What defines your relationship to God?
In our reading this Sunday from Isaiah, God has allowed a
foreign king, Cyrus, to play a role in saving Israel. The image is a powerful one: God grasps
Cyrus’s right hand, empowering
the human king with new authority to accomplish God’s goals. This gesture radically alters the Israelites’
understanding of their own relationship with God: I am
the Lord; there is no other. It is a
clear statement of monotheism: our God
is the God, the only God, a fact celebrated in Psalm 96: For all
the gods of the nations are things of nought; hence the people are called
to Give the Lord glory and honor.
By Jesus’s time, monotheism has taken firm hold, but what it
means to be in relationship with that one
God is still subject to definition.
In their attempt to trap Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel, the Pharisees in
fact trap themselves. Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar
or not?, they ask, providing the coin Jesus asks for and thus demonstrating
they are guilty of the idolatry associated with carrying Caesar’s image. Repay
to Caesar what belongs to Caesar is Jesus’s way of saying, don’t get caught
up with trivialities like coins; give Caesar his coins and give God your
heart! That is the mark of true
relationship: not that we quibble about
arcane rules, but that we concern ourselves with grace, with God’s dwelling
among us, paying close attention to our covenant relationship first and
foremost. All human politics are
insignificant in comparison.
That grace – God dwelling with us – is the very same that
Paul wishes on the Thessalonians. We can
live under foreign domination – Cyrus, Caesar, whomever – so long as we allow
the peace that comes from that indwelling of God to permeate us, so long as we
open ourselves to the faith, hope, and
love that will bear good fruit. If
God – the one God, Lord over all, rules our lives and governs our existence,
then we will know the grace and peace
of a strong relationship with the Lord, who calls us by name, every single day.
This post is based on Fr. Pat's Scripture class.
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