Looking Eastward

If you’re like me, you’ve had to spend some time in your life figuring our your taxes.  I occasionally catch myself wondering, just where do my taxes go, and how will my contribution be spent?  In the 22^nd chapter of Matthew’s gospel, Jesus is asked by some Jewish officials whether it is lawful to pay taxes?  He responds by examining a coin with the emperor’s head on it and then advises them give to the emperor what belongs to him and give to God what belongs to God.  Somehow, I find Jesus’ words to the Jewish officials, written some 2000 years ago, a comfort, as I offer hard-earned income for purposes that remain veiled from me.

Taxes are our offering to the government and ensure its (and our) well-being into perpetuity, and while we don’t know exactly where the money goes, we trust it’s for a good purpose.  Taxes, though, are not the only offering we make in good faith -- there are many similar offerings we make, some of them, like taxes, are obligatory, and others, like looking after ailing family member or friend, are acts of free will.  Offerings, whether obligatory or optional, are rituals that weave through the fabric of our lives.  At the end of the day, like the taxes we pay, our offerings to this world are done in good faith, but without full understanding of the outcome.

Examples of how we might offer ourselves are numerous and varied.  When we sit and listen patiently to a distressed friend, we never know whether we’ve been any help at all.  When we donate money to charity, we can’t be sure how those pounds will be distributed.  When we greet a stranger on the street with a smile, we have no idea just how that might alter the course of that person’s day.  In every instance, we make such offerings in good faith, believing they will lead to goodness and a more abundant life than may have been experienced previously.

One, often weekly, offering that goes virtually unnoticed happens when you enter the church.  As you enter many Churches, you do so from the west entrance.  When you situate yourself in one of the pews, you face east – the direction of the rising sun and the new day ahead of you. To get to your seat, you will have walked from the west to the east, unwittingly perhaps, but symbolically moving away from the day that has ended to approach the new day, with its new possibilities.  As Christians, we are always on a journey toward Christ, who is for us the promise of the new day.  It is with this idea in mind that churches tend to be eastward in orientation; we literally walk toward the new day, as we walk toward the Altar at the eastern end of the Church.

This sort of talk may sound “new age”, but it is, in fact, an age-old element of our Christian teaching.  As Christ rose from the dead on Easter Sunday morning, marking the victory of life over death and light over darkness, we too are invited to do likewise, approaching each day as an opportunity for new life.  This point is highlighted by the representation of the risen Christ placed at the very centre of the church’s eastern facing window.  Christ’s resurrection is our invitation to see each day as one of new and unexpected possibilities.  In the life of Christ we find new life.

In front of the pews and before the east, there stands the altar -- that historical place of offering.  In our Christian worship, we offer bread, wine, and donations of money as signs of gratitude, but we offer something more -- we offer ourselves.  As we face eastward – the direction of the new day – and offer ourselves, we offer ourselves with a new attitude, a new outlook.  We offer ourselves to God with the belief that there is a new day ahead, with new possibilities, both for ourselves and for all people on the journey with us.  We offer ourselves in the midst of all that we are not, knowing that with each new day, we have the possibility of being something more. As with all other offerings, obligatory or optional, we make our offering in good faith, believing it will lead to goodness and a more abundant life than may have been experienced previously.

As you join me in offering your taxes to the government, join me also in considering the ways we can offer our lives to the goodness of God, taking our confidence from God’s creation, where there is always a new day dawning.