Our readings this week are Exodus 33.12–23 and Matthew 22.15–22.  In the aftermath of the calf debacle, the narrative of Exodus turns for a while to the question of God's presence with his people.  There are all sorts of threads that could be pulled at in this section - for example how do we resolve God's declaration that his face must not be seen (v.23) with the recording of the fact that He and Moses would chat 'face to face, as a man speaks with his friend' in verse 11...  These questions, though, in some ways only serve to underline the thrust of this section - how can this people, or any people, safely spend time in the presence of God?  And, perhaps more importantly, what does it mean if they can't?

The very astute amongst you will notice that I've been quoting from the New International Version of the Bible so far this week, and not the New Revised Standard Version to which I link, and which we read in church on Sundays.  There is a reason - I think its translation of this section really brings out the question at its heart:

"If your Presence does not go with us... What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?"

Wow!  What a question.  It's maybe not a question we ask too often - perhaps because we're so accustomed to the narrative of Emmanuel - 'God with Us'  - in Jesus, and the reassurance of his presence through everything: there's nothing we can do to make God love us any more, and there's nothing we can do to make God love us any less.

That is very true, and wonderful - but let's make sure we don't allow that familiarly to lead to a comfort that breeds contempt.  God's Presence with us, Christ within us, is not something we should ever take lightly - it is the defining characteristic of what it means to be a Christian, and what it means to be saved.  What else distinguishes us?  It is what gives us our distinctiveness as believers, and also as individuals, as we relax into the work of that Presence shaping us into the people God wills us to be.  Without it we are quite literally nothing.

So I just wonder if it's something we can try bringing back to front and centre in our awareness, our thinking, and our behaviour this week?  What might you do differently if you were deliberately, rather than accidentally, living out the distinctiveness that comes to you through the presence of God within you?

In the gospel reading Jesus throws down a similar challenge.  When confronted with the question about paying taxes with all the overtones of national identity, subjugation, and religious freedom that comes with it, he cuts straight through all the complication with a very simple command, "Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s."

To whom are you giving what in your life?  Is it deliberate?  Is it accidental?  Is it the way you want it to be?  Is it the way God wants it to be?