Sermon Recording:

Sermon for October 18, 2026  

“Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.”  

Well. Whether we hear it from the King James or the New Revised Standard Updated version, if this isn’t an appropriate introduction to Stewardship Season, I’m not sure what is…

“Give therefore to the emperor…”

Jesus’ deceptively simple response to the Pharisees and the Herodians is an invitation to ponder the relationship between a life of faith, our civic responsibility, and how we and the church relate to money. And as Jesus and his interlocutors discovered, there is plenty to be mined from this brief encounter.

First of all, we need to identify the players in the drama. We have the Pharisees, who are part of the religious authorities, and the Herodians, a group not named anywhere outside of the Gospels, but who are thought to have been a political group affiliated either with Herod Antipas (the Tetrarch or minor king responsible for the death of John the Baptist) or with the Herodian dynasty in general. The important thing to know is that the Herodians were supporters of Rome and the Emperor, while the Pharisees were emphatically not. And yet today we see the two groups in cahoots, seeking to entrap Jesus in a lose-lose predicament. First, they try to butter him up; they call him a great teacher, they call him sincere, they say he is fair-minded. Then they lower the boom:

“Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?”

If Jesus says yes, he inflames the Pharisees, and probably many of his own supporters. If he says no, he runs afoul of Caesar. It’s like that scene from the 1957 film, Witness for the Prosecution in which Charles Laughton’s character demands of the defendant, “Were you lying then or are you lying now?”

But Jesus sees through their smarmy flattery, calling them hypocrites, which at the time literally meant playactors. He demands to see a coin. 

The coin is significant here. It is a reminder of the ubiquity of Roman power. Caesar’s image promulgates the myth of his godlike nature, as well as exerting civic control of the people, who are required not only to revere Caesar as divine, but to pay tribute in the form of taxes, which are not intended for the well-being of everyone, but to expand the Empire and to fill the pockets of the ruling elite, the cronies and the collaborators. Rome is inescapable in this occupied territory; not even the inside of people’s pockets can evade the gaze, or the reach, of the Emperor. Caesar, in short, thinks that he owns everything and can do with it whatever he wants.

And Jesus knows this. He knows the power of Rome, and he will feel its crushing weight all too soon. But he also knows that political power is not the same as moral authority. He knows that Caesar, for all of his kleptocratic ways, and statues and banners and coins and triumphal arches and ballrooms is no match for God, or for God’s economy of mercy, God’s currency of love, and God’s Dream of reconciliation and justice. Caesar doesn’t stand a chance, because, in fact, it is God, not Caesar, who owns everything.

So there is irony in Jesus’ teaching, but it is an irony that treads a gossamer-thin line that leaves the questioners speechless. Jesus knows the danger of not paying tribute to Caesar and he doesn’t want to ask his people to defy the Empire by withholding what it demands. The people trade every day in the Roman economy; it is a fact of life in this time and place; it is how they survive. But at the same time God’s faithful see the Emperor’s image on their coins and know idolatry for what it is and that what God expects of them far transcends mere money. To give to Caesar and to give to God at the same time is to be aware of the nature of the currency we hold and the attitude with which we give it.

So we return to Jesus’s question:

“Whose head is this, and whose title?”

Whose image is on this coin?

Whose…image?

If Jesus’s question of the Herodians and the Pharisees is one side of a coin, then the question on the other side might be, whose image do we bear? Whose image marks all of God’s creatures, indelibly and irrevocably? And what does that mean?

If we are image-bearers of a loving God, what do we owe to God and to our fellow image-bearers? How do we live this out as Christians and as citizens, which are identities that are not so much siloed and separate as woven together into the fabric of who we are in the world? 

Author and priest Debie Thomas says this:

“When I look to Jesus to think about how to practice my faith in the political realm, I see no path to glory that sidesteps humility, surrender, and sacrificial love. I see no permission to secure my prosperity at the expense of another’s suffering, no evidence that truth telling is optional. I see no kingdom that favors the contemptuous over the brokenhearted and no church that thrives for long when it aligns itself with power… So yes, by all means give the emperor what belongs to him. But remember that our first debt is to a power that will remain long after earthly empires rise and fall. Our first and highest debt is to love.”

Our first and highest debt is to love.

I told you this was a great introduction for Stewardship Sunday.

The theme for this year’s campaign is “To Seek and to Serve”, which is inspired by our Baptismal Covenant, in which we vow “to seek and serve Christ in all persons,” loving our neighbor as ourselves. At first, I thought I was so brilliant and original in coming up with this theme, until I noticed that it is also used by Episcopal Charities and Episcopal Relief and Development. But, if we are going to imitate other organizations, it doesn’t get much better than to reflect those whose mission is compassion toward others who bear God’s image. Because that is the invitation and challenge of Beloved Community that the Body of Christ aspires to.

Our annual stewardship campaign is about establishing a budget for the coming year. It is about keeping the lights on, the infrastructure running smoothly, and the staff paid for the herculean work that they do. Yes/and, all of this makes possible our ministries of inspiring worship, warm fellowship, and compassionate service, which is how we relate to God, each other, and the world outside our doors. 

How do we render unto God the things that are God’s? 

Even when the currency we use is, well, currency, which is part of the worldly economy, our mindset and yes, our heartset is what makes all the difference. Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass and more recently The Serviceberry, writes of the threefold gift economy that is shared by all creatures. In the gift economy we receive abundant gifts out of God’s generosity, and express our gratitude, through reciprocity—by returning those gifts, often in another form and by passing it on to others, who receive our generosity with gratitude, and then reciprocate generously, and so on. An example of this might be the trees that receive the rain that helps them to grow and produce shade, fruit, and oxygen to the benefit of other living creatures. We receive abundantly from God, often without thinking about it, which is why we sometimes say before the Eucharist, “All things come of thee, O Lord, and of thine own have we given thee.” When we give to others out of gratitude for what we have received, we are part of the gift economy, mirroring the ever-flowing generosity, gratitude, and reciprocity of Creation, all of which is imprinted with God’s image.

We are rendering unto God what is God’s.

So, friends, what will be our heartset? 

“Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?”

I will, with God’s help.”