Caesar's Coin (Proper 24A)

  

A Denarius of Tiberius 

Caesar’s Coin

Proper 24A

The Rev. Fr. Anthony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.

10:30 a.m. Sung Mass

18 October 2026

Mission Church of St. Paul the Apostle, Crescent City CA

Exodus 33:12-23; Psalm 99; 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10; Matthew 22:15-22

God, take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

 

A lot of us have been thinking, recently, about the words of someone who learned too late to oppose the horrors of the Nazis: 

 

“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me." 

 

What most of us don’t know is that these words were written by a Lutheran pastor who had initially supported Hitler because he thought the New Testament taught him to respect the authority of the state above all.  And he did that in part because of his misunderstanding of today’s Gospel.

 

We live in a divided, messed up world, with plenty of tyrants leading different countries.  It is a world rife with horror and good reason to fear and hate. We tend to tolerate the brutality of political leaders as long as they have money and can put out propaganda convincing us that they are on the side of the right, the good, and the greatness of our own people.       

 

But none of this is new to the world.  Jesus lived in a Roman Empire led by Tiberius Caesar, who regularly committed military and police-state atrocities to maintain what he called the “Roman Peace” paid for by oppressive taxes on the very peoples subjugated by Rome. Tiberius was the supreme high priest of Roman old-time religion and morality.  But read the Roman historians:  everybody knew but dared not say he was an abusive old pervert holed up in his pleasure palace on the island of Capri, where he regularly raped and killed children for sexual gratification.  In Galilee and Judea, Jesus’s co-religionists had real problems of conscience about being part of such a morally compromised system.  It wasn’t their own country, after all.  Should they be “good subjects of the Empire” and go along to get along?  Or should they violently revolt, or just refuse to pay those taxes? 

 

In today’s Gospel reading, people ask Jesus whether he endorses a tax revolt.  Both the Pharisees and the Herodians who ask support the tax in their own ways.  The Pharisees use careful legal casuistry to argue you could pay Roman taxes and still keep God’s Law. The Herodians, allied client kings the Romans had installed and the Sadducees who ran the Temple, are totally in bed with Romans and themselves benefit from the taxes.

 

They had good cause to tell people to pay their taxes.  Resentment over them had led to anti-tax riots in the past and ultimately would lead to general insurrection and the destruction of the Jewish homeland by Vespasian and Titus in 70 CE.   The tributum capitis was applied throughout the Empire on every non-citizen living under Roman control.  Everyone was required to pay the sum each year simply for the privilege of living and breathing under the protection of the Pax Romana.  Protection money indeed.  

The Roman Procurator Quirinius had provoked a district wide revolt just 25 years or so before just by conducting a census to establish base lines for the tax. It had ended with the Romans’ crucifying en masse several thousand captured tax rebels, and was the origin of the guerilla fighters who throughout the New Testament are called lestes (bandits) or zealots.  

 

A Second Temple Shekel 

The scene in today’s Gospel takes place in one of the outer courtyards of the Jerusalem Temple (Matt 21:23).  It is Passover week; the city is crowded with masses of the devout commemorating God’s delivery of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt.  Political tensions are high and the risk of sudden outbreak of mob violence is great. The previous day, Jesus had conducted a demonstration in the Temple courtyard by driving out moneychangers (Matt 21:12).

 

The money changers, you will recall, were there to “assist” the devout by taking their unclean Roman coins and exchanging them—at a small commission, of course—for kosher Temple currency that worshippers could use to buy the animals queued up for fully assembly-line slaughter at the altar.  Jesus’ public act of driving out this commerce, needed to allow the sacrificial rites to proceed within the context of larger economy run by non-Jews, has led people to think that Jesus is a closet tax resister, come to Jerusalem on a donkey to the adulation of crowds.  Later in the week, at his hearing before Pontius Pilate, they will charge him with this very crime—promoting tax resistance against the Romans—to argue for his execution (Luke 23:1-4).  And he will die on a cross between two of those anti-tax bandits. 

 

It is in this tense scene that the Pharisees and Herodians innocently ask Jesus, “Is it permitted to pay taxes to the Emperor?”  

If Jesus says “yes,” he marks himself as an Imperial tool, a quisling, and a disloyal Jew, fair game for the rage of the mob.  If he answers “no,” he commits treason and marks himself for Roman crucifixion.  Malice indeed. 

Jesus says, “In what coin is the tax paid?  Can you show me one?” 

They don’t produce a Temple shekel, because for the Romans, it was “funny money” not recognized as valid currency.  They produce a Roman denarius, the coin for a common laborer’s wage for a day.  It is common enough in archeological digs from the period, bearing an image of Tiberius Caesar on its front, with the inscription, “Caesar Augustus Tiberius, son of the God Augustus.”  On its back is a picture of Tiberius’ mother Livia, wife of Augustus, seated in the posture of the Goddess Pax, or Peace:  good propaganda for Tiberius.

Jesus asks, as innocently as they had, “Whose image is that?  And whose inscription?” 

Jesus has thus caught those who had been setting a trap for him. 

By producing a Roman coin here the Pharisees and Herodians show to all that whatever their political and religious differences, they both use the idolatrous coinage of the age, and have brought it into the sacred precincts. 

Their sheepish reply as they produce the coin shows they know they have been had, “It bears the Emperor’s image and his inscription.” 

Jesus replies, “Well then, if this coin belongs to Caesar, then give it back to him!”  And then he adds, slyly, “And what belongs to God, give to God.” 

Christians over the centuries have understood this saying in a variety of ways. They usually combine Jesus’ reply to Pontius Pilate “My kingdom is not of this world” (John18:36) with Paul’s urging his readers in Rome to “be subject to the governing authorities” (Rom 13:1) and argued that there are two separate realms, two separate spheres: God’s workings versus earthly political activity, the Church versus the State. This view became almost universal within Christianity after the Emperor Constantine, who made Christianity the state religion supported by force of law and arms.  Many argued that the state is an empire operating within a greater empire, God’s kingdom, and that Christian rulers gained their legitimacy from Church consecration.  They said this with straight faces, unwilling to notice the unedifying fact that it was the earthly rulers who usually dictated terms to the Church under the arrangement.

Look at the results of such an interpretation. The cross, previously a sign of Jesus’ passion, became fused in people’s minds with the Sword of Constantine, wielded under the phrase In Hoc Signo Vincis, “With this sign, conquer!”  IHS for "IHSUS, Jesus," became IHS "In hoc signo." Christians murdered Christians in riots and even wars over exquisitely fine points of Christology, and exiled whole communities to maintain doctrinal purity and unchallenged political power. In the East the leading churchmen became creatures controlled by a corrupt and oppressive Byzantine court.  In the West, The See of Rome, claiming an increasingly powerful role as monarchial ruler of the Western Church even as the power of the West’s earthly rulers declined, eventually became such a symbol for corruption, abuse of power, and oppression that some, like Henry VIII and Martin Luther, actively embraced the idea of the Church subservient to earthly leaders.   The low point was the prostitution of the Church in Germany—both Protestant and Roman—in support of the Third Reich.  The guy who wrote those words at the start of my homily initially supported Hitler because he was, after all the God-appointed leader of the nation, and because he persecuted people whom he had been taught to see as enemies of God.  But he soon found himself arrested when he put took issue with the Nazis turning the whole church into its own hateful creature.  The kingdom within a kingdom of the Constantinian settlement has become a Reich within a Reich! We see the same prostitution of the church today in our country in Christian Nationalism, held by some evangelicals as a biblical teaching (!) and the ideology behind the current administration’s “Project 2025.”

But this idea of two spheres is not what is intended in Jesus’ “render unto Caesar” saying. 

Pre-Constantinian Father Tertullian, in De Idololatria, points out that when Jesus says to give the coin with Caesar’s image back to Caesar, he adds “give back to God what is God’s.”  Tertullian asks, “What is it that has God’s image? Why, human beings, of course, since ‘God created human beings in his own image.’” 

 

In other words, it is not a question of two spheres, but one alone: God’s.  We—all that we are, all that we will become—are the coin that bears God’s image and which we must give back to God.  Caesar’s coin with its image, because it distracts from this real issue, is thus labeled idolatry. 

When Jesus says “What belongs to God” he probably has in mind a lot more than just us.  As Psalm 24:1 puts it: “The earth is the Lord's, and all that it in it; the world, and everything that lives.” The whole natural world belongs to God as well.   Jesus here rejects the idea of two spheres: for him, there’s only one.   
 
“Go ahead and give Tiberius that coin, since it plainly belongs to him. But there are bigger fish to fry—like how we pay back to God what is God’s!”  Don’t get worked up over paying taxes, whether out of an outraged sense of political insult (a loss of “liberty”) or morality (not committing “idolatry.”)   If you are already up to your neck deep in sewage, don’t suddenly get all sentimental about keeping your face clean.

 

Jesus knows that we are living in occupied territory.  Not just Romans occupying Palestine. The demonic Powers and Dominions, the evil systems that reign here, are what truly occupy God's good creation. And he says, do what you need to do to get by under such an occupation.  But don't let it fool you one bit. Use the coin, but don’t believe the propaganda on it.  

The problem is that money stands in for so many other things for us.  It objectifies value and worth, work, and honor.  “How much is that person worth?” we ask, oblivious to how we have reduced the person to mere possession of pieces of the economic pie.   “I have done right by her,” says the man about to be divorced for emotional abandonment, thinking only of the money he has sent her way over the years.   “Oh, he doesn’t work, then?” we ask about a stay-at-home father, just because his work isn’t quantified by measurable currency units.  The proverb says it all, "Money is Power." 

Jesus will have none of this.  

Talking about money and devotion to God elsewhere, Jesus says, “No one can serve two masters.  Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” (Matt 6:23-25).  

 
Money is not the only idol out there.  Political programs promising greatness or redemption, whether from the Right or the Left, have a way of standing in for other issues, just like money. And they can be as corrupted as money can be. What matters for Jesus is an open-hearted trust and devotion to God, and the acts of mercy and social justice that result from this.  Look at the person in front of you and treat them with respect, if not kindness. 

  
The world we live in is occupied territory.  That’s why it is so messed up.  We are all in Caesar’s game, and have to pay in Caesar's coin, play by Caesar's rules.  But as Jesus said after his arrest, "those who live by the sword die by it."  There is so much more at stake, a much more important game afoot. 

Give back to Caesar what is already his.  But give to God everything. 
 
In the name of Christ, Amen.

The Parable of the Invitation (Proper 23A)

  

The Parable of the Invitation

11 October 2026: 9a.m. Sung Mass

Mission Church of the Holy Spirit, Sutherlin, Oregon

Proper 23A

The Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.

Isaiah 25:1-9 Psalm 23 Philippians 4:1-9 Matthew 22:1-14

 

God, give us hearts to feel and love.

Take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

 

What in the world was that Gospel reading about?  If a king invites a whole lot of people to a party and he’s so scary that everyone finds some lame excuse to get out of it, there’s something wrong with that king.  And if you dragoon me in from the street as a party stuffer to fill in for all the declined RSVPs you have received, only to humiliate and shame me for not wearing just the right clothes, and then throw me out, there’s something the matter with you, not with me.   

 

Matthew’s Jesus starts it with “the kingdom of heaven is like….”  But remember that this isn’t saying that king is somehow God.  The phrase means something more like “Let me tell you a story that will help you see how God rules over us and how God doesn’t.”   

 

The king here is clearly a psycho, totally self-absorbed and narcissistic.  This is how Nero, Caligula, or some petty but nasty dictator in a banana republic, or unfortunately now our own President, treats party guests.  By seeing how bad such “hospitality” is, we see maybe what God’s invitations are like by contrast.  

 

Matthew was written just after Vespasian destroyed the Jewish homeland and its Temple in 70n CE.  The Gospel writer suffers from serious post-traumatic stress syndrome.  Matthew tries to come to grips with that earth-shattering event by looking at Jesus’s parables and applying them to his own day:  Jerusalem was destroyed, he says, because Jesus was crucified there.  In trying to make Christianity a little more respectable in Roman eyes, he lays the blame of the crucifixion on the Jewish leadership and mobs, not on the Romans, even though crucifixion was not a Jewish form of execution, but a Roman one specifically reserved for rebels against the Roman Imperium. 

 

Matthew here has taken a parable from Jesus with a single point of comparison and added all sorts of details to turn it into an allegory, changing its meaning in the process.  Like all the parables in the last few weeks in the Lectionary, the earlier form of the parable had one meaning, one critical of the careless rich and powerful of Jesus’s society, the very kind of message that got him killed by the Romans.  Matthew allegorizes the stories, adds details, and interprets them as moral admonitions and explanations for his own day. 

 

The powers at play in these stories are not attractive. In one (Matt 20:21-35), a landowner pays day-laborers such a pittance that he cannot be bothered to prorate their wages for the amount of the day they had worked, and then blames the ones who complained they had worked longer for being stingy.  In another (Matt 18:21-35), a petty king forgives a subordinate a 100-million-dollar debt so he can look good and hide his own corruption, and then condemns that very subordinate to endless torture because he didn’t see the need for such PR methods and wouldn’t forgive a sum paltry in comparison to someone else.  In another (Matt 21:31-46), an absentee landlord applies squeeze on the tenant farmers working his vineyard, who resort to violence to defend themselves, thus getting landlord’s goons and his own son killed in the process so he ends up annihilating all the tenants.  In today’s parable (Matt 22:1-14), a psychopathic ruler throws a dinner party that everyone rightly is afraid to attend.  He then dragoons passersby on the street as party stuffers, and then punishes them when they show up underdressed.  Matthew has turned all of these into allegorical dramas explaining the dynamics of Jewish-Gentile relations in the Christian Church in Syrian Antioch, and making some sense of the Temple’s destruction: Jewish members of the church shouldn’t resent the grace shown gentile coverts.  Gentiles coming late to the party might not be expected to be circumcised or keep Jewish Law, but at least should dress right by avoiding things that were totally revolting to Jewish sensibilities. The destruction of the Temple was not a random misfortune, but punishment from God.  In Matthew’s reading, the power in these parables seems to be God, and those fairing ill seem to be Matthew’s Jewish compatriots who declined, wholly or in part, Jesus’s invitation to welcome God’s Reign.  Both God and the Jewish people come off poorly in the process.  

 

Today’s parable, like last week’s, is preserved not only in Matthew, but also in the Gospel of Luke and the non-canonical Gospel of Thomas. If you carefully compare these, it is clear that the parable on Jesus’s lips originally ran this way:

 

“A rich man gave a great dinner to which he invited many guests. When all was ready, he sent his servant to summon the guests. But one by one, they all gave excuses for not coming. Hearing this, the rich man commanded his servant, ‘Go out quickly into the streets and alleys and bring in anyone you find. I want my great hall to be filled for the banquet.’”

Most of Jesus’ audience knew that a great banquet was a big scriptural image for God’s future saving act.  Even though many passages said, like today’s Isaiah reading, that this banquet would be for all nations (Isaiah 25:7), many teachers—including some of the wealthy criticized in Jesus’ parables¾said that it would be an exclusive event limited to God’s elite people only. 

 

Jesus replies to such a stingy image of God with parables. He points to the weather and says that God gives his rain and sunshine to both good and bad people alike (Matt. 5:45).   He points to families and notes that when children ask for bread to eat, parents do not give them stones, or when they ask for an egg to eat, do not give them a scorpion, or when a fish, not a snake. “If even average parents try to give their children good things, how much more generous will God be?” (Matt. 7:9-10; Luke 11:11-13)

And Jesus’ actions match his words. He regularly eats and drinks with people declared contagiously unclean by his religion.   He welcomes them.   He tells people to accept God’s invitation without fear or anxiety.  “Don’t worry about how you’re clothed,” he says, “the wild flowers are prettier than King Solomon all decked out, without any worries at all” (Matt 6:28-29).  When he sends the apostles out, he tells them to just take one change of clothes and no more, to accept people’s hospitality, not be picky about their food, and eat whatever their hosts give them, presumably whether it’s acceptable to the religion or not (Mark 6:8-10; Luke 9:3-4; Matt 10:9-10).  He asks Martha, driven to distraction about getting every little detail of her dinner for Jesus just right, whether she might relax a little, and focus on the one thing that will give her joy, Jesus’ word, just like her sister Mary (Luke 10:38-42).  

Jesus’ original parable here tells the story of the host forced by RSVP “regrets” to drag in people from off the street to say God’s banquet is open to all.  It’s all about God’s kindness, God’s grace.  But Matthew adds all the nasty details about a psychopathic king and invitees scared to death of getting things wrong, and that poor guy without proper wedding clothes thrown out into the street bound hand and foot.  Matthew is trying to explain that no matter how gracious God’s invitation, we need to be attentive and intentional in accepting it.  Matthew’s image of having proper clothes for the wedding becomes in the Gospel of Thomas a symbol of whether we have actually truly accepted God’s gift.  This corresponds to a little-known fact about Jesus’s culture: lords who threw big parties with dress codes beyond the means of their guests were expected to offer them proper dress as part of the invitation.  So those folks showing up dressed wrong declined this offer of hospitality just as much as the folks who gave such lame excuses as a reason for RSVP-ing no. 

 

I have to tell you, we live in a messed-up world full of leaders like that psychopathic king. And we seem to respond by being just like them.  I was horrified in reading the New York Times this morning that threats of death and violence against our political leadership at the national, state, county, and city levels are at an all-time high, both from the right and the left.  And we have that odious fellow who serves as secretary of defense but styles himself as the secretary of war saying he plans on live-streaming the firing-squad execution of a mass-murderer in December.  I won’t even talk about his boss. We are led by Nero’s and Caligula’s, and are increasingly becoming like them.  What a broken, broken mess we are, having Made America Grotesque Again.  So when Jesus calls us to joyous acceptance of God’s gentle invitation, and asks us to extend it to others, especially those who hate us and whom we find ourselves hating, that is something really, really important. 

 

At Caesar’s party, where all is fear and stress, if there is anyone like that guy thrown out on the streets, it is Jesus himself.   Jesus was taken outside the city wall and nailed to a cross because he just was not up to snuff when it came for giving proper respect to Rome. 

 

God is a kind and loving host, and invites us all.  There is no need for stress or anxiety.  The good news in this is that God’s invitation is not like Caesar’s.  God is not a psycho killer.  We need not fear. 

 

But in order to accept God’s invitation, we do have to be open to receive it. St. Augustine says, ‘God gives where He finds open hands.’ You can't receive the gift if your hands are already full, or are clenched tight.

In yet another parable, Jesus compares God’s kingdom to a narrow path and a tight gate, which at any given time only a few can manage to squeeze through (Matt 7:13-14). This is because in order to get through such a tight fit, people have to be willing to abandon all the baggage they are carrying, whether riches, resentments, self-will, sins, or even what appears to be good things if they are getting in the way. 

 

What does accepting grace, freely offered, look like in practical terms? 

It looks like me admitting that I am helpless and hopeless. It sounds like the sincere phrase “I am sorry and I humbly repent.” It feels like Martin Luther’s heartfelt cry when barely missed by a thunderbolt, “I am yours, Lord; Saint Anna, help me. I will become a monk!”  

I myself have known God’s grace.   Once for me, all was hopeless and helpless, through my own “thoughtlessness, weakness, through my own deliberate fault.”   I found that I had to accept my own powerlessness and turn it all over to God. And keep doing that, each day.  Gradually, steadily, God worked wonderful changes. I am still far from what God wants. But I live each day in gratitude.

I know that many of you have had similar experiences. Some of you have told me your stories.   We need to continue in faith and gratitude, and share the invitation to God’s splendid party through our actions and words.

If you have not had such an experience, then please listen to this call to God’s banquet, you random passerby on the street, and come it to the party.   The tickets are free. But they are not cheap. Once in the door and settled at the table, we must continue to respond to Jesus’ beckoning call.  Without sinking into fear or anxiety, let’s give some thought to how we’re dressed. This means amending our ways, making up as far as it is possible for our misdoings.  It means trying to be our best selves, being a bit better today than yesterday, this year than last. 

 

The banquet is priceless, the bread the finest, and the wine, a vintage that makes our hearts gladder than any other. Come to the banquet; don’t worry whether you are worthy.  Don’t about your clothes.  Don’t be afraid. Just come.    

 

In the name of Christ, Amen.

Desperate Farmers (Proper 22A)

  

Desperate Farmers

(Proper 22A)

9:00 a.m. Sung Mass

4 October 2026

Parish Church Saint Luke, Grants Pass (Oregon)
Isaiah 5:1-7 Psalm 80: 7-14 Philippians 3:4b-14 Matthew 21:33-46

God, give us hearts to feel and love,
take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

 

We have seen in the last few weeks several parables of Jesus that have been re-interpreted by Matthew’s Gospel:  Matthew regularly takes a parable that has a single major point of reflection and turns it into an allegory, a story with several points of comparison.  Last week, it was the parable of the two sons, the big talker and the big doer (Matt. 21:23-32).  Jesus meant this as a simple contrast between saying and not doing on the one hand and not saying but just doing on the other; Matthew turned this into an allegory about the religiously orthodox (Pharisees and scribes) and repentant notorious sinners (tax-collectors and whores).   The week before that, it was the parable of the bad personnel policy (the day workers hired at different times yet paid the same; Matt. 20:1-16), which Matthew understood as an allegory about the grateful ones come lately to faith and the resentful ones who have been here a long time.  On Jesus’ lips, it was a critique of the unfairness of the marketplace and the careless ways of the wealthy, where what they see as an act of kindness can be seen as corrupted by the unfairness of the larger system.  The week before that, it was the parable of the unmerciful servant (Matt. 18:22-35).  Again, what for Jesus had been an edgy critique of the careless rich, great and small, had become for Matthew an allegory about the need for us to forgive others if we expect to be forgiven ourselves by God. 

The images in today’s readings, the parable of the vineyard in Isaiah, and Matthew’s take on the parable of the wicked tenants, both use the rich images of viniculture to talk about our relationship with God.  We must bring forth sweet and juicy grapes, acts of compassion and service, if we are to truly be God’s vineyard, lest he clean up the garden, toss us out, and start again with another vine stock more prone to fruit. 

That much is obvious from the Lectionary’s juxtaposition of these two passages.  And, as far as it goes, is a good message. 

But what is not so patently evident is how Matthew, once again, has reframed and reinterpreted Jesus’ parable.   When you compare this parable with how it is preserved in Luke and in the Gospel of Thomas, you see what Matthew or his tradition has added:  all the little details that lead us to see in the parable a complex story with many points of comparison s an allegory: the direct allusion to the parable of the vineyard in Isaiah, the complex narrative about different slaves being sent and some getting killed and others just beaten, or the detail of the murdered son’s body being tossed out outside vineyard.  Even the concluding question, “what do you think that landowner is going to do to those tenants?” is missing in the original form. 

Matthew, writing after the Roman army’s destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 C.E., believes that Jesus’s parable is about that earth-shattering event, the end of Second Temple Judaism and the Temple cult with its legal practices.  He sees it as being replaced by Christianity.  In this proto-supercessionist understanding of the parable, the Landlord is God; the tenants, the Israelites and the Jews; the agents sent and then abused, the prophets; and the “only son, the heir,” Jesus Christ.  The idea is that Jews over the centuries rejected the prophets, and abused and killed some, and finally rejected Jesus, who was killed outside the city wall.  So the disaster in 70 CE was actually God’s punishment. 

I have to tell you, I have real problems with this understanding of the parable.  St. Paul never believed that God had rejected his people, or had changed his deal with them, only that God had included Gentiles in the scope of grace and election.   And the violent and dark history of Christian anti-Semitism, with pogroms and massacres regularly happening on Good Friday over the centuries, demands that we not encourage or mimic supercessionism or any narrative that would blame “the Jewish people,” for deicide.   Such ideas should be recognized as a negative, anti-gospel foray of the mind, just like the Psalmist’s murderous prayers that his enemies’ babies’ brains be smashed against the wall. 

The story as originally told by Jesus is a shocking tale of how desperate tenant farmers in first century Roman-ruled Palestinian had become.   Like the parable of the dishonest manager, or the parable of the bad personnel policy, its original point was to contrast how wrong the world was in this system of things with how things might be if God’s reign were here in full power.

Just look at the land owner here:  he is not sending those servants out of any concern for the tenant farmers.  He is sending them, probably with strong-armed goons, to pick up the latest installment of squeeze.  The farmers, desperate, resort to strong-arm tactics to defend themselves, not once, but twice. 

Think about how such a parable would have been heard by the crowds of peasants and day-laborers following Jesus.    He starts the story of an absentee land-owner.  He sends his henchman from the city to the farm get the produce for this season.  The farmers have had enough!  They rise up and send the goon packing!  I can imagine that Jesus’ audience here probably cheered.   The landowner sends another, bigger, goon with more “motivation” to come back with the goods.  But again, the poor tenants send him away empty handed!   The crowd at this point is going wild at this story where things are finally going as they ought to!  But then the Landowner sends his own son—an only child—to make sure the tenants haven’t been secretly paying kickbacks to the goons to get them to go back empty-handed.   The crowd becomes silent in anticipation of how this interesting story will end.   But the tenants, seeing the son, misunderstand what’s going on.  They think that the Landowner has died, and that the son is making an inspection tour to make sure his inheritance is in order.  And so they kill him, thinking that they will get squatters’ rights on unclaimed property if the son himself has not left a will.   The crowd is in doubt now; they don’t know who to side with.  They see the twist in the story, the unexpected fact that the Landowner is not dead.  And they know what he is going to do at the murder of his son by these lawless tenants.  He will wreak a terrible vengeance, slaughtering the farmers and their families, and replacing them with docile, productive ones so he can go back to city to enjoy the high life off the proceeds of the farm. 

I doubt that there was any cheering now.   The poor people in the audience have just heard a story that reminds them of how they simply must mind their own business and play along with the oppressors lest things go totally wrong.  The rich in the audience, the religious leaders, the lawyers, know that Jesus has just blasted the system of oppression that has made them wealthy and powerful.  No one cheers, but everyone wonders at the story. 

This story should make us wonder as well.  How much of the good life we enjoy comes from work of others, and that unfairly?  How much is gained by the exploitation and violation of an already fragile natural environment?  How is it possible to address unjust systems of power and wealth?  Is it right to do so, and if so, what means are just and right to do so?   The Landowner and the tenants in this story have clear ideas of honor, fairness, and law.  I wonder how our ideas of such things fare in such a world as seen in Jesus’ story.    This week, I invite us to let this story work in us, and make us wonder a whole lot.  

In the name of Christ, Amen

Friends of Jesus (Proper 21A)

  

Friends of Jesus

27 September 2026

Homily Preached at the Episcopal Church of the Holy Spirit, Sutherlin OR

Proper 21A

The Rev. Dr. Anthony Hutchinson

Exodus 17:1-7; Psalm 78:1-4, 12-16; Philippians 2:1-13; Matthew 21:23-32

 

God, take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

Fifteen years ago in Wuhan China (yes—that Wuhan, the place where Covid19 first showed up seven years ago!), I had an experience that made me think a lot about what it means to have faith.  At a semi-formal dinner welcoming me as a senior U.S. Embassy official, I noticed that one of my table companions, a top official of the Hubei provincial government, was wearing a beautiful carved wood Buddhist prayer chaplet (like this one) around his wrist.  Knowing that this man had to be a member of the Chinese Communist party, and that one must affirm absolute atheism in order to become a member of that party, I innocently asked him, “Oh, those are nice beads.  Are you a disciple of the Buddha (fotu)?”   His body stiffened and I could see that he was quickly working through in his mind the implications of such a question from me.  He relaxed, and then said, smiling, “I’m not sure I count as a fotu (Buddha’s disciple). I’m just a foyou (Buddha’s friend).” 

 

 

His reply, as clever as it was, got me thinking.  We like to say we are Christians, or disciples or students of Christ.  But are we Christ’s friends?  

 

Jesus, just before his death, told his disciples that they were his friends, not his servants (John 20).  He was giving his life for them, and he wanted them to know that this was not the action of a teacher for his students, or a religious leader for his followers.  It was the action of a friend, out of love for his friends. 

 

In today’s Gospel reading Jesus gives a cautious non-reply to questions about his authority, just like that official’s non-reply about his Buddhism.  Jesus then tells a story about two sons, one who says he will obey his father and then doesn’t and one who says he won’t, and then does.  Jesus clearly condemns the first and praises the second. He s saying, don’t focus on whether I have authority’ rather focus on what doing what good sons and good friends do for those they love.    

 

Many people in the world today say they are Christians.  They say they study and follow his teachings, Jesus’ commands, his rules.  And they condemn those who are not as diligent in this, who are not good disciples.  This hateful condemnation of others is the original sin at the heart of perverted Christianity and Christian nationalism. 

 

But Jesus said many times that we must not judge others because we know that we have been forgiven great errors and failings. 

 

Jesus said many times that sinners who recognize their fault and need God are far closer to God’s Reign than people who follow all the rules and thank God that they are better than others. 

 

Jesus told many jokes which had as their butt the pious and the self-important. 

 

It was precisely this contempt of Jesus for the righteous religion of the rule keeper that got him in such hot water with the local religious authorities.  “He spends all his time with drunks, sex-workers, and traitor collaborators with the Romans,” they said. He replied, “it is the sick who need a doctor, not healthy people.” 

 

The Romans suspected that Jesus was stirring up trouble against their imperial occupation of his homeland, and so those religious authorities, when they just couldn’t deal any more with his contempt for their rule-keeping religion, arranged to have him turned over to them to be killed.   

 

People who say they are Christian and who do not actually internalize and practice what Jesus did, and how he saw the world, are like the first son in the story. 

 

People who might not be so righteous, but end up trying to follow the behavior Jesus modeled, not out of a desire to keep rules, but out of a sense of obligation of friendship and love, are like the second son. 

 

In the traditional Roman Catechism, faith is described as “an act of the will assenting to that which is revealed by God, because of the authority of the revealing God.”   Faith is accepting God’s words precisely because it is from God that they come.   

 

The point is well taken—accepting what God tells us simply because it pleases us, or because we already agree, this is not faith.  It is a simulacrum of faith.  It is not true religion, but boutique spirituality. It is not seeking God’s will.  It actually is simply seeking our own desires and tarting them up as if they were God’s. It will not lead us beyond ourselves, or ultimately anywhere good. 

 

Those who take this definition of faith--assent because of authority--literally and all by itself generally end up painting a gloomy picture indeed of faith.  It becomes an act of submission in what appears to be an abusive relationship: "submit to me because I am God and you are not, or burn in hell."  Such an act of “faith” robs us of any autonomy, of any free will, of any human dignity, and necessarily makes us part of an army of robot victim souls. 

 

Is accepting God’s word on the authority of the revealing God bound to make us such victim automatons?   No. 

 

For, you see, there are two kinds of authority that one can base acceptance on:  authority because of position, rank, and recognized reliability, or authority that comes from who one is, and what one’s relationship to us is.  The first is the authority of a corporal commanding a military unit that he has just been assigned to.  The soldiers obey him because of the position he holds, not because of who he is.  But there is another kind of authority, the authority of the physically brave private who charges the enemy lines, and whom everyone else follows because they are inspired by the example.  They follow him because of who he is, not because of what position he holds.

 

Our faith, our trust in God must be based on the latter kind of authority. 

 

It is why Jesus calls us to be his friends, not his slaves. 

 

It is why Jesus describes God's reign as a treasure buried in a field that we joyfully sacrifice all else to possess.

Jesus in today's parable is suggesting here that ultimately, those who proclaim they are God’s followers will fail in following God’s will, while those who are God’s friends will, despite all their failings (or perhaps because of them), succeed. 

 

The principle here is found throughout scripture:  the first shall be last and the last first.  The tax collector praying for forgiveness from God is closer to God that Pharisee with a cold proud heart who prays to thank God he is not like "that sinner over there."  In today’s Hebrew Scripture lesson, it is only in the desert dryness that God can make the rock split and bring forth water. In the epistle, the “mind of Christ” that Paul wants us to emulate is described as an emptying of self-seeking and full trust in (friendship with) God.  In the Gospel, Jesus says to his opponents,  “Traitors and sex-workers will go into the Kingdom before you,” precisely because his opponents want to base their faith on the authority of position and rules rather than the trust of friendship. Note that the parable of the two sons is introduced by that dispute over "authority." 

 

 So just as that man in Wuhan was a “friend,” not a “disciple” of Buddha, I think that Jesus in this parable and others is calling us to be his authentic friend, not his simply his slavish follower.  That’s because slavish followers tend to focus on instrumentalities and rules, and thus always seem to end up disappointing their masters.  But friends, despite problems and failings, tend to come through in the end and make their masters—no, make that their friends--happy with them. 

 

So let’s pay attention to our friend, Jesus.  Let's pay attention to his tastes, what he likes, and what he doesn’t like.  Let’s pay attention to the kind of company he keeps and do likewise.  Let’s let him be our friend, and take us from where we are to where we ought to be, regardless of our or other people’s opinions of where that may be.

And let’s stop condemning others when we have so much about ourselves that could be condemned.  Let's forgive others, and let’s forgive ourselves, since we have so much that our friend Jesus has already forgiven.

In the name of our Christ our friend, Amen.