“The Sum of Faithful Stewardship - Parables of Jesus for Faithful Stewards, Part 3” by the Rev. Don Wahlig, October 22, 2023, Year A / 21^st Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 24) –  Exodus 33:12-23 and Psalm 99 • Isaiah 45:1-7 and Psalm 96:1-9, (10-13) • 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10 • Matthew 22:15-22

THEME:  All we are and all we have belong to Christ and he wants us to serve him through acts of justice and compassion for our neighbors outside the church. 

This is week 3 of our Season of Commitment sermon series. We’ve been focusing on Jesus’ parables and commandments to love God, our faith family, and our neighbors outside. So far, we have learned from him that gratitude for God’s love necessarily produces generosity, and generosity produces joy.

All along the way, Jesus has been confronted by his opponents, the religious leaders of Jerusalem. Time after time, Jesus has shown them to be hypocrites - more interested in their own power and prestige than the well-being of the people they supposedly serve.

This Sunday, the list of his opponents has expanded. They now include the political leaders, too. There is an old saying, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. That explains why Jesus is now confronted not only by the religious leaders of Jerusalem, but the political leaders, too. 

These new political opponents are the Herodians. They are detested by the people because they are complicit in the Roman occupation of Judaea. Normally, these Herodians would have nothing to do with religious leaders like the pharisees. But the pharisees have evidently convinced the Herodians that Jesus is a threat to them, too. 

So it is that we see the highly unusual sight of Jerusalem’s religious and political leaders approaching Jesus together and laying a trap for him. First, they flatter him to get him off his guard. Then they pose a seemingly straight-forward question.  “Tell us, is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” By lawful, they mean what the Jewish law says about paying taxes to Rome. It is a subtle attempt to make Jesus choose a side in the long-running conflict between the Jewish people and their Roman occupiers. If there is one symbol that represents Rome’s ever-present dominance of Judaea, it is the poll tax. One denarius for every Jewish man, woman, and slave. 

Jews deeply resented this tax. It was the source of a simmering feud stretching back decades. In the past, it even boiled over into open revolt. If Jesus says yes, it is lawful, he will lose credibility with the people. If he says no, he will be brought in and tried for sedition. Either way, his opponents hope, they will be rid of him. Jesus’ clever response rejects the false assumption that allegiance to God precludes allegiance to civic government. Jesus asks for the coin used to pay the tax. The fact that he does not have this coin and his opponents do is significant. To understand why, let’s take a look at that coin. 

On one side, the coin bears the image of Emperor Tiberius. The inscription declares him to be the divine son of divine Caesar Augustus. Caesar Augustus was his adoptive father, who was himself considered a god. So, Tiberius is claiming to be the son of god. On the reverse is another inscription.  It declares Tiberius to be the high priest of the emperor cult, the pagan religion that Romans believed in. To an observant Jew, you could hardly find a more idolatrous and offensive message. That Jesus’ opponents carry it around in their pockets, means they are idolators.

So, Jesus holds up the coin and asks, “Whose image is this, and whose title?” The answer is, of course, the Emperor. Then, Jesus says, “Give to the Emperor the things that are the Emperor’s, and to God the things that belong to God.”  His opponents are amazed. Not only has he managed to evade their trap, but he has subtly managed to undermine the Emperor’s power. The question he leaves unanswered is the one his opponents should ask themselves, and so should you and I.  “Whose image do we bear?”

The answer was as obvious to them as it is to you and me. It comes straight out of the first chapter of Genesis: all humankind, male and female, are created in the image of God. All of us bear God’s image and all of us belong to God. But, wait a minute. What about those taxes? Do they belong to God, too, even when we pay them to Caesar?

This is where so many misinterpret this passage. It is often taken to mean the total separation of the realm of faith and the realm of government. We call this legal principle the separation of church and state. That is not what this passage means. In fact, it means just the opposite. 

Jesus is saying what Paul and other New Testament writers say, namely that governments are the instruments of God’s will. God works through governments and other institutions to share his love for his people. The role of government is to help the people flourish, which is what God intends for all his children. Not every government is a good government, of course. Governments are subject to sin the same way other institutions are. There even comes a point when governments become abusive. 

It is notoriously difficult to determine when that point has been reached, but when it is, governments must be resisted and sometimes overthrown. There are those in the world today who are asking that same question of their own government. 250-odd years ago, you would have heard Alexander Craighead say the very same thing right here. He was not alone. John Witherspoon, whose second wife is buried in our cemetery, said the same thing, as did other prominent preachers in colonial America. 500 years ago, Martin Luther and the other Reformers like John Calvin and John Knox, reached the same conclusion about the church. 

These examples are the extremes. No government is perfect and no church is perfect. But, for the most part, both are trying to help people flourish.  Christ calls us to honor and support that work wherever it is being done. So, we pay taxes to our government. As we do, we trust that giving to Caesar that which belongs to Caesar somehow carries forward God’s mission of compassion and love for his people, even if Caesar may know very little about that love. 

But what about the second part of Jesus’ commandment to give to God that which belongs to God?  The answer is this. If all things belong to God, even our taxes, and all things are meant to support his work of love in this world, then we who bear God’s image also belong entirely to God and we are meant to serve God the way Jesus did: giving all that we are and all that we have to share his love with others. This is the New Testament standard of faithful stewardship: 100% of our lives, not just 10% of our income. 

God sent Jesus to show us how to use it.  He taught us to love not only those within our own faith family, but those outside in our community as well. Our benchmark for loving others outside the congregation, as it was last week for loving those inside the congregation, is the early church.  In those first few centuries, Christians shocked their neighbors by the way they cared for others, not just fellow Christians, but strangers and pagans alike. When plague struck and a member of the household became ill, Romans simply cast them out into the street. Christians took them in and cared for them. Which is how Christians created the first hospitals. When it came to the masses of the poor, instead of ignoring them as most Romans did, Christians fed them, clothed them, and took them in, including unwanted children. Which is how Christians created the first orphanages. As a result, Christians stood out. And Christianity grew. It grew like wildfire. Even Roman Emperors commented on the extraordinary way Christians cared for their neighbors. And it was all done out of love.

That is a pretty high benchmark. We are not perfect here at SSPC, but we do our best to live up to it. We feed the hungry in Harrisburg. We repair homes and churches from Maine to Florida. We provide a place where mission teams from all over can afford to stay as they, too, share God’s love with our community. We provide space for girl scouts and preschoolers, for those who help handicapped adults, and battered women. 

There is more we can do. Like providing space and support for those recovering from addiction, or those going through painful career transitions. Or maybe loaning out medical supplies like walkers and wheel chairs to elderly folks who need them but can’t afford them. Or providing an after-school program for young children, like those who graduate from our preschool. All of these programs, both current and future, have two things in common. First, they are motivated by our desire to follow Jesus in sharing God’s love with our extended community.

Second, they are all possible because of our faithful stewardship. They start with gratitude to God who gives us all that we have and all that we are. From gratitude emerges generosity. From generosity emerges ministry.  Friends, as you consider your stewardship pledge for the coming year, please take a moment this week to appreciate how God has blessed you – and how God wants us to use those blessings to bless others through our ministry here at SSPC.



May it be so.