The Company Store?

Isaiah 45:1-7
1 Thessalonians 1:1-10
Matthew 22:15-22

Some people say a man is made out of mud. A poor man’s made out of muscle and blood. Muscle and blood, and skin and bone. A heart that’s weak and a back that’s strong. You load 16 tons, what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt. St Peter don’t you call me, ‘cause I can’t go. I owe my soul to the company store.

I used to love this song as a kid. Don’t know where I first heard it, mom’s oldies radio station or one of those things that looks like a CD only bigger, with one long scratch in it - a record. But I loved the range and the music, and it probably wasn’t until I read stories like “Of Mice and Men” that I even knew what the singer was going on about. And I am so glad we don’t have those indentured servant villages any more. No more share cropping. Well, at least we don’t have them by that name. Instead we’ve got “Payday advance!” and the like, which might help once or twice in a pinch, but start one of those spirals when you take a loan on money that you haven’t got yet to pay a bill, then the next check buys the last one, and you’re waiting for the next again, living hand to mouth at best. 

I know here in Chatham that might seem like a far away thing. Granted, I’m going to pay twice my seminary bill in the next twenty years thanks to interest rates, but that’s an unseen sort of payday advance. One of many quieter, sneakier, more commonly ignored forms of ‘owing my soul to the company store,’ as it were.

And it’s not just currency, not only dollars and cents, temple tax and tributes to Caesar, that we’re talking about, either. These obvious examples are easy to hide behind when it comes to the real depth of our debt. When Martin Luther died, it is reported that his last words were “we are all beggars, it is true.” And not many, if any, of us really know what it feels like to have to beg, I’ll bet.

Instead, we have social expectations. Unwritten rules to follow. Expectations to live up to. Debt to the bigger picture. Debt to the credit cards, sure, but debt to the things that got us into debt in the first place. The proving of our worth. The setting up a household of which we can be proud when the neighbors drop by. The social status which we have inherited and worked for, which must be maintained or improved upon. I cannot tell you how many people I have met in my lifetime who would come back to church if only they had their own house in order, if only they had their life together, if only they knew they could keep it together and not fall apart at that one hymn or the sight of that one person.  People who feel like impostors if they can’t carry a tune or follow in the bulletin as well as their neighbor in the pew.

Well, in case we ever lose sight of it, let me point out: we’re all lost here. All in debt. All beggars in one form or another. On the surface of it, none of us can claim to be self-made: somebody before us had to know about the birds and the bees. We owe our existence to at least two people, maybe doctors and lab technicians, too. Then the folks who built our homes, or printed the books we learned from, or sweated over the clothes we wear... not to mention those who print these little green pieces of paper, who mint those small silver and copper coins, and those whose faces are on that paper and those coins.

If we are to ‘give to Caesar what it Caesar’s,’ to return to FDR every dime with his face on it, to Lincoln every dollar. If we return to China everything marked ‘made in China,’ forefit the government’s involvement in Social Security, and the insurance companies’ hold on money for our hospital bills and cars and homes and eventual funerals...

We are indebted to many systems. We have put our trust in many things. Money is only one of those things, though it is more often than not the small god in which we put our trust. That’s why we don’t consider it polite to talk about money, neither giving it nor spending it nor being held accountable with it. Money has power. Money speaks. Put your money where your mouth is, and your budget and your checkbook will show what you really value.

But behind all of those debts, behind all of these loans we take and these other things we trust to take care of us, are the bigger things, the deeper fears and insecurities.

What if someone finds out I don’t always have faith? What if I have the wrong faith? What if I fall when I most need to stand? What if I fail my children or my parents? What if my friends leave me? What if I get sick? What if I am left alone? What if...?

Where does everything else we fall back on disappear to when we most need these sorts of answers? When we can no longer run or hide from the realities of life and mortality? When we grieve? When things change? Will Caesar save us? Will Caesar defend us? Will Caesar live up to the hope we have put in his protecting us?

No, Caesar will also die. Caesar will fall and be replaced by other Caesars, or Kaisers as the German puts it. Neither Caesar nor those pretty coins with his face and inscription will ever really be able to save us.

Give to God the things that are God’s. The hearts that God made. The minds that God formed. The bodies that God breathed life into. The lives that God died to save.

Give to God the things that are God’s. The harvest that grew in the light and the sun and the rain and the ground that God created. The hands and the feet that God strengthened and made skilled for God’s work. The hopes and visions that God planted through prophets and dreams and communities living together. 

Give to God the things that are God’s and watch God do amazing, resurrection work with you. For you are one of those who belong to God. Who came from God and are claimed by God and will rest in God.

Give to God the things that are God’s - all of your insecurities and questions and doubts and dreams and disappointments and griefs and joys. Every last bit of you belongs to God, including the mess, and God not only knows it all but wants it all and will transform it all. Those wrestlings, questions, curiosities, even people’s complicated hypocrisies, are made new in the light of Christ, reformed in the reality of the resurrection. 

God has come to give God’s entire self for our sake. Something that Caesar, try as he might, can never have done. Something that lasts far longer than any Empire the Caesars have tried to build. World without end, remember? 

Some people say a man is made out of mud. Some say a man is made out of stardust. Our Scriptures seem pretty intent that we are all, men and women and children, made in the Image of God, restored with the Image of Christ. That Image will outlast any image or inscription on a coin or even in a window. That God - this God - will neither leave us nor forsake us. As Isaiah the prophets reminds us this morning, God says “I am the Lord, and there is no other.” We owe our souls to nobody - we are free because our ultimate debts have been paid. Our lives belong to the giver of life, the lover of us all, who by the freely given sacrifice of his death has given us life upon life everlasting. Caesar can have what he thinks belongs to him - we belong to Christ.