Render to Caesar

Biblical Text: Matthew 22:15-22

“Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s” is one of the most quoted saying of Jesus. But I’m convinced that 99.9% of the time it is quoted, we quote it terribly wrong. We use it to let ourselves off the hook on our duty. That is the essence of the trap they were laying for Jesus. Which side of this divide are you on Jesus? And whichever side he is “on” he’d lose the crowd from the other side. They marveled at his answer. Not because it was simply a rhetorical masterpiece of weaving between two poles. We hear politicians daily attempt that, maybe monthly do it successfully. But those are always like the apocryphal saying of Barack Obama – “my superpower is that people hear what they want to in my words.” When Jesus said this what they marveled at was how it convicted everyone. Jesus isn’t on any of their sides. He’s the King of the Reign of Heaven. This sermon attempts to restore some of the marvel of that saying.

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Worthy

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Biblical Text: Matthew 22:1-14

The Gospel text is the parable of the Wedding Feast. It immediately follows last week’s text – the wicked tenants. So they are covering some of the same territory, but this one expands on the tenants in two ways. First, it answers what is counted as the wickedness. In the wedding feast is it described as being unworthy. And it is simply dishonoring the King and his son. The second way it expands is the Wedding Feast parable continues to add how the new tenants or the second invitees are both called and treated. And it is this second part that is the most important for the church. This sermon meditates on both the lessons of former Israel for us, and for what is called from us to be worthy. Or maybe the best way to put it is how are we not unworthy? Which is everything to do with the wedding garment.

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Handing Over the Things of God

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Biblical Text: Matthew 22: 15-22

I always laugh when I hear someone say the church is so political, although I think I understand what they mean. I laugh because it really isn’t. The lessons from this Sunday’s lectionary are the only ones that I think call for explicit political preaching. And to be honest, in my entire time pew sitting, I probably heard less than one handful of explicit politics from the pulpit. Most ministers would avoid it completely. But what I think they are expressing is not so much “vote for x” from the pulpit as the complete subordination of “things temporal” to “things eternal”. (Don’t miss the collective prayer I left in the recording.)

Jesus’ “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s” saying is not an invitation to some type of church state separation. One can have a purely secular politics. Just stop at the first part. And that makes sense. That is the way of the principalities and the powers. But if you want to follow Jesus the call is to give to God what is God’s, which includes the things of Caesar.

Neither Jesus nor I get explicit about the answers to this. Honestly in Jesus’ day it might have been easier, or at least the average person would bear no responsibility for the actions of the gov’t because they were subjects, not citizens. But when you vote, when you are a citizen, you bear responsibility. This sermon attempts to lay out what discharging that duty in a Christian way looks like.

Lacking Wedding Garments?

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Biblical Text: Matthew 22:1-14

Jesus tells three parables in a row in this section of the gospel. We’ve read each of them on successive weeks. They spring from a confrontation with the Priests in the temple, but this one – the Wedding Feast – I believe has much less to do with them directly. The two sons has already told them where they have gone wrong. The wicked tenants has rendered the judgement against them and essentially removed them from office. The Wedding Feast is forward looking. “The reign of heaven has become like….” such a wedding feast. This tells us what it is like now. The call is universal. Come to the wedding feast. But it is possible to fall into the same error as ancient Israel, to disrespect and dishonor the Son.

The real question to ask isn’t what is the wedding garment. There are lots of answers that all have some amount of truth. The deeper question is what does it mean to lack it? And to that there is one answer, to dishonor the Son. Is there anywhere in your life you are in open rebellion against the reign of the Christ? Today is the day of grace. Prepare. Put on the garment before you go.

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The Things of God

Biblical Text: Matthew 22:15-22
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The text contains Jesus saying, “give to Caesar the things of Caesar, and to God the things of God”. It is possible simply take that answer as a simple dodge, but that is not what this sermon does. This sermon looks at Jesus’ saying in four ways. In the literal time frame it was a way to confront and avoid the politics of division. It encouraged the hearers to ponder both what was the state’s and what was God’s, and how they might or might not over lap. If we look through a lens of Christology one of the creedal confessions is that Christ sits as the right hand of God. He has defeated the powers and principalities and now does reign. What that rules out are the simple poles that the state’s things are always God’s things or that the state’s things are never God’s things. Caesar, like Cyrus and Pharaoh, is accountable to the God of Israel, the only God. In sorting out the things of Caesar, we can’t find ourselves at the extremes. If we look through a moral lens, Jesus encourages us to look at whose image or whose icon is on things. The coin bore the image of Caesar, but humans bear the image of God. Morally, when we see the least among us, we are to see the image of Christ, and act accordingly. Yes, that image is cracked due to sin, but it is that image that Christ repaired. It is that image that the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is renewing in us. Finally, we are encouraged to take an eschatological view (a completion or end view). In how we dispose of the things entrusted to us, do we use them for temporal ends, or do we use them for eternal ends? Jesus invites us to put God in our debt. He’s good for it. If we give the things of God to him we will not lose our reward.

Worship Note: I moved our Hymn of the Day after the Sermon in the recording. LSB 851, Lord of Glory You Have Bought Us. I did this because the sermon was a little longer today. So if you just listen to that you can get to it quicker. I also moved it after because the words of that hymn I believe capture the Christological and Moral force of the message exactly. The eschatological is there as well, but not quite as direct, or not put in the same vocabulary. I use treasure in heaven as the vocab sticking with the monetary theme of the text. The hymn switches to theological virtue language: faith, hope and love.

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What Are You Wearing?

Biblical Text: Matthew 22:1-14
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We had a guest with us in worship today, Ms. Natalie Howard, who is a missionary to the Dominican Republic. So, the sermon pulled double duty, as an intro.

But the preacher in me doesn’t hand over the pulpit so easily, and the text is a fascinating one, or at least it was fruitful meditation material for me this week. Jesus parables all take some strange turns. Last week with the wicked tenants I invited us to see the horror. And if we stop to think about horror, what causes it is the presence of something that shouldn’t be or acts that transgress what should be. Those wicked tenants might be more appropriately absorbed by those in leadership roles, but today’s wedding feast is simply the man not dressed for the occasion. The point of the picture is not what everyone else is wearing, but what he is not, and what that says. And it should cause us to ponder what are we wearing?

Worship Notes: In the recording I did not leave in Natalie’s presentation. Not because it wasn’t good, but because the person is part of the presentation. (If you would like to hear it, contact me and I can send you the larger recording.) You always get more if you come to church. I did leave in our hymn of the day. LSB 636, Soul Adorn Yourself With Gladness. The text and tune together create one of the great works of beauty in Christian Worship.

1 Soul, adorn yourself with gladness,
Leave the gloomy haunts of sadness,
Come into the daylight’s splendor,
There with joy your praises render.
Bless the One whose grace unbounded
This amazing banquet founded;
He, though heav’nly, high, and holy,
Deigns to dwell with you most lowly.
2 Hasten as a bride to meet Him,
Eagerly and gladly greet Him.
There He stands already knocking;
Quickly, now, your gate unlocking,
Open wide the fast–closed portal,
Saying to the Lord immortal:
“Come, and leave Your loved one never;
Dwell within my heart forever.”
3 He who craves a precious treasure
neither cost nor pain will measure;
but the priceless gifts of Heaven
God to us has freely given.
Though the wealth of earth were proffered,
none could buy the gifts here offered:
Christ’s true body, for you riven,
and His blood, for you once given.
4 Now in faith I humbly ponder
Over this surpassing wonder
That the bread of life is boundless
Though the souls it feeds are countless:
With the choicest wine of heaven
Christ’s own blood to us is given.
Oh, most glorious consolation,
Pledge and seal of my salvation.

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Things of Caesar…Things of God

Biblical Text: Matthew 22:15-22
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That title is a reference to the aphorism of Jesus, “give back to Caesar the things of Caesar, and to God the things of God”. That phrase is more than a slippery evasion of the question the Pharisees were asking him. It is a startlingly deep teaching on limits to the temporal state and the extent of the requests of the Gospel. There are of course book length treatises that examine this. This sermon attempts to focus on three things:
1) What the things of Caesar are by bringing in Romans 13
2) What Caesar should provide, and a simple description following Peter Leithart’s taxonomy: guardians, babels and beasts, of the limits of our giving back to Caesar.
3) What giving back to God means with a focus on three ideas: a) bearing the image of God through baptism, b) the summary of the law as our spiritual worship and b) the gospel tithe.

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Parabolic Questions

Biblical Text: Matthew 22:1-14
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The text is the third parable in a row that Jesus has told to the Chief Priests and the Elders in the temple. By this time the meaning at the time of telling is obvious, but the question is what does it mean on the other side of the parabola’s line of symmetry.

This sermon, with the help of Augustine and Gregory the Great, stakes out what it means for the church. In particular it looks at three things: 1) Where are we confronted with Jesus today?, 2) What do we take the wedding garment as? and 3) Do these things themselves point to something greater? Along the way we tackle a few other modern questions that cling to this parable.

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Steve Jobs, iPod Touch, Wedding Clothes and St. Paul

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Text: Matt 22:1-13, Philippians 4:4-13

In the human economy there can only be one Steve Jobs. If everyone took Steve Jobs’ advice the world would be a pretty miserable place pretty quickly. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t inspiring. It also points to the problem with how we look at the world and the human economy. The entire creation is God’s. He claims every last inch of it. The parts that we find sexy and glorious and the parts less so, even crosses. He is renewing all of this now groaning creation. If you find something excellent or pure or noble think on these things…practice these things…is St. Paul’s admonition. And in God’s economy, one of abundance and not scarcity, we practice right in our backyard…with our neighbor. God finds that excellent. In God’s economy there is room for many Steve Jobs.

In a more personal note or reflection, this sermon uses a significantly different outline. It is really a story interrupted format. Where I would usually use stories as illustrations within a larger frame work, in this case the story is the format with a couple of places of commentary. This happened to us this week – a reflection on Steve Jobs – here is a way to interpret that shared story in the light of God’s Word. This may sound bad, but if the preacher isn’t effected, nobody else will be. The preacher’s first audience is him or herself. Steve Jobs effected me at multiple levels. I think that might come through. It is a shorter sermon than normal – just under 1100 words instead of usually around 1400. If you didn’t get a chance this Sunday, I’d invite you to listen. But we’d also love to see you in person.

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