What Do You Really Want?

When I was in training to become a spiritual director I had a teacher named Matt Linn, who

was a Jesuit priest whose life’s work has been about using Ignatian spirituality to promote

healing. I remember a number of times when we were watching him in a spiritual direction

session with one of us, when we would get stuck in downward spirals of anxiety and

hopelessness or anger and frustration, he would lean over, look into our eyes, and ask: “But

what do you really want?”

 

He wasn’t asking us to get in touch with the latest contents of our Amazon wish list. Jesuits

believe that at the core, underneath our surface desires, is a longing put in our being by

God—that God’s Spirit is always leading us in the direction of life. A lot of times what we

thought we wanted—a change in our spouse’s behavior or relief from a situation we found

frustrating or whatever—was a symptom of something much deeper, and Matt believed if we

looked deeply enough, we would find the call of God toward belonging, and healing, and life.

That does not mean we should mistake our surface desires for the leading of God’s Spirit,

though. And that is part of the meaning of today’s text from the Hebrew Scriptures.

 

We are in Act three of our five-act-play—the act we are calling “Israel”. Last week Blair taught

us about Abram and Sarai, who even though they had been barren answered the call of God to

embark on an incredible journey of risk and faith so that their descendants could become a

blessing for the world. Today we continue the story of Israel. Much later in the life of Israel,

after they have become slaves in Egypt and have been liberated through the prophet Moses

and have returned to Canaan, we come to today’s reading in I Samuel 8. In today’s text the

people of Israel thought they wanted a king. They had been living in the land of Canaan for a

while now as a covenant community. Their mandate was to live trusting God’s unilateral

covenant to love and guide them. But in today’s text they were switching gears. They

demanded a king from Samuel. They wanted to move from being a covenant community—and

instead become an imperial community, a community that got its needs met through

centralizing power and wealth in a human king.

 

It’s easy to criticize Israel for demanding a king, but if you read carefully, Samuel’s sons, who

had taken over for him in parts of Israel, were corrupt – they were taking bribes and

perverting justice. If my Jesuit teacher Matt Linn had been there to ask Israel what it really

wanted, what do you think the answer would have been?

•        justice
•        protection
•        someone they could relate to more as a human being

 

God tells Samuel to warn them that if they get a king, they will not get what they really want.

Instead of justice, the king will take the best of what they have. The king may protect them

from some outside enemies, but not from his own insatiable appetite for power and wealth.

God warns the people that the way of the king, the imperial community, is barren, to use the

metaphor from Abram and Sarai’s life; the imperial community is a way that does not lead to

life. What God is trying to say to the people of Israel is, “What do you really want?” And, as is

common, they do not listen.

The story of the actual kings of Israel is bleak. Instead of justice, Solomon forced the people to

work to build his palaces and temples and cities, so much so that ten of the twelve tribes

seceded and became their own country—the ancestors of the Samaritans in Jesus’ day. Instead

of protection, the kings became vassals of neighboring empires, and the two countries were

eventually taken into slavery and exile to Babylon. Thus goes the sorry story of the kings of

Israel, the imperial community they thought they wanted so much.

 

Our reading from the Gospel of Matthew today is also set in a time where kings are a problem.

In this reading the Herodians and Pharisees, who by the way are archenemies, get together to

set a political trap for Jesus. (And by the way that for Pharisees and Herodians to get together

over anything at all would be like Nancy Pelosi and Michelle Bachmann to declare a

partnership). They come and ask Jesus if it is lawful to pay the tax to the emperor. Now this

particular tax was especially galling because it was the tax that literally paid for the

occupation of Israel by Rome. It’s the tax that paid the salaries of the soldiers there

oppressing every day Israelites. To call it offensive is not even to scratch the surface of how

they probably felt about this tax. So is it lawful to pay a tax like that, they want to know?

 

So let’s unpack Jesus’ answer. At first glance it might seem that Jesus is saying that there is a

big divide between what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God. Maybe the tax to Caesar

is just part of the real world we have to deal with. Maybe the imperial community is a

necessary evil. Maybe Jesus came to save individual spiritual souls only and his life and death

and resurrection have nothing to do with bodies and systems and political oppression. This

kind of interpretation is part of what led Lutherans in Nazi Germany to fail to oppose

Hitler—because they thought there was no overlap between the realm of public life and the

realm of church. But I’m here to tell you that I don’t think that’s what Jesus meant at all, and

here’s why.

 

You’ll notice Jesus asks them to bring him a denarius, which was the coin that was used to pay

the tax. Caesar’s image was stamped on the coin. Now this does not culturally mean the same

thing as the stamp of George Washington on our quarters. In Roman times the Caesar was

literally thought to be a god, and Rome demanded that its subjects give him, not just political

allegiance, but worship. All this is implied by his image on the denarius. But any Jew would

immediately understand that this is blasphemy. In fact it’s a violation of the second

commandment to have any “graven image” of God at all.

Jesus’ next comment—give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that

are God’s—also means more than it apparently says. What belongs to God? Everything!

Jesus’ answer was very clever, because he escaped the political trap that they set for him. But

it was more than clever. He was doing more than taking a position on the legality of the tax in

question. He was criticizing the entire system, a system founded on the worship of Caesar and

Roman law. He was saying, there is nothing that does not belong to God; we owe our very lives

and everything we have to God. And this coin, this thing that looks like it belongs to Caesar, is

a blasphemy and an abomination not worth the metal it is printed on.

What did they really want, those Herodians and Pharisees? They thought they wanted to shut

Jesus down, because he was disruptive. I’m sure despite their massive political and religious

differences they all wanted an end to oppression, and that is not wrong of them to seek justice.

But the way they sought justice—through the imperial community of Rome or the imperial

community of Israel—was a way that was barren, a way that did not lead to life, and Jesus

came precisely to show them a different way. God in Jesus came to show us an entirely

different meaning of the word king.

 

In Mattthew’s Gospel Jesus is portrayed as the Son of David the king. Jesus’ disciples, just like

everyone else, thought this would mean he would restore the imperial community and

substitute the Messiah for the Caesar. But Jesus, as king, came to serve. He came to show us

that God’s reign is utterly unlike the human kingdoms we know. In its essence, entering God’s

reign is about living as a covenant community—living first and foremost as recipients of the

love of God. It is about receiving the “kingdom of God,” or the reign of God, as a gift;

understanding that God’s love is stronger than any empire, any system, any injustice. That

finally, the powers of empire cannot separate you from the love of God.

 

Well, all this sounds very epic. But God’s reign, God’s kingdom, exists in the ordinary things in

our ordinary lives. Jesus pointed out a picture on one small coin to make his point. We are

talking about taxes and marriages and jobs and schools and kids and boyfriends and colleges

and what you secretly wish for, when everyone else has gone to sleep and you find yourself

alone with your thoughts and maybe your Netflix account. Like the people of Israel, we too

suffer many things, and this story invites us to find out whether we are going to be a covenant

community or an imperial one. Where are we going to get what we need?

This week I’d like to invite you to a spiritual exercise. Every day when you wake up and before

you go to bed, survey your day, and ask yourself three questions:

· What do you really want?

· Which of your desires leads you to barrenness—to the emptiness of imperial

community, the power that is no power at all, because it does not lead to life?

· What does it mean to you that you are invited to receive God’s reign as a gift?

The people of St. Matthews are apprentices learning to follow the way of Jesus together. We

are learning what it means to be a covenant community, not an imperial one. Let us discover

together the radical gift of God’s reign.