I am Christian

Proper 24A, St. Martin’s Episcopal Church, Moses Lake; by Sr. Annette Fricke, OP The early church had no building, no money, and no political influence; and they turned the world upside down. JD Greear Imagine you are a man or a woman on your way to work. As you drive over a bridge, you notice a dog in the water that appears to be alone and struggling. There is no other animal or human around. There is no hint as to how the dog got into this situation. The clock is ticking away. The dog is having difficulty keeping its head above water, appearing exhausted. What would you do? Would you strip down to underwear and shirt and swim out to get the dog, even if the water is very cold? What will happen if you don’t act? If you just ignore the dog and drive on to work without even making a call for someone else to rescue the dog? What will your boss say or do if you tell the truth as to why you are so late for work? What if it was Jesus who came upon this situation? What would Jesus do? How does it change things as a human, not Jesus? That is what the Gospel lesson is about. How do we live with the tension of living in this world, yet owing everything to God because God has given us the world for which to care? How do we determine our priorities to distribute justice to all the created world? There is always room for improvement. There is always room to care enough to act. There is always room to change our priorities both collectively and personally. This is what life presents us. There are many dilemmas which we find ourselves in as we go through life. Again, and again different situations call for us to decide and cause us to think about the statement Jesus made, “Give to Caesar that which is Caesar’s and to God that which is God’s.” There are some choices in life that we choose differently depending on the context and what age we are, what we learned along the way. We don’t think the same as we did when we were a few years younger. That is what keeps this text from Matthew fresh. That choice is always before us as we live day to day. What belongs to the government and what belongs to God? Jesus seems to imply that we should give to both. We will have divided loyalties as citizens of the United States and Christians, loyal to Christian teaching which calls for social justice. When there is a moral conflict between the two, we should side with God, what we believe is right in God’s eyes. There are two groups that are trying to trap Jesus. His answer is very clever in that it totally avoids being trapped. They are unable to trap him at this point, so they go away. He can neither be accused of betraying the Roman government nor encouraging others to rebel against Rome. As Ellie mentioned last Sunday, the United States is one of the first countries to be established without a monarchy. We didn’t like the taxes imposed by King George III. We chose to be independent and make our own rules and regulations. If we had remained a British Colony, our money would not have our presidents and other important people on it, it would have a monarch of Great Britain on it, like Canada has. Our government is for the people and by the people, which means we have elected officials working for us and have the right to tell them what we want or vote them out of office. We have a conscience guided by our loyalty to God. The values we hold as Christians should take the lead in what we do in relation to our government. As to our church, we are called to be faithful to God and vote also for those we want as leadership as well as what we want in our mission statement to be as well as how we are choosing to follow that mission statement. It is expected that we will evaluate what it is we want in the mission statement and how we will support that mission statement to the end that God is the one who has the glory. May we always focus on doing God’s work in the world today and into the future. May we always be ambassadors of God’s love. The early church had no building, no money, and no political influence; and they turned the world upside down. JD Greear *This sermon is meant to start as a children's sermon with a dialogue about US coins, asking first whose picture is on each of the coins. I was going to give the Canadian penny to the youngest of the children just to see if he/she noticed that it says "Canada" on it and is a picture of Queen Elizabeth II.