10/12
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| fall.... |
Columbus Day.
As we begin Bible Study, I share a few thoughts on Columbus Day. It has become increasingly politically correct to refer to the day as Indigenous Peoples’ Day. I’m checking out pictures from Pittsburgh where the Schenley Park Columbus statue has been shrink wrapped in plastic to be ready to be removed and replaced in a private Italian community location. I recall being in Parana, Argentina where a rediscovered forgotten Afro-Argentinian neighborhood has become the center of an annual anti-Columbus Day indigenous festival with music and dance from the many cultures that make up South America.I remember being in Central America where this day is known as el dia de la raza…the day of the race…celebration of el encuentro, or the encounter of Europeans and the indigenous people of this hemisphere.The vast majority of South Americans are mestizos, a mix of Spanish and native. The masses of campesinos see this encuentro as what created them as a people. I can tell Michael was getting anxious and defensive about Columbus and can feel him relax as I speak of the complicated nature of the conversation. I also recall how we now know that many of those who accompanied Columbus and the later conquistadores were Marranos, Jews who had converted to Christianity as a way to avoid the 1492 expulsion. And how today New Mexican families are rediscovering their Jewish roots. And also that the Columbus celebrations were a way for Italian immigrants to claim their place in the American cultural landscape in the midst of prejudice and exclusion. Yeah, it’s complicated.
The world is a richer place for el encuentro. And for all our intermixing. The world is better off with African-Americans and their gifts.And the mestizo peoples of South America. I have thought that this was all inevitable. Despite all that came with it. But I have been rethinking that. We could have had the rich interweaving without the accompanying genocide. Like how we now believe that the so-called lost colonists of Roanoke Colony , Virgina actually joined their Croatan neighbors when their English colleagues were so delayed in returning. Learned new customs and foods and intermarried, just became one people.It could have gone like that and still produce the richness we have inherited. Like the Silk Road in Asia. Stretched out across an ocean. Let’s keep the conversation going. And see what we can learn.
Tonight we’re looking at the continued controversy between Jesus and the Jewish authorities. It’s the famous “paying taxes” question found in Matthew 22: 15-21. (And Mark 12: 13-17 and Luke 20: 21-26.) Pharisees and Herodians have come together to lay a rhetorical trap for Jesus. On first reading, Marsha says it “looks like he dodged a bullet.” Michael sees Jesus as making a point about “….reality, the way things are, God and Caesar with get theirs. After all, the Romans are providing roads and other infrastructural benefits”…. Leila says “You can’t buy your way into heaven.” And Amber Lee sees something about the nature of buying into a system of money. ( We also take a moment to wish her a happy Canadian Thanksgiving, Canada’s creative to the Columbus conundrum.)
The Herodians and Pharisees ask Jesus if paying taxes to Rome is “lawful” (Jewishly speaking.) The census tax is highly rented by the occupied Jewish community. If he says “lawful” they will feel he has betrayed them. If he says not lawful, the Romans can accuse him of sedition. He asks to see a coin and says “Give to Caesar what s Caesars and unto God what is God’s.” Traditionally, this has been seen as Jesus taking a middle path that provides approval of Christians supporting civil authorities. But actually, that is out of character with Jesus’s teachings and lifestyle related to religious, social and economic issues.
What’s going on here? First of all, this is san unlikely coalition. The only thing Pharisees and Herodians had in common was wanting to get rid of Jesus . Pharisees were those who believed God did not five in the Temple but in the Torah and wherever God;s word was, God was. Herodians were followers and supporters of the Roman installed ethnarch Herod, who served as king at their indulgence. And it was Herod who had built the Temple whose last remaining Western Wall is so beloved today. (This is the only place in the Gospels the word Herodians appears.) The key to Jesus response is Psalm 24:1 : “ …the earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world and all who live in it…”. All of it is God’s. But there’s a trickier reality here. Something I haven’t noticed in 40 years of Bible study. He asked to see a coin. The coin has Caesar’s image on it. The whole reason there were money changers in the Temple for Jesus to drive out was because the Roman coins were forbidden in the temple. They had to be exchanged for Temple moneys as it were. So Jesus’ opponent are exposed in having carried forbidden coins into the temple. His answer is actually radical. In essence he says, You belong to God or you belong to Caesar. One or the other. And you have already chosen.
Those seek to be his followers today in our own world have to make the same choices ourselves. What does our checkbook say about who we are? What if that were our biography? How do we spend our time? Our gifts? It is all God’s. We are, as we saw last week, all tenants. We are called to be stewards of God’s creation. We cannot own it. We must care for it. And for all who live in it. The existential realities of that are hard on 2020. But the choice is there to be made. As Election Day grows ever closer…to whom do we belong?
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