Prayer: Come Holy Spirit, come.  Take my lips and speak with them, take our minds and think with them, take our hearts and set them on fire with love for you.  In Christ’s name, we ask it.  Amen.

The early nineteenth century poet, Percy Shelley wrote a poem titled Ozymandias.  Ozymandias is the Greek name for the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II, who ruled in Egypt from 1290-1223 BC.  Ozymandias carried out (or took credit for) many extravagant building projects one of which was an enormous and foreboding statue of himself.  Shelley’s poem, Ozymandias, is about this particular statue.  The poem reads, “I met a strange traveler from an antique land who said: Two vast and trunk less legs of stone stand in the desert…Near them, on the sand, half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown and wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command tell that its sculptor well those passions read…And on the pedestal these words appear, “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye mighty and despair!”  Nothing beside remains.  Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare the lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Ozymandias’ immense statue, while it remained standing, must have been an intimidating and awe-inspiring spectacle.  It was a sign and symbol of the magnificent power and authority the Pharaoh wielded in the ancient near-east.  An enemy army that approached the statue must have thought twice about invading a nation with the technological and artistic mastery that was necessary to build a creation of such magnitude.  In the ancient world, the statue was an incomparable monument to strength and power—in its day truly a modern marvel.  But, in the present, the statue (to borrow Shelley’s expression) is a colossal wreck, standing in a forgotten desert, slowly wasting away as time marches along.  The poem reminds me of the words we use during the imposition of ashes, as we begin our Lenten journey, on Ash Wednesday, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return.”

In today’s gospel lesson, we encounter the One the church calls the King of kings, Jesus, in Jerusalem days before his crucifixion.  He is approached by a group of religious leaders who had long before determined to kill Him.  Ten chapters preceding today’s lesson, Matthew writes, “The Pharisees, [the religious leaders], went out and conspired against Jesus, how to destroy him.”  In this particular encounter, they scheme to destroy Jesus with a trick question—a question, that they believe, will help them to finally bring down the source of life and love, Jesus, who they have grown to hate.   Now before they ask the question, they try to placate Jesus with encouraging words and considerate complements.  The religious leaders begin, “Teacher, we know that you are sincere and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality.”  The leaders in Jerusalem are trying to “butter Jesus up.”  They want to be sure that Jesus answers their question, so they approach him kindly.  Who wouldn’t respond to a question that was prefaced with such flattery? 

Now here’s the question, “Tell us then, what you think.  Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor or not?”  Seems innocent enough, but here’s the trick.  If Jesus answer that it is not lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, he has committed treason against Rome.  The religious leaders could immediately hand Jesus over to be arrested by the Roman officials.  On the other hand, if Jesus says it is lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, Jesus would alienate himself from much of the Jewish population who desired to be free from Roman occupation and felt Roman taxes were unnecessarily oppressive.  This second option would give the religious leadership power to turn the Jewish people against Jesus—truly tricky. 

Well, Matthew tells us that Jesus recognized their malice.  He asks for a denarius, a Roman coin, because he did not have one himself.  Now I want to pause a second here and reflect on this.  Jesus who is heir to the whole universe has to ask for a coin.  The King of kings is desperately poor.  I hope that strikes you as remarkable.  The one who rules over the visible and the invisible, the one who stirred the primordial elements in creation, the one who breathed life into you and me can not even produce a single denarius, a penny.  Compare Jesus to Ozymandias.  During their earthly lives, Ozymandias had everything Jesus had nothing.  Today, all that remains of Ozymandias is a lonely statue that wastes away in a forgotten desert.  On the other hand, today (right now at this moment), Jesus is the Risen Lord offering life, love, and meaning in abundance to all who come to him by faith.  In which will you place your life, your hope, your trust?  In political power and material wealth, which are here today and gone tomorrow, or Jesus Christ?  Which one?  Don’t underestimate the importance of this question.  It has eternal implications for each of us.

Now back to the story, one of the religious leaders easily produces a coin and hands it to Jesus.  On it is a portrait of the emperor.  Now Matthew doesn’t mention this but surrounding the picture would have been these words, “Tiberius Caesar, august son of the divine Augustus, high priest.”  The image and words are blasphemous in the hearts and minds of the Jewish people.  Nonetheless, Jesus takes the controversial coin into his hand and responds, “Whose head is this on the coin and whose title?”  “The emperor’s,” replied the religious leaders.  “Give therefore to the emperor,” Jesus says, “the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”  In affect, Jesus supports the paying of taxes to a sovereign secular or pagan government.  This is actually nothing new.  It is part of the Jewish law.  However, in his response, Jesus is not making a statement about the relationship between church and state, instead, he is making a claim about what the heart of God desires more than anything else.  You see another translation of the Greek verb “give” is “give back.”  Jesus is saying give back to the emperor what is his and give back to God what is his.  The coin bears the image of the emperor so give it back to him—who cares about a silly coin.  However, you bear the image of God so give yourself back to God.  Jesus’ response is amazing.  He offends no one and at the same time makes a profound point about the life of faith—Give your self back to God.

Well one way we give ourselves back to God is through living out God’s compassion in this world.  As I mentioned, we are created in the image of God and the most public face God puts before us in the scriptures is that of a compassionate God.  This is the God who delivers the hardheaded, stiff-necked people of Israel over and over again, who comforts the weary, weeps with the broken-hearted, longs for a lasting relationship with creation. Giving ourselves back to God means opening our own hearts and souls to a compassionate ache—a compassionate ache, in the center of out being, that brings about committed acts on behalf of others.

Fifteen minutes away from Manhattan, the richest section of the richest city in the world, is Mott Haven, a place in the South Bronx with the poorest congressional district in America.  Jonathan Kozol spent almost two years talking to children there.  The 48,000 people who live there boast a median income of less that $8,000 a year.  The children are some of the poorest and sickest in the world.  The South Bronx has the highest rate of asthma in the United States—due in part to the fact that so many toxic installations are located there (sewage plants, waste burners and dump sites).  The Mott Haven neighborhood has the highest AIDS rate in the industrial world with one-quarter of mothers testing HIV positive.

Kozol notes that, “the children of these neighborhoods are not suffering by mistake.  They are the outcasts of our nation’s ingenuity.  We lock them up in modern ghettoes.  We label them unclean, just as in the middle Ages.  We give them the worst schools, the vilest hospitals, the filthiest surroundings in the Western world.  Then we study them to find out why they do not have good values.”

Kozol continues, “It isn’t the values of these children or their mothers or their fathers that concern me.  It is the values of a society that increasingly and unmistakably has made it clear that it does not love children and that willingly and shamefully allows the innocent to be destroyed.”  Kozol concludes, “The children I have met who sing ["Amazing Grace"] in church are full of grace.  And, they see clearly.  It is our nation that is blind and needs our prayers.”  I would add to Kozol’s comments about Mott Haven that the plight of the urban poor in New Orleans in the first days following hurricaine Katrina emphasized again, at least for me, that as a nation we continue to ignore to our own detriment those living below the poverty line.

How can you and I help these children and the countless others that live similar lives in our city, in our nation, and in our world?  Well it begins by giving ourselves back to God by responding to the compassionate ache at the center of our beings, which cries out for us to find creative solutions to care for those who suffer in this world.

There is little left of significance from the life and reign of Ozymandias King of Egypt, and believe it or not one day their will be little left of our culture and nation.  The very coin that was brought before Jesus two thousand years ago has probably returned to the earth and its elemental roots.  Things that are temporal are constantly passing away.  Remember that you are dust and to dust you will return.  Put your faith in things that are eternal.  Put your faith in God who offers you life through His Son Jesus Christ.  Give yourself back to God by showing the world your compassion.  When we give ourselves back to God by reaching out to others, our lives touch the divine, which is the experience that God’s heart and, ours as well, desires more than anything else.  Amen.

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