Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD
October 21, 2023

What’s Mine is Yours?
Matthew 22:15-22

Gillian, Cocoa and I took a walk yesterday, down our street lined with towering sycamore trees.  The sycamore leaves all turn brown and drop in dry heaps covering the curb, but interspersed through the neighborhood are oaks and maples, sweetgums and dogwoods, chestnuts and black walnuts, trees whose leaves turn the most incredible shades of orange, gold, and crimson, so that the sidewalks become a red carpet.  Some are so beautiful, I can’t walk by without stooping to pick them up.

I’m ashamed to say the magic of fall was a mystery that would pass by almost unnoticed until I had children.  But now, my children ask me – why do leaves change color in fall?  How does it happen?  And I know now that leaves produce chlorophyll through spring and summer, a chemical which tints them a basic green color and allows them to turn sunlight into sugar through photosynthesis.  The sugar feeds the tree.  The chemicals which appear to tint a leaf yellow or gold is called carotenoids, and they’re there, in the leaf, all year – but the chlorophyll covers it up, so the yellow can’t be seen.  As the weather cools, especially if we get bright sunny autumn days and crisp fall nights, and a few rainy days, the leaves have a lot of sugar stored up to feed the tree.  That’s when the chemical that turns leaves bright red and orange begins to be produced; it’s called Anthocyanin.  As the nights grow longer and days shorter, chlorophyll production tapers off – revealing the brilliant yellow and red that have been there all along, and just weren’t visible.[1]  The tender leaves of a tree would freeze if they tried to survive the winter, so they seal up the veins that carry liquid to and from the branch, and eventually, they let go – falling to the ground, carpeting the sidewalks.

The words of Psalm 19 come to mind…”The heavens are telling the glory of God, the earth proclaims Gods handiwork.”  Yes. It’s true.  Look around. Breathe it in. With eyes to see, we people of faith can’t help but recognize the hand of the creator present in the world around us.  How can this be if God is not?  Chlorophyll, carotenoids, and anthocyanin coexisting within a single leaf, each sustaining the tree in its own small way, one stepping forward as another falls back.   And more than that, the wisdom underlying the cycle of our seasons testifies to the wisdom of the creator: this autumn time of letting go, creation hunkering down through the cold winter to rest and build strength, the cycle starting again with the fresh green growth of spring.

We often hear that God created the universe out of nothing.  Earth was a formless void into which God spoke.  But: Celtic Christians believed that God created not out of nothing but out of God’s own being. Imagine the big bang as a birthing, creation born in a flash from the divine body.  Everything is therefore infused with the sacred, because God’s body is the ground of our being.  God’s breath, our breath. Think of the respiration of leaves, as co2 is absorbed and oxygen emitted.  Then their majestic turning, green fading to reveal brilliant flaming colors of fall, readying the tree for winter.  This incredible balance, this beautiful world. This stunning cosmos.  All of it. Of God. From God. Holy.  This means that instead of being far off, out there, or up there, detached from the machinations of our world, God is right here.  MaryAnn McKibben Dana quotes John O’Donohue: “If we believe that the body is in the soul and the soul is divine ground, then the presence of the divine is completely here, close with us.[2] All we need to do is slow down and tune in: to notice the holy at work in the ordinary.[3]  God, not far off, but right here.

And so this question that the Pharisees and the Herodians ask… do we pay taxes to Caesar?  Is it lawful?  This is a sneaky, trick question. It’s a political, partisan question, a question designed to make someone angry no matter what Jesus says: if he says, no, don’t pay it, the Herodians will have reason to arrest him.  But if he says, “Yes, Pay the tax,” both the Pharisees and Jesus’ followers will be furious.  See, the tax was a denarius, about a day’s wages, paid once a year to support the emperor.  So this tax didn’t pay for firefighters or police, it didn’t fund trash collection or pave streets.  It went into the emperor’s coffers, it funded his sacrilegious ostentatious odious occupation of Israel.   And it had to be paid with a coin that had Caesar’s face on it, a graven image they were forbidden by Jewish law to possess.  Sure, Jesus says, give to Caesar what is Caesar.  Let him have his coin.

But then Jesus says, “give to God what is God’s.” If God created the world out of Gods own being.  If the heavens are singing the glory of God, the earth reveals God’s handiwork… then everything – all of creation belongs to God. So all of it is sacred.  Even the coin with Caesar’s face on it.  Everything should be devoted not to Caesar.  Not to our faulty government with its partisan politics and deadlock and decrees.  But to God.

Now many will tell us that this is not true. That religion has its place over here. In here. In here.  That commerce, and governance, and leisure, and business, and learning…. They all exist out there. Keep religion in here.  But out there, pay your taxes.  Look out for yourself, your family, your comfort.  That’s all that matters.  Forget the mystery of the leaves.  The majesty of fall.  The sacramental shimmer that infuses everyday life.

They want us to think that Gods domain is here. Here.  Not out there. Out there, there is technology to demand our devotion, and drugs to numb our aching hearts, and money to be made from fear and hate. Raytheon and Lockheed Martin are churning out bombs and planes, and aircraft carriers. There’s money to be made out there, especially if God stays in here. And here.

But this week I saw a video of a child, a little boy, rescued from the rubble after an airstrike in Gaza.  He was maybe 5 years old, covered in dust.  Hair matted with blood. He was looking around with wide eyes, asking, “am I alive? Am I alive?”[4]

And I read an op-Ed written by an Israeli-American woman, whose child, her son, was kidnapped by Hamas militants two weeks ago.[5]  Taken while fleeing a terrorist attack on a music festival, and she does not know if he is alive or dead.  And she is terrified.  Terrified of what will happen to her son. Her beautiful boy, who loved music.

And on my way here, this morning, I passed by a boy, hood up, hands shoved in his pockets, in the cold. Sitting on a step. Backpack nearby. Waiting for a car to pull up so he could make his next deal.  Just a few blocks from here.

They will tell us there is nothing we can do. These boys are not our problem.  Just let it go.  But how can we?  These children. These boys. They are our children.  How can we allow this to happen? The bombs to fall, the terrorists to terrorize, the hopelessness to spiral into the abyss?

Because in their faces, if we look closely, we will see God’s face. Their bodies: the tear-streaked cheeks, the eyes wide with shock, the shoulders hunched against the cold, they are precious.  Sacred.  Beloved.  The creator’s handiwork.

I don’t have to tell you that our world, God’s creation, is a bit of a mess right now. But I can’t help but wonder what might happen if we stopped to notice, to acknowledge the divine signature all around us.  If we realized that we ourselves, you, and me – each of us owes our being to God.  And our endless bickering, our pointless posturing, our political maneuvering – all of the blood spilled and the children killed to control one tiny corner of our planet for however long … is just a diversion.  Hubris.  Human fault and frailty.

And I wonder what might be possible if we could open our eyes and tune our hearts to see the holy handprint within us, shimmering golden like the carotenoids… right here within us all along.  Just waiting for the green greed of the world to recede, for the cold night to creep in, to inspire us to find a way shine.

Maybe, just maybe when we look to see the face of God in others… when we remember whose image and likeness we bear within our own hearts – maybe we will have the courage to offer to God every possible thing that we can.  Our whole lives.  Our whole selves.  For peace.  For justice.  For those boys.  May it be so.

[1] “The Science of Fall Colors,” USDA Forest Service website, https://www.fs.usda.gov/visit/fall-colors/science-of-fall-colors#:~:text=As%20night%20length%20increases%20in,unmasked%20and%20show%20their%20colors.

[2] John O’Donohue, Aman Cara: A book of Celtic Wisdom qtd by MaryAnn McKibben Dana in her Blue Room newsletter, “The Divine is Close With Us,” 8/25/23

[3] Ibid.

[4] I could not find this video in the writing of this sermon.  I believe it was shared in an Instagram story by Rev. Ashlee Weist-Laird.

[5] Goldberg, Rachel, “I hope someone somewhere is being kind to my boy,” guest essay, The New York Times, 10/12/23, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/12/opinion/israel-hamas-hostage.html

Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD
September 30, 2023

A Question of Power… and the Power of Questions
Matthew 21:23-32

Senator Dianne Feinstein died on Friday, a lion of California politics and in the Democratic party.  She was 90 years old and had served in the US. Senate for more than thirty years, the first woman to serve as senator from California.  In her tenure through four Presidents (Biden was the fifth), Feinstein was a champion of gun control and green energy and women’s rights.  As chairperson of the intelligence committee, she oversaw the report that revealed the brutal interrogation techniques CIA operatives used on detainees at Guantanamo Bay in the early years of the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan.  She called that oversight and censure of the CIA and the public release of the torture report (as it came to be known) the most important work of her career.[1]

In recent years, though, the Senator was in declining health, and she appeared to be relying more and more on her staff.  People began to question whether or not she was up to the job.  In the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Feinstein appeared detached and her questions meandered; she repeated herself more than once – not for emphasis, but because she apparently had forgotten she’d just asked the same question.

Feinstein leaves three octogenarians in the Senate, and 16 who are 75 or older.  I’m sure that these long-serving politicians are very good at their jobs.  But I also have to guess they find it difficult to part with power.  And so they refuse to relinquish it.

In this tense exchange between Jesus and the temple leaders, the leaders are finding it difficult to relinquish their power, too.  Jesus has just paraded into town (literally) and stormed into the temple, tossing tables and throwing out those who would profit from the piety of poor people – the money lenders and venders.  The religious leaders need to get him out of the temple – really, they need him out of the way completely.  Because they are in power, and they want to stay that way.  His antics are threatening.  He attracts the attention of Rome.  And he attracts the attention of the people – the crowds are growing by the day.  Now, if those crowds were all faithful, law abiding Jews, that might be okay, even a good thing.  The problem is that they aren’t upstanding, religious folk – they’re Gentiles and tax collectors, Roman soldiers and prostitutes.  Seriously problematic for the guys in charge to have all of this rabble, these unclean people in their holy space.

So they try to trap Jesus… by asking him a question.  But: Jesus refuses to answer.

Now, the religious leaders should have known better.  They should have known that Jesus was clever, a tricky person to deal with.  After all, he is asked 183 direct questions in the gospels, but he directly answers only 3 of them.  This isn’t one of them.  But he asks more than three hundred questions in his teaching.  In the only story we have of Jesus’s childhood, he has run off to the temple when his parents find him there, he is questioning the rabbis – and the text tells us, all who heard him were amazed.

Anyone who has spent time with a child recently can tell you that kids ask a lot of questions.  Why is the sky blue?  What is the sun made of?  How do birds fly?  What is gravity?  We are born open eyed with wonder, curious about the world around us, intensely interested in understanding how things work and why.  But over time, we stop asking so many questions.  We start to believe we’re supposed to have answers – that asking questions reveals weakness, because it means admitting we don’t know something.  But here is our lord and savior Jesus Christ asking hundreds of questions, and answering only three.

Some people believe that faith means certainty.  I’m not so sure.  Faith can bring knowledge of self, can bring us closer to God, can impart wisdom for living.  But it also brings a whole lot more questions.

Episcopal priest Rev. Paul Kingsley served a church in Towson for decades.  He was remembered for saying, “We go to church to have our questions answered.  Instead, we have our answers questioned.  That clears the decks for having our questions questioned!”

Religion professor Jonathan Malesic has taught college students for more than 20 years.  He wrote an op-ed in the NYTimes earlier this year describing an oft-overlooked quality that leads to academic success in higher education.[2]  Simply put, successful students are willing to learn.  That is, they are open to new ideas and knowledge. They ask questions, and pursue their curiosity.  They do this despite the social and cultural forces that expect us to present ourselves as competent and capable, “always already informed.” Malesic quotes philosopher Jonathan Lear, who calls this attitude knowingness: “a sickness that stands in the way of gaining genuine knowledge… as if there’s too much anxiety involved in simply asking a question and waiting for the world to answer.”[3]

I can’t help but think of Rainer Maria Rilke, who wrote in his Letters to a Young Poet the advice, “have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”[4]

Live the questions now, because that is how you live your way into answers.  That is, in part, what Jesus is doing in this story.  He throws out the money lenders to challenge to the status quo within the temple, where only the wealthy were allowed to worship properly – some were allowed in, but many others were kept out.  He questions the questions of the leaders because they can’t, they refuse to see God’s power – God’s power to heal and reconcile – at work in him and in the world!  Jesus doesn’t teach by sharing clear answers, he teaches by doing! He doesn’t just talk about the kingdom. He enacts it.  By questioning the leaders, by teaching and storytelling, Christ demonstrates his power, holy healing power.  Boundary breaking power.  When the people see Christ’s power, when they realize he’s acting by God’s authority, they are amazed. They’re also afraid.

Afraid, because holy power means that the world as it is is not how it will always be. God is at work, and change is coming -and change is hard. It can be scary. It means that the powers that be, won’t be forever. And people who have power don’t give it up easily.

Before Dianne Feinstein was elected to the Senate, she spent ten years as Mayor of San Francisco, having been appointed to office in the chaotic hours after the assassination of Mayor Moscone and Harvey Milk.  She proved herself to be a brilliant, driven leader, determined to get results to improve the city she loved.  I read that one mark of her leadership was that she cared about details, and spent time each day questioning the department heads about their work – following up on projects, tracking the nuts and bolts minutia of running a city.  Her questions made her a stronger leader.

Questions deepen and strengthen our faith.  It’s why we just spent an hour in the Forum exploring two of our congregation core values: curiosity and doubt.  And so I wonder: What questions do you have?  How can we live them together?

[1] I drew from the New York Times’ coverage of Sen. Feinstein’s life, her obituary, and political career.  Knight, Heather, “As Mayor, Feinstein Made San Francisco ‘Vibrant,’ City Leaders Say,” 9/29/23, The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/14/us/dianne-feinstein-career.html?name=styln-dianne-feinstein&region=TOP_BANNER&block=storyline_menu_recirc&action=click&pgtype=Article&variant=undefined

[2] Malesic, Jonathan, “The Key to Success in College is So Simple, It’s Almost Never Mentioned,” The New York Times, January 3, 2023. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/03/opinion/college-learning-students-success.html?searchResultPosition=2

[3] Ibid.

[4] Rilke, Rainer Maria, Letters to a Young Poet, excerpt accessed on https://www.awakin.org/v2/read/view.php?tid=747