Power to Amaze

In this season, we are invited to walk in weakness, to pay attention to what it feels like to be empty. We are being invited to unlearn what we assumed we knew, so that we can learn or relearn the upside-down power that is eternal.

What is power?

What is valuable?

Who holds all of this?

Who is in charge?

Yeah, I like those questions, how do we make our way in this place?

There is an ancient story of some religious leaders and teachers who continue to be frustrated with Jesus’s ways and teachings. So they set out to trap him.

Later they sent some of the Pharisees and Herodians to Jesus to catch him in his words. They came to him and said, “Teacher, we know the you are a man of integrity. You aren’t swayed by others, because you pay no attention to who they are; but you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth.”

Pause. Can you see the slimy sludge of envy and pride dripping off their words? Yikes.

“is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not? Should we pay or shouldn’t we?”

But Jesus knew their hypocrisy. “Why are you trying to trap me?” he asked. “Bring me a denarius and let me look at it.” They brought the coin, and he asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?”

“Caesar’s,” they replied.

Then Jesus said to them, “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”

And they were amazed at him.

First, he sees through their smarmy words and scheme. Then he asks for a coin, which they have on them and hand over to him. Whoops. You are not to bring a graven image into the temple area. That’s why they had separate temple coins, because Roman coins have graven images on them. Busted. First sign of their hypocrisy. And whose image is on the coin? Caesar. Fine, then give to Caesar what is his, but to God what is God’s.

If Caesar’s image is on the coin, hand it back. You are simply talking about dividing up life into this or that, what is mine and what is the power’s that be, and then what is the Divine’s. That kind of divided life is exhausting.

So, a question for you. Where is God’s image placed?

So God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

Which leads to, And they were amazed at him. Of course, because the entire person is the Divine’s. We don’t compartmentalize life to hand out in bite size pieces, as if the world is a flock of wild birds that we divide ourselves up for.

This one life is the Divine’s. And this season is learning how to integrate and live from that place of wholeness, from the image of the Divine in us. Because how we live is how we offer that which is the Divine’s, right back to the Divine.

That’s power to amaze.