Saint Matthew 22:15-22

A teenage girl left for school wearing one yellow and one orange sock…

Her mother, noticing this, headed her off at the front door. "Why are you wearing two different colored socks?" she asked. The teenager responded, "I have a right to be different if I want to." Then she added, "Besides, all the kids at school are doing it!"

A man who always wore matching socks had been given cause to wonder whether or not he was a conformist. He said the following …

Today a friend called me eccentric. People have called me all sorts of things over the years, but this was the first time I'd been called eccentric.

I decided to look up the dictionary definition of the word eccentric. It read, "An eccentric person deviates from the norm. An eccentric person operates away from the center."

I wasn't sure if my friends had complimented or insulted me. So I did a lot of serious thinking. I wasn't sure that I wanted the label "eccentric," but the more I thought about it, the more I liked it. If the center is the norm in which the majority of people are living, then I am perfectly satisfied with the label. The truth is that I don't have to be like everyone else. I can be different.

The words of my mother linger in my memory: "Don't do it because everyone else is doing it," she told me, "stand tall, do what you know is right, rather than trying to be like everyone else.

We all have the desire to find meaning for our existence. And Jesus made it clear that the only way we can find true meaning for our lives is through God, through doing the Will of God.

For this reason, we talk a great deal about God. We try to understand who He is. We communicate with one another about how God has acted, and about how to pray to God, and about what all of this says about life and suffering and death, and about human relationships.

We talk a great deal, but talk is easy and, all too often perhaps, talk is cheap. And the time comes when we need some tangible way of expressing what we're trying to say. And from the earliest Biblical times, people have used material things to indicate just where they stood in their relationship with God. In Biblical times, a hard-working farmer during harvest season would contribute a minimum of ten percent of his grain as his way of saying "This is how I feel about what God has done for me and my family and my harvest." Then, as economic systems evolved believers began to bring in money.

When we come to Jesus' time, we see that an unusual system had been devised …

There was an annual budget for the Temple and the Religious establishment which was divided into thirteen categories.

There was one box in the Temple treasury for each of the thirteen categories. You could come in and decide which of the thirteen you wanted to support. If you didn't like the Preacher, you didn't have to give a penny toward his salary. You could put your money in some other box.

Jesus was there one day and He saw people bringing in their money and he heard the tinkling of the coins as they dropped into those thirteen boxes. Moreover, He saw that most of the people who were bringing the money were merely contributing out of their abundance. Then a poor woman came along and dropped in two copper coins. Jesus apparently knew something of her background because He said that this woman had put in more than the rest. It was only two copper coins with minimal value, but it was this woman's entire treasure.

This is one of those New Testament stories that is so simple and obvious that it hardly needs interpreting or explaining. Obviously the two coins in themselves were not more than all the rest of the contributions, but she was giving of herself unconditionally to God, through this gift of all she possessed. That's how she felt about God, and that's why she might have qualified in God's eyes as an eccentric person - one who deviates from the norm, one who operates away from the center.

We are given many opportunities, through our money, to get beyond the talk about God and to show God, in tangible ways, here in Church, and elsewhere in situations of human need. We are given many opportunities to show God just how we feel about Him, even at the risk of being classified as eccentric persons who deviate from the norm.

In today's Gospel Reading the Pharisees knew that if Jesus spoke against the tax, this would please the Jewish Zealot party which favored the use of force to gain independence from Roman Rule. They also knew that it would probably result in Jesus' arrest by the Romans.

If on the other hand, Jesus spoke in favor of the tax, He would alienate the Zealots.

Either way, He would lose, presumably. But Jesus' answer merely evades the problem, thus thwarting the Pharisees' plot to entrap Him. "Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's" (Matthew 22:21).

"Give to God what belongs to God." Indeed!

It has been said that human beings are like tea bags: you don't know how strong they are until they're in hot water.

Jesus talked a lot about the things that get us into hot water, and heading the list was money. "Where your treasure is," Jesus said, "There your heart will be also." Then He added, "No one can serve of two masters: for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth" (Matthew 6:21,24).

"Love of money is the root of all evil," said the Apostle Paul. "You cannot serve God and money," says the Lord Jesus.

Do you possess your money, or does your money possess you?

When it comes to money. Do you speak the language of love or the language of greed?

When it comes to money, are you immersed in the Gospel Truth or are you still in hot water?

"From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required." Jesus said (Luke 12:48). It may not be easy to get out of hot water.

It may not be easy to give 'till it hurts.

It may not be easy to practice sacrificial love.

It may not be easy to give joyfully and generously to someone in need.

It may not be easy to live up to your faith in this manner, which is to say, it may not be easy to give to God what belongs to God, but it always is rewarded. "Give and it will be given to you … " Jesus said, "for the measure you give will be the measure you will get back" (Luke 6:38).

Give generously and joyfully, and you will discover, as the Apostle Paul has written, "God loves a cheerful giver." In this sense, God Loves An Eccentric!

Thanks be to God!!!!!

Amen!!!