The Backside of God, the Emperor's Head and the Human Person as Icon

Lectionary Link

Click for audio>  Sermon 10.16.2011

23 Pentecost, Cycle A, Proper 24, October 16, 2011

Exodus 33:12-23  Psalm 99
1 Thessalonians 1:1-10  Matthew 22:15-22

  I am a person who probably lives in more constant personal irony than is good for anyone, but things just occur to me, as in our two lessons for today.  We have some rather strange anatomical juxtaposition:   The backside of God and the head of the Emperor.  How’s that for a sermon title:  The backside of God and the head of the Emperor?  And now you do wonder about my inclination to irony.

  The biblical representation of God is that God is a holy God.  God is such an entire other order of Being; how could we even know the existence of this other order of Being without some translation of this Holy Being into the categories of human experience?  No one has seen God at anytime; his Son has declared him.  No one can see God and live and so humanity is the proverbial moth headed towards the flame since we do not have the capacity for either the Heat or the Light of God.  Our God is an all-consuming Fire, Scriptures records.

  So how do we deal with such a holy and great God who is another order of Being incomprehensible to those who do not have the divine capacity?  How do we know that such a Being exists since if we declared God’s existence, why would anyone trust our limited knowledge of such a Being?  We are rescued from the problem of an unknowable God by the concession that there are energies and emanations from God that are perceptible to human experience and they are such enhanced perceptions that they are able to be for us an adequate proof of God’s existence.

  Moses was a great man because of his encounters with God.  He had several theophanies or encounters with God; God in the burning bush, God in the inscription of the laws on the stone tablets, and yet when it came for Moses to see God, he could not.  He was allowed to see only the energies of God; he was allowed to see the backside of God as he passed by.  Moses was like a moth that did not fly into the flame and get consumed.

  Certainly this theophany or encounter with the divine, bespeaks of what is called God’s glory.  And how is it that we human beings can be aware of God’s glory or the sublime evidence of the Divine?  We confess that there is enough of a likeness with divinity in human capacities to be able to know God who is way beyond human capacity.  If the heavens can bear or carry the glory of God, so too it is the belief in the biblical tradition that men and women can bear the glory of God.  Why do men and women bear the glory of God?  What is one of the most often used words since we have been using computers?  Icon.  In the book of Genesis, it is written that Adam or the first human being was made in the “image” of God.  The Greek word for “image” in the famous Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures is the Greek word from which we get the word “icon.”  Humanity was made to be like the “icon” of God.

  If human beings were coins, then God’s icon or image would be stamp upon us, because we belong to the one whose likeness we bear.  When a child looks like a parent, we can say that “child” belongs to the one whose image is seen in the child’s face.

   Now let us fast forward to the time of the Gospel of Matthew.  What did the writer or editors of the Gospel know?  They knew the Caesar during the ministry of Jesus?  Caesar Tiberius.  And he was the step-son of Caesar Augustus who had been elevated to the position of a god by the Roman senate.  And so what was one of the titles of Caesar Tiberius?  Tiberius was a divi filius, a son of a god.  What was the right of every Roman Emperor?  An Emperor would stamp his image or icon on the coinage as a sign of his economic power in his realm.  His image or icon on the coins was also his right to collect taxes in his empire.  What did the Gospel writers believe about Jesus Christ?  They believed that he was more than divi filius  or son of a god; they believe he was Son of God, Dei filius,  Son of the Lord God, the God of Moses. And being the Son of the God of Hebrew monotheism, he was special indeed.

  I am trying to coax you into the irony of the numismatic encounter between Jesus and the Pharisees and Herodians who were trying to stir up trouble about paying taxes to the Emperor.

  Jesus who is the exact image or icon of God as God’s Son makes a comment about the image or the icon of the Emperor Tiberius on the Roman coinage in Palestine.  And this same Caesar is one who was call divi filius or son of a god.

  Jesus said that Caesar could have all of those coins on which his image was stamped.  But let God have everyone  on whom the image of God is stamped.  And who is that?   That is all men and women, including the emperor.

  Let the emperor keep his coins but let him honor the profound image of God that is stamped upon even the emperor by virtue of his being made in the image of God.

  Do you now see all of the symbolic irony of this Gospel text?

  But there is a further faith assumption in this text?  If the Emperor really is made in God’s image and belongs to God, then the coins and all of the Emperor’s possessions also belong to God.

  There is a message of faith and stewardship for each of us in this Gospel.  We can live our lives as strutting Caesars on the stages of our little empires.  We mark the image or icons of our lives on things in our lives with possessive words like my and mine.  These clothes are mine.  This talent is mine.  This house is mine.  This church is mine.  This money is mine.  This fame and notoriety is mine.  This car is mine.  This is my time. This is my right.  This is my privacy.  This is mine…mine…mine…mine.

    We stamp our image on what we think that we possess and we create the “mine field” of our lives.  Mine…mine…mine…mine….don’t step on my mine. 

  And Jesus reminds us about our image and about derivative iconography.  “Okay, render unto you the things that are yours….but render unto God the things that are God's.”

  And there’s the catch.  Whose icon do you and I carry in our lives?  If you and I bear God’s image, we belong to God and so in a derivative sense, we are fooling ourselves every time we say “mine.” 

  Faith in Christ who is the Divine Image of God for humanity means that we learn to transform the attitude of “mine” into the attitude of “yours.”  It’s all yours, God.  And when we transform the attitude of it’s all mine, into it’s all yours, God; we will hear God say to us, “My children, it all belongs to us, because I have shared it all with you and with everyone.  Now go forth and enjoy and share what belongs to us."  

  The Gospel today invites us to get our derivative “iconography” in order so that we can be converted to know that all things belong to God and then we can know God’s conversion to us to hear God say, “It all belongs to us, now go enjoy and share.”  Amen.