What Is God's

Pentecost 19A, 10/19/14
Matthew 22:15-22; Psalm 96

Lord, you are great, and greatly to be praised. Help us declare your glory among the nations and your marvelous works among all peoples. Judge us with righteousness and truth. Amen.

Show me the coin used for paying the tax. Whose image is on the money?

In Jesus’ day, the picture was of Caesar, the reigning ruler of nearly all the known world.

Today, our money carries the images of a bunch of dead presidents, unless you’re carrying around a Sacagawea or Susan B. Anthony dollar, or maybe a Benjamin bill – and if you happen to have one of those in your back pocket, you are most welcome to put it in our offering plate!

In any case, the pictures on our money are still representative of our nation, with pictures of historic leaders on them. We can’t literally give our money to those people. 

But the symbolism of our money is the same as it was in Jesus’ day.

If pressed, we would have to give the same answer to Jesus that the Pharisees and Herodians did – the government’s image is on the money.

It’s got someone else’s face on it.

It doesn’t belong to us.

Let’s take the question a little further, though.

It sounds like the Pharisees and Herodians were trying to get Jesus to say something about giving the money to God instead of to the corrupt government. But Jesus doesn’t take the bait.

Why not?

Consistently, throughout Jesus’ ministry, he raises up the importance of worshipping God and caring for others, even when that means breaking the rules.

So why get all legalistic about paying taxes to the government now?

Perhaps another way to ask the question is this: if Jesus doesn’t tell us to give the money with the image on the emperor on it to God, what does Jesus tell us to give to God?

The second half of his command to the Pharisees and Herodians today is give to God what is God’s.

What is it that bears the image of God? What truly belongs to God in the first place? What needs to be returned to the one who made it?

Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

(Genesis 1:26-27)

God’s image is on you.

And Jesus’ command is to give to God what is God’s.

If we’re supposed to give things with the ruler’s image on it back to the ruler, the logical next step is that we are also supposed to give what has God’s image on it back to God.

Today’s conversation between Jesus and the secular leaders is a call to discipleship; it’s a directive to give everything that you have and everything that you are over to God.

Look at yourself the mirror.

I brought a mirror today – so really – look into the mirror.

Whose image do you see?

Do you look like the president or the governor or Bill Gates or Donald Trump? No. 

And whoever has to look at you most often probably thinks that’s a good thing.

You don’t look like a world leader.

You look like God. And so does the person next to you.

Actually, take a look at the person next to you. As you look at them, carry this thought with you – that is what God looks like. OK, now turn to someone else and look at them. That is what God looks like, too.

The Bible tells us that every time you look in the mirror, or every time you look at another person, you are seeing the image of God.

Today Jesus asks the people to give to Caesar the things that bear Caesar’s image – and to give to God the things that bear God’s image. So each one of you is being asked today to give to God what carries God's image - YOU.     

Whose image is on you?

God’s image is on you.

So give to God what is God’s.

The call to action for us today is to give our lives back to the one who gave them to us in the first place.

In order to be faithful, to live the Christian life, to be a good disciple, there are a few things that we need to do. Following Jesus is an active thing – it’s not something we can do by just staying in these familiar pews at church.

Discipleship isn’t about believing the right things – it’s not about knowing the Bible or reciting the creed or having faith that Jesus died for our sins.

Discipleship is active. It permeates every area of our life. It directs how we behave when someone cuts us off in traffic or is rude to us in the grocery store. It informs our relationships with our family and friends. It guides us in the best ways to spend our money.

Discipleship can be practiced inside the church, but it fails if it stays there. Discipleship means following Jesus, for the sake of the world.

Let me say that again, because that is important.

Discipleship means following Jesus, for the sake of the world.

This congregation should care deeply about what discipleship means – not just because it’s another name for Christian living, but because we refer to it in our mission statement:

We are a caring community empowered by God to be disciples of Christ.

Discipleship is more than coming to worship and signing your kids up for Confirmation and volunteering with Altar Guild and singing with the choir.

         Discipleship is about giving to God what is God’s.

Jesus wants us to give him our best when we are going about our daily life.

So what can you do to give your best to Jesus?

How can you be the best husband possible, to honor God? How can you be the best nurse, or caregiver, or student, or gardener, or grandmother? How do your daily actions tell the world that you are a follower of Jesus?

I’m not talking about converting people here.

Sure, we want more people to become Christians – part of the instruction that Jesus gives us is to spread the Gospel to all nations.

But the best way to do this is to lead by example.

No one is interested in joining a religion that doesn’t really seem to matter to its own adherents.

How can you best give yourself to God?

Reflect on that for a bit.

pause

Think about the ways that you can give back to God the things that are God’s, in your relationships with other people. Think about how you can do that at your job or in your household or as a member of your community.

Now I’d invite you to take one of the offering envelopes and a pencil from the pew in front of you, and actually write on it what you think you can give back to God in your daily life.

We just ordered new offering envelopes – they’re more up-to-date and less expensive than the ones in the pews right now – so don’t worry about using up the old ones. It’s probably a good thing, actually.

If you’re worried about someone else seeing what you write, just put something on the inside flap of the envelope. You can seal it if you want.

In a few minutes when the ushers come by to collect the monetary offerings that folks have brought today, please also put these envelopes with your personal offering into the plate.

You can keep thinking about it, and write something down later if you want to. While you’re thinking, I’ve got just a few more things to say this morning.

One of my favorite psalms is Psalm 24:

The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world and those who live in it.

The Bible constantly tells us that everything that exists belongs to God in the first place, including our selves.

Jesus is reminding us today to return to God those things that already rightly belong to God.

Jesus is calling us to be disciples, that is, to be those people who give back to God even when it isn’t easy to do so.

A few weeks ago many of us filled out Spiritual Gifts Inventories as part of worship. We answered 60 questions that could help indicate what our gifts are, and how we can best serve God with our lives.

I’d like to use those forms to get some ideas on where our congregation’s ministry can grow. If half of us have a gift for writing, for example, but we don’t offer you any opportunities to put that gift to use, we’re selling short both you and God.

But we haven’t had enough responses to make those kinds of discoveries yet.

So please, if you haven’t filled out a Spiritual Gifts Assessment, grab one on your way out of church, fill it out, and bring it back next time you’re here. There are stacks available at the doors at the back of the church, and in the room where we’ll be meeting for coffee hour after worship, if you can stay.

Our secretary, Jaye, is compiling the results of the inventories, and once we have a few more responses, we can discover some ways that God is actually empowering us, as a community, to live as disciples of Christ.

Discipleship means following Jesus, for the sake of the world.

Discipleship isn’t about your own salvation, or about keeping the church doors open, or even about growing your personal relationship with God.

It’s about giving to God what is God’s

Discipleship makes a difference in the world.

So let’s work together, as individuals and as a congregation, to follow Jesus’ lead and make a difference in the world.

And may God bless our efforts.

Amen.

High Stakes

Pentecost 18A, 10/12/14
Matthew 22:1-14 (and Philippians 4:1-9)

God of truth, honor, and justice; God of purity, commendation, and excellence; help us to stand firm in you. Give us your peace. In Jesus’ name, Amen. 

Have you ever told a story in order to prove a point, and stretched the truth just a little to make your point more firmly?

That ref must have never watched a football game before, every single play he called was wrong!

Well, really, he probably only messed up once or twice, but if it was on an important play, it would seem like he was wrong more often than that.

We went to the amusement park and the line for every ride was at least two hours long!

Well, no, the unpopular rides probably still had short lines or no lines at all, but you’re making the point that the park was unusually crowded.

She hasn’t slept more than an hour at a time since the baby was born.

OK, maybe that one’s not an exaggeration, depending on how demanding the newborn baby is.

The Horse and His Boy is  one of the Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis, which are some of my favorite books. One of the characters in that book is telling her servants about the importance of keeping a particular secret, and this is how she threatens them:

“No one is to be let out of the house today. And anyone I catch talking about this young lady will be first beaten to death and then burned alive and after that be kept on bread and water for six weeks. There.”

– Lasaraleen in The Horse and His Boy, by CS Lewis, p.106

Today’s parable from Jesus is just as absurd as these exaggerations.

The king invites a bunch of guests to a banquet in celebration of his son’s wedding, but no one comes.

Really? Who ignores a royal summons?

And then the king sends out slaves to encourage the guests to come with delightful descriptions of the feast that is ready and waiting, but the guests aren’t impressed.

         Hey – free food! Do you really think no one would be tempted by that?

         At least a teenager or two would find their way in, wouldn’t they?

But they didn’t, apparently. And then the people who were invited decide to kill the messengers.

Whoa. That’s a pretty severe reaction. I mean, I’m no expert – well, I do watch a lot of CSI, but I don’t have a lot of personal experience with this… I’d imagine that it’s more work to kill someone and clean yourself up afterwards than just to go to the banquet and eat the free food. Why go to the extra trouble of killing the king’s slaves?

In response to the murder of a few of his slaves, the king goes to war against the people – his people – and burns their city – his city. This doesn’t sound like a good policy for a king to follow if he wants to keep his throne.

Well, apparently after his subjects killed some of the slaves, and the king killed many of his subjects and burned their city, there were still folks left roaming the smoke-filled streets. The king still had a full staff of other slaves he could send out to invite people in from the main streets to join in the feast – the feast that apparently had been sitting in Nescos to stay warm while the war was raging and the city was burning.  

If it was so important to have people at this feast, why didn’t the king just feed it to his soldiers? It would have saved him a whole bunch of trouble.

But the point isn’t what would make sense for a rational person to do. The point is that this parable is absurd and unbelievable.

I don’t know whether Jesus was trying to exaggerate the violence of the people, or the power of the king, or the importance of the feast, or what. This is a confusing parable on many levels.

But what I do know is that Jesus was not trying to tell a believable tale here. His listeners are supposed to understand that this situation is ridiculous.

And just like when we tell ridiculous stories, and exaggerate the details in order to make a point, Jesus is trying to make a point in the parable today.

Or, since it’s a parable, there might be several layers of meaning and many different points that Jesus is making by telling this story.

But for today, let’s just focus on one of those points.

What is your commitment to God, really?

Jesus is at the end of his ministry.

In Matthew, chapter 21, shortly before today’s reading, Jesus entered Jerusalem to the shouts of Hosanna, while people laid down coats and tree branches to prepare a way for his triumphal entry into the city.

Through this chapter of Matthew, and on into chapters 23, 24, and 25, Jesus continues some pretty serious teaching. He’s not particularly nice here – his teaching gets more pointed at the end of his life, it includes more imperatives to renew your relationship with God. Jesus emphasizes the life-or-death importance of faith.

In Matthew chapter 26, Jesus shares his last meal with his disciples, then is arrested.

So today’s parable comes just a few days before Jesus will be arrested and put to death. He knows that the powers that be are drawing closer and preparing to punish him. He has predicted his own death and told his disciples about it.

Which means that the disciples have heard about what’s at stake, and they should have some idea of what’s about to happen – even if they don’t like it, they’ve heard Jesus talking about his own death a few times now. They know that the stakes in his ministry are high.

And today Jesus tells this confusing, exaggerated parable about a king giving a wedding feast for his son.

Given the context of where Jesus is at in his ministry, considering that he knows he’s at the end of his life, I think he’s returning to the beginning. He’s ready to play his hand and call the bluff of everyone else at the table.

What is your commitment to God, really?  

This is what Jesus is asking by telling today’s parable.

Jesus expects high levels of accountability from his followers.

So today’s parable asks the listener, are you ready to put your money where your mouth is?

To quote an old Elvis song, what Jesus wants is a little less conversation, a little more action, please!

If you’re really my disciple, Jesus asks, are you actually following me?

Did you drop your daily tasks to come when I invited you?

Did you listen to and respect my messengers?

Did you respond appropriately to the call to be a disciple?

Are you actually present here, at the table where God’s servants throughout time will be feasting together for eternity?

If you’re too distracted by your daily tasks, Jesus suggests – if you’re too busy to listen to the voice of God – you’d better watch out. Your priorities are confused. And there may be a price to pay if you don’t fix those priorities quickly.

In Matthew 21 and 22, Jesus teaches a lot about total commitment to God.

The greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and the second is like it – to love your neighbor as yourself.

In the Temple in Jerusalem, Jesus turns over the tables of the moneychangers and argues that the Temple should be re-focused on being a house of prayer.

There have been a few other confusing parables in the recent Gospel readings we’ve had the past few Sundays, and while they may be difficult to follow and even sometimes absurd like today’s story – the parables that Jesus uses here help us remember that a commitment to following Christ is what makes us a Christian.

It’s like I said in last week’s sermon – Jesus is life! The rest is just details.

So today Jesus is saying – enough with the discussion and debate! I’m calling the question. It’s time to make a decision, time to fish or cut bait.

Are you committing your entire lives to God? Will you put God’s needs before your own? Will you answer when God asks you to do something?

Or will you be like the guests in today’s parable, who ignore the invitation, make excuses, and even react violently when there’s an attempt to force them into doing something they won’t like?

That brings up a good point, really.

It may not be pleasant to follow Jesus.

There are times when it will be hard, stressful, maybe even countercultural.

But following Jesus is still the most important thing that you will ever do.

Jesus has already made all the Passion predictions in the Gospel of Matthew – before he tells this parable, he has told his disciples several times that he must suffer and die in order to fulfill his purpose on this earth.

The disciples don’t like that.

Whenever Jesus talks about his own death, sometime tries to talk him out of it.

So today Jesus changes the stakes.

You don’t really get a choice, is what the parable implies.

When God asks you to jump, you ask how high.

When there’s an opportunity to follow God – when you are invited to a free five-star meal – you go! That’s really what the appropriate response must be, both for the disciples and for us.

Today’s parable uses exaggeration and ridiculousness to make the very simple point that following God is the most important thing that we will ever do.

In just a moment we will sing about having a commitment to follow Jesus. I recommend that you think about the words, and actually pray that God would help you follow through on them.

Jesus is asking – will you come and follow me? Will you let your life be changed? Will you leave yourself behind and move ahead in faith, following the guidance of the Holy Spirit, even when it’s a little scary? Are you willing to take risks and step out of your comfort zone because of your faith?

That is what Jesus is asking us to do. Here, at the end of his life, he knows that discipleship isn’t about comfort and feeling good. It’s about sacrifice and selflessness. That is what he expects from his followers.

Let’s sing together, and pray that we will have the courage to follow where Jesus leads.

Amen.

The song we sang next was The Summons (or Will You Come and Follow Me), #798 in the hymnal Evangelical Lutheran Worship. The tune is traditional Scottish, and words are by John Bell of the Iona Community in Scotland (copyright 1987).

Thank you to Lance Pape's commentary on Working Preacher this week for much of the inspiration for this sermon! http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2204

Global

Pentecost 17A, 10/5/14
Philippians 3:4b-14
Global Church Sunday

Lord, help us to treat you and your messengers with respect and love. Make us the cornerstone of your church and help us to bear fruit in your name. Amen.

Christians in every hemisphere, continent, and time zone today are gathering together for worship. This is World Communion Sunday. It is a day to honor the things we share with other Christian denominations – Scripture, Baptism, and Communion. Today we are also experiencing music from churches around the world.

This day isn’t about denying the cultural and theological differences among us, but about recognizing that there is at least one thing that ties us all together as Christians: our faith in Jesus Christ. The namesake of our religion is the only reason that any of our congregations and denominations exist in the first place.

So Global Church Sunday, as we celebrate it in this congregation, is a day to remind ourselves that the church is not about us. It is about Jesus. It is so much bigger than our building and our members.

Church    is about faithfully living as disciples of Jesus.

And people can do this – people have been doing this – in countries and cultures around the world for the past two thousand years.

Today we take a moment to recognize God’s presence and activity in places outside our own doors.

Sometimes when we get too familiar with something, it can start to seem old or boring. Getting outside of our comfort zone can bring us excitement and inspire new ideas to bring back to our everyday lives.    Welcoming people from other cultures is one way to help us see our world in new ways.

Many of you met Eva, who was with us for about a week in July. Eva is a social work student from Slovakia. She was spending time in our town as part of a global exchange program through the ELCA.

The Sunday that Eva worshipped with us, she helped me serve Communion. This was something she had never experienced before – only the pastor serves Communion in her home church. The idea that anyone who receives Communion is eligible to serve    was totally foreign to her.

It’s something we take for granted – and truly, something we appreciate, when many of you step up as volunteers to help serve – so hearing about Eva’s experience of serving Communion in our congregation was moving.

Being among us, in a culture outside of her own comfort zone, Eva was able to experience God in a new way.

We have at least as much to learn as Eva does.

Have you ever been to worship with people who spoke a language that you did not know?

A colleague of mine tells a story of his year volunteering with the church in Africa. He was invited to prayer meetings once a week, and he went because he was expected to go, but he wasn’t really sure what his role was supposed to be. He didn’t understand what people were saying, and didn’t see how he could participate in these gatherings. Eventually, he started to let his mind wander while he was at these meetings every week.

After several months, he had a better grasp on the language, so one night he actually paid attention to the words that were being prayed.

He was shocked to discover that once a week, from the time he arrived, the community had been gathering to pray for him, and his ministry among them.

Just because you don’t understand the words that are being said, doesn’t mean that God isn’t acting through them on your behalf.

Have any of you ever prayed with a congregation or in a building that is older than our country – or older even than our denomination?

The oldest Christian communities in the world are in Palestine, and the oldest remains of Christian church buildings in the world are in Syria and Jordan. These ancient churches weren’t planted by some European missionary in the age of colonialism, these communities were started by Jesus’ original disciples.

They were around even before the New Testament was compiled or the Nicene Creed written.

But you don’t have to travel to the Middle East to find ancient Christian churches.

I once visited the York Minster in northern England. It’s the largest cathedral in Britain, and boasts the biggest medieval stained glass window in the world. Construction on this cathedral started    about 200 years before Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg, Germany, starting the Protestant Reformation.

Imagine the wealth of knowledge    and the depth of tradition    held by these communities in Jordan, Syria, and Palestine.    Think of what we can learn by studying the artwork and the stained glass of ancient cathedrals. What kinds of things might we learn from these places and communities about spirituality and discipleship?

I could go on all morning. There is so much to learn by stepping out of our comfort zone. God can speak to us through the traditions and cultures and even the languages of other people.

If you are ever presented the opportunity of going on an international mission trip, I hope you take it. Your faith will be deepened by what you experience among God’s people somewhere else in the world.

But I don't have the money to send each of you to a church in some other country for worship this morning, so we’re attempting to bring some of those traditions to you.

That’s why we’ve got songs from all over the world in worship today, some old and some new. That’s why we dedicated an entire service to doing things that are a little bit different from what we do on a normal Sunday here in our community.

When I was studying at Luther Seminary, I heard a comment from a student who was about to graduate – who was about to be ordained – about how he believed it wasn’t important, at all, to learn about traditions of Christians around the world. He was just going to be called to serve a small parish in the rural Midwest, full of people of Scandinavian descent, he said. None of that multicultural stuff mattered to him or to them.

He couldn’t have been more wrong.

What matters    is Christ.

And none of us has a monopoly on understanding Christ, or knowing when and where God shows up.

That is why connecting with the global church is important.

Everything that we can use to identify ourselves – our family name, our parents, our children, our professional achievements, our reputation in the community, our ethnic heritage and our nationality – none of these matter at all.

Compared with knowing Christ, none of these other things, none of these measures of our identity in the world, carry any kind of importance.

Rural Midwestern Scandinavian Lutheran – none of those adjectives have meaning when compared with the name Christian.

“Whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ.

More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”

Paul summarizes the essence of Christian identity in today’s passage from his letter to the church in Philippi.

“For Christ’s sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ

and be found in him. Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”

Paul had enviable social status in the Jewish community in the first century.

He was the guy that everyone wanted to be.

But none of it mattered.

As a Christian, Paul knew that those earthly measures weren’t going to gain him salvation.

All that matters, at the end of the day, is growing in faith,    growing closer to God.

A few years ago, there was a popular series of t-shirts and key chains and stickers and whatnot. They said things like “Football is Life. The rest is just details.”

Do you remember that fad? Maybe you still own one of those shirts… ?

Well anyway, that’s actually a pretty accurate description of Christianity.

         Jesus is Life. The rest is just details.

We can learn from Paul, and from Christians around the world, about many ways of practicing our faith. What’s most important is that we prioritize Christ above any other identity that we think is important. Jesus is bigger than our local congregation, bigger than Norwegian American Lutherans, bigger than the ELCA, bigger than we could ever understand.

Other cultures might have deeper ways of praying, more meaningful ways of worshipping, bolder ways of living as a disciple. Christians around the world can teach us about following Jesus and can help us grow in faith.

Contrary to what that seminary student said, Global Church Sunday matters, because Christ matters.

         Christians can only grow in faith when that faith is practiced in community.

And Christians can grow more deeply in faith when those communities are connected to one another, bridging the barriers of distance and language and denominational affiliation.

In Christ, may we all be one.

Amen.