Yours

Eastern Parkway United Methodist Church

A warm welcome to each worshiper today. We celebrate you and offer you our friendship and love. We are a congregation of people who seek to grow spiritually, to become more like Christ in His compassion and acceptance of everyone while growing more aware of what it really means to be Christians today.

As a Reconciling Congregation, EPUMC affirms the sacred worth of persons of all sexual orientations and gender identities and welcomes them into full participation in the fellowship, membership, ministries, and leadership of the congregation.

943 Palmer Avenue, Schenectady, NY 12309 / 518-374-4306 epumc943@gmail.com / www.easternparkway.org

Order of Worship

October 22, 2023

10:00 a.m.

*You are invited to rise in body or spirit.

Prelude

Greeting and Announcements

Mission Statement:

We are a faith community striving to be, to nurture, and to send forth disciples of Jesus Christ.

Call to Worship:

Though there are rulers, presidents, kings, queens, God is the Lord of all life.

In God we live and move and have our being.

God requires our faithfulness and our service.

We reach out to others with the same kind of love with which God has touched our lives.

Come, let us worship the Lord who is always with us.

Let us praise God who walks daily by our side. AMEN.

*Hymn Change My Heart, O God #2152

Prayer of Confession:

We are so easily pulled this way and that way by those who would promise instant healing for all the world’s woes. We want to have everything be whole and happy, and we don’t know what to do, so we pay attention to those voices that cry the loudest, whether they are voices of blame or promise. In our fearfulness, we love to place blame for all our woes on the shoulders of a few people. In our anguish, we seek instant answers from sources that are very unreliable. Lord, help us. Turn us around. Help us know that you are our Lord and you have provided much for us. You have given to us abilities, and understanding, and ways in which we can be those who would bring peace and justice. You have blessed our lives. Heal and restore our spirits, Lord. Help us truly place our trust in you and to work in ministries that uplift people. This prayer we offer in Jesus’ name. AMEN.

Assurance:

The Lord has given to us gifts and abilities to work for peace and justice. You are especially blessed by God. Go into this world in confidence of God’s presence and love. AMEN.

Scripture Reading Matthew 22: 15-22

The Question about Paying Taxes

15 Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said. 16 So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, “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. 17 Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” 18 But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? 19 Show me the coin used for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius. 20 Then he said to them, “Whose head is this and whose title?” 21 They answered, “Caesar’s.” Then he said to them, “Give therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.” 22 When they heard this, they were amazed, and they left him and went away.

Sermon Yours

While preparing to preach on this text, another of my favorites to sermonize on, I was reading some old rap lyrics, from a group called “D’Angelo and the Vanguard”, and their 2014 album “Black Messiah”. I heard some lyrics I wanted to share with y’all from their song “1000 Deaths”. Disclaimer: you might not agree with everything you’re about to hear. That’s part of the point.

“When Jesus, when I say Jesus, I’m not talking about some blonde-haired, blue-eyed, pale-skinned, buttermilk complexion cracker Christ.

I’m talking about the Jesus of the Bible, with hair like lamb’s wool. I'm talking about that good hair, I'm talking about that nappy hair.

That his body would be like beryl. Another scripture said his body would be like jasper.

Another scripture said his body would be like fine brass, as though it had been burned in an oven.

Jesus: the Lord, the Savior, the Master, the Redeemer. Jesus, the Black revolutionary Messiah.”

“Black people need some peace, white people need some peace. And we are going to have to fight, we're going to have to struggle, we're going to have to struggle relentlessly to bring about some peace because the people that we're asking for peace, they're a bunch of megalomaniac war-mongers, and they don't even understand what peace means. We've got to fight them, we've got to struggle with them to make them understand what peace means.”

These lyrics came to mind because there’s so, so much there. Politics, racism, and racial animosity; war, capitalism, and power; and, of course, the millennia old issues of what Jesus really looked like, what culture he was from, and the harm we do when we white wash him.

These lyrics may feel uncomfortable to you for a number of reasons: it’s a rap song in church so it feels out of place; it’s an African American group naming their frustration with their White neighbors; and, maybe most of all, because these lyrics tie together a few concepts that many of us work hard to keep completely separate: religion, politics, and society.

This morning’s Gospel text makes a similar, uncomfortable connection, and is oft-quoted, both by those who insist that all talk of Jesus must remain apolitical, and by people who are inclined to argue the opposite. The details in this text oddly have made both camps feel empowered to make their case.

It begins like many of Matthew’s stories, with the Pharisees getting a bee in their collective bonnet and confronting Jesus about it. Sometimes when I read these stories I think that Jesus must have considered putting bells around their necks so he could hear them coming. So, ding a ling here come the Pharisees, but they’re not alone this time. They have some strange company: the Herodians. To us today that just sounds like a throw away context word, but to Matthew’s readers this was anything but. The Pharisees represented the higher crust of synagogue life, and were super concerned with following the Law of Moses by the letter. Based on their beliefs, as well as their desire for some power, they strongly resented the Roman occupation of Palestine, and King Herod’s rule. The Herodians, on the other hand, were pro-Rome, and pro-Herod, hence the name. These two groups don’t like each other. This is like seeing Mitch McConnell having after-work drinks with AOC. The image makes no sense. Except in the one instance where it does: neither the Pharisees nor the Herodians are fond of Jesus. Perhaps the enemy of my enemy is my frenemy.

So these frenemies approach Jesus with a real zinger of a question that they’re sure will stump him, cause him public disgrace, and, most importantly, get him in big trouble, either with the crowds, or with the law. “Should we pay taxes to Caesar?”

The first piece of Good News for us is that Jesus is very, very smart. He sees all the layers in front of him quite clearly, from the frenemies hanging out to stick it to their common adversary, to their entrapment question, to the transparent way they prefaced it: “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.” They started by buttering Jesus up so much you’d think he was movie theater popcorn. They want to lull Jesus into a false sense of trust, while also sharpening the bear trap: Jesus is unbiased and impartial, right? Jesus isn’t political, right? He stays out of that stuff?

The context of the entrapment question is important. All of the people who live in this area are required to pay an annual census tax to Rome, and they pay this money to the tax collectors that show up in the narrative so often. The cost of the tax was one denarius per person, a high cost. But the denarius itself was a controversial coin, a silver one with Caesar’s head on it declaring the head of Rome your king, your priest, and your God. If you pay taxes to your oppressor using this coin, are you not only supporting your own oppression but also endorsing what the coin says? The Pharisees believed this was the case. The Herodians were wealthier than the average inhabitant of Palestine, and believed that, although there were drawbacks to foreign occupation, they benefited from Rome’s presence. Use your imagination, and apply that same sentiment to our current era, and folx who support morally bankrupt politicians because they hope that person will create jobs, or shrink inflation, or lower taxes. I won’t name names on principle, but you can imagine a few. Rome, for their part, didn’t give a hoot what your inner thought process was, they just wanted your money and your fealty.

How will Jesus answer this question? The set up feels like a lose-lose. If he says you should pay your taxes, he will enrage the thousands of people who have been following him around. If he says you shouldn’t pay your taxes, he’s going to prison. So what will it be?

With Jesus, the answer is the middle way. There’s support and criticism in his words for everyone. We all have hearts capable of love, but we also all act with selfishness that we need to divest of. And in this specific instance, we need to confront deeper truths. For starters: we need to face our hypocrisy. The Pharisees confront Jesus for not taking down Rome, and yet they, too, enjoy wielding their power over others. More to the point, the Pharisees won’t sign on to use these denariuses to pay their taxes, but are totally comfortable buying everything else with these blasphemous coins. They can’t have it both ways, if they don’t want to support the foreign occupation of their land, then they should give all their money away so they don’t have these coins anymore. They could even pay their taxes with them! Meanwhile the Herodians are as see-through as saran wrap, and they need to take a hard look at the world they really live in, and how their wealth hurts the poor.

The point Jesus lands on for everyone is one that remains uncomfortable for us to hear today: you may as well pay your taxes. We live in a complicated world where we carry several different overlapping identities, and each one comes with someone we have to satisfy. What’s really yours, and how much control do you have over the big picture? We both pay our taxes and give offerings to our church with the same green paper with dead Presidents on it. That money totally carries with it images and wording that supports Uncle Sam, no different than the denariuses in Jesus’ day. Who does that money belong to, and how much power do we have with it? This question is especially relevant while we’re in pledge season as a church. Some of us live paycheck to paycheck, and might have only a few cents to spare for the offering plate. Some of us might have a little more than that, and some of us may have a lot more than that. And, no matter where we fall in that, all of us make moral decisions every time we decide what we’re spending money on. Do we buy what we need from small, local businesses? Or do we shop at WalMart? When we buy fruits and vegetables, are we aware of the migrant labor that went into growing and picking them? When we buy clothing, do we know who made them, and the labor practices of those manufacturers? It’s terrifying how much the purchase of ordinary items can go to support the exploitation of migrants, children, the poor, and people of color. But that also means the power is ours, even in small, everyday decisions, to put our money toward what we really believe in, and to use it to help one another.

We can’t separate ourselves from the political, or the controversial. Jesus didn’t, he faced it all head on. Where we sit, in our American church in a suburban town, the choice is ours which way we will go–will we be self-serving with our resources, or will we hear our neighbors’ criticism of our Church and government, and use what we have to build justice? Jesus supports the latter, and so should we.

Amen.

*Hymn Take My Life and Let It Be #399

Offering

Offertory

*Doxology #94

*Prayer of dedication

Pastoral Prayer and Lord’s Prayer

Companion God,

we praise you for the grace which is always on the move,

from death to life, desolation to hope, famine to feasting.

As we travel this road of pain and rejoicing,

we give thanks that you go with us as our guardian and friend:

that you have taken us by the hand and led us,

giving guidance and support.