Who Gets What?

Matthew 22:15-22

October 18, 2026

 

            My first theology class in seminary was intimidating. My professor, Dr. Dawe, was delightful and kind, but that didn’t make the content of the class any easier for me to grasp. Many of my fellow classmates were religion majors in college. They were already fluent in the language of theology, while I was still trying to learn my theological ABCs. The class was intimidating in general. But when we were given a big assignment to compare and contrast Karl Barth and Gustavo Gutierrez, two leading theologians and their particular branches of theological thought, the intimidation became specific.

            Dr. Dawe told us that most people would choose to write a paper on this, but he also told us that he would accept more creative approaches as well. I chose both ways. I realized that if I were going to understand the differences, I would need to see them. So, I created a collage. I went through magazines and found pictures that I thought represented Barth and pictures that represented Gutierrez and I laid them out on a poster board, Barth on one side and Guttirez on the other. When I could see the differences, then I could write my paper.

            In preparing for this sermon, I’ve tried to create a mental collage like the one I did for theology. I picture one side labeled as Caesar and one side labeled God. What belongs to Caesar? What belongs to God? Who gets what? On the surface, this might seem like an easy exercise. Caesar should have very little if anything. Maybe some money and taxes. God should have everything else because everything belongs to God. We all belong to God. Thanks be to God. Alleluia. Amen. Yet I know it’s not that simple, because no matter how much I try to make clear boundaries and keep the two categories separate, Caesar is everywhere. Nothing is as clean cut and simple as we might like it to be.

            On the surface this passage is about taxation. You’ve heard the expression that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. That aphorism is here at the beginning of our passage. The Pharisees and the Herodians may not have been enemies, but they were definitely not friends. They did not work together. They usually stood in opposition to the other. On paper, the Pharisees, as the religious leaders, were against collaborating with the Roman government. They believed in the authority of God alone. They were proponents and keepers of the Law, which took precedence over any other human-made law. The Herodians, as their name suggests, cooperated with the Roman government. It was safer and more expedient to be on the side of might, even if might was not necessarily right.

            But neither group liked Jesus, and they didn’t like how he influenced the people and undermined their authority. They did not appreciate the grave danger that he put all of them in. So, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, which means that it would be better for all of them to unite forces and get rid of this guy? That is their true motivation in this story. Get rid of Jesus by whatever means necessary, and they come together with a question intended to do just that.  

            The Pharisees sent their disciples along with the Herodians to ask Jesus a question about taxes. They begin with flattery.

            “Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality. Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?”

            Yeah. Right. Jesus saw through their oozing adulation and named it – hypocrisy. Jesus was profoundly adept at taking a question meant to trick and trap him and putting it back onto the questioner. The Pharisees and the Herodians want to entrap him, because if he says that it is lawful to pay taxes, the people will turn against him. If he says that it is not lawful to pay taxes, then the Herodians can claim he is guilty of treason. Jesus loses either way. But Jesus was not about to step into their trap. He knows exactly what they’re doing.

Why are you testing me, you hypocrites? Fine, you want to know about taxes. Here’s your answer. Give me a coin. One of them handed him a denarius. He looked at it, then asked,

            “Whose head is this, and whose title?” They replied, “It’s the emperor.”

            Then there is your answer. Give to the emperor what belongs to the emperor and give to God what belongs to God.

Over and over again, Jesus’ words have been interpreted through the lens of separation of church and state. If even Jesus implies that there is a dividing line between them, then the two should be separated. Yet that kind of political and religious separation is our modern understanding. I’m not, in any way, stating that in our modern context church and state should not be separated. But given the context and the culture of the time, I doubt that anyone listening to Jesus or even the first hearers and readers of Matthew’s gospel would have thought in those terms. Religious law was the law. There would have been no separation between the two.  But that’s also why the empirical tax was so odious. 

This tax was the Roman census or the “head tax” that was instituted when Judea became a Roman province. The tax was not only considered unfair, but it also went against Torah. The land of Israel belonged to God alone. Since Caesar was a usurper, paying the tax was considered an act of disobedience to God. Not only would Caesar’s image have been on the denarius, but the inscription would also have read something like, “In Caesar we trust.” Caesar was not just the governing ruler; as emperor, he was, for all intents and purposes, a god. So paying the Roman head tax meant that the Jewish people consistently broke the first two commandments. They put another god before the Lord God, and they used a coin that bore a graven image. When Jesus asked to see the coin, he was asking those leaders what was in their wallet. How interesting that they could produce this coin which went against the Law and he couldn’t? How interesting that they could produce this particular coin in the temple? The hypocrisy of that, of the religious leaders having a coin like in this in the holiest of places, was not lost on Jesus. 

Even when this passage isn’t interpreted as a reason for separation of church and state, it is used as a way for believers to find their way through a complex world that is driven by money.  Just give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and the rest goes to God. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? But real life is a different beast altogether. We are, like it or not, driven by money. You need a certain amount of money just to survive. If you don’t have it, survival can be tough to say the least. Every week the church gets requests for assistance with utilities and other expenses. The constancy of need just to pay for the basics shows us how necessary having money is, and, more importantly, what it means not to have it.

And let’s be honest, the church is not immune to the demands of money. The session is getting ready to put together the budget for 2027. Budgets are about money – what we have and what we don’t. You saw the numbers last week about the building expenses we’ve had in just a few months. This building requires money. Our programs require money. You pay me to stand in this pulpit. And I need to be paid. As much as I may wish that I didn’t need that, as much as I wish that I could do this for free, I can’t. Because our family is also driven by money – what we have and what we don’t.

If Caesar in this passage is synonymous with money, then Caesar is everywhere. That mental collage I tried to make has no easy, clear lines between Caesar and God. Money is our reality, the same as it was for the people gathered around Jesus.

Jesus was not giving an answer that suggested that any of this was clear cut and simple. I suspect that he understood the complexity of life then, just as he would understand the complexity of life now. Because life is complex and this is a complex issue, I don’t have any easy answers going forward. I don’t have a ten-point list for how to render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.

But a commentary I read reminded me that if that coin bore the image of the emperor, than what image do we bear? The answer is found in Genesis. We were created in the image of God. We bear God’s likeness. We bear God’s fingerprint. It may not be something that we can see with our eyes, but it’s there. And if we bear God’s likeness, then everything we do, every decision we make, should be done with that in mind.

Too often, I find myself thinking, what requires my money and how much will be leftover for God, for the church. I think that needs to be turned on its head. Maybe the question I should be asking is, how does my faith direct my money? How does my belief that we are all created in God’s image direct what I give, how I spend, where I spend? How does my faith determine what I value?

These are questions that cannot be asked just once. Every time I open my wallet, I must ask the question, who gets what and why? We bear the image of God. We were created in God’s likeness. We owe God everything. May we remember that when it comes to money and everything else in this complicated, challenging world we live in. We owe God everything. Thanks be to God.

Let all of God’s children, created in God’s likeness, say, “Alleluia.”

Amen.

The Unrobed Guest

Matthew 22:1-14

October 11, 2026

 

            Mary Cooper is thrilled. Pastor Jeff, the pastor of her church, has asked Mary to create and organize the church’s interactive Halloween experience. This experience is designed to teach participants about the wages of sin and lead them to the church and to God.  

            The experience is Heck House, where each room reveals one of the seven deadly sins and its deadly consequences. As each person works their way through the house, the hope is that they climb the stairs to Heaven. If the project works as it should, people will be appalled and afraid of what they’ve seen in the other rooms, when they reach Heaven they will ask to be saved.

            Mary is excitedly telling her family about her plans for Heck House at the dinner table, when her mother – affectionately known as Meemaw – asks a question.

            “You mean you’re trying to scare people into joining the church?”

            Mary responds that on Halloween people like to be scared anyway, so why not use that fear to push them in the right direction. At this point her youngest son, Sheldon, speaks up and comments that for centuries religion has used fear to motivate people. And, he adds, when you add in a measure of guilt to that fear, it becomes an excellent form of crowd control.

            His mother responds to this by saying that their religion leads by love not fear. Sheldon then asks what happens when people don’t follow the rules. Without hesitating, Mary says in a cheerful voice,

            “Then they burn in hell.”

            When she sees her family staring at her in shock, she quickly adds, “Because God loves them.”

            This is a funny moment from the second season of the television show, Young Sheldon, created as a prequel to The Big Bang Theory. Although it was meant to be funny – and it is – Mary’s comment about burning in hell because God loves them highlights something that I grew up believing to be true. You break the rules, you suffer eternally.

            We touched on this same idea last Sunday, when we dug into the Ten Commandments as a gift from God rather than a means of trapping people into breaking the rules. However, both of our passages today give me pause, because they speak strongly of the opposite of the idea that God gave us a gift when we were given the Law. Both our passages speak to this belief that when we mess up, we face eternal damnation.

            The parables that Jesus tells in these last days before his crucifixion are becoming darker and more dangerous. The tension between Jesus and the religious authorities continues to grow. Everything Jesus says to them pushes him closer to the cross. And he knows it. The plots to have Jesus killed are fomenting. He is angering the religious authorities. He speaks truth to those in power, and therefore he is a threat to those in power. This parable, which is dark and hard to hear, is right in line with what is happening in the world around Jesus.

            “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son.  He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come.  Again he sent other slaves, saying, ‘Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.’  But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, while the rest seized his slaves, mistreated them, and killed them. The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city. Then he said to his slaves, ‘The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Go therefore into the main streets and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.’ Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests.”

            The context in which Jesus is speaking this parable is also dark. As much as the crowds around Jesus have lauded him, followed him, sought after him, and beseeched him, Jesus knows that his ultimate rejection by the world is fast approaching. As I said, he is angering the powers-that-be. He is making enemies, and those enemies are plotting to seek their revenge. That is the context in which Jesus is speaking these parables. But we are dealing with a larger context as well because Matthew is writing his gospel account to a particular audience in a particular context too.

Scholars believe that Matthew’s gospel was written to a church in conflict. His community is splintering. His community, his church, is on the brink of a split. Matthew and those others who have heard the good news of Jesus and believed are most likely the minority. It seems that the majority are unwilling or unable to hear or believe the good news, and the result is a theological and emotional battle for the soul of the gathered people.

            Although a similar parable to this one is found in the gospel of Luke, Matthew takes this parable and makes it a grave, even sinister, warning. If you do not accept the invitation to the king’s feast, if you decline, even though you were supposed to be on the guest list, you will not only be replaced by someone else, but you will also be destroyed. Yikes.

            And, just as in last week’s parable of the vineyard, the emissaries of the king who brought the invitations were not only dismissed, but some of them were also abused and killed. So it is understandable, I guess, why the king would be angry, but it is still a struggle – at least for me – as to how to grasp the terrible turn that takes place in today’s parable. The king is not only angry. The king sends out his troops and destroys those who declined, those who murdered the emissaries and burns down their city. Then, while the city is on fire, others are invited. The party doors are thrown open to a brand-new guest list. And then there is the poor guy at the end, who accepts the invitation to come to the party, but isn’t wearing the right clothes. Instead of being given a chance to run home and change, he is bound hand and foot and thrown out into the outer darkness. Again I say, yikes!

            How do we interpret this dark and disturbing parable? For years I have only heard this as allegory. Jesus begins by saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet …” Therefore, it must be that the kingdom of heaven is like a great feast, and if you are invited to attend, you really should. Because if you don’t, if you ignore the invitation, or worse, if you harm the messengers of the king otherwise known as God, you will suffer dire and eternal consequences. And if you do come, make sure you pay attention to what you wear. For this party, the right clothing is everything. And I mean everything.

            If Jesus’s point in this parable is to let the religious authorities know that they were invited to God’s great banquet but rejected the invitation and killed the messengers, then it seems to counteract every other thing that I was taught about love and grace and mercy. But is Jesus telling this as an allegory or is something else being shared? If parables were told, as Dr. Amy-Jill Levine said, to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable,” who are the comfortable in this case? Who is being afflicted by the story Jesus tells? And where is God really in this story?

            If God is the king, then all our understandings about God are true. God is great and loving and gracious, unless you cross him. Or is that what we want to believe about God,  because we are convinced that we are the ones who accepted the invitation to the party? Let the others who didn’t suffer for it. We took our seat at the table.  Or did we?

            Theologian and essayist, Debbi Thomas, wrote that perhaps Jesus told this parable as another way to turn things upside down and inside out. Perhaps, she wrote, Jesus wanted the people listening to see that they projected this understanding of God onto God because it made them feel better. Because as long as they believed they were the ones who accepted the invitation, then they felt secure, their anxiety was eased. And anxiety is a great motivator, isn’t it? I think anxiety lies at the heart of our story from Exodus. The people were so anxious about Moses being gone for too long, that they let their anxiety push them into demanding Aaron make a new god for them. The golden calf is not so much about worshipping different gods, it’s about thinking that ultimately we have the power to create the god we want.

            And if there is truth in that, then could it also be true that we turn God into a despotic king who hosts a party inside while outside the city burns? Maybe the king is not God in this parable. Maybe the king is who we want God to be, what we try to make God into. Maybe that king is as much golden calf as the one Aaron makes for the people.

            So, what about the unrobed guest? Thomas ponders the possibility that the divine in this parable is not found in the king but in the unrobed guest. Did this person forget to wear the wrong clothes or did he choose not to? Was his fashion faux pas an act of ignorance or refusal, resistance to the despot king and those who partied with him? Was he unwilling to dress for a party that once again strengthened the misperceptions of who was in and who was out?

            Perhaps, as Thomas suggests, he went to that party unrobed, because he understood that being bound hand and foot and thrown out to the darkness of crucifixion and death was the way of faith. If the divine is to be found in the unrobed guest, then how we read and hear this parable is truly turned upside down.

            Or not. Maybe I’m wrong about all of the above. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time. But I know that too often I put myself into the place of the “good guys” in scripture and forget or ignore or refuse to consider that I might be walking in the shoes of those who just don’t get it. I know that my anxiety about the world, about life, about God, has led me to create golden calves, to fashion God in my own image. And the minute I think I have destroyed those false idols in my life; a new temptation arises and I am rebuilding before I realize what I’m doing. But I know this, God is always bigger than any story of God can proclaim. God is always more than my limited understanding can perceive. God will never stay in the boxes I build to contain him. God will never be found in the golden calves I create.

            And isn’t that the good news? Isn’t that the gospel? That God is more? That God is not what we make God to be? That the kingdom of heaven is unlike any kingdom or empire or realm that we can create? And isn’t the foundation of our faith built on the belief that God comes in unlikely ways to unlikely people? So perhaps God is in that unrobed guest after all? Because we are reminded again and again that God is God and we are not. God is God and we are not. That is good news. That is why I emphatically and joyfully say, thanks be to God.

            Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia.”

            Amen.

           

 

 

The Gift -- World Communion Sunday

Exodus 20:1-4, 7-10a, 12-20

October 4, 2026

 

            The Good Place is the first and only television series I’ve ever watched that included Moral Philosophy and the study of ethics in in the foundation of the show. I don’t want to give too much away, but I can give you a few main points. The premise of the show is that when you die, you wind up in either the Good Place or the Bad Place. And we reach either the Good Place or the Bad Place by a calculation of points. Every day of our lives, we have the opportunity to earn or lose points. We earn points by doing good things and being good people. We lose points by doing bad things and being bad people. It’s that simple, or at least it should be. The rest of the series is one twisty, turny, roller coaster ride as to why the points system is not as simple as it seems. That’s where Moral Philosophy and ethics comes in.

            In the first episode, one of the show’s main characters, Eleanor Shellstrop, wakes up in The Good Place. She meets Michael, her guide to her part of The Good Place. One of Eleanor’s first questions of Michael is who got it right. Which one of the religions got heaven and hell correct? Michael tells her that all of the world’s religions got some of the afterlife right. But he shows her a picture hanging on his wall of a young man in the 1970’s. The young man is Doug Forcett. In the 1970’s, when he was in an, let’s call it an altered state, he had a vision of the afterlife and he described it with a 92 % accuracy. This made him an afterlife hero, which is why  his picture is hanging on the wall.

            In a later episode, we meet Doug Forcett in person. He is an older man living in Calgary, and his perception of the afterlife when he was in his 20’s changed him – but not for the better. He spent the rest of his life so scared of losing points that he gave self-sacrifice a bad name. He would take care of any injured animal. Any injured animal, domestic or wild, even if caring for that animal meant his own life was put in danger. A kid who lived near him came and taunted him on a daily basis, making mean requests of him because he knew that Doug would do them. Doug was so terrified of not earning enough points to get into the good place, he ended up living in relative isolation, unable to be in relationships, and unable to experience any happiness or joy. He was controlled by fear, which does not make for much of a life.

            The points system in The Good Place may be an invention, but it resonated with how I understood God for a long time. When I was a kid, I was convinced that any mistake I made would bring disaster down upon my head. When I was four, I was with my parents in the grocery store. The store had inexpensive paperback novels for sale near the checkout lane. I picked up one of the books and put it in a grocery bag. My mom liked to read, so maybe she would like to read one of these books. When we got home and my parents discovered it, they naturally questioned me. I was terrified. I knew that I had done something wrong, and I knew that I would be punished. But as scared as I was of being punished by my parents and the prospect of going to jail, I was even more scared of being punished by God. If I were in The Good Place, I would definitely have lost points.

            You see God was confusing to me. In Sunday school we learned that God in Jesus was our loving shepherd. He took little children into his arms and blessed them. But we also learned that God was always watching us, and if we ever made a mistake, if we ever put one toe out of line, then God’s foot would come down from the clouds and stomp us like a bug.

            I want to stop for a moment and defend my early religious teachers. I don’t remember any of them ever using the image of a foot stomping on a bug to describe God. But that is the impression I had. And whether I would have admitted it or not, I carried that impression with me well into adulthood. What helped to reinforce that impression of God? The Ten Commandments.

            To be fair, it wasn’t just the Ten Commandments themselves that gave me the idea that God was waiting to stomp me out of existence. It was the story around the giving of the commandments that scared me half to death too. If you look at the passages building up to our verses from Exodus, you will read that it took three days of preparation for the Israelites to be ready to hear these words given by God to Moses. On the third morning, there was thunder and lightning. The mountain of God was covered in thick smoke. From out of nowhere a trumpet blared so loudly that it made every person waiting in the camp tremble and shake.

            This would have terrified me as a kid, and I’m not crazy about it as an adult either. But this colored my association with the Ten Commandments. It is The Law, and it is designed to keep us in line. Or else …

            But was it?

            I don’t want to tell you how old I was and how long I had been in ministry when I began to wonder if God didn’t create the Ten Commandments as a club to hammer the people into submission, which is what I’d always thought. Maybe, just maybe, God gave the people the Ten Commandments as a gift. A gift. God gave them as a gift to help the people, who were being formed into a community, as a way to be in community, to be in relationship with God and with each other.

            When I teach the Ten Commandments to confirmation classes, I encourage the young people to notice the structure of them. They begin by first talking about how we are to be in relationship with God. God has brought the people out of slavery in Egypt. Our God is a liberating God, so don’t create idols because worshipping those idols will make you captives all over again. What idols do we worship today that hold us captive? Money, power, busyness?

            And what about not making wrongful use of God’s name? Is this about swear words or is it about using God’s name to justify evil, to excuse harm, to support the oppression of others? How much of the evil done in the world throughout history and today is done in the name of the Lord? And before we point fingers at other religions, we need to turn those same fingers toward ourselves. Every religion is guilty of this. Every religion continues to be guilty of this.

            Then there is the command to keep the sabbath. Is the sabbath about restriction or is about rest? In the story of creation, God rested on the seventh day. God rested. Shouldn’t we rest too? And shouldn’t we allow the rest of others, other people, animals, creation itself? Instead of rest, though, we have turned sabbath keeping into another list of rules and regulations. Or we ignore sabbath altogether and believe that constant busyness proves our worth as humans.

            I’m not going to explicate every commandment but looking at the rest of them, we see that they are about being in relationship with others. Don’t murder, don’t steal, don’t break relationship, don’t be envious about what others have. Honor the people who have loved you into who you are now. In the gospels Jesus summarized them with this same structure. Love God. Love one another as you love yourselves. The commandments are about relationship – with God and with one another – and I think they are a gift.

            Jesus also taught that his coming was the fulfillment of the Law. He didn’t talk about overturning it or making it obsolete. He talked about fulfilling it. Jesus, as the divine incarnate, showed us what it meant to be human, what it meant to be in relationship with God and with other people. Jesus showed us what it meant to love neighbor as self. Jesus exemplified the gift that is the Law.

            And it seems to me that when Jesus had run-ins with the religious authorities, which is the context of our gospel passage this morning, it was to try and show them that they took the Law God gave them as a gift and turned it into a weapon to be used against those over whom they held power and authority. It was not God who made the commandments into a club to wield against the people. It was the people who did that. And we still do it.

            We still try to use the commandments, the Law, not as a way to build relationship, but as a way to force submission. We use it not as a gift but as a hammer. And when it is used as a hammer, it builds walls between us instead of tearing them down. When we use it as a hammer it pushes people away from God instead of drawing them near. If Jesus tried to tell the religious professionals that they had lost the plot when it came to the Law, then I suspect he would tell us the same thing. We get the letter of the Law, but we never quite capture its Spirit. The Law was meant to be a gift, to build relationship, to create community. And we need that gift more than ever, because our world is one of broken relationships. And that brokenness reveals itself in small ways and large. It reveals itself in harm toward others, toward creation, toward ourselves and toward God.

            I think it is fitting that we think of God’s gift of The Law on this day. Because today is World Communion Sunday. Today is a day when we emphasize our relationships, not just with one another in this place and in this community, but with people all over the world. Today, people in every context and culture, will gather at the table and take the bread and drink from the cup and remember Jesus and what he lived for and what he died for and who he died for. And we all will remember that in him death is not the end but the beginning. We are a resurrection people. And resurrection is not just something that happens in the sweet by and by but in the now. When relationships are built and rebuilt, when we extend the grace that has been given to us, when we forgive as we are forgiven, when we see the Law not as a hammer but as a gift, we participate in resurrection.

            We have been given a gift. We are called to love God and to love one another and to love ourselves. It is a gift. It is the good news. Thanks be to God.

            Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia!”

            Amen.

Power?

Matthew 21:23-32

September 27, 2026

 

            “Because I said so.”

            These four words are some of the most basic, simple, seemingly benign words in the English language. Yet when I was a child, the combination of these common words held the power to undo me. I hated hearing them. To my childish way of thinking, they were the epitome of all that was unfair and unjust in the world.

            All I wanted to know was, “Why?” Why can’t I do this or why can’t I have that? But as a kid, it seemed like the only response I ever received from my parents to my sincere inquiries about the limits enforced upon me was, “Because I said so.”

            I swore on everything I held sacred that when I grew up and had children of my own, I would never, ever say those four words to my own kids. I would always carefully and lovingly explain to my children why they could not do something or why I expected something from them. I would strive to ensure that my children understood my reasoning. The phrase, “Because I said so,” would be anathema in my home.

            Never say never.

            Becoming a parent makes you understand your own parents a little better. My parents were not tyrannical authoritarians. They would often talk to me about their expectations of me, and attempt to explain why they made the decisions they did. But I realize now that there just weren’t enough hours in the day to calmly answer my every questioning of their authority with,

            “Amy, we love you. Your well-being and safety are more important than anything to us.”

Or, “Amy, it is our job as your parents to teach your responsibility, to make sure you can function in society on your own.”

            Or, “We take seriously our task to rear you to be an engaged, thoughtful, compassionate, caring citizen – not just of these United States, but of the world that God has given us.”

            Or, “We set these limits because no matter what the standardized tests say about your intelligence, sometimes your decisions make us question whether you and your brain leave the house at the same time.”

            “Because I said so” was quicker and made the point without a lot of fuss and bother. It is a statement of authority and of power to a certain extent. It states clearly that I am the parent and you are not. Even though as a child I did not like hearing these four words, as a parent I learned quickly that I had to be the parent. I was the parent and my kids were not. Sometimes “Because I said so,” was the surest way to drive that truth home. And to prove that life goes in cycles, just the other day Zach told me how much he hated it when I would say, “Because I said so.” And I thought to myself, “Just wait.”

            Authority and power are at the heart of this passage in Matthew’s gospel. When Jesus comes into the temple, the chief priests and elders approach him while he is teaching and ask, “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?”

            Who gave you the right to do and say what you do and say? Who gave you the power? Who do you think you are?

            The larger context this passage lives in tells us a lot about what is happening within our verses. We are not reading about just a random day in the temple. Significant events led up to this moment and to this question. Chapter 21 begins with Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, or what we know as Palm Sunday. Jesus rode into the city as a king, and because of this the entire population of Jerusalem was cast into confusion and tumult. From there Jesus went to the temple and “cleansed it.” That’s a rather bland way to describe what Jesus really did, which was overturning the tables of the money changers and knocking over the seats of the merchants selling doves. He drove them out and charged them with turning his Father’s house into a den of thieves. Once those folks were gone, he healed people. The blind and the lame came to him to be made whole. This infuriated the religious folks who held their own brand of power, which made the cross loom ever nearer.

            After all this, Jesus left the temple and went to Bethany to spend the night. The next morning, as he made his way back to the temple he stopped by a fig tree hoping to find some fruit for breakfast. But the fig tree was barren; no fruit, just leaves. He cursed the fig tree and it withered at the sound of his voice. The disciples were amazed at this, and Jesus explained it by ascribing it to faith. If you have more faith than doubt, you can tell a mountain to throw itself into the sea and it will happen.

            Now we come to our passage. Jesus has returned to the temple. He is teaching. The chief priests and elders come to him and demand to know who gave him his authority, where does he believe his power comes from, and who the heck does he think he is?! But their question is a trap and Jesus knows it. If Jesus says the wrong thing, then they can accuse him of blasphemy which was no light offense. But the religious authorities have never set a trap for Jesus that he does not see through, so rather than answer their question, he asks one of his own.

            “I will also ask you one question; if you tell me the answer, then I will also tell you by what authority I do these things. Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?”

            The religious folks know that they have stumbled into a snare of their own making. If they say that John’s baptism was of divine origin, then Jesus will want to know why they didn’t believe him. Because wouldn’t that mean they did not believe God? But if they say it was of human origin, then the crowds will turn on them because the people believe that John was a prophet. The only safe answer is the one they give. “We don’t know.”

            Jesus responds, “Well, if you don’t know, then I’m not going to tell you the origin of my authority.”

            But Jesus does tell them a parable about a father and two sons. The father asks both sons to go and work in his vineyard. The first son refuses but then changes his mind and does what has father asked. The second son replies in the affirmative. He will go and work in the vineyard but doesn’t make good on his promise. Jesus questions the questioners,

            “Which of the two did the will of the Father?” They answer, “The first.” Jesus then equates the son who does the will of the Father with tax collectors and prostitutes. The sinners, the castoffs and cast outs of society, the ones who said, “No,” are now the ones who go “into the kingdom of God ahead of you.”

            Jesus makes it clear that John’s authority, John’s power, should have convinced the chief priests and scribes, but they did not believe him. But the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. They heard John. They believed John. They flocked to the wilderness to be baptized by John. They recognized how lost and broken they were and they believed. Even though they originally said no. They changed their mind and they took faith from words to action. So they will go into the kingdom of God ahead of the religious professionals.

            I guess Jesus could have responded to the original question with, “Because I said so.” He was and is the Son of David. He was and is the incarnate coming of the holy into the world. He had that authority and he held that power. Instead, he tells a parable about two sons and turns it back to John. John came with authority, the authority of a prophet, power given by God, but you wouldn’t believe him. You wouldn’t listen to him. Now you demand to know my authority?! Yet the people you have deemed unfit to even be in your presence heard and believed John, and they will be in God’s presence before you will.

            The one thing that the religious leadership – and the disciples and a whole lot of other folks if I’m honest – never really understood is what Jesus tried to teach them about power. I realize the word power is not used in this passage. And while it is a synonym of authority, it does carry a different connotation. Jesus understood where his power and authority came from. It came from the Author of life, of all creation. And I believe that Jesus knew he could have used his power to get what he wanted, to do what he wanted, and to avoid what he wanted to avoid. But he understood what power truly is, and it is a lesson that the people then and us now cannot seem to grasp.

            Jesus understood that power is not something you wield against others. Power is something that you lay down for the sake of others. Isn’t that what the Christ hymn in our passage from Philippians speaks to? He had the power to make the story go in a very different direction, but he chose not to use his power as a weapon but as a blessing instead. 

            The people around Jesus constantly misunderstood his power. And we do too. We think that power is about strength and might. We think that power is something we hold. But Jesus, in everything he did, even driving out the moneychangers, was about turning our notions of power upside down. True strength is found in what the world considers weakness. True power is not something to cling to but to let go. True authority is not what we grasp for ourselves but what is given to us. True wealth comes not from what we hoard but from what we give away. In about five days from the time of this confrontation, the chief priests and elders will think they have won. But that death is just the beginning of the story God continues to write, to author, to create, to speak into being.

            Which son will we be? The one who says no, but then gets a glimpse of the true power of God and says yes to the work of the kingdom? Or will we be like the son who says yes, but then gets lost in the world’s power and abandons the kingdom work to be done? Which power will we follow? Which power will we cling to? That’s the question. Thanks be to God.

            Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia.”

            Amen.

Scandalous Goodness

Matthew 20:1-16

September 20, 2026

 

            A favorite movie of mine is A League of Their Own. It tells a fictionalized version of the All-American Girls’ Professional Baseball League. When the US entered World War II, baseball, like so many other occupations, were short of players and of workers. Wanting to keep the game going, mainly for the morale of the country but also for continued profit, league owners hatched a plan to start a women’s league. If Rosie could be a riveter, then why couldn’t Betty be a ball player?

            Although women were told it was their patriotic duty to go to work in the factories and other positions that were traditionally occupied by men, they were not welcomed with open arms. And as the movie conveys, they were not welcomed on the playing fields either. The women’s league was blasted by men and women alike. It was believed that allowing women to play a professional sport would place traditional femininity at stake. The movie depicts the women ballplayers having to endure things that no male player would ever put up with. I’m not talking about harassment. I’m talking about charm lessons and makeovers. The women had chaperones, even though many of them were married. And while the men played in pants, the women had to play in skimpy skirted uniforms.

            Crowds for the games were small, and they were often booed and mocked. They were told that girls can’t play baseball, even though they were playing baseball. But as the movie progresses, the tide begins to turn. The league begins to gain fans and supporters. Crowd size begins to grow. But the tide of the war is also turning. The allies are starting to win. Mr. Harvey, the owner of the movie’s main team, tells his marketing man, Ira Lowenstein, that once the war was over all the girl’s teams would be dismantled. Lowenstein was dismayed. He was the one who pushed for the teams to be taken seriously. He made sure that the women’s talent was highlighted and broadcast.

            When Harvey tells him that the teams will be dismantled, he protests. This is how it will be everywhere, isn’t it? Women were told it was their patriotic duty to go to work, and now they’ll be told to go back to the kitchen. Harvey responds, “You want the boys coming home from war to go into the kitchen?” This is profoundly unfair and Lowenstein knows it, but that is the way of the world.

            But is it the way of the kingdom? Last Sunday we talked about the math of forgiveness. There’s math at play this week too, although it is written more as a word problem than a multiplication challenge. It’s about the last being first and the first being last.

            These words come at the end of our passage, at the end of the parable that is unique to Matthew’s gospel. It is also considered to be one of the most offensive parables in any of the four gospels. In another one of those tricky kingdom parables, Jesus tells the disciples a story that is meant to give them an insight into the workings of God’s realm.

            Jesus says that the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers to work in his vineyard. It was not unusual at that time for day workers to gather in one place with the hopes of being hired. The landowner must know this, so he goes to that place to find the laborers he needs. He contracts with the workers for the usual daily wage of one denarius. This would have given each worker enough money to feed their families for a few days.

            The landowner takes this first round of workers to his vineyard and they get to work. But there must have been a lot of work to be done, because at nine o’clock, the landowner returns to that same place and sees workers who have not been hired and he tells them to go and work in his vineyard and he will pay them whatever is right. They agree and they go. The landowner repeats this process at noon and at three o’clock. At five o'clock, he must have realized that there was more work to be done before they could call it a day, so he goes one more time to the hiring spot. He sees workers standing around and asks them why they aren’t working. Because no one has hired us, they tell him. So, he hires them. They go to the vineyard to finish up the day’s work.

            When the workday is finally finished, the landowner tells his manager to pay all of the workers. But he tells the manager to pay the workers hired last first. The manager does this, and the workers hired last get one denarius each. I can imagine what the workers hired first and then earlier in the day were thinking when they saw this. They were probably giddy with anticipation at the wages they were about to receive. After all, if these guys hired last got a full denarius, then that must mean they would be paid twice that amount, if not more!

            But I suspect that their eagerness turned to shock and then to anger with each group that was paid. Because they were all getting the same amount. The ones hired last were paid exactly what they, the ones hired first, were paid! How dare the landowner pay them the same amount!

            Their anger becomes fury and they go to the landowner to complain. These last guys you hired worked only one hour, but you have paid them the same as us. We worked all day! We bore the sun and the scorching heat on our backs. Why are you paying us all the same?!

            But the landowner seems confused by their anger. He replies,

            “Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?”

            Are you envious because I am generous? Are we envious because God is generous? Are we envious and angry because God shows such scandalous goodness to people we know don’t deserve it? Are we envious because math in God’s kingdom turns everything upside down?

            Think about Jonah. To claim that he is a disgruntled prophet is an understatement. He is so angry and perturbed at the thought that God might show the people of Ninevah even a scant amount of God’s goodness and grace, he willingly disobeys God’s call. God says, Jonah go to Ninevah. And Jonah turns the opposite direction and jumps on a boat bound for Tarshish.

            To be fair to Jonah, Ninevah was the capital city of Assyria, and the Assyrians were brutal. They were enemies of Israel. They sacked Jerusalem. By the world’s standards, Jonah had a right to want the worst for Ninevah. But to God’s standards, it was a different story.

            God is good all the time. All the time God is good. How often do we say that the phrase with joy? But if we’re honest with ourselves, when we say it are we referring only to God’s goodness to us and to the people we love? Do we want to see that same goodness of God given to the people we despise, to the people we think don’t deserve any measure of grace or goodness? Jonah didn’t want to preach to the Ninevites, because if for some strange reason they listened and repented, he knew God would be good to them. He knew God would forgive them. He was well aware of God’s scandalous goodness, and Jonah wanted no part of it.

            Are we envious because God is generous? Are we angry that God’s goodness extends to all of God’s children, and that scandalizes our sense of fair play?

            Another way to translate this sentence, “Are you envious because I am generous?” is “Is your eye evil because I am good?”

            Is your eye evil because I am good?

            I think about this in two ways. The first is that the expression, “the eyes are the window to the soul,” is not just a nice thing to say. My understanding is that it comes from the belief that people could get a glimpse into someone’s soul through their eyes. If someone talks and acts warmly, but their eyes are cold, what do we perceive about them? So, by saying this was Jesus referring to the soul of the people who were angry at the goodness of the landowner? Maybe.

            The second way that I am trying to get my head around this translation is the idea that some cultures put a lot of stock on the evil eye. We can give people the evil eye, and you definitely don’t want the evil eye placed on you. This is something that you might hear about in Greece. My sister talks about the evil eye. If someone put the evil eye on you, it needs to be taken off. Quickly.

            When Brent and I went to Greece two years ago, everything seemed to go wrong on our way there. Our first flight was delayed. We ended up staying overnight in Toronto and lost a full day in Athens. When we finally got to Athens, we waited for two hours while they tried to find my luggage. We finally reunited with my sister and brother-in-law, and then his car broke down on the way to their home. My brother-in-law has the family gift of seeing that an evil eye was put on someone, and apparently someone had gotten to me. He prayed for me, and things got better.

            Is this superstition? Maybe. Is it true? Maybe, maybe not. But whether we can actually put an evil eye on someone or not, I think deep down we all have moments when we want to. Jonah would have gladly put an evil eye on the Ninevites rather than preach God’s mercy to them. He would have preferred death to being called to preach to them. The workers who went to the vineyard first would have put an evil eye on the landowner and the other workers too because they resented the goodness shown to them. Is your eye evil because I am good. Are you envious because I am generous?

            The first shall be last and the last shall be first. Math in the kingdom of heaven turns everything upside down. It upends our sense of who belongs in and who deserves to be out. It throws everything we think we understand about the world off kilter because God wants goodness for all of his children. All of them! And that scandalizes us. That offends us. That makes us angry and resentful against others and against God. But God’s scandalous goodness is the good news of the gospel. God’s scandalous goodness covers us as well. We assume we are the first who will be last, but maybe to someone else, we are the last who will be first. God’s scandalous goodness covers us all, so hard as it is, let’s lay down our resentment and envy and give thanks that the kingdom of heaven is not designed by us but by God. Let us give thanks for God’s scandalous goodness. Thanks be to God.

            Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia.”

            Amen.

 

The Math of Forgiveness

Matthew 18:21-35

September 13, 2026

 

            I am not a math person. It’s not just that I don’t like math, it’s that I have math anxiety. Sometimes that anxiety can feel crippling. I have dealt with math anxiety for years and years. The last time I remember not having math anxiety was third grade. But as I recall, multiplication tables were beginning to test my early math calm, so third grade may have been the gateway grade to my mathematics challenges.

When I was in junior college, I took college algebra and was struggling to understand and struggling to deal with my anxiety. My teacher was a very kind, very patient woman, and she tutored me outside of class. When I was sitting with her working through the equations, they made some sense. I could figure them out. I didn’t stop working when the tutoring ended. I studied at home too. But the minute I sat down to take the test any comprehension I thought I had about algebra was gone. I couldn’t figure out the equations. I didn’t know what I was doing. I remember how panic would just well up in me. It was awful. Even today, if you were to ask me to do some calculations beyond any basic math, and you insisted on watching me do the work, I would probably start to cry. Even if I don’t full on cry, I will definitely be fighting back tears. Ask me to write an essay, and I can write rings around anybody. But ask me to do math, and I’m a hot mess.

            This is why whenever we come to these verses from Matthew’s gospel, I get a little panicky. In the verses we read last week, Jesus gives the disciples a way to handle conflict when it arises in the community, because Jesus understood that conflict would arise. The community of the faithful is not immune to conflict, so when it arises here is a way to work through it. This conversation continues in our verses this morning. Peter takes the next step from resolving conflict to forgiveness of someone who has wronged him. He asks Jesus just how many times he is required to forgive another member of the church who harms him. Lord, should I forgive this person as many as seven times? And Jesus responds,

            “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.”

            The seventy-seven can also be translated as seventy times seven, which for the math people out there is 490 times. (I used the calculator on my phone.) But I don’t think that Jesus was trying to make the point that there is an exact number for forgiving someone. I think that Jesus was trying to get to the heart of what it means to forgive someone and what forgiveness and forgiving is.

            To explain this, Jesus turns to a parable. He tells the disciples a kingdom parable which is more than just a clever way to begin the story. When Jesus began a parable making a comparison to God’s kingdom, then the people listening needed to take heed because the kingdom of God is everything. So, the parable begins with the kingdom of heaven may be compared to … fill-in-the-blank.

Jesus fills in this blank with the story of a despot king who decides to settle accounts with his enslaved laborers. While it is unlikely that any king would ever lend a laborer one coin, this particular ruler has lent this particular person an enormous sum of money. The enslaved man owes 10,000 talents. This huge debt would roughly equal 150,000 hours of labor. In other words, the laborer is never going to be able to pay it off in his lifetime. It was ludicrous on the king's part to even think that would be possible. Of course, the man can't pay. In response the king ordered him to be sold, along with his entire family -- wife, children, everyone. The man falls down in front of the king and pleads for mercy. In what appears to be a total contradiction of character, the king grants it. He forgives the debt. 

            You would think that this enslaved man who has been forgiven such a great debt, who has been shown so much grace and mercy, would immediately want to bestow the same grace and mercy on someone else. You would think wrong. No sooner than the laborer leaves the king’s chambers, he runs into another laborer who owes the first one money. This debt is relatively small. Especially in comparison with the original debt owed to the king. But when the second indebted slave asks for mercy, the one who had been shown so much grace refuses to extend it in return. Instead, he has this fellow thrown into prison. The other workers witnessing this are horrified, and they report it to the king. The king becomes furious and demands to know why the first enslaved man, having been shown mercy, denied mercy to someone else. Then the king hands the enslaved man over to be tortured until he can pay his debt. Knowing that his debt to the king is insurmountable, this is really a lifetime sentence.

            This is a disturbing parable indeed. We must be careful to read this as parable and not allegory. If we look at it allegorically, then each aspect of the story correlates to God and heaven exactly. Yet I cannot see God as a despot sultan whose first response is to not only condemn the one who owes so much, but also his family. However, saying that does not lessen the parable’s unsettling challenge to the disciples and to us. We are shown great mercy. We have our debts wiped out. Shouldn’t we also show that mercy to others?  As we are forgiven, should we not also forgive? 

            Technically the answer to these questions is “yes.” Yes, we should forgive as we are forgiven. Yes, we should show mercy because we are shown mercy. Yes, yes, yes. But as theologian, Debie Thomas, wrote, if we are going to talk about what forgiveness is in light of these verses, then we must also talk about what forgiveness is not.

            Forgiveness does not negate accountability or justice. Forgiveness does not make everything better nor does it wipe every slate clean. The truth is that passages like this one, especially this one, have been weaponized against people who have been abused and harmed. Telling an abused spouse, woman or man, that they must forgive the abusive spouse because that’s what Jesus requires yet never holding the abuser accountable harms the abused all over again.

            Forgiveness does not automatically mean relationship or reconciliation. In the verses preceding these, Jesus lays out the steps for confronting someone who has sinned – go alone to confront the person first, then take one or two other people with you, then involve the whole community – and if none of those work to bring the one who has sinned back into the fold then that person should be treated as a gentile or a tax collector. To our contemporary, western ears, we may hear that as shunning. Well, I’ve done everything I could to make it right with this person but nothing has worked. Therefore, I break with thee, I break with thee, I break with thee.

            But how did Jesus treat gentiles and tax collectors? Did he shun them? Or did he treat them with love, did he recognize them as neighbors? Even if they refused to reconcile or be in relationship, Jesus never treated them as Other, as anything less than children of God. We may not wind up being in relationship with someone we have tried to forgive, but they’re still a neighbor.

            If forgiveness is not all of the above, then what is it? It seems to me that forgiveness is a choice rather than a feeling. If I wait to feel forgiving before I forgive someone, then I will probably wait the rest of my life. Forgiveness is liberating, sometimes for the one who is being forgiven but equally if not more often for the one doing the forgiving.

            Over the course of my life, there are people who I have had to make the choice to forgive; not because they have asked for it or even owned up to doing anything wrong. But I have chosen to forgive because life is too short. It is too short to bear grudges. It is too short for bitterness. It is just too short. And I suspect that there are people who have made the same choice about me.

            But does that make forgiveness cut and dry? No. Forgiveness is as messy and as complicated as the humans who are trying to achieve it and those who make it necessary. Which is all of us. We started off these verses with a strange equation, which should be straightforward. Isn’t math straightforward? 2 + 2 always = 4. That’s about as straightforward as you can get. But it seems to me that when it comes to the math of forgiveness, Jesus understood that it was not easy and not clearcut and not simple. It requires resolve and recognition of the other’s humanity, and it may require repetition to get it right. How many times do I forgive someone who has wronged me? Seven times? No, seventy-seven times. Or seventy times seven times. You forgive until you lose count. And then you forgive some more. We forgive because we have been forgiven, just as the parable about God’s kingdom reminds us. But we also forgive because even the gentiles and tax collectors are our neighbors in this kingdom of God. And what place does vengeance and hatred and bitterness hold in the kingdom of God? I don’t think any of that is meant to be there. It is forgiveness that can liberate us from the cycle of vengeance we find ourselves in. It is forgiveness that has the power to transform enmity into amity, foes into friends. It is forgiveness that liberates those who forgive. Forgiving someone who has caused you great harm does not erase the harm, but it can change the dynamic. Forgiving someone who harms you can change you.

            The math of forgiveness is not simple. It can challenge us in ways we cannot imagine. But forgiveness is part of agape love, and forgiveness has the power and the potential to transform the world into the kingdom of God. So, how often should we forgive someone? What is the magic number? Jesus said, do the math. Let’s do the math. Thanks be to God.

            Let all of God’s forgiven children say, “Alleluia.”

            Amen.

           

What We Owe One Another

Romans 13:8-14

September 6, 2026

 

            I have been having computer issues this week. My old laptop shook off its earthly charging cord and went to that great tech recycling bin in the sky. But losing the old laptop required me to get a new laptop, and that required a couple of trips up to the Best Buy in Cool Springs. Yesterday, Brent and I were on our way to Best Buy, and we were stopped at a big and busy intersection. I was in the passenger seat and not paying attention to the traffic ahead of us, when I heard a loud bang and Brent said,

            “Oh my gosh, an accident just happened! A car went up in the air!”

            We were a few cars back from the light, but on the other side of this busy, big intersection, two cars hit. One of the cars had flipped over on its side, and a woman was trying to climb out of the car window. Several people on that side of the highway had stopped to help.  Two men were helping the woman get out of the car, and they carried her away from the car. Other people were bringing jackets or anything extra that they had in the car to put on the road, and then around her shoulders.  And the two men carrying her laid her on those clothes. One of the guys who had helped her get out of the vehicle, then climbed into it, I guess to make sure no one else was trapped.

            We were able to drive around it, and I worried to myself about whether we should have stopped as well, but there were so many people right there that I think more folks stopping would have been a hindrance rather than a help.  Both Brent and I were pretty shaken up by this, because we both understand how quickly something like that can happen and how terrible it can be. As we were driving down our part of the highway, two fire trucks were racing toward the accident. And I did what I always do when I see something like this, I closed my eyes and said a silent prayer for everyone involved – the drivers, the helpers, the first responders. And I thought about the fact that we had just witnessed love at work in the people who helped the woman out of the car, ran to bring jackets, and called for help. That’s what Paul was talking about when he said to owe no one anything except for love, I thought. The people who helped may or may not have thought about owing love to someone else, but their actions spoke loud and clear.

            “Owe no one anything except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.”

            What we owe one another. Maybe this should be a question instead of a declarative statement. What do we owe one another? Paul writes that the only thing we should owe one another is love. Whenever I read statements like this in our scripture, I always think about how beautiful and poetic this kind of language sounds, but how hard it actually is to live out and live into. Loving one another is never a simple task, because love’s requirements are not simple nor are they easy. The debt of love requires us to put ourselves last and others first. Love requires us to reach outward rather than drawing inward. Loving one another can put us into situations that are challenging, even frightening. Owing each other love is not as simple as it might sound, is it? So, what do we owe one another? If we owe only love, then what does that mean and what does that look like?

            One challenge to owing one another only love is that so much of our world – our societies, our relationships, businesses, and even the church – seem to be built and structured on something else other than the debt of love. We look at owing one another as quid pro quo. If you do for me, then I’ll do for you. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. But that has nothing to do with what Paul is writing about in this letter to the church in Rome.

            Paul wrote that the one thing we owe to one another is love. There are three types of love in Greek. There is Eros — which is romantic love. When we fall in love, we fall into eros. There is Philia — which is friendship and loyalty. Think of Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. Its name begins with philia. The third kind of love is Agape. Agape is love that willingly sacrifices itself for another. It is love that does for someone else without expecting anything in return. It is love that pulls a woman out of a car or carries someone out down flight after flight of steps in a burning tower.

The love that Paul uses in these verses is not eros. It is not philia. It is agape. Owe no one anything other than agape, a love that sacrifices itself for another. I go round and round with Paul on many things, but I cannot deny the power of his rhetoric. This is a rhetorical feat. By using the language of owing, of debt, and then pairing that with agape, Paul sets up his listeners for a shock, especially if you take into account what he writes in the verses preceding ours about what we owe others in authority.

Listen, y’all. You should be good citizens. Obey the laws. Pay your taxes. Do what is right. But when it comes to owing others, the only thing you owe is love. That’s it. Oh, by the way, the love that you owe each other is agape love.

Wait a minute, Paul. Agape love is about sacrifice and willingness to give all that we have and do all that we can. So, what you’re saying is that all we owe is agape, but that means that we owe one another everything! Yikes!

But here’s the rub. Paul makes it sound simple. But we know it isn’t. We know how hard it is to love others. Yesterday, Brent and I witnessed people acting out of agape love. But I can’t help but wonder if those same people would have anything to do one another had it not been for that terrible accident? I’m not trying to be cynical. It’s just that we are living in divided, polarized times. That’s an understatement. A crisis brought out the agape, the love, that lives in us. On Friday, we will observe the 25^th anniversary of the most terrible crisis in my lifetime. On September 11, 2001, we watched in real time as agape love leapt into chasm hate created. Agape love seems to be at its most visible in an emergency.

But Paul was not writing in terms of an emergency or a crisis. He didn’t write, owe no one anything except love when the worst happens. He did not pen, owe no one anything but love but only when the world falls apart. He wrote,

“Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.”

Paul does not make this love we owe one another conditional or time contingent. What we owe one another is love, agape love, love that sacrifices, love that puts the other first, love that does what is hard and even what is scary. And this isn’t love that is reserved only for the people you like or agree with. It is for everyone.

Why can’t we do that? Why can’t we take Paul’s words seriously and act in a way that shows we love others, without concern about what it may cost us? I think that’s the clue. What does it cost us to owe nothing but love?

            I think when we read and hear statements about agape love like this, we believe that we are being called to give away everything we have. Certainly, Jesus did not shy away from that kind of call in the gospels. He told the rich young man that if he wanted to follow Jesus, he had to sell his possessions and give everything to the poor. And it is highly possible that Jesus was speaking literally. But, for the sake of argument, Paul’s words are not necessarily asking us to give up everything we own for someone else, so what is this agape love? Does agape love require us to believe that other people are as human as we are? Do we owe other people the right to exist, even if their existence challenges us? Do we owe other people the common courtesy of treating them with dignity and respect? Do we owe others the belief that their experience, their perspective, their life has meaning and truth, even if we don’t understand it or can see it?

            It seems to me that some of the worst atrocities humankind has committed against humankind — and there have been many and continue to be many — comes out of our ability to convince ourselves that the other is not fully human, that they are lesser than us, or that their lives matter less. And when we can convince ourselves of this, then we can convince ourselves to do terrible things to others because we believe that their lives matter less than our own; or that their lives matter not at all.

            What do we owe one another if we all we owe is agape love? We owe one another everything.

            Writer Anne Lamott tells a story in her book, Bird By Bird, about an eight-year-old boy. His little sister was diagnosed with a blood disease. His parents tell him that he may have the same blood as his sister, and if he does, then a transfusion of his blood could help her live. The brother agrees to be tested, and it turns out that his blood is a match for his sister. The parents ask him if he is willing to give her some of his blood so she can live. He asks to think about it. He goes to bed and the next morning he tells his parents that he is willing to give his sister his blood. All the arrangements are made. The little boy and his sister are in a room together, and they begin the transfusion. Everything seems to be going fine. The doctor comes over to check on the little boy. The doctor asks how he is doing, and the little boy looks at the doctor and asks,

            “When will I begin to die?”

            I’m sure everyone rushed to explain to him that he wouldn’t die giving his sister his blood. I’m sure they immediately reassured him that all would be well. This would not require his giving of his life for his sister. But the little boy thought it would. And he did it anyway. He was willing to die so his sister could live. That is agape. That is what we owe to one another. Thanks be to God.

            Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia.”

            Amen.