person who looks after themselves, and gosh, a person who doesn't even need the services of the garbage man at all. So what

would you do? If you're really trying hard to impress the garbage man, then you'll wheel out an empty garbage can every week.  You'll roll out a completely empty garbage can every time, making sure that the inside of that garbage can is sparkly clean, never used even. And what it lets you do is to look at all the other garbage cans on your street, set out for the garbage man to pick up, overflowing with trash, and thinking smugly to yourself 'thank God I don't live like that.'

Ah but you do.  You do live like that.  You churn out the same amount of trash, but you just don't want anyone to know.  So where does it go? You keep it in your home, out of sight, never seen.  You keep it hidden far away, stashed beyond the line of sight of

any human being or even of the garbage man himself. You live a life surrounded by trash and garbage to make sure that the garbage man will never see the amount of trash.

But here's the thing.  The garbage man isn't judging you.  He isn't really interested in what content you're putting out in your trash can.  These days, the garbage man doesn't even get out of the truck to poke through what you have in your can.  His entire job is to take your trash away, so you don't have to live with it anymore.  By not putting that trash out, all that happens is that you're drowning in your own filth, and the garbage man drives by taking nothing away. 

When Jesus says to give to God what is God's, he is asking us to give to God what God has asked for.  What did God ask for?  He asked for our sins.  He asked for our garbage.  He asked for our sin and our shame, our grief and our disappointments, he asked to take our sin and divide it as far as the east is from the west from us.  That's what he asked for, from the beginning until now.  All the respectibility that we think God wants, that's what Caesar wants.  The world around you wants you to be respectable.  It wants you to behave, to look good, to keep the laws of the land, and to have all the appearance of someone who does the right thing. Caesar doesn't care how good of a person you actually are, he doesn't care about the content of your character, he just wants you to do toe the line as far as the law goes. Jesus, on the other hand, wants you not to hide your sin from him, not to hold onto it to your detriment, not to pretend that it doesn't exit, but instead to turn it over to him.  It's what he asked for, it's what he ordered, it's what he wants from you as a person, it's all he wants. Not the veneer of politeness or respectability, not the illusion of propriety, not an empty garbage can, but a garbage can loaded full of junk and filth that you turn over to him to take away. 

Be perfect, say the scriptures, as your heavenly Father is perfect.  Are you perfect? No? Then what do you do? Pretend? Or do you let the garbage man do his job? He'll drive past your house regardless, he'll pick up the garbage can regardless, whether there's anything in it or not. So why are you trying to impress him by giving him only what he didn't ask for? Give unto Caesar what is Caesar's.  Give him your pride and your self-importance.  Give him the illusion of your perfection.  Give him your law abiding respectable suburban persona.  And give give Jesus your sin, your shame, your guilt, and let him take it away.  That is, after all, what he ordered.

pj.