Sermons from St Faith's
Unseating Idols
Revd Sue Lucas, 19th October,
2014
In my first parish, I married a young couple. When
I went to see them I was snapped at by their Jack
Russell, but that's another story. Their
love for, and commitment to one another, was
evident. And they told a story. The young woman
had got into debt to what are, effectively, legal
loan sharks – pay day lenders like Wonga.com. The
husband went round all their friends and
relatives asking for what they could spare,
but in slummy – in loose change of as small a
denomination as possible. He collected the
exact sum she owed – in a Jeroboam. Needless to
say, Wonga were not best pleased at having to
count it all. But they couldn't refuse – after
all, he said, it's got the Queen’s head on
it - it's good coin.
The mark of its validity became, for this young
couple, a small but witty and very effective act
of protest against an unjust system of debt.
There are strong analogies with today's Gospel.
But to devout first century Jews, Roman coin was
not good coin. Don't forget, it couldn't be used
in the Temple but had to be exchanged. Why?
Because it had the Emperor’s head on it. And the
Emperor was treated as a god. Roman coin was a
blasphemous thing – a hated symbol of the double
oppression of Rome and the collusion of the
Jerusalem elite in their rule.
And the Pharisees, who here, not for the first
time, attempt to trick Jesus, know that. The
question they ask him is a question he apparently
can't win whichever way he answers. If he says
don't pay your taxes, he's an insurrectionist. If
he says do, he's colluding with the oppression of
Empire.
So he asks for a coin. Not an insignificant detail
– he doesn't carry one himself, perhaps an echo of
the injunction to his disciples in the so called
Mission Discourse of Matthew 10 to ‘carry no
purse’ – to be vulnerable.
And his question – whose image is here- draws
attention to what the coin is – a graven image, an
idolatrous symbol of the power of Rome and its
spurious, oppressive economics. So ‘give it back
to Caesar’ makes of what ordinary people must do
and hate – a gesture of defiance and resistance –
throwing the coin of an idolatrous emperor right
back at him. Perhaps Jesus’ words here were
accompanied by tossing aside the coin that he
never owned in th first place.
It is not an accident that the idolatrous graven
image is a coin – idolatry is economic, as well as
theological; from the idols made of silver and
gold in the psalm, to the image of Molech with its
feet of clay to the golden calf, idolatry both
attempts to trap God – to make God small and mean
- as the Pharisees attempt to trap Jesus – it also
appropriates the material, concentrates wealth and
power in the hands of the already wealthy and
powerful. And the wealthy and powerful use
theology, as they always have, to control and
oppress.
In our own time, we are surrounded by idols
economic and religious; the idol of neo-liberal
economics, that promises unlimited growth but
actually consumes people, resources and the
planet; which is why Christian Aid is holding a
week of prayer and action on climate change, to
which we churches in Waterloo are contributing
with our own prayer walk this afternoon; and the
trickling down of wealth, which manifestly hasn't
happened. And it has its own oppressive theology
too, the narrative of dividing and condemning;
those who are different; those on benefits;
immigrants, and those who are disabled. Nor has it
served the wealthy in the long run either; even
those who are relatively comfortable see their
children unable to get work, even as graduates, or
afford somewhere pleasant to live. ‘Spirits
oppressed by leisure, wealth and care,’ as the
hymn writer Timothy Dudley-Smith puts it. We have
not yet done the maths of idolatry.
Yet the church is a small space of resistance to
oppressive power and idolatry. For, ultimately,
the only image we have of the living God is Jesus,
who, enthroned on the manger and the cross,
subverts any idolatry, any ideas we might have
about what the glory and the grandeur and the
splendour of God is, and instead confronts us with
God’s odd justice, God’s strange mercy, God’s
peculiar power, and God’s economy – the economy of
the kingdom, in which the resources of the earth
are available for all;
The dearest idol I have known, whate’er that idol
be, I will unseat it from thy throne, and worship
only thee. Amen.
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