Then [Jesus] said to them, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” – Matthew 22:21
Nobody asked, “What things are God’s?” for fear, perhaps, you’d speak the answer then: “All things belong to God; all things, including you.”
Two millennia we’ve focused our attention on the first, imperial, clause, debating what the monarch, governor, or mayor should receive,
As if what they received did not belong to God, both when the coins were in our hands and when they’d dropped into official palms. They still belong to God.
As crimson cascades in its gruesome torrents from the slain of Israel and Gaza, of Ukraine, Myanmar, Maghreb, of Russia and Sudan,
Of Mexico and Ethiopia, and dozens, scores, of nations bled by fewer deaths but still, too many when the the only number should be, “none,”
What do you tell us now, in our imperial power? Do you hold out the twenty dollar bill and say, “Please, not like this. Oh, not like this”?
Or do you drop your head into your hands and in a river of frustrated tears weep for the desecrated images of God?
A poem/prayer based on Matthew 22:15-22, the Revised Common Lectionary Gospel Reading for Year A, Proper 24 (29).
Photo of a first century denarius of the Emperor Tiberius by Portable Antiquities Scheme from London, England – Tiberius, R6195, BMC 49. Uploaded by Victuallers, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10817585.
The young ‘akepa was eager, so eager, to fly. He’d been fascinated by the idea ever since he first saw his father fly to the nest with food, and then fly away again to get more. As his wings feathers grew on his wings he got more and more excited, even if they did come in first as greenish-grey, the same color as his mother’s wings, and not the bright orange of his father. He didn’t worry about the color. He just wanted to fly.
His nest was a hole high up in a koa tree where a storm had brought down a big branch long before he was hatched. He poked his beak out from time to time to watch the other birds fly, and from time to time he’d stand on the edge and stretch out his wings and imagine what it was like. When the breeze ruffled his feathers he held his wings out to see what it felt like with the wind pressing against them. So many times he nearly hopped away to take to the open air, but somehow he refrained.
It might have had something to do with his sister, who was an hour older and, sadly, somewhat bossy. I’m an older child myself, and my younger brother would probably tell you that when I was young, I was somewhat bossy. “Don’t you do it!” she snapped at him. “You know your wings aren’t strong enough yet.”
“How do you know that?” he asked crossly.
“Because mine aren’t, and I’m older than you,” she said.
“By an hour.”
“It could be by a minute and they still wouldn’t be ready, and yours aren’t ready, so don’t go hopping out of the nest,” she said, and, well, they bickered.
I’m sure you never bicker with your brother or sister or friends, do you?
Both their parents were away from the nest one afternoon and he was perched on the edge of the hole in the tree watching some other birds when a small group of people walked through the forest below. He didn’t pay any attention to them – they didn’t fly, after all – when one of their cell phones rang. The ring tone was an electric guitar riff.
He’d never heard a noise like that before. It was loud – the phone was at top volume – and fierce, and harsh. Startled, he hopped up and away – but not backwards into the hole in the tree, but forwards into the open air. He desperately opened his wings, but found that his sister was right. He didn’t have the strength for level flight. Flapping desperately, he managed to slow himself down enough to grab some twigs close to the ground. There he huddled miserably beneath some leaves as his sister called from above.
His mother found him there not long afterward. “Get me back to the nest!” he begged. “I promise I won’t try to fly again!”
She looked him over and said, “How?”
There wasn’t a way for her to carry him, or for his father to carry him, or for the two of them together to carry him, and he knew it.
“Will you leave me here?” he asked.
“Your father and I are going to take care of you right here,” his mother said, “until your wings are strong enough to fly – which won’t be all that long. You’ll be less comfortable here than you would have been in the nest, and you’ll have to keep out of sight of the ‘io, but you’ll be fed and you will grow.”
That’s what happened. He wasn’t comfortable. The branch was drafty and the leaves let the rain through and the sun got plenty hot. Plus he could hear his sister calling “I told you so,” from time to time, which wasn’t very pleasant.
But then his father or mother would arrive with something to eat, and with some reassuring sounds, and the warmth of their feathers against his. He wasn’t comfortable, but he was comforted.
A couple days later he could fly just fine, and one more comforting thing happened. His sister, who’d been badly frightened when he fell from their nest in the hole in the tree, said she was sorry for calling “I told you so.”
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Story
I write these stories ahead of time, but tell them on Sunday mornings from memory and from improvisation. This is a morning when the telling sounds rather different than the writing.
“[The people said,] ‘Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.'” – Exodus 32:1
Those Ten Commandments seem so clear. I hardly even needed to take notes (though in all honesty my memory is unreliable about the honor due to parents) to live righteously with just a few missteps. I certainly would never worship figurines.
Before I criticize those people in the desert wastes, perhaps I’ll walk a mile in their shoes, uncertain whether when the day is gone, that water may be found, and whether on the morrow manna will appear, to satisfy the hungry travelers of Sinai.
The man whose staff wrought miracles had vanished in the clouds that wrapped the mountain’s height, in billowed fire that no one could contemplate surviving. In his absence who could speak to God? Who could interpret God to them?
“Make for us gods,” they said, and so would I, for with a leader vanished and the desert fierce at hand, I’d seek – I’d want – to crystallize my hopes, to incarnate my faith, to be the comfort of my fears. A calf? Why not? It symbolizes promise, strength, and growth.
You’ll find no statue of a calf among the decorations on my wall or door. You’ll find the cross – a symbol only, right? – and yes, some artwork of my favorite stories, like the walk with Jesus to Emmaus, and the supper Jesus held with his close friends.
No, these for all their imagery, are not my idols. I look for comfort rather more in tasks completed, praises given me, for though I blush at them, I trust in them to keep me safe and soothe my soul amidst the pains and sufferings of life.
They do not work. Oh, they will stimulate a flush of pleasure in the moment, but the feeling fades. I know if I rely on human approbation, I will put my heart in danger of starvation – I’ve been parched when human love ran dry before.
It’s human, I suppose, to seek a way to make the evanescent tangible, to hold in hand or ear or brain or heart a solid thing, a symbol sensible, like praise or wealth or sex or dignity. These are our ordinary golden calves.
Forgive us, Holy One, as we have failed to learn how legion are the idols we will make, how much they look like faithfulness they ape, how little they will heal or comfort us. Forgive us, God, and by your grace dissolve our idols and restore our souls.
A poem/prayer based on Exodus 32:1-14, the Revised Common Lectionary First Reading for Year A, Proper 23 (28).
While they were young, a myna and a saffron finch struck up a friendship. It wasn’t all that unusual, to be sure. Mynas and saffron finches hunt and peck for seeds and bugs and so on side by side quite often. Along the way they chat about this and that, that and this, at least until the flock of mynas gets riled up about something and start an argument among themselves.
This young myna didn’t much care for the myna arguments and even less for the major arguments, so she would hop off to one side with her friend the saffron finch, and the two of them would talk about food, and bugs, and the silly things mynas do, and the silly things saffron finches do, and the completely undecipherable things that humans do.
The myna liked her friend a lot. The saffron finch liked her friend a lot. Even when they weren’t talking about anything terribly important, they loved their time.
One of the mynas in the flock became, if not the leader, one of the more popular mynas among them. He was often loud and boisterous, and he tended to win the arguments. But he also got the mynas together. When a cat came by, he was the one who organized everyone to screech at it and dive at it until it went away. He kept an eye out for ‘io overhead and for mongoose on the prowl. If one of the mynas was missing, he’d search until he found them (which rarely took long; they tended to be behind a bush or under the eaves of a roof).
As time went on, he became more and more the leader of the flock, and all the other birds came to value his time and attention. That included the myna who was friends with the saffron finch. One of the things she’d talk to her friend about was the times when he’d talk to her.
“He’s an important bird,” said the saffron finch, before they went on to talk more about which was the best flavored bug that day.
One day, however, the leader myna hopped over to the myna who was friends with the saffron finch. “Hey,” he said, only with more myna screech to it. “I hear that you’ve got a friend who’s a saffron finch.”
“That’s right,” she said.
“No, that’s not right,” he told her. “Your friends should be mynas, not saffron finches. It’s one thing to put up with them – after all, they’re so small they don’t eat much – but it’s another thing to be friends with them. It’s time you dropped her. Tell her to stay away from you.”
“Why would I do that?” said the myna with a saffron finch for a friend.
“Because it’s what you should do,” said the leader myna, “and if you don’t, we can’t have you in the flock.”
At this moment the saffron finch landed nearby. The leader myna told her, “Say goodbye to your former friend. She’ll have her friends among the mynas now.”
“There’s no goodbye,” said the myna. “You’re my friend as long as you want to be.”
“I told you to drop her!” he said.
“You can say that all you want,” she replied. “I choose my friends, not you.”
“We’ll see what the flock has to say about that,” he said, and called them over. “This sad bird has a friend who’s a saffron finch,” he sneered to them. “Are we going to put up with that in our flock?”
The myna looked at her friends. She didn’t say anything. They looked at her, and they looked at their leader.
Unexpectedly, the saffron finch spoke up. “Don’t you have a friend who’s a spotted dove?” she asked one, who nodded. “And aren’t you friends with a yellow-beaked cardinal, and you with a northern cardinal?” she asked two more. They nodded as well.
“Are you going to let this bird choose your friends?” she asked, and all the mynas shook their heads.
That was the end of one myna’s leadership, and the continuation of a number of friendships, because of one loyal myna, and then many loyal mynas, in that flock.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Story
I write these stories in advance, then tell them with a combination of memory and improvisation on Sunday mornings.
Photos of a myna (l.) and saffron finch (r.) by Eric Anderson.
“When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them.” – Matthew 21:45
I’ve never owned land. I’ve never had a tenant. I’ve been the tenant. I’ve been the replacement tenant. I’ve felt the urge to seize control. I’ve seen what happened to those who tried.
When Jesus told this story, God, did those all-powerful people hear the landlord as themselves? Did they nod with satisfaction as they gave the story’s end: “He’ll put those wretches to a miserable death.”
I wonder what a shock it must have been to hear that they were not the owner, but the tenants, that they did not possess the power or the ownership they thought they had.
O Heavenly Gardener, may I tend this vineyard you have given me to cultivate with care, and neither seek to seize it for my own, or punish those who take it for themselves.
A poem/prayer based on Matthew 21:33-46, the Revised Common Lectionary Second Reading for Year A, Proper 22 (27).
The image is Le fils de la vigne (The Son of the Vineyard) by James Tissot – Online Collection of Brooklyn Museum; Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 2007, 00.159.139_PS2.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10957416. Of all Tissot’s paintings of Jesus’ life, death, and teachings, I find this the most chilling.
She was the best. Everybody knew it. When young koa’e kea began learning to fly, they aspired to fly like her. She was the best.
Koa’e kea move awkwardly on land, and so did she, but the grace with which she’d take off had everyone gasping with amazement. One moment she was stationary on the ground, the next moment she was in the air, moving as if she’d never been anywhere else. When fishing, she would dive straight down, and only stray to the side to intercept the moving fish in the water below. Her take-offs from the water were as seemingly miraculous as her take-offs from land. One moment bobbing in the waves, the next moment climbing to the skies.
When young koa’e kea tried to race her, they rapidly fell behind. When they tried to turn more sharply than she, they either skittered away or fluttered helplessly down until they’d caught themselves and controlled their flight again. She landed so gently that her legs barely flexed. From time to time she’d gently roll through the air. Those who imitated her went through day after day of struggle, turning this way and that and descending rapidly, until they finally mastered those subtle movements of the feathers. Then they’d roll, but never with the same grace and power.
When she wanted to relax, she’d catch the rising air above Halema’uma’u Crater, soaring in rising circles with barely a wingbeat, higher than any of the other koa’e kea dared to go, a spot of white against the blue sky.
She was the best.
One young koa’e kea was determined to be her successor – in fact, to fly even better than she did. He studied every move she made. He exercised his wings. He spent hours facing into the trade winds and seeing what happened when he moved this feather like this, or that feather like that. He was going to be the best.
There was one difference, though. He announced it.
“I will be the best!” he said at some point during just about any conversation. He knew he wasn’t the best, not yet, but every koa’e kea on the mountainside knew what he aspired to be.
As for the best flyer among them? She said nothing, did nothing, but flew her best over the ocean, and over the pali, and over the mountain. When someone asked her help or advice she gave it (she was a willing teacher), but there was never a word from her about who the best flyer among the koa’e kea was.
There were plenty of words from the younger one. “I’ll be the best!” he said. “I’ll be the best very soon!” And indeed, that seemed like it might be true. He was taking turns almost as sharply as she. His take-offs were almost as magical. When he soared, he rose nearly as high.
So his grandmother took him aside one day. “Grandson,” she said, “I am very proud of you. You are the best flyer of your generation, and you may become the best flyer of us all. I’m so proud of all your hard work.”
“I’ll be the best,” he said.
“But one thing, grandson,” she said, “will prevent you from being the best if you keep doing it.”
“What’s that?” he asked. “Is it the way I hold my tail on takeoff? I’ve been working on that.”
“No,” she said. “It’s the way you keep talking about becoming the best.”
He was confused. “If I’m the best, or nearly the best, shouldn’t I say so?”
“Does the best flyer among the koa’e kea need to say it?” his grandmother asked.
As he thought about it, he realized that she never said a word about it. Even when she was doing something showy – like those rolls through the air – she never did it in a way that upset the other birds. She relaxed through those rolls, and in those rising circles, so that nobody ever thought her skill was a taunt or an insult to them. It was just an expression of her joy in flight.
“No, I don’t think she does,” he replied.
“You’re more than a good enough flyer,” said his grandmother, “that you don’t need to say a thing about it, either.”
It took a while to break the habit – bad habits are hard to break, aren’t they? – but on the day that his soaring circle reached higher than hers, he said nothing about it. She did – she congratulated him on his skill – and the two of them were the wonder of the koa’e kea of Hawai’i Island, rising, turning, diving, and soaring so beautifully that everyone else watched in wonder and in awe.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Story
I write these stories first, and tell them from memory – which means things change. Today that includes the addition of sound effects.
Photo of a koa’e kea (white-tailed tropicbird) by Eric Anderson.
“Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.” – Philippians 2:3
So many years ago:
The certainty with which I judged. The anger I received, Hot words with friends There in the driveway.
The bitterness I brought to bed that, strange to say, provoked a prayer. To my surprise, in answer came a voice:
“You were wrong. Go and apologize.”
Since that angry night, I’ve known that pride goes not before the fall: Pride is the fall. At least, my fall.
The voice did not just speak to judge or to correct, but leads and has led me that night to this. And, no, I’m never sure
This voice is God’s, and this voice mine, but on that night, I knew and know. If I am humble, it has been the struggle of my life and soul.
So Paul rings true to me to warn of pride (I laugh to think how much he struggled with his very warning),
And I take my comfort in the humble form of Jesus, who, though God in truth, eschewed the power: and shared the love.
A poem/prayer based on Philippians 2:1-13, the Revised Common Lectionary Second Reading for Year A, Proper 21 (26).
Photo by Eric Anderson.
Author’s Note: This is a true story. I’ve struggled with pride ever since, of course. My arrogance is never far away. For the record, I followed the advice of the voice. I apologized.
He was the oldest of the three ‘amakihi, so he thought he would get everything the first and the best.
In fact, he did get fed first after he’d emerged from the shell and was breathing deeply for the first time. Getting out of an eggshell sounds easy, but he didn’t find it so. Next to him the other two eggs continued to rock and creak for some time as he ate his first bug from his mother’s beak. It tasted wonderful.
I know you and I might not think so, but he thought it tasted wonderful.
Truly, though, he wasn’t born first by much. His sister emerged from her shell within an hour, and his brother was eating his first bug a half hour after that. Still, he was first. And if you’re the first born – um, first hatched – that comes with some benefits, right? First hatched, first fed – at every meal. First hatched, first flight lesson. First hatched, first singing lesson. First hatched, first… well, everything.
But his parents didn’t seem to have learned that rule.
When they came with bugs for their nestlings, they tended to put it in the first handy little beak. Our oldest little ‘amakihi didn’t like it, but in all the chaos of pushing about in the little nest he thought they were just careless and making mistakes. As they grew, he learned to get his beak in place just a little more quickly at mealtimes, but he thought his parents had figured out how to feed him first. And at singing lessons, he didn’t wait for them to say, “Who wants to sing first?” He just sang first.
Flying lessons, though, were different.
Flying, obviously, has to be taken seriously. ‘Amakihi may be small birds, but gravity pulls them just like it pulls you and me. Mother and father didn’t ask for volunteers or pay any attention to his volunteering. They called on the one who was ready, not the one who was eager.
It made him mad.
“That’s completely unfair!” he shrieked one morning when his younger sister took off before he did. He launched himself into the air, flapping madly (and angrily) and not very well, because he wasn’t paying attention to what he was doing, he was paying attention to what he was feeling. He landed rather painfully in a nearby tree and sulked.
The branch jumped a little bit as another bird landed near him. He looked up to see his mother.
“What’s not fair?” she asked.
“It’s not fair for you to teach the others before me. I was born first. I’m always first. I’m always supposed to be first. I’m first!” he said. And he cried angry tears.
She waited until the crying had settled down some, and said, “No, it’s not fair. And it won’t be fair. Not because being born first, you always go first – that’s not true, son, and it’s about time you learned that – but because love isn’t fair.”
It was a shock to hear that he wasn’t always going to be first, but it was more of a shock to hear that love isn’t fair.
“I love everyone in our family equally,” she said. “I love them equally even when they peck at me, like your sister did yesterday, or when they ignore me, like your brother did this morning. I love them equally when your father eats the bug I was following or when your grandmother tells me how to do something that I already know how to do. If I were being fair, I’d love your sister more when your brother annoys me, and I’d love your brother more when your father makes me angry.”
“And you’d love everyone else more when your oldest son gets mad and flies off in a huff,” said her oldest son.
She didn’t have to reply.
“Thank you for not being fair,” he said.
“You’re welcome,” she said. “Now, shall we work on that takeoff? And landing? And paying attention to where you’re going in flight?”
That little ‘amakihi family went right on being unfair – and loving one another each day.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Story
I write these stories ahead of time, then tell the story from memory. Memory plus improvisation, that is.
“And he [the landowner] said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went.” – Matthew 20:4
You’ve given me heavy lifting, Jesus. How shall I understand this tale?
Do you applaud the naked use of power that’s used by rich and haughty men (and yes, I do mean men) to stratify and separate the workers who might, joined together, change the world? Oh, that would pain me, Jesus.
Or should I see in this landowner’s strange caprice the startling love that cannot be provided less to one, and more to one, for love unmeasured cannot be decreased or increased? This lifts my heart to hope.
Do I perceive a stern rebuke to those, like me, who act as if they know your will much better than the ones whose faith is newly growing, newly shining? It is a painful arrogance to think that you have set me on a throne to rule.
Is this a welcome call to nations who could never comprehend your word, O Jesus, in that ancient Aramaic? Those who, like me, are grateful for the pen of Matthew to record your parable, and translators to share this text?
Where shall I find my place, O Christ, in this strange tale? Am I the powerful one? I, long ago, put off my entry to the Church, so have I come late in the day, or have so many days passed now that I have worked the morning, noon, and afternoon?
I guess I’ll have to let your Spirit move. These things, and more, are… “obvious.” And when I struggle with the obvious your prompting steals on stealthy step to prod my heart and soul. Impel me, Christ, to find my place, from first to last, in you.
A poem/prayer based on Matthew 20:1-16, the Revised Common Lectionary Gospel Reading for Year A, Proper 20 (25).
The image is part of an illustration from the 11th century Codex Aureus Epternacensis, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10315166. One of the things that fascinates me about this image (and two companion paintings of the beginning and end of the Matthew 20 story) is that the faces are so alike. I’m certain that’s an artistic choice, and I’m letting it work within me.
They were building their first nest together as an ‘apapane couple. An ‘apapane nest is a pretty impressive piece of engineering, taking a week or even a day or two more. That’s a lot of grass and twigs and moss to move.
They weren’t the only ones, of course. In a tree not far away his sister and her husband were also building a nest, their first one, too. They’d got started a little earlier, so their nest was taking shape while the brother’s nest looked pretty ragged. Everyone was having trouble finding the grass and moss and twigs for their nests, and flying farther to find them.
That’s when he got his clever idea.
When his sister and her husband (and his own wife) were away looking for more material, he flew quickly over to his sister’s nest. He pulled out a particularly nice twig that would be perfect for his own nest and flew back. When his wife returned she found him proudly settling that twig into position.
“Well done!” she said.
“There’s more,” he said.
They both flew off, she to search the forest and he to his sister’s nest. Before his wife came back he’d made three trips to it, taking grass and moss as well as another good structural twig.
“Where are you finding this so quickly?” his wife wondered.
“I found an old nest that nobody’s using,” he said.
“Oh, good! Show me and I’ll come, too.”
“I wish I could. This was the last of it,” he told her.
But he went back to his sister’s nest again for more.
He was careful to make sure his sister and her husband were absent. It was clear that they had had a difficult time replacing the things he’d taken. They were still ahead in their nest’s construction, but not so much as before.
He pulled a piece of moss from his sister’s nest and turned around. There, sitting silently on a nearby branch, was his wife.
“Abandoned nest?” she said.
“I’ll stop with this one,” he said.
“That’s not enough,” she told him. “You have to put that piece back, first of all. Then you have to wait for your sister and her husband and tell them what you’ve been doing. Then you have to help them build this nest that you’ve been stealing from.”
“Isn’t it enough that I just stop and let it be?” he asked.
“No, it isn’t. It’s nowhere near enough. You’ve been pulling their nest apart and you need to help them put it back.”
“Couldn’t I just do that? Leave out that I’ve been taking things?”
She gave him a very sharp look indeed. “She’s your sister. Do you think she’d be content with a lie?”
He admitted that she wouldn’t.
“Ask anyone among the ‘apapane,” she said. “We can live together when we make mistakes and make amends for them. We can’t live together with lies. It begins with truth. So tell the truth.”
He told the truth. His sister had some true and truly angry things to say to him about it, but she did accept his help in repairing the damage and, during family gatherings, was sometimes heard to say, “It begins with truth. Thank you, brother, for the truth.”
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Story
I write these stories ahead of time, but I tell them from memory rather than reading them. As a result, they change.
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