Worship
Service for October 18, 2026
Prelude
Announcements:
Call to Worship
L: The days are surely coming, says the Lord,
when I will make a new covenant…it will not be like the old covenant:
P: Written on stone.
L: This will be a radically new covenant; my
laws will be within you
P: Written on hearts.
L: And God added these wonderful words –
P: I am your God and you are my people.
L: Imprint these words anew on our hearts, O
God, so that we know You in all Your fullness, love You as You love us, and
worship You as You deserve.
Opening Hymn – Lead On, O King Eternal #447/724
Prayer of Confession
Merciful God,
You bring our lives in harmony with Yours because of Your righteousness and
justice, Your steadfast love, mercy and faithfulness. These are the qualities of Your life which
were clearly imprinted on Jesus’ heart and which have been written on our
hearts not in ink but with Your Spirit.
We confess that while we readily accept the joy of living Spirit-filled
lives, we all too often fail to live up to the challenges that it brings. When we alienate others by our judgmental and
hard-hearted attitudes: Living God, forgive us and renew our lives with Your
Spirit. When our witness fails to reveal
a heartfelt desire to spread the good news of peace, love, justice and mercy to
a world sorely in need of such news: Living God, forgive us and renew our lives
with Your Spirit. Living God, we come to
You in penitence and faith, praying that Your love will be rewritten on our
hearts and revealed in our lives through the power of the Holy Spirit. (Silent
prayers are offered) AMEN.
Assurance of Pardon
L: If anyone is in Christ, there is a new
creation: everything old has passed away, see everything has become new! We have been reconciled to God through Christ
and all this is from God who does not count our trespasses against us – but
entrusts us with the message of reconciliation.
P: The good news therefore is this: In Jesus Christ we are renewed, we are loved,
and we are forgiven. Thanks be to God!
Gloria Patri
Affirmation of Faith/Apostles’
Creed
I believe in God the Father
Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth; And in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord;
who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under
Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; He descended into hell; the
third day He rose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven, and sitteth on
the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence He shall come to judge
the quick and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Ghost,
the holy catholic Church; the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins; the
resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting. AMEN
Pastoral Prayer and Lord’s
Prayer
O God, our strength and our shield, we gather today to worship the
grandeur of the created world and our place in it. You have created us to till
and keep your garden and we thank you for the privilege of being stewards of
all that you created. As we sing and
worship, make us mindful of the perfection in which the world was created. As it is in our power, make us agents of
reconciliation. Make us people who not
only speak words of peace; make us peaceful people. Make us people who not only speak words of
hope; make us hope-filled people. Make
us people who not only speak words of love; make us loving people. As we hear the words of life in Scripture,
song, and sermon, may the seed of the gospel take root in our lives and may we
be the people you created us to be.
Heavenly Lord, we seek answers to life’s most difficult questions when
we gather together in praise and honor of your name. Know that our questions come with great
wonder and awe at who you are and whose we are.
In our journeys to find the right path for each of us, we have stumbled
and fallen, risen and been renewed. We
have floundered on treacherous paths and have sailed on smooth seas. In this morning’s worship we have named loved
ones and cherished friends that are currently in need of smoother waters and
calmer seas. We pray for…
In this time of silence hear also the words and meditations of our
hearts.
In Jesus’s name we pray together saying…Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed
be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will
be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver
us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory, forever.
AMEN.
Hymn – Rejoice
Ye Pure in Heart #145/169
Scripture Reading(s):
OT – Isaiah 45:1-7
NT – Matthew 22:15-22
Sermon
The
Things That Belong to God
(based
on Matthew 22:15-22)
We
all understand that there are responsibilities attached to living in a
community. We pay taxes because we recognize
that roads and schools and services do not simply appear because someone wishes
they would. But when Jesus tells us to give to God the things that are God’s,
the question posed by the Pharisees’ disciples and Herodians becomes a little more
difficult to understand, because Jesus didn’t explain that part and what that
really means.
What
are the things of God? Is Jesus talking
about the offering we put in the plate, the hour we spend in worship, or the
prayers we remember to say when the day finally quiets down? Those things should matter, of course, but I
wonder if we sometimes only make God’s claim small enough to fit comfortably
into our schedules. We give God a place
on Sunday morning and a line in the household budget, and then we go about the
rest of our lives as though everything else belongs entirely to us. Jesus’ words though invite us to think about
and consider whether the boundaries we have drawn between the two things the Pharisees’
disciples and Herodians ask about are really the boundaries God recognizes.
It
requires us to slow down enough to ask what faithfulness requires and what God’s
love and intention might see that our habits have taught us to overlook. Sometimes the faithful answer is inconvenient.
Sometimes it unsettles an arrangement we
have learned to accept. And sometimes it
begins with realizing that we have been asking a question that’s much too
small.
Matthew
places this encounter in Jerusalem, where the tension around Jesus is growing. Some Pharisees send their disciples to him,
accompanied by Herodians, and together they offer a question designed to trap
him. We should remember that this is a
dispute within the Jewish world of Jesus, who is himself Jewish. Matthew describes the intentions of these
particular questioners. They approach
Jesus with flattering words about his honesty and independence, but the praise
is preparing the ground for an accusation. They ask whether it is lawful to pay the tax
to Caesar, expecting that whichever answer he gives, somebody will be able to
use it against him.
We
hear versions of this same type of question whenever someone is more interested
in winning an argument than understanding another person. There are questions asked across a dinner
table that are really invitations for a fight, and questions on social media
that leave room for only two answers, both of which have already been assigned
to opposing teams. The questioners want
Jesus to choose a side on their terms. A
yes could make him appear comfortable with Roman domination; while a no could
expose him to an accusation of resisting Rome. Their concern is not that he help them live
faithfully. Their concern is that he say
something useful to their plans.
However,
Jesus recognizes what is happening and asks them to show him the coin used for
the tax. They produce a denarius, and he
asks whose image and inscription it carries. They answer that it is Caesar’s. Then Jesus
tells them to give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the
things that are God’s. It is a perfectly
remarkable answer, because he responds to their question while opening up a
much larger one. They have asked about a
simple coin. And Jesus has asked them,
has intentionally invited them to think about the limits of Caesar’s claim and
the reach of God’s.
We
often stop with the first half because Jesus answered it clearly, but that
leaves the second half of his answer almost untouched. What belongs to God? Psalm 24 declares that the earth and all who
live in it belong to the Lord. Government
has responsibilities, and we have responsibilities within it, but no ruler
possesses the earth in the way God does, and no institution has the right to
demand the worship that belongs to God alone.
There
is also a connection here that Christians have long found illuminating. Jesus asks about the image on the coin, and
Genesis speaks of human beings as made in the image of God. Matthew does not spell out that connection,
but it helps us hear the depth of the question. If a coin bearing Caesar’s image can be
returned to Caesar, what does it mean for a person bearing God’s image to
belong to God? Perhaps Jesus is drawing
us beyond a calculation about money toward the offering of our whole lives,
including the way we recognize the sacred worth of every life.
A
government may issue a coin, a company may issue an identification badge, and a
hospital may put a numbered band around a patient’s wrist. Each serves a purpose. None tells us everything that person is. Before anyone is a taxpayer, an employee, a
patient, or a name on a list, that person is someone whose life matters to God.
Giving God what belongs to God begins
with learning to see people that way.
Imagine
a woman standing at a checkout counter after a long day. The person ahead of
her is having trouble with a card, the line is growing, and the cashier looks
as though one more complaint might be more than she can bear. Our woman in this illustration has somewhere
else to be, and she can feel the familiar irritation rising. Nothing particularly dramatic happens next. She simply pauses, notices the cashier’s face
and the concern on the face of the woman whose card is being uncooperative, and
she speaks with a little kindness. Perhaps
she simple says “Don’t rush, I’m in no hurry.”
Or something more familiar or soothing to the woman in front, “Don’t you
hate technology when it doesn’t work? Happens
to me all the time.” Even though she had been in a hurry a moment
before or started to feel frustrated herself. It will never make the evening news, but
something important has changed: a person who was becoming an obstacle has
become visible again.
That
is a small illustration, but it leads toward something much larger. If human
beings belong to God, we cannot treat their dignity as something they must earn
by being useful to us. The person who
needs help belongs to God. The person
whose accent is unfamiliar belongs to God. The person living with dementia, whose
conversation no longer follows the patterns we expect, belongs to God. So does the person whose opinion frustrates us
so much that we would rather dismiss them than listen. God’s image is not a reward for agreeing with
us or having life al together. It is the ground on which we meet one another.
And
that means our faith cannot stop with being pleasant to people we happen to
encounter. Kindness at the checkout
counter matters, but so do the conditions under which the cashier works, such
as fair wages. A generous meal matters,
but so does asking why a neighbor has so little food. A welcome offered to a stranger matters, but
so does challenging the language that makes whole groups of people sound
disposable. We give God what belongs to
God when we refuse to let human beings be reduced to expenses, threats, or
inconveniences, and when that refusal takes shape in what we support and how we
live.
This
doesn’t mean that every decision will be easy or that Christians will agree on
every policy. Discernment requires
patience, accurate information, and a willingness to hear from those who live
with the consequences of our decisions. But
we do have a place to begin. We can ask
whether a choice honors the person made in God’s image, whether it protects
someone vulnerable, and whether our desire for comfort has made another
person’s suffering easier to ignore. Those
questions will not do all our thinking for us, but they will keep us from
calling indifference faithfulness.
One
of my favorite passages from the Old Testament comes from Micah when the author
offers us that familiar invitation for what is required of us but to do
justice, love kindness, and to walk humbly with God. Humility is part of the invitation for a
reason. We can be certain that people
matter to God while admitting that we still have something to learn about how
to care for them. Sometimes giving God
what belongs to God means surrendering our need to have the last word, so that
someone whose voice has been pushed aside can finally be heard. Or someone whose voice says something opposite
our own, is one that we finally listen to and think about.
Our
time belongs to God as well, and that may be one of the harder things for us to
accept. We tend to speak of time as a
possession: my afternoon, my weekend, my retirement, my plans. And there is nothing wrong with making plans
or protecting time for rest. But a life
received as a gift cannot be measured only by how successfully we keep everyone
else from interrupting it. Sometimes an
interruption is where the life of faith becomes real.
Picture
an adult child visiting an aging parent. There are appointments to arrange,
prescriptions to check, and papers to sort, and the visit becomes an efficient
series of tasks. Then the parent begins
telling a story the son or daughter has heard many times before. Everything on the list suggests moving on, but
love suggests sitting down. They put the phone away and listen, not because the
story contains new information, but because the person telling it needs
company. In that moment, giving time
becomes a way of giving oneself. A task
may remain unfinished, but a relationship receives the attention it needs.
Many
of us, maybe even most of us know how difficult that can be. We live with responsibilities that are real,
and some people are already carrying more than anyone can reasonably ask of
them. So, this is not an invitation to
guilt every caregiver into doing more, or to tell exhausted people that their
exhaustion proves they have failed God. Our
bodies belong to God too. Their need for
sleep, nourishment, safety, and care is part of the life God has entrusted to
us. Sometimes the faithful act is to ask
for help, to accept a limit, or to rest before resentment takes root in the
place where love used to be.
Paul’s
invitation in Romans 12 to present our bodies as a living sacrifice is not a
command to destroy ourselves in the service of everyone else’s expectations. It’s an invitation to let our embodied lives
become an offering: the work of our hands, the attention of our minds, the
words that come from our mouths, and the ways we care for ourselves and others.
We are not disembodied souls paying
occasional visits to a religious building. We are people whose daily living can become
worship.
That
brings the question very close to home. What
does God receive through the way we spend an ordinary Tuesday? Does someone receive our attention? Does our speech make room for truth? Do we notice the person who is lonely, and do
we allow ourselves to be known when we are lonely? We do not need to turn every hour into a
religious project, however. We need to do is remember that God is present
in hours we have been tempted to call ordinary, and that faithfulness often
grows there through habits of patient, attentive love.
We
belong to the God we meet in Jesus, who sits at tables with people others have
rejected, welcomes those who have been pushed aside, and carries love into
places where fear and violence seem to have the final word.
Jesus
asks whose image is on the coin, and the answer comes easily. The deeper question stays with us after the
coin is put away. Whose image do we see
in the neighbor, the stranger, the person who troubles us, and the face we meet
in the mirror? If we can learn to
recognize God’s image there, then giving God the things that are God’s will
begin to shape everything else. We will
have a reason to guard human dignity, a reason to share what has been entrusted
to us, and a reason to hope when our efforts feel small. We belong to God, and so does the world God calls
us to love. May our lives become a
grateful answer.
Thanks
be to God. Amen.
Offertory -
Doxology
Prayer of Dedication
Lord
of all, remind us of the sacredness of the moment when our offerings are
presented. Remind us that our offerings
are like our prayers of confession: they represent what we have to give and our
willingness to give to further your kingdom and the proclamation of it. Bless both the gifts and the givers. We pray this in the name of Jesus. AMEN
Closing Hymn – Savior, Like a Shepherd, Lead Us #387/688
Benediction
May the living word of the Lord dwell with you. May it live through you. May it fill your thoughts and deeds. May it fill your mouth with God’s message of
love. May it sustain you in good times
and bad.
May it
equip you for a ministry of peace and hope!
AMEN.
Postlude
