Category Archives: Sermons

Poking around on the interwebs today, I came across a blog I kept during seminary.  It was quite the reading experience.  Apparently editing was not my strong suit 10 years ago.  I also had many thoughts about church politics and events in the Middle East, so solidly on brand there.  It included the text of the sermon I gave in the chapel senior year.

I was surprised at how well the sermon held up.  There were definitely things I would change–stylistic tweaks I would make.  Things I would add for clarity’s sake, and adjustments if I weren’t preaching in an academic community who all knew who Cyrus the Persian was***.  But for the most part, the faith I talked about in that sermon is the faith I talk about today.  I want to go back in time and high-five my younger self, and tell her “That’s it!  Don’t be so nervous! You got this!”

On that note, here is my sermon from this Sunday.  It’s less of a sermon, more of a very thorough outline, but the ideas are there.  I wanted to talk about light and dark, and the limits of dichotomies in our dealings with God.  So I talked about neurological things!  As one does.

December 31, 2017

Christmas 1

John 1:1-18

Fun story:  For a few years in college, I saw things.  Not interesting things, like visions of God or angels, or apparitions of the future.  I saw flashing lights, floating dots, and ghost images around lights.  All those symptoms that doctors tell you are Very Bad, and you should immediately go to a doctor should you experience.

Tests were all negative–they couldn’t find anything wrong with me, even after all the doctors had stared at me, and med students had looked worried at me.   But the flashing lights, and weird floaty things persisted.  And thus did begin my fascination with light–since suddenly, everyone else could see something clearly that I could not.  This phenomenon I had taken for granted was now very apparent in my life.  

(Fast forward a couple years, and doctors would conclude that nothing WAS wrong with me–that what I was seeing was the result of a fried cranial nerve during a bad migraine, and could mostly be fixed with surgery and good glasses.  So please don’t worry about me–I am FINE.  But my fascination persisted.  Light, it seemed, wasn’t just light for everyone.)

Light/dark is a familiar dualism.  Light= good!  Dark=bad!  Light makes us happy, and dark makes us sad. Light is the thing we want, darkness is the thing that scares us.  This dichotomy is so familiar to us that we assume that this is apparent to everyone and we use that turn of phrase all the time.  It’s everywhere.  It’s in the gospels–and not just in the Johaninne prologue. 

Recently, this turn of phrase has become controversial, because it has been used throughout history to tell people of darker skin that they are less than.  Even so far as Joseph Smith telling Mormons that Indians and black people had darker skin because it was an outward sign of their sin.  Now that’s horrific, and so equating light with goodness has become a problem not just for those of us with visual impairments, but also for the reason that it can hearken back to this really troubling history.  

But  if we listen, what the prologue tells us is that, in fact, the dualism we assume is not apparent.  And it isn’t self-evident.  When the light comes, John writes, the world doesn’t even notice.  Even as the light illuminates the darkness, and even as the light has been present for all time, and lightens all creation.  Such a powerful presence, and somehow we just don’t notice it.  He came to his own, and his own did not receive him.

In retrospect, we sit here, comfortable in the 21st century, and it is hard to see how Jesus’ contemporaries didn’t realize who he was.  He was doing miracles!  He was preaching such amazing things!  How could people not stop what they were doing and noice?

Yet what’s fascinating throughout the gospels is how mundane the reasons people give for avoiding following Christ are.  It’s rarely that they don’t believe, per se-more often it’s something more pedestrian.  The rich young man really likes Jesus, but Jesus tells him to sell all he has, and well, his house is so comfortable!  Business leaders in Jerusalem acknowledge the truth of what the apostles are preaching in Acts, they believe in the risen Christ, but they’re worried about their income.  Pilate and Herod know who and what Jesus is–Herod asks for a miracle–but they have other, pressing political concerns.  

Rather than a simple dichotomy, what pulls us away from the light of God seems not to be darkness–it seems to be apathy.  We seem to be numb  to the light, and to what it’s doing.  It is all around us, and somehow, we just ignore it, or we don’t see it, because we’re so focused on other things.  It’s not that we dwell in darkness–a big, bad, foe out to snatch us up–we just become immune.  

It’s here that John’s prologue is at its most wise.  John, in his poetry, reminds us that the light is deeper and more profound than a simple enemy to the darkness.  But the Word, which is the Light, was in all things, and gave birth to all things, so when we stop and look around–it is in the light in which we live and move and have our being.  There is nothing we can think, say, or do that is apart from the Light.  And there is no darkness that can overcome or destroy the light. The light of God is what enlivens all life.  

But our constant task is to realize it.  To see the light as it shines around us, because while God never is apart from us, often we are so used to God’s presence that we begin to take it for granted.  Our task is to notice.  To recognize.  To be aware of the light shining around us.   To recognize the divine presence suffusing our existence, and not to be distracted by other concerns or worries.  Not money, not politics, not family–not even the darkness.  Because as John reminds us today, there is nothing in all creation that can snuff out God’s presence in this world.  Thanks to the Incarnation, we are inextricably intertwined in the life of God from now on.  The Light is here, and cannot be removed.  Our job is to recognize it and mirror it back.

Amen

***Cyrus the Persian was the Persian emperor who conquered the Babylonian Empire, and allowed the exiled Israelites to return and rebuild Jerusalem.  Despite not being Jewish, Isaiah LUUUUUVES Cyrus because of this–which is why I refer to Cyrus as the McDreamy of the OT.  (Because he is.) (Prove me wrong.) (You can’t.)

I very much like preaching about Mary.

There is a dearth of good Anglican mariology, in my opinion.  Generally, we fall into one of two camps:  either we go full hyper-dulia and Romish about the Mother of God, with rosaries and novenas aplenty, or we go full Baptist, and ignore her.  I don’t think either are helpful.  Mary has a unique role in the Gospels and in the life of the church.   So it’s important for a theoretical, textual reason.

But it’s also important because of actual, human people.  This year, I was tempted to talk about something other than Mary, and her kick-ass self.  But then I came across a published sermon, given by a mainline Protestant minister, in which he claimed Mary was unimportant because she merely was a pawn in God’s larger plan of grace.  In fact, he argued, she had no choice at all–and emphasized that several times.

Nope–I decided right then and there I had to talk about Mary again.  It was either that or be kept awake for the next year with nightmares of that horrifying sermon playing in my head.

As I was giving the sermon, I watched the congregation.  They were on the smaller side–it was the morning of Christmas Eve, after all.  But when I got to the part about Mary being her own person, a teenaged girl in the pews shot her head up, and started grinning.  Afterwards, she told me delightedly that she loved my sermon.

That’s why I do this.

Rev. Megan L. Castellan

December 24, 2017 (Morning)

Advent IV, Year B

Luke 2

The week before Christmas is a fascinating time for clergy, and other workers within the church.  Traditionally, it is the time when the copier breaks, when the plumbing declines to further plumb, and when all manner of small inconvenience suddenly appears, such that you cannot deal with the mounting pile of insanity that needs to be dealt with.  It breaks the weak, let me tell you.  And it’s why I’ve been bringing chocolate into work all week.

Of course, that’s what it’s like for most of us in these last pre-holiday days:  lots of rushing, lots of worrying about whether the family will make their flights, or whether Atlanta will have another blackout.  Whether that last side dish will get done, whether everything will be read or not.  For many of us, clergy or not, Christmas is an exercise in anxiety.

Contrast this, then, with the images on our Christmas cards of the Holy Family:  figures serene and formal, spotless and pale–looking like they never had a day of worry in their lives.  

Most of the images of Mary and Joseph that we see around this time of year do not reflect what we know their reality must have been:  harried, frantic, dirty, and terrified.  I did a Google search this week, when I was trying to avoid writing this sermon, and by a large margin, most of the images you find of Mary, especially, show her emotionless, and with her gaze off in the middle distance.  She’s distant and otherworldly–too pure and holy for whatever fears and concerns we struggle with.

But we know, of course, that this isn’t present in the narrative.  To read Luke’s account of the Annunciation is to encounter a young girl who has a lot of emotions.  

When Gabriel shows up to Mary (according to tradition in Nazareth, he shows up while she’s getting water from a local well), she very clearly has some concerns.  If you read the text closely, you can track the changes as the conversation happens.  Gabriel gives her the good news, and Mary is quite explicitly not on board.  She is worried, she is frightened, she has some questions, gosh darn it.  So she asks them.  “How can this be, since I am a virgin?”  Mary is trying to figure this out.

Gabriel gives further information, and it is only when he does, that Mary responds to the initial announcement.  “Here I am, the servant of the Lord.”  Mary’s affirmative response is predicated on this give-and-take with the angel, and we know this in part because Luke describes Mary’s interior life–the only person really besides Jesus who is described as having interiority at all in the gospels.  

It never fails to amaze me, how many sermons and articles I come across which try to overlook or dismiss Mary’s arguing with the angel, and try to make the case that she either had no hesitations (flimsy) or she had no choice (horrifying.)  Each year, when I read about the Annunciation, these depictions of Mary as an emotionless pawn again flood my vision–the verbal equivalent of those pictures of the otherworldly, distant white girl on the Christmas cards.  

For one thing, the girl who doesn’t care doesn’t appear in Scripture, so there’s that.  For another, any assertion that Mary is anything other than a fully embodied agent of her own authority helps prop up some really disturbing ideas about women as a whole, and their ability to make their own decisions.  Because Mary is so often held up as What All Faithful Women Should Be, when she is reduced to a quiet pawn in the hands of God, that similarly tells women that the ideal to emulate is quiet, subservient, and without a will of her own

But finally, and perhaps most vitally, when we do actually stick to Scripture, and the depictions of women shown there, instead of our invented nonsense, we see that Christianity is resting on the foundation of the (still-controversial idea) that it is vital to believe women.  Both the malaligned women at the empty tomb, and the frightened, excited girl who spoke to an angel.  Without the believed testimony of women, we would have no church.  We would have no faith.

And just as vitally, when we bear witness to the fullness of this tradition, then we also see that it is as fully formed human beings that God encounters us.  God encounters Mary in her complete humanity–in all of her confusion, in all her doubt and fear, in all her questioning.  God does not shy away from any part of her or declare her questions out of bounds–God declares her as Blessed among women before a single word leaves her mouth. Indeed, she is blessed just as she is.  She does not have to do or change a thing.  

So then, Mary serves as a reminder that God takes us, each as we are.  Each one of us, regardless of our doubts and our hesitations has been declared beloved and blessed by the Most High.  Each one of us is needed in this recreation of the world.  And for each one of us, regardless of how well the cookies turned out, regardless of whether the dog eats the turkey, regardless of whether the children fight, regardless of whether we can muster up enough cheerfulness or not–Christ will be born on Christmas.  

Rev. Megan L. Castellan

December 24, 2017 (Morning)

Advent IV, Year B

Luke 2

The week before Christmas is a fascinating time for clergy, and other workers within the church.  Traditionally, it is the time when the copier breaks, when the plumbing declines to further plumb, and when all manner of small inconvenience suddenly appears, such that you cannot deal with the mounting pile of insanity that needs to be dealt with.  It breaks the weak, let me tell you.  And it’s why I’ve been bringing chocolate into work all week.

Of course, that’s what it’s like for most of us in these last pre-holiday days:  lots of rushing, lots of worrying about whether the family will make their flights, or whether Atlanta will have another blackout.  Whether that last side dish will get done, whether everything will be read or not.  For many of us, clergy or not, Christmas is an exercise in anxiety.

Contrast this, then, with the images on our Christmas cards of the Holy Family:  figures serene and formal, spotless and pale–looking like they never had a day of worry in their lives.  

Most of the images of Mary and Joseph that we see around this time of year do not reflect what we know their reality must have been:  harried, frantic, dirty, and terrified.  I did a Google search this week, when I was trying to avoid writing this sermon, and by a large margin, most of the images you find of Mary, especially, show her emotionless, and with her gaze off in the middle distance.  She’s distant and otherworldly–too pure and holy for whatever fears and concerns we struggle with.

But we know, of course, that this isn’t present in the narrative.  To read Luke’s account of the Annunciation is to encounter a young girl who has a lot of emotions.  

When Gabriel shows up to Mary (according to tradition in Nazareth, he shows up while she’s getting water from a local well), she very clearly has some concerns.  If you read the text closely, you can track the changes as the conversation happens.  Gabriel gives her the good news, and Mary is quite explicitly not on board.  She is worried, she is frightened, she has some questions, gosh darn it.  So she asks them.  “How can this be, since I am a virgin?”  Mary is trying to figure this out.

Gabriel gives further information, and it is only when he does, that Mary responds to the initial announcement.  “Here I am, the servant of the Lord.”  Mary’s affirmative response is predicated on this give-and-take with the angel, and we know this in part because Luke describes Mary’s interior life–the only person really besides Jesus who is described as having interiority at all in the gospels.  

It never fails to amaze me, how many sermons and articles I come across which try to overlook or dismiss Mary’s arguing with the angel, and try to make the case that she either had no hesitations (flimsy) or she had no choice (horrifying.)  Each year, when I read about the Annunciation, these depictions of Mary as an emotionless pawn again flood my vision–the verbal equivalent of those pictures of the otherworldly, distant white girl on the Christmas cards.  

For one thing, the girl who doesn’t care doesn’t appear in Scripture, so there’s that.  For another, any assertion that Mary is anything other than a fully embodied agent of her own authority helps prop up some really disturbing ideas about women as a whole, and their ability to make their own decisions.  Because Mary is so often held up as What All Faithful Women Should Be, when she is reduced to a quiet pawn in the hands of God, that similarly tells women that the ideal to emulate is quiet, subservient, and without a will of her own

But finally, and perhaps most vitally, when we do actually stick to Scripture, and the depictions of women shown there, instead of our invented nonsense, we see that Christianity is resting on the foundation of the (still-controversial idea) that it is vital to believe women.  Both the malaligned women at the empty tomb, and the frightened, excited girl who spoke to an angel.  Without the believed testimony of women, we would have no church.  We would have no faith.

And just as vitally, when we bear witness to the fullness of this tradition, then we also see that it is as fully formed human beings that God encounters us.  God encounters Mary in her complete humanity–in all of her confusion, in all her doubt and fear, in all her questioning.  God does not shy away from any part of her or declare her questions out of bounds–God declares her as Blessed among women before a single word leaves her mouth. Indeed, she is blessed just as she is.  She does not have to do or change a thing.  

So then, Mary serves as a reminder that God takes us, each as we are.  Each one of us, regardless of our doubts and our hesitations has been declared beloved and blessed by the Most High.  Each one of us is needed in this recreation of the world.  And for each one of us, regardless of how well the cookies turned out, regardless of whether the dog eats the turkey, regardless of whether the children fight, regardless of whether we can muster up enough cheerfulness or not–Christ will be born on Christmas.  

(With apologies to Proverbs.)

Three things are feared by preachers,

Four topics make them all afraid:

Stewardship, Doubting Thomas, and the Trinity.

On Wednesday, the Vestry requested that I preach on Stewardship.  For various reasons, this had not been done at St. Paul’s for a good long while, but being an odd duck, I really like preaching about stewardship.  I have been known to break into stewardship sermons in the middle of August.  So I said I would give it a shot.

Here’s what I said.  People liked it, which I think might be a Thanksgiving miracle.

Rev. Megan L. Castellan

November 19, 2017

Ordinary Time, Proper 28

Parable of the Talents/Absentee Landowner

It may or may not surprise you, but when I took the theologically risky path of googling this parable, a lot of sermons came back extolling the virtues of capitalism.  (You find strange interpretations of the Bible when you google without knowledge–if you google the story of Esther, for example, you find a lot of Sunday School lessons on how important it is for girls to be obedient to adult authority.  Which is 9 kinds of toxic, in light of the news of the past few weeks.)

The parable of the talents, these random Internet sages argue, is principally about how God, in the figure of the absentee landowner, gives us gifts, or resources, and then expects us to make them as profitable as we can while we have them, before he returns.  If we fail to do that, then woe betide us.  

And the VERY BEST way to do that, many of them argue, is lending money at high rates of interest in a capitalist system which is clearly what those slaves were doing!

I got a new book by the Conservative Jewish writer and New Testament scholar Amy Jill Levine on the parables last month, and so she and I are here to tell you that there is a lot wrong with that proposition.  For one, there really wasn’t any sort of market system that we would recognize going on at the time of Jesus.  There’s no way Christ was advocating an early Adam Smith philosophy here.  

But more importantly, let’s consider the personality of the landowner here.  He’s…sort of a mean dude.  He randomly gives money (a lot of money, actually) to his slaves, and then leaves.  We aren’t told why.  And when he returns, he demands it back, and not only that, he demands that the slaves should have made him a hefty profit through what appear to be really risky means.  And he gets EXTREMELY ANGRY AND VIOLENT with the slave who didn’t do that–even though these were never explicit instructions.

Is this a good parallel for God?  Really?  Does this sound like the God that Jesus has described up until now?  The God who asks us to love our neighbor as ourselves, to turn the other cheek, and not chuck them into the outer darkness, the God who constantly reminds us that the last shall be first and the first shall be last, and as Professor Levine pointed out–has a special concern that fields and vineyards not be over harvested, so that the poor may eat for free.  The idea that God would be represented in this parable of Jesus’ as an absent, greedy landowner who deprives his slaves of even the little they possess is confusing at best, when you stop to consider it.  Nothing Jesus has told us about God up until now fits with the landowner.

Indeed, Jesus tells us that God doesn’t leave us.  God isn’t absentee at all.  Jesus’s constant refrain throughout the gospel is “The Kingdom of God has come near”.  God never leaves us.  A more consonant way to read this parable might be as a diptych with what comes next–that famous story about the sheep and the goats.  So we have this rather awful story about the World as it is–where an absentee landowner expects his slaves to make tons of money for him alone, and when that isn’t done, he reacts violently.  But you turn the page, and hear “But when the Son of Man comes, with his angels around him, he will separate the sheep from the goats”.  

And in this “judgement” scene, the flock will learn that, contrary to what they had believed, contrary to the images of an Absentee Landlord in the sky, He hadn’t left them at all–he had been with them all the time!  

And, when he divides them, one from another, it won’t be based on who made the most money–rather it will be on who used what they had to care for the most suffering people.  An entire reversal of what came before.  

In Jesus’ kingdom, what is important is not how much money you make.  How much profit you can accrue for Some Scary Man in the Sky who Will Punish You.  It’s how much you used what you had to care for others–how much you gave your talents to the care of others, and not to accruing more and more money.  THAT’s what counts.

At St. Paul’s, we dedicate a full 14% of our budget to our food ministries and to our school in Haiti.  That’s over $112,000 a year.  Compared to other churches, that’s an enormous percentage, and does not include the amount of money we give to the diocese.  

That money goes to the work you see around you all the time.  The food pantry, which gives away so much food, three times a week, no questions asked, to our neighbors in need.  The various food programs that we also keep running here: Meals on Wheels, Senior Commodities, TEFAP and Backsnacks, meet the needs of various communities who also rely on the food we give out, but for one reason or another, can’t make it to the pantry as often as they need to.

We also, through your generosity, run a school and church in Haiti, in a very remote part of the country, and have for over 30 years.  The children who come to our school receive a hot meal every day, and a quality education which prepares them to enter the workforce and change their country for the better.  

But not just that.  Because, let’s face it.  If you wanted to feed the hungry, or help children in Haiti, you could do that by giving your money to Harvesters, or the Red Cross.  But when you give your money to St. Paul’s, what you are also doing is keeping this place alive.  A place that not only provides food and shelter to those who need it, but a spiritual home and haven to generations who have come through those doors.  You keep the lights and heat on so that people can stop and rest here and find a moment of peace.  You keep your preachers supplied so we can give a word of wisdom each Sunday to someone, maybe who has never heard it.  When you give your money to St. Paul’s each year, quite frankly, you change lives.  You change lives in Westport, in Haiti, and right here in these pews.  

We at St. Paul’s know that God is not that absentee landlord, who abandons us to make our way as best we can, alone in the world.  We at this church know that God is always with us, and that God gives us Christ, and gives us each other to care for.  We know that our job here is to care for those least able to care for themselves, and to tell the world this story we know about the God who loves them, and who is here with them.  

But crucially, it is only with your support that we are able to do these things.  It is up to you, and how you spend your talents, that determine whether we can keep doing the work we have been doing together.  

We’re entering stewardship season (as you might have guessed.) And that’s a word that mostly scares the pants off of good Episcopalians.  But stewardship is just about how you decide where to put your resources–that question of the slaves.  Do you put them to the goal of earning more and more money, like those first servants, whether you just stick them in the ground, or whether you dedicate them to the material and spiritual care of others.  This is what we have to decide, because it is part of the spiritual life.  This is part of following Christ.  

At St. Paul’s, over the years, we have done our best to put our resources towards keeping the light of God’s love shining in this corner of the city.  That is what we will keep doing.  And with your help, that is what we will always do for generations to come.

Amen.

So last week, the rector and I were discussing the parable in Matthew he was going to preach on.  It was that tricky one about the king throwing a party that no one comes to, so he burns down a city in retribution, and kidnaps a whole second city into coming to his party.

It is tricky for some (hopefully) obvious reasons.

I suppose it was those discussions that led the rector to announce, in the course of HIS sermon, that I would be unpacking the ensuing pericope in Matthew, so everyone should show up next week to see how I did it.  At the time, I had not planned on doing that, but I am loathe to disappoint an entire church-ful of people, or to so publicly flout a reasonable request from my rector.  So I duly took on the famous “Render unto Caesar” passage.

I really dislike this passage–not for what it actually says, but for the ways in which it has been applied over the years.  The neat division between secular and sacred by people who claim the Incarnation has troubled me for years–ever since my professor in college went on a tangent one day and exegeted this passage.

We were supposed to be discussing the history and development of human rights in Islamic law that day, but one of the articles we had read cited the oft-made argument that Western Christianity alone was responsible for the development of freedom of religion, because of this ‘render unto Caesar’ passage.  Prof Sonn could not even with this historical and exegetical blunder, and took a time out to explain how that was NOT AT ALL what Jesus was doing, and NO ONE thought about distinct religious and political spheres until modernism, and also, the concept of dhimmi was ample evidence of an Islamic concern for the religious rights of minorities, and it’s not like medieval Europe did so great in that regard either, because what was that Hundred Years’ War about again?  She had some strong feelings on this, as she did on most things.

But it was the first time that I had heard an alternate interpretation to the traditional Two Kingdoms line, and it stuck with me.  (Also, the proclivity to fly into tangents about academic ridiculousness complete with handwaving and sarcasm.)

Here’s what I said, with a hat-tip to Prof Sonn.

Rev. Megan L. Castellan

October 22, 2017

Ordinary Time, Proper 24

Matthew 22:15-22

• Here is my long awaited sermon on the puzzling Caesar vs God parable in Matthew, that Fr. Stan so generously previewed last week.  As was promised, I will preach on the Gospel.  I had thought about preaching on Isaiah, because Cyrus the Persian is the DREAMIEST OF ALL BIBLICAL CHARACTERS, but alas, no.  
• As Fr. Stan said, this is indeed a tricky passage.  We know this in part from the Pharisees and Herodians saying to each other, “we’re going to be tricky”.  It’s a bit of a giveaway.  But also from the way this passage has been treated over time.  
• Because part of the challenge of the Bible is that we read–not just the words on the page–but also the history of how those words have been interpreted and used.  How these passages have been understood by people before us through time.  For better and for worse.  
• So this passage, for example, from the time of Martin Luther, helped give rise to something called the Two Kingdoms doctrine.  
• The idea was that God ruled over history in two distinct ways:  God ruled over secular affairs through secular or civil authority, and over spiritual affairs through religious authority.  
  • It was a variation on Luther’s ideas about law and gospel–the law being the civil authority, and the gospel being religious.  Which was helpful, because it would be tough to run a kingdom if the king cheerfully forgave all murderers and let them run freely around as an act of grace.  
  • But Luther was clear that civil leaders got to govern in their own way, and should have NOTHING TO DO WITH RELIGION.  Religious leaders, on the other hand, shouldn’t meddle in the affairs of the state, because their ‘kingdom’ was separate.  
  • The reason being, Luther reasoned, was that Civil authority existed to curb the worst impulses of non-believers.  Religion, on the other hand, was effective for believers.
  • This gave rise to some really GOOD effects on the government side–John Locke cited Luther when he wrote the philosophy which led to our First Amendment.  Governments realised that their role was not to dictate religion.  Good idea.  Solid.
  • On the flip side, however, churches started to pick up the idea that their job was not to meddle in the affairs of governments, or even, in extreme cases, to have opinions about them.  Instead, their job was to keep rendering unto Caesar.  That’s….not as great.  
  • The Roman Catholic church sort of picked up this theory too, eventually, but called it the two swords theory, where one was temporal, and was much lower than the spiritual sword. But still!  Separate things!
• So when we read this, that’s frequently the background music we hear playing.  Give to Caesar what is Caesar; give to God what is God’s.  Of course! We think!  They’re two separate realms!  
• And yet, if that were true?  This would not be a trap.  
• This is a hard question for Jesus precisely because THERE IS NO SEPARATION.
• This is a trap because there is no clear answer–least of all a clear division.  
• This conversation is happening as the Leaders are standing in the Temple–an edifice built by a Roman-Jewish Client king, in order to curry favor with the locals, first of all.  
• That also meant that the Roman coin couldn’t even come inside the gates.  Caesar’s image was breaking the 1st commandment against graven images.  
• The crowd is not a fan of Rome, so signing off on Roman taxes will make Jesus unpopular.  
• HOWEVER, saying people should NOT pay taxes makes him a traitor to Rome.  It’s a trap.
• But either way you go–you see how religion and the secular world are intertwined.  
• To be Jewish is to take a certain position with regards to Rome.  To be Roman is to have another position with regards to Judaism.  The entire question posed by the leaders here rests on the idea that THERE IS NO SEPARATION between these ‘two kingdoms’–rather, there’s one kingdom.
• And Jesus has to pick one.
• He goes with “Give to Caesar’s what is Caesar’s–i.e. The coin” and “give to God’s what is God’s.”
• Here’s the catch:
• To an observant Jew, or even a non-observant one, ALL THE WORLD was the Lord’s.  There’s no part that isn’t God’s, where Caesar would reign.  That’s axiomatic.  Part of the reason people didn’t want to pay taxes to Caesar was that taxes were a symbolic acknowledgement of Caesar’s rule over them.  

• What Jesus is doing is carefully threading a needle here.  He’s caught between empire and the demands of faith.  And while the empire has daily demands that ask for compliance, God has larger commands that call upon our lives.  How we negotiate that is a test of faith.
• Ultimately, when the Empire demands coins, that’s not a big deal; coins are essentially worthless.  When the Empire demands supreme allegiance, loyalty, to the exclusion of what God asks of you–that’s a problem.
• So the task for us is not to divide the world up into neat spheres of influence.  
• The earth is the Lord’s and all that is therein, after all.
• God actually gets a say in all that we do–we have to carry Christ’s call to us to be unconditionally loving, generous and merciful into ALL aspects of our lives.  
• But we do have to decide what in our lives belongs to the Empire, so that we can give it back.
• What rightly belongs to God?  What rightly belongs to the Empire?
• There will always be the claims of Empire in our lives–whether we are on the victorious, Roman side or not.
• The risk for us is to confuse our loyalties.
• God still controls the world, not the Empire.  And while we still need to contend with the earthly reality of these powers which rise and fall, we cannot escape that our primary responsibility is to God.  Period.  
• Whether we are subjects of Rome, of the United States, of Capitalism, or the most sacred of Empires, that of Major League Baseball–that doesn’t let us avoid the call of God.  God still asks us to live our faith.  Even as Uncle Sam asks us to pony it up.
• We get to decide what that negotiation looks like.  I’m sure those disciples argued about it–chances are good they disagreed strenously.  
• But the two kingdoms still pull us.  Ignoring them doesn’t make them go away.  Complying with their every whim doesn’t make them go away.
• We have to carry our discipleship into the midst of Rome, in order to change them.  We have to transform the empire from within, by staying true to the primary call of Christ to us.
• Only then will the world be transformed into the reign of God we wish to see.