A Poem For a Stewardship

The Temple Tax

I have the taste of money in my mouth.
The metallic tang covers my tongue,
As my throat unslackens and unlooses
Prayers, praises, verses, songs
With one hand raised to the altar,
And the other in my pocket.

You who drew the fish from the water
And withdrew the coins of copper 
From its consuming, biting teeth
To pay the price of entry—
Kill this mammon greed,
And, instead, Lord, enter me. 

Serving Two Masters 

I wrote this poem years ago when I was first employed at Christ Church Memphis as a Wesleyan Fellow. I was paid hourly at the time, and I remember experiencing deep conflict in my heart over why I was working. 

Was I putting in the hours to serve God and glorify Him, or was I trying to fulfill my hourly requirements for a paycheck? 

Some weeks, I struggled to differentiate between the two motivations: “But who can discern their own errors? Forgive my hidden faults.” 

The Lord slowly began convicting me with His grace. So, one day, I set out for the lonely places of the woods and trails to spend time in fellowship and solitude with God. I wanted to cast these concerns before Him. As I walked, the Lord began to put the above words into my heart and mind. I sat beside the Wolf River and slowly typed them into my phone. 

Rather than tasting and seeing the goodness of God and having His words fill my mouth with honey, I was all too often tasting and seeing the false goodness of Mammon, which was cold, bitter, and metallic compared to the sweetness of feasting on God. 

Even in Worship, my heart would be divided between two masters, a deadly scenario that our Lord strictly warns about: “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”

My divided heart is mirrored in my divided posture, one hand on the altar and the other in my pocket.

Coins in the Mouth of a Fish

The second stanza is inspired by the Gospel account where the disciples are barred from entering Capernaum unless they pay the temple tax. Peter goes to our Lord, who asks a puzzling question over who is the one who pays taxes, the children of the kings or others. “Others,” Peter replies.

JESUS: “Then the children are exempt,” but then he proceeds to invite Peter to do what he does best—fish: “But so that we may not cause offense, go to the lake and throw out your line. Take the first fish you catch; open its mouth, and you will find a four-drachma coin. Take it and give it to them for my tax and yours.” Matthew 17:27

What a surprising miracle! Amid the struggle between our earthly and heavenly duties, there is grace. The children are exempt, meaning that those who are sons of God by faith in Jesus are exempt from earning, from earning the cost of entry to be in the presence of the Father. They are sons and daughters of the King by Christ’s merits. He paid the price in full! We don’t have to pay the price of entering the temple because Jesus, the true temple, paid the ultimate price of His life. Now, through repentance and belief, in a miraculous reversal, He enters us through the Holy Spirit instead.

And yet, look how the Lord provides for our earthly duties—with the same kind of bewildering, unexplainable grace—coins in a fish's mouth! This reversal was mirrored in the poem where my metallic tongue is healed by the coins in the fish’s mouth! 

In the words of C.S. Lewis, “Aim at Heaven, and you will get Earth 'thrown in': aim at Earth, and you will get neither,” or listen to our Lord, “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” 

As I sat beside the river, God drew my heart to this story of water, fish, coins, and surprising grace. As the words began to take shape and form, my heart of scarcity became a heart of sanctity. Once surrendered, my “not enough” heart became a “more than enough” heart overflowing with God’s presence. 

Afterward, the Lord began to heal my heart of stone, my heart of greed, and began to replace it with a heart of flesh, a heart of presence. I stopped working from a sense of lacking and earning and started working from a sense of abundance and grace. 

The most dangerous word in our spiritual life is “mine.” Nothing is truly mine, not my resources, efforts, or abilities. It is all a gift. God revealed this truth to me on the banks of the Wolf River. He freed me from serving the wrong master, who bites and consumes, and with patience and compassion, He is teaching me, because I am weak and imperfect, how to serve the right master with my time, efforts, talents, and resources. 

I invite you to ask the Lord to examine your hidden thoughts, as the Psalmist prays: “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

If you are like me and often weighed down by worries about money, rather than having one hand on the altar and another in your pocket, I invite you to cast your lines—your time, efforts, resources, burdens, anxieties, whole self—in hope and expectation into the waters of God’s grace, and look and see what God does. 

In the words of James Boice, “The insufficient from the hands of the insignificant became sufficient when placed in the hands of Jesus.”

Related Reading

Beyond Bread and Fishes: A Message of Trusting God by Rev. Paul Lawler

The First Things of a Blessed Life by Rev. Paul Lawler

Why Prayer Works by Bro. Chris Carter