A group of friends went deer hunting and paired off in twos for the day. That night one of the hunters returned alone, staggering under an eight-point buck.

“Where’s Harry?” he was asked.

“Harry had a stroke of some kind. He’s a couple of miles back up the trail.”

“You left Harry laying there, and carried the deer back?”

“Well,” said the hunter, “I figured no one was going to steal Harry.”

Priorities are a complex thing. And it’s sometimes easier to look back on our lives and see where our priorities were out of order. In our passage for this week from the gospel of Matthew, we often look at the question that the Pharisees and Herodians asked Jesus as being a question of priorities. Basically, who is more important: Caesar or God? But the interesting thing is that both the Pharisees and the Herodians would have had a different answer to their own question. You see, Pharisees of course saw God as the main priority. They were focused on the law of God and the temple. Herodians, on the other hand, were Greeks who’d fully assimilated into the Roman Empire. They fell in step with the Emperor. So, Jesus was trapped. And the Pharisees and Herodians knew it. They’d carefully planned this out. If Jesus said that paying taxes was lawful, then he was breaking Jewish law and they could charge him with blasphemy. But if he said it was unlawful, then the Herodians would have him charged with treason and probably arrested. Jesus was between a rock and a hard place.

How often are we too put between a rock and a hard place when it comes to our loyalty or our priorities? How do we engage in the democratic process in a way that doesn’t compromise our Christian values? How do we shop in ways that don’t compromise our Christian values? How do we put God first in everything when we do? How do we give to God what is God’s? In the end, that was the question that surfaced for me. I don’t think we have too much trouble giving to Caesar what is Caesar’s most of the time. It’s usually pretty clear what belongs to Caesar. But giving to God what is God’s doesn’t feel quite so straightforward.

Let’s look a little deeper at the text for this morning. Perhaps it will provide us some further guidance on this. There are three questions that arise for me from this text that I think are important for us to ask ourselves as we consider where our priorities lie. First, who are we aligning ourselves with? The text talks about the Pharisees plotting to trap Jesus and they do so by sending their disciples along with the Herodians to question Jesus. The Pharisees and the Herodians did not have much in common. The Pharisees cared about Jewish law. The Herodians cared about Roman law. The Pharisees viewed God as the top authority for their lives. The Herodians viewed the Roman Emperor as the ultimate authority. The Herodians seemed to stand for everything that the Pharisees weren’t. So, why did the Pharisees align themselves with the Herodians. They did it for the sole purpose of getting what they wanted, which was for Jesus to say something that they could use against him. Who or what do we align ourselves with for the sole purpose of getting what we want? I suspect if we all thought about it long enough, we could all name something like that.

So, who are we aligning ourselves with? But we might also be asking, what do we carry with us that betrays our true priorities? Jesus asks his questioners to show him a coin used for the tax. Now, keep in mind that there were different coins used for different things. There were coins used in the temple that were specific to the temple. And then there were coins of the Roman Empire, coins with the Emperor’s face on them. These were the coins used to pay the tax to Caesar and therefore these were the coins Jesus was asking to see. However, this discussion was taking place in the temple, where it was forbidden for people to carry the coins of the Emperor. Yet, someone there had one. They were trying to trap Jesus, but when Jesus asks for a coin, they immediately produce one. This act turns the tables on the questioners. Suddenly they find themselves implicated in wrongdoing because they have that coin with them, which makes a statement about their priorities. What do we carry with us that implicates our priorities, whether in a good way or a bad way. That’s a question worth asking ourselves.

Who are we aligning ourselves with? What do we carry with us that betrays our true priorities? And finally, who do we think God is? I think that the Pharisees biggest mistake in this scenario was not understanding who Jesus is. They went into it under the assumption that Jesus would have to say that paying the tax was unlawful, which would then get him in some serious trouble with the Emperor. The Pharisees wanted this troublemaker Jesus out of the way. So, they aligned themselves with a group who did not hold the same values as them in order to get what they wanted. And they were sure that they had Jesus trapped. They had finally come up with a question that Jesus could not finagle his way out of. But clearly they did not understand who Jesus was. Jesus saw through their trap immediately. And in answering their question, he made sure to also show that he knew exactly who they were. He knew them to be the type that was strict on the rules for others but secretly broke the rules for themselves if it profited them. And, Jesus, by asking for a Roman coin from them, exposed that hypocrisy to all who were present. How often do we mistake who God is? How often do we expect God to act in a certain way, only to find that God is doing something completely different?

These three questions lead me back to Jesus’ final statement to the Pharisees and Herodians. Jesus says to them, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” I believe there are several ways we could interpret this statement. First, we could look at it as simply a statement about money. We should pay our taxes to the government and we should pay our tithe to the church. End of story. And in some ways, that is exactly what Jesus was saying. Another way we could read it is though is a bold statement that everything belongs to God and therefore nothing truly belongs to the emperor. Reading it this way makes worshipping God and tithing an act of rebellion against the authorities of this world. Or there is a third way we could read this statement. And that is that our entire lives belong to God and if we live our lives for God, then paying our dues to the authorities that we find ourselves under is not antithetical to God but rather an act of service to others.

I’ll be honest that I don’t know which of these interpretations is the correct one. But what I do know is that right now, giving to God or to the government does not feel like an easy task. Our government is so divided and it doesn’t seem like anyone is able to bridge that divide to make decisions that benefit the entire nation. And when it comes to giving everything to God, I, for one, feel depleted and tired. I feel like I have very little left to give. How do I give everything to God when I feel that way? As I’ve wrestled with that question this week, I’ve come to a conclusion. When we are depleted and empty, even that can be given to God. We can give God our emptiness and exhaustion, our fears and frustrations, the holes in our lives that we can’t seem to fill. We can give EVERYTHING to God. And God doesn’t just turn around and give it back to us. God takes that emptiness and fills it with love and peace and joy. So, no matter where you are today, whether you feel full, empty, or somewhere in between, give God everything. And allow God to use it for your benefit and for the benefit of others. Let’s make God our priority and everything else will fall in line. As the hymn says:

I surrender all

I surrender all

All to thee, my blessed Savior

I surrender all

Amen!