Matthew 22.15-22
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning,
Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, Colorado

All literature, sacred or not, is created within the context of culture and history. Some types of writing — like wisdom literature — endure, while other types fade with time. The setting for this morning’s text is, of course first-century Judea, a region under Roman occupation for a little less than a century, and it would be another 30 years or so until the Jews rose in revolt and about 35 years until the Romans would defeat the Jews and demolish the Second Temple. The people Jesus is speaking to are living under the boot of the Roman Empire. Think of occupied France during World War II and you’ll get the picture: people living under military occupation, religious oppression, economic oppression, and a growing hatred of the occupier. 

Both Jesus and his inquisitive friends, the Pharisees, were anti-Roman, but the Pharisees had a leg up as members of the religious establishment. So, when they send their students, their disciples, over to Jesus to pose a question, they are trying to get Jesus into a double-bind, either by admitting that it was legitimate to pay the occupiers or whether a tax revolt was more appropriate. 

Of course, Jesus doesn’t play into their hands, he does some rhetorical jujitsu, asking them to pull out a denarius. It’s the type of Roman coin that would have been in circulation when Jesus told the Pharisee, “Show me the coin used for the tax.” And when Jesus says, “Whose head is this and whose title,” I always just assumed, it’s a picture of Caesar and it says that he is the emperor…but there is more to the story. 

After doing a Google search for an image of an early first-century denarius, I found the two sides of the coin you see on your screen. On one side you see a profile of the emperor Tiberius (who was the emperor at the time Jesus told this story) and o;/the reverse side there is a seated image of Livia, the mother of Tiberius. So those are the people pictured, but Jesus also asks “whose title?” Well, I expected it to say that Tiberius was the emperor. But that’s not exactly what it says. Around the edge of the “heads” side of the coin, starting under Tiberius’s chin and reading counter-clockwise, it says, “TI” for Tiberius, “CAESAR” (which you can translate yourself!) “DIVI AUG F,” which in abbreviated form means “son the God Augustus,” and also inscribed is Tiberius’s own title “AUGUSTUS” which is a politico-religious term that means “venerable, worthy of worship.” And on the “tails” side of the coin you can read Tiberius’s other title, “PONTIFEX MAXIMUS” or highest priest. So, the titles aren’t just political, but go to the heart of Roman imperial cultic religion. 

A good, pious Roman would think that paying taxes to Caesar WAS giving to God, or in Tiberius’s case, the son of a god. But, of course, every Jew in the ancient world, including Jesus himself, knew that Augustus was not divine. That’s what the Pharisees are getting at…but Jesus turns their question on its head, challenging the hearer to question and distinguish what belongs to God and what belongs to Caesar. 

They are vying for the hearts and minds of the people: Caesar on one hand and God on the other…the Roman Empire on one side, the kingdom of God on the other. And when you live in a tiny country under occupation by Roman legionaries, it may be easier to see the force of empire than to see the immediate reality of God. 

When new members joined our congregation earlier in the summer, they offered the same words of covenant that all who join this congregation say. And perhaps we don’t think of those phrases as being countercultural, but they are. When we say, “I give myself unreservedly to God’s service,” we are pledging our lives and our allegiance not to Caesar, but to God. 

For me, that means that our primary loyalty is to the kingdom of God, rather than the empire of Caesar – or whatever petty empire has taken Rome’s place at the center of our lives. In our covenant, we are making a statement not simply about whom we will serve, but about the way we orient and prioritize our lives. So, what does that mean to you? What does it mean to YOU to give yourself without reservation to God’s service? 

We all know people who serve other gods, in fact, each of us serves them on occasion, and more than occasionally if we aren’t vigilant. We serve these other gods when our primary attention and focus is on something else. Some serve the god of personal comfort, while others serve the god of the stock market, others serve the god of white supremacy, and still others the god of power and influence. Like the old Bob Dylan song says, “You’re gonna have to serve somebody…well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but your gonna have to serve somebody.” And as Jesus says in the sixth chapter of Matthew’s gospel, “No one can serve two masters…You cannot serve both God and Mammon [sometimes personified as the demon of wealth].” And the point Jesus is making with the denarius is that you cannot serve both God and Caesar.

What does Jesus mean to imply when he says, “Give to God what is God’s?” Jesus undoubtedly knew Psalm 24 by heart, and I intentionally included it as our Call to Worship this morning. “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it.” So that little denarius, even with the picture of the emperor stamped into it, belongs to God. 

Some of what belongs to God is entrusted to you for your good use. I see what some of you do with the gifts and graces and dollars God has put in your hands. I see the work you do with Habitat, with La Foret and the wider UCC. This week, I see Plymouth folks and other ecumenical partners using our North Wing to collect clothing and supplies for immigrant children who arrived in this country as unaccompanied minors, and I’ve seen you outside (and inside!) our senator’s office calling for an end to gun violence. And I see what you do to keep this church not just plugging along, but vital. I see our Council working hard to make tough decisions and guide us toward a future that will be different after the pandemic is through. I see our deacons and my staff colleagues finding creative ways to reach out to you during this tumultuous time. And it requires you taking part of what God has entrusted to you and investing it in the mission and ministry of your church. And if you ever get confused about who we are meant to serve, just pull a quarter our of your pocket to read the reminder under George Washington’s chin: In God We Trust.

May it be so. Amen.

© 2020 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact hal@plymouthucc.org for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses.

Matthew 22.23-32
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning,
Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, Colorado

If you have two sons, like I do, this parable sounds strikingly familiar. In years past, I could imagine Cameron playing video games on his X-Box on a Saturday morning and me asking if he would please mow the lawn and Cam begging off with some excuse about homework. And then asking Chris, who would say, “Sure, dad,” but then he’d get involved in something else and forget about the task at hand. (Mind you, I’m just plugging their names in here…they’d always have jumped right up and mowed the lawn. ? ) I might have been disappointed in Cam’s first response, but not that he came through in the end. And Chris just flaked out on me. Which son would I have thanked heartily for “doing the will of their father?”

But the parable is even more pointed than that. By bringing tax collectors and prostitutes into the narrative — outsiders and lowlifes rejected by the good Temple-going people of Jerusalem — Jesus brings the generalized parable into his own present day. It isn’t they who are supposed to “get it,” to understand what John was and Jesus is talking about…but they do. There is a motif in the New Testament about the people who should understand, don’t and the people who would ordinarily not be “in the know” are the ones who get it. I mean we all know that there is no such thing as a “Good” Samaritan, or astrologers from Persia who understand that a newborn babe is king of the Jews.
Well, where does that leave us? You and I may look a lot more like the scribes and the Pharisees than we’d like, don’t we? We’re the ones who are supposed to understand the message of Jesus, but don’t you suspect that there are times when we are the ones who don’t have a clue? I know that most of us at Plymouth don’t fit the current stereotype of American Christianity: closed-minded, unthinking, anti-science, bigoted, and knowing that if we are “saved,” then you other people certainly aren’t. And yet… And yet…there are times when we can come off as the ones who are meant to understand Jesus…but can’t or won’t. 

For most of us, it isn’t a matter of intellectual firepower that holds us back, rather it concerns commitment and showing up. This is where trust comes into play: “John the Baptizer came to you on the path of righteousness, but you didn’t trust him, but the tax collectors and prostitutes did.” Trusting Jesus is primarily an activity of the human heart, rather than just the mind. Tying our active minds together with the feelings of our hearts, connecting the two, is a key task for many of us in the UCC, where we encourage you to “bring your brain to church on Sunday.” Well, I certainly hope you bring your heart, too. 

This parable is about trusting and then doing. It’s about being truly present in the service of God’s realm on earth. It’s about showing up when you get the invitation. (And if you’re listening to this right now, consider yourself invited!)

Years ago, when I was a young adult, my former in-laws were being invited to dozens of weddings as people my age were getting married, and they frankly found it a bit tiresome…RSVPing, blocking off a weekend, buying a gift, going to the service and reception. And one time, they simply responded that they were not able to come. A few months later, the groom, Paul Blandford, ran into my former father-in-law, who is a really good guy, and said how disappointed he was that he and his wife couldn’t make it to the wedding. And then it hit my former father-in-law like a ton of bricks: When you are invited to a wedding or hear of someone’s funeral or memorial service, you go and show up. The code word in their family for times you need to show up became “It’s a Paul Blandford.” Have you ever declined an invitation to show up…to wedding, to an event, as a volunteer, as a leader? It may be easier at times to say, “No, thanks,” but it doesn’t move us ahead as a body of people, whether it’s a family, a congregation, a community, or a nation.

How do you show up…when you cannot physically show up? Covid-19 has been disruptive in so many ways, and we get to choose whether to connect or to hide…and there is a time for each. But let’s focus on connection. I’m doing a memorial service this afternoon, and only the immediate family are attending because of the pandemic. That’s a way to be present at a tender moment is each other’s lives, albeit in a different way. And there are other ways on a personal level to show up: pick up the telephone and call someone, pull out the notecards you got for Christmas and put pen to paper and send a note, really listen deeply to a friend or loved one. I see people at Plymouth showing up in all kinds of ways in the midst of the pandemic. Members shopping for those who are especially vulnerable to the coronavirus, Our Habitat ministry team invited me to a virtual Habitat breakfast over Zoom in a few weeks. You, our congregation sent a special gift of $10,000 to La Foret to help provide pandemic relief, in addition to the $20,000 you all contributed individually  for other forms of pandemic relief. Our Immigration ministry team has been at work collecting cleaning and household supplies for immigrant families. Our Stewardship Board got a beautiful brochure written, designed, produced, and mailed in record time. Thanks for saying “yes” and showing up.

Sometimes this pandemic causes us (especially us introverts) to withdraw in pain or grief or anxiety, and we don’t want to connect through one more damned Zoom meeting. And I cannot imagine how incredibly busy and stressed so many of our parents are trying to manage kids doing remote learning, working from home themselves, and trying to have a life. (And I do see a parent, who teaches chemistry at CSU now online, serves as this congregation’s moderator showing up to play violin this morning.)

So, this is a gentle reminder that oftentimes, we feel better when we show up, when we connect, when we make the effort, we feel better for having done so. And when we show up, we need to be fully present, not just physically present. We must bring our souls as well as our bodies. Showing up as faith in action is even more important, because we’ll probably end up feeling more connected to God as well. 

Woody Allen supposedly said that 90 percent of life is showing up. And I think there is truth in that, no matter who actually said it. Consider this: if you THINK about going to the gym, but don’t show up, you won’t get in better shape. If you only THINK about your faith, but never offer a prayer, pick up a Bible, do an act of compassion for someone you don’t know, your faith might stay flabby, too. When we show up, we don’t just do it for ourselves, we show up for each other, and during a pandemic, it’s even harder, less convenient, more costly, but we can’t go it alone.

I invite you to be like the son who eventually unplugs from the X-box and mows the lawn. Follow the lead of the tax collectors and prostitutes who trust the way of God’s kingdom, here and now and still unfolding. And as our worship continues and in the week ahead, may you open your heart and your mind to the God who created you, invites you, blesses you, and redeems you.

Amen.

© 2020 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact hal@plymouthucc.org for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses.

The Rev. Dr. Mark Lee
For Plymouth Congregational UCC
Pentecost 1A (lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/texts.php?id=142)

The one constant in life is change.  One of the constant changes we live is that of saying “Good-bye.”  Sometimes it is but for a while. Sometimes it is for good. The good-bye I am leaving you with is somewhere in between, for while I am leaving my professional role with this church and going to serve elsewhere on a 2-year contract, Ivan will keep our ranch here and I’ll come back to visit him regularly.  After 2 years, only God knows where I’ll be called next. Change, even good change, is often felt as loss, and as I say vaya con Dios it is with a mix of sorrow and hope.

Today’s texts carry that mix.  Paul is signing off his last letter to Corinth, a place he might or might not get back to.  And Jesus is trying to boil down years of teaching:  A Great Commission that refers to his Great Commandment.  Make disciples of every kind of people by teaching them to love one another.

Now when Matthew was writing this, it was a victory lap of sorts.  His audience read this about 50 years after the fact, and knew how this Commission was well on its way to being fulfilled.  A mix of persecution, catastrophic war, and missionary zeal had spread Christian communities through the core parts of the Roman Empire.  Christianity was in Rome, the center of the empire, even before Paul writes his letter to the church there around AD 50.  Even as all roads led to Rome, so also did all radiate from there.  The merchant and military classes were particularly mobile in the ancient world, believers among them.  Outside the empire, tradition credits the Ethiopian eunuch of Acts 9 with taking the gospel into Africa, and the apostle Thomas with founding the church in India that carries his name to this day.  

Sharing the the Good News is in Christianity’s DNA.   The Bible reminds us “Whenever anyone asks you to speak of your hope, be ready to defend it.  Yet do this with respectful humility.” [1 Peter 4:15-16]  Sometimes we have not done it well, but at its best it is “one beggar telling another where to find bread.”  I well remember being enthralled in college by stories from visiting missionaries, and we would make zealous commitments “To go wherever Christ calls us to go.”  (All the while hoping that it wasn’t really the ends of the earth, we wanted electricity and running water!)  

I was led into parish ministry.  There were obstacles, I got tossed out of my first seminary for being gay.  But I then met gay Christians who loved and nurtured and healed me, and later found Iliff in Denver that supported my reality and my call.  After working in administration for Unitarian and Episcopal churches, I pastored for 15 years in the Metropolitan Community Church, founding congregations in Ft Collins and Cheyenne. 

I learned that following God’s call isn’t an exercise in tea-leaf readings, casting fleeces, or trying to see behind the clouds. I don’t think God’s will is this pinpoint thing that God coyly hides from us and if we can’t figure it out our life is ruined. Rather it was listening to my heart, the advice of people I trust, and prayer to nurture the wide context of my faith. Trying some things and failing or succeeding.  God treats us as adults, asks us to use our mind, heart and community to weigh options, giving us choices between good things.  For myself, I found that those times I forced myself into something with sharp elbows and big ego did not usually turn out well.  Instead I learned that finding God’s will is usually unassuming and straightforward.  

My call to Plymouth is a perfect example:  after Julie left as Director of Christian Ed to pursue her PhD, I was chatting one day in Hal’s office.  I’d been on the Adult Ed Committee and then chair for a couple years.  I’d been retired on disability due to my health for a while, and that grated on me terribly; I missed active ministry.  I’d been exploring the UCC, taken history and polity courses, and was considering transferring my ordination.  So Hal asks me, “How would you like to lead an adult education program like Plymouth’s?”  Knowing that Plymouth had a policy against hiring members, I had not considered applying for Julie’s job.  So I’m wondering, “Where around here has an education program like Plymouth’s?” … “Is there was a good program at like Windsor or Loveland or Greeley?”  “No,” Hal said, “I mean here,” and after I got over my surprise, this new call was off and running.

This has been such a wonderful ministry you have let me do.  It has been so satisfying to teach, mange, learn and explore with you.  No, we did not figure out the Trinity.  We did not solve homelessness.  We don’t understand the Bible, or Jesus or God.  We have yet to build the world of peace and justice and welcome and inclusion and care and love that we know God keeps leading us towards.  But we have worked together towards all these things.  

I can’t take credit for it all.  I built on a long-standing program built by Alice Clark, Julie Mavity-Maddalena and many adult education committees.  More deeply, the roots of the program come from this church’s conviction that Christian Formation goes through our entire lives.  It isn’t like you go through Sunday school and get confirmed, get a diploma and are done.  You’re barely beginning!  This church knows that whether a person is 9 or 90 that there is yet more.  

Sometimes it is head-learning, a core of information about what it is to be Christian, good info about the Bible and history and tradition.  There are skills to be learned to weigh truth claims, consider evidence, and how to read our sacred texts in context.  All that information helps shape beliefs, but we have come to understand that beliefs are only tools.  Sometimes we build on them, sometimes we change them, some we even have to unlearn (God as old white man or Bible as science book, anyone?)  We realize that there is much more to following Christ than beliefs about him.  Beliefs are important, but they are not the goal.

It also takes heart-learning.  This is a lifelong quest for me, to bridge head and heart, and you have played an important role in helping me with that.  So we let ourselves (oh my, the terrible word my therapist keeps taunting me with) – FEEL.  We learn how the Spirit molds our heart, how healthy Christian community keeps us grounded, we dare to let ourselves grieve and enjoy and fear and thrill and love.  A lot of this is caught rather than taught, but we create good places for it to be caught – frank discussions, walking labyrinths together, doing lectio divina in small groups, listening so that we “bear one another’s burdens.”  “How is it with your soul” is a question we should ask each other more often.

All this would be incomplete however if it just left us with heads crammed full of theology and Bible, and hearts all warm with fellowship and the Spirit if it did not get our hands and feet dirty. Some of the best times have been when we have done an educational series on a topic and then it was manifest in the outer world as action.  Social action has to be grounded in clear, fact-driven analysis of a situation.  And social action has to be sustained by a core of spiritual heart and practice “to keep on keeping on.”  You don’t hear the Black Lives Matter protesters singing Justin Bieber.  They sing spirituals.  Sweet Honey in the Rock’s Ella’s Song, gives us a window into what is sustainable Christian Formation in our time:

“We who believe in freedom cannot rest
We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes

“Until the killing of black men, black mothers' sons
Is as important as the killing of white men, white mothers' sons

“That which touches me most
Is that I had a chance to work with people
Passing on to others that which was passed on to me.”1

“A chance to work with people, passing on to others that which has been passed on to me.”  There are so many:  you who have taught, you who have led discussions, forum moderators, you who tirelessly chased down political candidates for forums, you who reviewed books that you suggested for classes, you who have set up chairs or handled AV, so many of you who have been parts of boards, ministry teams, committees and projects,  the scores of people who make the Visiting Scholar program so great (and btw, we have Eric Elnes on tap for November for an online program). Thank you.  

So many of you enjoyed my classes and gave me encouragement – and some of you endured my less than stellar projects and gave me loving feedback (anyone remember Kathleen Ray’s ransom atonement book, “Deceiving the Devil”?).  I love to teach, you taught me how to do it better, and having eager learners makes it a joy.  Thank you.

And for the love and care and guidance you gave me quite outside my professional role, encouraging my continuing education; supporting my pilgrimages; praying me safely home from Jordan; being patient when my health challenges flared up.  Thank you. You have made me welcome in your homes, on retreat at LaForet, over a hundred cups of coffee -- you have let me into your lives and hearts.  Thank you.

Now God is leading me to a new ministry – as an interim pastor for a medium sized church a half days’ drive away (I can tell you where in another week or so). I am about equal parts excited and terrified.  It will take everything I’ve learned in 30 years of ordained ministry – and all you have poured into my mind and heart these past years will so help that church.

So let me end by remembering todays epistle reading:

“Finally, brothers and sisters, farewell. Put things in order, listen to my appeal, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you.  Greet one another with a holy kiss.” (Maybe now that is a virtual kiss!)  
“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.”  [2 Cor. 13:11-13]

Or as I like to say:  God loves you today too.  Go live accordingly!

1 https://genius.com/Sweet-honey-in-the-rock-ellas-song-lyrics 
from the album “We Are All… Every One of Us” (© 1983).
Listen to it here:
  https://www.song-list.net/videos/sweethoneyintherock/ellassong 


 
Service prayers:

Communion prayer:
    Remembrance, Invitation & direction
    Great Thanksgiving & Epiclesis

We give you thanks, O Great and Loving Creator,
For creating a beautiful yet complicated world,
And placing us in it as stewards and participants.
We are glad that you sent Jesus to show us who you are
And how human life can fulfill your quest for justice and peace.
We thank you for gathering us as your church
Bound together always by the Holy Spirit
And connected today by the ingenuity of human technology.
Now Holy God, spread your Spirit upon these gifts of food and drink
Wherever we may be
that they might be for us the presence of the living Christ,
Making us one across time and space.
Spread your Spirit upon us,
so that like these communion elements
We too might be taken, blessed, broken and shared,
so that others might know the blessings
of living in communion with you and one another. 
Through Christ, with Christ and in Christ, in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
all glory and honor are yours Almighty God, now and forever. 

    Words of Institution
    Welcome to the table
    Serving

Pastoral prayer:

God who hears the cry of the poor and oppressed:
You have always been with us -- 
When we were slaves in Egypt,
When in exile in Babylon,
When under the power of empires, despots and tyrants,
When divided into factions and set against each other,
You are a God who rescues.
You came to us in Jesus, who blessed the poor and powerless
Walked the way of the Cross – and invites us to join him.

So we lift our hearts to you in these troubled times:
You know the violence that has oppressed our African American neighbors
For hundreds of years.  
Violence that changed legal forms
But still kept them scared and poor and hurt and killed.
Now we have seen with our own eyes
How agents of government casually kill them
And then provoke violence and harshly suppress peaceful protest.
We’ve always known these things, but the scales have fallen from our eyes.
We have seen how police supported by our own taxes
Managed by officials we elect
And armed with surplus from our bloated military
Walk the way of empire,
Sometimes benefiting us, and sometimes hurting us,
But consistently keeping black people, brown people, queer people, female people, poor people many other people disadvantaged, silenced and disposable.  

We feel sad.  We feel angry. We feel confused.  We feel guilty.  We feel powerless. But we are committed to follow You.

O, that you would tear wide the heavens and come down!  Give ear to the chants of your people!  Let the outcry come before you!
Save the unjustly imprisoned!  Heal the injured!  Cast down the mighty from their thrones, and lift up the lowly!  Fill the hungry with good things, and make the rich share their hoardings!

Give us eyes to see the truth of our society, and the hearts to bear that truth.  Keep those who march safe, and keep us safe when we join them.  Give us the sense to listen most to those who suffer the most, and then follow with our voices, wallets and votes.  Give us Christ-like courage to use our privilege to dismantle the systems that oppress the many to the benefit of the few, even when we are among the few.  

Let us work for your kin-dom, as we pray week after week lifting the prayer Jesus taught us:

Our Father who art in heaven……


Benediction:

God loves you this week too, so go live accordingly.  

So go into all the world:
In the love of God who created you,
The peace of Christ who redeemed you,
And the power of the Holy Spirit
    Who will sustain you 
        Through everything.  Amen.