Thank God for the lectionary! Without it I might not know when stewardship season was. And despite the fact that this is probably the worst time for a non-profit since 1929, next Sunday, come hell or high water, according to the lectionary, is the time to remind our parishioners to "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and render unto God that which is God's."
Stewardship... heck ya!
You know what? As I read the story of the ever heated interaction between Jesus and his opponents during holy week, I'm fairly certain that these famous words from Jesus have nothing to do with stewardship - at least as it has come to be known as the season to ask for pledges for the upcoming budgeting process.
What really belongs to Caesar?
What, then, really belongs to God?
Give Caesar back his name and his ungodly image - give God the rest. Not 1%. Not 5%. Not 10%. Give God 100%. It is a repeat of the wedding banquet parable from last week. If you wanna party, you've gotta give up the rest of the stuff you carry around with you; you've gotta put on the clothing of the kingdom and let the world have what belongs to it.
I am preaching this Sunday, and I need to come up with a way to preach NOT stewardship that doesn't sound condescending toward those do preach this text during stewardship campaigns. Any ideas?
1 comment:
Good luck with that. I mean that in both the snarky and unsnarky senses. :-) If you can find a way to do so, that would be a very good thing, and I hope you succeed. On the other hand - good luck with that. ;-)
Maybe just play dumb? "I'm just a young, naive postmodern - it never occurred to me that Jesus would be commending merely a minor financial commitment to shore up an institution - that's obviously not at all what he was about."
(Obviously you wouldn't say that; but maybe just "naively" ignore the conventional interpretation in favor of the one you summarize, which is clearly much more in keeping with his life and message? Do you think anyone would notice?)
This one actually seems easier to me than, say, the five talents, where it probably is necessary to acknowledge the traditional interpretation before pointing out that, no, of course Jesus was not giving us a love poem extolling the virtues of rapacious and unscrupulous capitalism, greed, and exploitation, as much as we might like to think otherwise.
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