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For: Pilgrim Lutheran Church, Kilgore, TX
On: The Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost (LSB 3-year Proper 24 A), 2023 October 22
Text: Mt 22:15-22; Title/Theme: “In God we trust” Hymns: LSB 940, 781, 792, 535, 719
+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. (Amen.)
What comes to your mind when you hear the expression “dead presidents”? Wikipedia “disambiguates” such things as a 1995 action-movie called “Dead Presidents”, that movie’s soundtrack, an American hip-hop group called “Dead Prez”, two songs performed by American rapper Jay‑Z, and that for which Jay-Z’s songs were named, namely money, because images of “dead presidents” appear on most Federal Reserve notes (Wikipedia). The use of “dead presidents” is not required, but, by the present federal law, all U-S currency and coins must include the national motto, “In God We Trust”. The likeness and inscription on a coin in Jesus’s day were part of an object-lesson of a sort in today’s Gospel Reading, in which Gospel Reading Jesus essentially answered the Pharisees and Herodians’ question about whether or not it was lawful to pay taxes by saying to render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s. This morning we consider primarily today’s Gospel Reading under the theme “In God we trust”.
As we heard today, the Pharisees, to whom we last week heard Jesus tell the so-called “Parable of the Wedding Feast” (Matthew 22:1-14; confer 21:45-46), immediately went and plotted how to entangle Jesus in His words and then sent their disciples with the Herodians in order to, having flattered Jesus falsely, ask Him a question that they thought would catch Him. The usual thinking is that either Jesus would say that paying taxes was not lawful, and so the Herodians could report Him as an insurrectionist to their Roman occupiers, or Jesus would say that paying taxes was lawful, and so the Pharisees could portray Him as disloyal to His occupied nation. Instead, Jesus characteristically escaped the trap! Jesus said the coin, with its “likeness” (or “image” [KJV, ASV, NKJV]) of Caesar and its inscription, which likely claimed Caesar to be “the son of god” and “highest priest”, was to go to Caesar, and, implicitly, people, created in the “image” of God and “inscribed” as God’s (Genesis 1:26-27; Ezekiel 9:4), were to go to God.
After President Biden Thursday night announced his request for more than 100‑billion dollars in aid for Israel and Ukraine, among other things, I read a report that said that our country’s budget deficit already had virtually doubled from one year to the next: from one‑trillion dollars in 20‑22 to two‑trillion dollars in 20‑23, about one-third of the budget. The national debt now exceeds 33‑trillion dollars, so Caesar can use all the “coin” we can give him. And, pay our taxes, we should—no matter how intolerably governments may tax us. They can take our possessions and even our lives; we should gladly give them everything but the Gospel. Of course, we do not render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s as we should. Much less do we render to God the things that are God’s as we should. We were created in the image of God—not that we looked like God, but that we knew Him and willed only to do His will—but, after humankind’s fall into sin, we no longer knew Him by nature and by nature willed only not to do His will. Though we are still distinct from all other creatures as rational beings, our reason and everything else is totally corrupt. We children of sinful Adam are fathered in his likeness, in his image (Genesis 5:3). The original sin we inherit leads us to commit countless, sometimes unspeakable, actual sins. So, we deserve nothing but both death here and now and torment in hell for eternity, unless God, as He does, calls and enables us to turn in sorrow from our sin and to trust in Him to forgive our sins for Jesus’s sake. So, “In God we trust”.
The Divinely‑inspired St. Paul writes that Jesus, the beloved Son of God, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins, is the image of God (Colossians 1:13-15). Again, he writes that unbelievers do not see the light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ, Who is the image of God (2 Corinthians 4:4). Jesus is the true Son of God in human flesh and the true High Priest. Jesus knew God perfectly and perfectly did God’s will. The Jewish leaders wrongly accused Jesus of forbidding them to paying taxes to Caesar so that the Romans would crucify Jesus (Luke 23:2). But, out of God’s love, mercy, and grace, Jesus died on the cross for your sins, my sins, and the sins of the whole world. He died in our place, the death that we deserve, and then He rose from the dead. What the Pharisees’ disciples and the Herodians said as false flattery, we believe: that Jesus is true and teaches the way of God truthfully. We are not saved by our rendering to Caesar or to God the things that are theirs, but we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. When we trust God to forgive us for Jesus’s sake, then God does forgive us. As with the Thessalonian believers in today’s Epistle Reading (1 Thessalonians 1:1-10), the Gospel comes to us not only in word, but also in power, in the Holy Spirit, and with full conviction. So, as St. Paul writes elsewhere, just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we also bear the image of the man of heaven (1 Corinthians 15:49).
Baptized into Christ Jesus, we are re-created, new creations (1 Corinthians 5:17). God’s image is restored in us as we are inscribed with the sign of the cross upon our foreheads and upon our hearts (for example, Revelation 7:3) and as His Triune Name is put upon us with water (Matthew 28:19). That Triune Name is retraced and repeated when we privately confess the sins that particularly trouble us and are individually absolved. And, wondering what we should render to the Lord for all His benefits to us, we lift up the cup of salvation and call on the Name of the Lord (Psalm 116:13). In the Sacrament of the Altar, bread that is the Body of Christ given for us and wine that is the Blood of Christ shed for us give us forgiveness of sins and so also life and salvation.
God worked through the Persian ruler Cyrus, as we heard in today’s Old Testament Reading (Isaiah 45:1-7), and God worked through the Roman rulers, as we hear in the New Testament, and God can work through secular rulers in our time, too. We are citizens of what we can call two “realms”, or two “kingdoms”: of both the “state” and the “Church”. And, as what we render to Caesar supports the governments and all of the governments’ benefits to us, so also what we render to God supports the Church and all of the Church’s benefits to us. Pilgrim’s Council today and Pilgrim’s Voters in three weeks will decide what budget the congregation should have, with the currently proposed budget having a projected deficit, though that deficit is a smaller percentage of the total budget than the federal government’s deficit is of its budget, and Pilgrim’s projected deficit is some 46‑million times lower in dollar value than the federal government’s deficit. Pilgrim’s projected deficit can challenge us to give more, although ultimately we do not give in order to meet the budget but out of thanksgiving for all that God has done for us, especially through His Son Jesus Christ. And, with daily contrition and faith, we live in God’s forgiveness of sins for when we fail to give as we should and sin in any other way.
“In God we trust”. The U-S currency and coins may say it, along with showing the images of dead presidents, but one rightly wonders how much of the country does trust in God. Of course, Christians trust in God not primarily for the country’s temporal security, but we trust in God primarily for our eternal salvation. What Jesus said to Pilate is true: Jesus’s Kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36). However, after Jesus comes in glory to judge the living and the dead, the kingdom of this world will become the Kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and He will reign forever and ever (Revelation 11:15).
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +