For the first few seasons, I was a great fan of the t.v. show, “Survivor.” 

You guys know “Survivor,” right? 

A group of people from all different ages and walks of life get plunked down somewhere beautiful but tough to live in, at least at first. 

It’s as if they are the random occupants of a lifeboat that has managed to make it to the relative safety of an uncharted island, and they to find a way to make it work—build shelter, find food, prepare food, eat food…gather wood, etc.    

Ultimately, of course, they must also find a way to survive one another, which is more about group dynamics than physical hardship.  

But the hardship is central to the experience. 

When each season begins, the contestants have only the clothes on their back and, as it happens, one personal item that they are permitted to bring.  

And this morning, it’s actually that personal item that I want to focus on.  

The very first person voted off the show on the very first episode of Season One was Sonya—a kind but rather physically frail person.  She lost the first challenge and the group decided she was only going to be dead weight, and they got rid of her. 

Her personal item, I remember, was a ukulele, which seemed very her.  

The villain of that first season, who also ended up the eventual winner, was Richard.  

His personal item was a little flint and some artificial kindling. 

Smart, right? No wonder that he won.  

He figured out that the guy who could make fire was important to keep around, at least for a while, and that it would give him some important room to maneuver within the group, which was really what the game was about.  

He was the first person in the show to see that a contestant’s personal item was an important kind of currency.   Something to trade on. To bargain with.   

In its way, it also said something about him as a person, of course, just as Sonya’s ukulele surely said something about her. 

But Richard was there to win the game, and who he was as a person didn’t really factor into his calculations. 

Or maybe that tells you everything you need to know about who he was as a person.  

II.

Our Gospel this morning also points out a kind of deeper calculation, as revealed through what someone has in their pockets. 

Matthew describes what may have been a decisive confrontation between Jesus and the Pharisees—a moment shortly before they decide it is too dangerous to let Jesus speak, and probably too dangerous to let him live.  

The key moment is a kind of gotcha, when Jesus tells them, “Render unto Caesar’s what is Caesar’s, and render unto God what is God’s.” 

He’s asked them to pull out a coin and tell everyone whose face is on it. 

So they do that. 

“Caesar’s,” they say, matter-of-factly.  

What you need to know is that at that time, that would have been flashing the enemy’s money. 

For the crowd, having Caesar in your pocket was to announce that, when it came right down to it, Caesar had you in his pocket.  

If the story went on for just another line or two, maybe they would have said that, like it or not, Caesar’s coins gave them room to maneuver.  

But as it happens, it would have said almost everything anyone needed to know about their ultimate loyalties, and about whom they were as people.  

And that is the point that Jesus wants to drive home. 

What are the loyalties that define us?  

Are there things that we are finally unwilling to trade away, or is everything up for negotiation, somehow?  

III.

That’s what Moses is worried about in this morning’s reading from Exodus.  

But first, that needs a little more explanation. 

The moment occurs during the leadership of Moses and comes from the Book of Exodus, sometime after Moses descends from the mountaintop, bearing the Ten Commandments.  

Well, at first, those turn out to be a complete flop. 

The people get scared while Moses is away receiving the Commandments. 

In fact, they get so scared that they turn toward symbols they can see, feel, and touch. 

At first, it seems unnecessary but sort of understandable – a security blanket, of sorts.  

These people bear a lot of scars from their journey up to now, and the man who has seen them through it all has gone off to do who knows what.  

But it all goes south.  

Instead of helping the people reconnect to God at a precarious moment, those symbols seem to replace God. 

And we know that because they seem to unleash a frenzy of behavior that God would never approve.  

They’re living the exact opposite of the kind of life that God would describe in the Ten Commandments.  

The world devolves into a place where all impulse control has gone out the window, and Moses is so taken aback when he actually sees it for himself that he loses some of his own self-control and angrily throws the Ten Commandments on the ground, shattering them. 

It’s the Bible’s version of what a life without the anchor of strong loyalties looks like.   

Maybe destroying the tablets is just as well, because clearly, they’re not ready to take up that kind of life.  

But in the part we’ve just read, we see Moses trying to grapple with what happens now.  

It is very much a personal question for him, in part because he sees their failure as a result of his own failure. 

But he knows he is unwilling to trade away this people, and he knows that he is uwilling to trade away God.  

Yet he cannot imagine how he will be able to be the glue that binds them together.  

He has nothing to offer either of them, except each other, both of whom he loves so deeply.  

IV.

It’s an odd question, I guess, but what does anyone have to offer when they have nothing to offer?  

What’s left when there is nothing else to trade, to bargain with or bargain for? 

What remains? 

Only what our loves have made us. 

All that remains are only those things within us that are not means to an end…things that are expressions of the love which made us and for which we were made.  

What would have been left of Richard on “Survivor” if he’d run out of kindling too soon or lost his flint in the forest? 

Only what he had allowed love to make of him. 

For Moses, the immensity and sheer wonder of God is too much for mortal eyes to take in, even his.  

But God lifts him to a sheltered place, a safe vantage point from which he can see the great train, a kind of wondrous cape of goodness that follows after God, and from that place, Moses gazes out upon the countless things that come from love, none of them a means to end, but as treasures cherished in themselves.  

I wonder if, as he’s watching that great train go by, Moses sees his baby picture sewn right in.  

I wonder if he sees the faces of each and every member of that stubborn and infuriating tribe he loves so dearly.  

I wonder if he sees the face of Richard from “Survivor,” and Max from 24 Maple Avenue.  

I wonder if he looks at the faces of those still in the future even today, whose lives already depend on us and to what our love will offer as a legacy for their safekeeping. 

That’s what Moses wants his people to understand about God. 

That’s what Jesus wants his people to understand about God.  

That’s what we need to understand about God.  

May we render unto God what is God’s…and in loving, see something of God’s glory. 

Amen