November 2nd

Leviticus 11:1-12:8, Mark 12:13-27, Psalm 30:1-7

Ever had one of those arguments about ownership of something. That’s my ipod, my TV, my DVD, my… Have we ever stopped to ask “What is God’s?” in this equation, because the answer is pretty much everything.

In Leviticus, these parts of “the law” should always be read in the context of Mark 7:1-23 where Jesus explains that it is what comes out of a person that makes them unclean and not what goes in. (“In saying this, Jesus declared all foods ‘clean’” (v19)). What is important though is giving to God what is God’s. If we take a look at today’s reading from Mark, Jesus says that we should pay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar. The Romans were an occupying force and one of the expectations in the eyes of Israel was that any Messiah would save them from Rome. Yet the Romans were very powerful rulers and Jesus would have been on dangerous ground if he denounced them in public. So if he said anything pro-Roman he could not be the Messiah and if he went anti-Roman then he would be up before Pilate. Surely the Pharisees had him here. But he goes down the middle, well this coin has Caesar’s face on so give it back to him!

This passage helps us with all of the vast readings on different kinds of offerings, and even today’s bit about offering the new child to God, they are all summed up in this Gospel passage. We need to give to God what is God’s and well, to be fair, for the creator of it all – it is all his. All of the rules about clean animals try to bring a sense of propriety into proceedings and in all honesty some of it has been proven to be quite sound in terms of health and hygiene . It also goes down to the most basic level that we are God’s and we need to give ourselves back to him. All of this clean/unclean malarkey is about how the people come before God, are they right before God and a lot of these animals were unclean in the very real sense. The offerings of the last few days are about Spiritual cleanliness and today it’s both spiritual and actual cleanliness.

Spiritually the death of Christ has made us clean, we are washed as white as snow. So if we come before God what are we going to bring. Our money, our material possessions, our families and so much more are from God and we need to give something back. Whether that is devoting half an hour to worship music on the ipod or giving a portion of our money. Most important however is to give ourselves and our hearts because they have “God” written all over them. What are you going to give today?