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“Turning the Question Around”
Mark 11:27-33,
A Sermon Preached by The Rev. Douglas M. Donley
Rebecca pulled out a book the other day. It’s a book of fairy takes which we have had since Amanda was born. She curled up on my lap and I read the wonderful story by Hans Christian Anderson called The Emperor’s New Clothes. Fairy tales, you know, are very important for children. They help them to integrate the fight between good and evil. And almost always, the good win out over the evil, no matter how big and powerful the evil is. This is an important lesson for us to remember into our adulthood. I love reading children’s books because they remind me who I want to be. Reading the Bible can do the same thing. We need to remember that God is on the side of good and God will always win, in the ultimate sense of the word.
At first glance The Emperor’s New Clothes is a fanciful tale about an arrogant king and his dimwitted subjects. But it is more than that, it is also about two subversive tailors who set out to swindle the king by convincing him to walk around naked. In the process, the tailors expose the stupid system of oppression to which everyone is a party.
The King likes to be admired. The peasants want to have the favor of the king, so they heap adulation on him. This soon rings hollow as the peasants say that whatever is done by the king is good and whatever goes against the king is bad. It’s kind of like the blindness of “my country right or wrong.” Even when the nakedness of the king is exposed, the people don’t “see” the truth—even when it is so obvious.
The tailors
are the subversives. They convince the
King to expose himself. And all of the
people see an ugly overweight bully who doesn’t look so tough. But the people still are drunk by the King’s
power, clothes or no clothes. They are
duped, like the disciples, like the crowds in the city of
Even though the tailors exposed the King for what he was and took off the mask of worldly power, the crowds, even the king’s court didn’t have the courage to see the truth. They asked the tailors, “How did you make such a beautiful outfit?” But the author’s subtle message is, “Why don’t you see that the King is naked?” That’s the important question.
Jesus is like the subversive tailors, not that he was out to make a profit on the King’s foolishness, but because he was out to expose the injustice of the system. And the question that comes to us repeatedly in the Gospel is, “why don’t you see that the King is naked?” It’s obvious, plain as day. But we’re in denial. Jesus confronts us with our own complicity, our need to turn a blind eye to the truth.
The fact is, we can all see that the king is naked. But it takes a child to admit it. It takes a child to have the guts to actually
tell the truth. Yesterday was an
unprecedented day. Millions of children
took to the streets: 1 million in
Our Monday “Peace and Pizza” group has been watching the PBS film series, “A Force More Powerful” which chronicles the nonviolent struggles of the 20th century. In one of the early struggles, people said, that leaders did not take power, it was given to them by the people’s inaction. Nonviolence seeks to take that power back because it dares to admit the nakedness that everyone sees.
We suffer from the lack of vision sometimes, because we want the quick and easy answers which will make us feel better about ourselves. Jesus never lets people get away with that. Today’s scripture is a case in point. “Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?” he is asked. Do you notice that Jesus often answers a question with a question? He responds with three questions, “Do you have a coin? Whose likeness is on it and what is the inscription.”
It’s another way of saying, “Is the emperor dressed or not?”
Jesus loved turning the question on his interrogators. He loved this more than he liked answering the questions. He made his questioners think, not simply to regurgitate the answers.
Think about these other questions which Jesus asked earlier in Mark’s gospel:
“Should wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them?”
“Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath?”(3:4)
“Can Satan exorcise Satan?”(
“Is a lamp
brought indoors to be put under a basket?”(
“Did the
Baptism of John come from heaven or was it of human origin?”(
“Whose
inscription is on the coin?”(
Jesus was very interested in
showing people a new way to look at the world.
He wanted people to think. He
wanted to also have them take off the masks that we can’t help but wear, being
children of our upbringing, in a society that is dependant on our masks,
The people
asked Jesus a question which was very important to them. For instance, paying taxes to Caesar was the
law, but it was also supporting a regime that really hated the Jewish
people. The Romans were about to destroy
the temple and the people had to pay tribute taxes to Caesar. Paying taxes to Caesar was a matter of
survival and it was a matter of ultimate hypocrisy. To catch Jesus in this trap would have sealed
his fate. If he said don’t pay taxes to
In order to
understand the scripture about the coin, we need to know a few things about the
coins of those days. Of particular note
is that the coin had a picture of Caesar on it.
But the other important thing is to know what the inscription said. This is where archaeology comes in
handy. You see they unearthed some of
these coins and the inscription under the face of Caesar said, “August son of
the Divine”. In other
words, Caesar Augustus, Son of God.
Render unto what is Caesar what is Caesar’s and render unto God what is
God’s. The coins say Caesar is God. But Jesus says, “Caesar is not God. The Empire has no clothes.” Real power is not in
Jack
Nelson-Pallmeyer pointed out at the Spirituality in
the Workplace class on Wednesday that the birth of Augustus was called by
Them’s fightin’ words. Jesus exposed his questioners’ complicity with the power structure and said, “you know what you need to do. Stop walking around naked. It’s embarrassing. Be clothed with righteousness. Be clothed with justice, then you really will be children of God. The reality is, you are naked and those with eyes to see know it.”
But that’s not the only question. Jesus asks, “what coin do you have?” The question is not whose face is on the coin. The question is “which coin are you using? You are already sacrificing to the wrong system.” It was like Jesus taking the clothes off, the masks off. How much are we complicit in a society or a system that is inherently evil?
Literacy, says Ched Myers, commentator on the gospel of Mark, is more than the ability to read and write. It is the ability to interpret the world. (Say to this Mountain p. 156)
Jesus wants us to be literate about the world and about ourselves. Think of the questions we ask about the problems of the world today. If we take a lesson from Jesus, these questions need to elicit questions about ourselves.
Some of the questions I would like to turn around are these:
We might change, why are the poor so lazy?
To: how much do you give to the poor?
Why are so many people suffering from compassion fatigue?
To: why are there so few people volunteering to help the poor?
Why are there so many gang wars?
To: why are the cities so filled with poverty?
Why are there so many problems like Columbine?
To: how many shows have we grown up watching which glorify violence?
Are you saved?
To: what are you doing to save the bodies of the people whose souls you want to save?
Do you like your church building?
To: how does your church building make you feel superior to others?
Do you support the sanctity of marriage?
To: are you faithful to all of your vows?
Do you support support tax cuts?
To: Do we have a responsibility to help out our neighbor?
Do you want Saddam Hussein Out of Iraq?
To: Are we willing to kill many Iraqis so we can have cheaper gas?
Or:
Is
What coin do you have in your pocket and whose face is on it?
These are hard words which Jesus gives us when the question is turned around.
Jesus was saying to the people, not only “the emperor has no clothes, but the empire has no clothes. I know you benefit from being yes-people to the empire or to the temple cult, but it is stark naked. It is foolishness. You are being duped. Beware.”
But here’s the rub, Jesus is not only saying the Emperor has no clothes. Jesus is saying, “You have no clothes. Try as you might, you cannot hide from God! God sees behind the facades and makes us betray our nakedness: Whose face is on that coin?”
When you have the question turned on you; the issue is not “Is the Emperor dressed,” but “are you dressed? Are you clothed? Is there something about which you ought to be ashamed?”
In his book Who Will Roll Away the Stone?, Ched Myers says, the moral of the story is, “If we want to know what Jesus stands for in the conflict-ridden world, we had better be prepared to be questioned by him about our own alignments.” (p.14)
The turning of those questions on ourselves is the test of true discipleship. Remember the test of discipleship in the fourth chapter of the Gospel of Mark? Jesus uses the allegory of soil for us to determine what kind of disciples we are. There are four kinds of soil. The first kind of soil is the kind which the seed gets snatched up by the birds as soon as it reaches the soil. This is like the people who simply ignore what is going on. They have no need for the good news.
The second kind of soil is the rocky ground. The people receive the word with joy, but when trouble or persecution arise, they fall away for they have no deep root.
The third kind of soil is thick with thorns. The people receive the word with joy, but the lure of wealth and position and power choke out the seed and it bears nothing. Whose coin do you have in your pocket? Whose face is on it? Whose inscription? To what God do you sacrifice?
The final kind of soil is good soil, rich loam where the seed grows and gives great fruit. These are the people who have the guts to say, “The Emperor has no clothes. The Empire has no clothes. I have no clothes.” They have turned the questions on themselves and realized the truth about themselves.
May we all seek to be that Good soil, not letting us off the hook, because the Bible doesn’t let us off the hook. May we see the truth and let that truth free us.
Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?
What coin do you have?
Whose face is on it?
Whose inscription is on it?
Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and render unto God what is God’s.