Good Faith

Matthew 22:15-22

Good faith is in short supply these days. In business, there is so much fraud. Phishing attempts, deception, and outright theft happens all the time. I get emails all of the time warning me about charges to my PayPal that aren’t real but are meant to get me to give whoever sent the fraudulent message my PayPal log in credentials. I get texts about a crazy, too good to be true, prize that I have won in a contest I have never heard of before. It’s crazy out there.

We seem to be incessantly subject to fraudulent texts and emails that we need to "update our car insurance" or deal with a "fraudulent" charge in our bank account (a fraud about a fraud!). We are in danger if we are not careful of exposing ourselves to identity theft and other ways that people can steal from us. Please be cautious about emails that say things which are too good to be true or come from suspicious places. (The IRS isn't going to text you about your taxes!)

And in our conversation, this Bad Faith happens too. The easiest place to find how good faith is in short supply is to go onto social media! Watch cable news! In debates that inevitably happen on social media or the media in general, we behave as if we are on opposing sports team. The first question after every presidential debate I have ever seen since I was a child was “who won?” rather than “what vision for the future did these candidates offer?”

Conversations that become arguments can so often become fraught with bad faith assumptions and questions that aren't asked to be answered, but lobbed as a grenade to explode into a gotcha moment for the person asking so they can "win" the argument!

Good faith is in short supply. And it was in short supply between Jesus and those who were trying to trip him up and find an excuse to kill him because Jesus was so threatening to them. It begins in Matthew by saying,"then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap Jesus in what he said."

When Jesus was asked "Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not," it was a real question that many folks in his time were struggling with. Different factions of Judaism under the thumb of Roman imperial occupation had different thoughts. Zealots believed that it wasn't. Pharisees were ambivalent and found themselves going either way. And other jews, especially those who were loyal to Herod and the temple authorities in Jerusalem were more supportive of paying taxes because they had "bought in" to the structures of Roman power at work in a proxy sort of way throughout Judea and Samaria at that time.

This question had great potential to lead to conversation and dialogue about their faith and how it worked within all that was going on at that time. But that question wasn't asked for the sake of dialogue, or conversation, or learning!

It was asked in bad faith.

It was asked by people who were more interested in destroying Jesus as a threat than learning from him as a Rabbi and Messiah. But Jesus was aware of their malice. And instead of insulting them or ignoring them or getting sucked into their trap by giving them one of the only two answers they imagined existed to this question, Jesus left them with their anxiety and bad faith and offered a truly brilliant response.

Jesus knew that they all already had an answer for themselves to this question! And so he gave the question back to them, "Give therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s."

Today, that answer still resonates. How much of ourselves are we giving away to that which is not God--to the powerful forces at work in the world: greed, fear, vengeance, apathy?

What if we could give ourselves to God instead? To the work of reconciliation, peace and justice? To a life of discipleship that brings us closer in our spirits to an awareness of God's constant loving presence? To a life of service that responds to suffering with love and grace? To a love for all that God has created and a joy that celebrates the work God is still doing in the world today? To an allegiance with the power and sovereignty of God rather than with the powers that be which lead to violence and death in the world today?