Show Me the Money!

This week, the Topeka City Council voted to remove the ordinance banning domestic violence. This was the latest move in a game of politics between the city and the county, a game of chicken back and forth with the pawns being victims of domestic violence – and it’s all over money.

The Gospel reading this week also speaks to money: Matthew 22:15-22, read with 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10 in mind.

Money and politics not only dominate the headlines – they also seem to affect and dominate every move we make. As Christians, are we expected to behave differently? Are we expected to simply fall in line? Is that what "give to Caesar’s what is Caesar’s" means?

Jesus turns the political question that the Pharisees ask him into a theological challenge. The secret lies in the actual coin of the denarius. On it was not “In God We Trust”; rather, there was an inscription that asserted that the Caesar was divine – that Caesar was equal to God. The coin was literally a false idol that the Pharisees themselves were carrying around, essentially breaking the first and second commandments!

Contrast them to the Thessalonians – whose lives were proclaiming the Gospel, the Good News, the Message so loudly that people were talking about it. Their lives had turned away from dead idols – turned away from worshiping money and politics to worshiping Jesus Christ. They didn’t just mouth the words, but with their whole hearts, minds, and souls.

Jesus tells us to give the false idol what belongs to the false idol, and give to God what belongs to God – the same God who is the Creator of the universe, the Redeemer of our lives, and the Sustainer of our every breath.

The same God is God of the city and the county, money and politics, abusers and victims. All belongs to God – so how can we work to protect the weak, the oppressed, the suffering, so that everyone will know just whose we are? How can we bring the kingdom of heaven to the here and now, just like the Thessalonians?

Love, 

Pastor Kate