Worship
for the Lord’s Day
October
18, 2020
Both congregations,
Olivet Presbyterian Church (9:45am) and Bethesda United Presbyterian Church
(11:15am) are now open for in person corporate worship beginning this
Sunday. For those of you who will continue
to worship from home, our service has changed a bit for the in-person corporate
worship service, but we’ll continue to provide you a similar experience here,
on-line.
Food Bank at Olivet for
West Elizabeth is scheduled for Tues, Oct. 20 from 1:00-2:30pm. If you are available to volunteer that day
(masked), we could use some help packing boxes beginning at 9:00am.
Due to a quick trip to
Florida to see my mother for her birthday we will not have in-person worship on
Sunday, November 1 and will meet virtually via this format that we’ve become
accustomed to over the past six/seven months.
We return to in-person, corporate worship on Sunday, November 8 at our
regular times.
Let’s begin:
Call to Worship
Prayer of Confession
God of mercy, we place our
trust in tangible things— things we can see and touch— and question whether You
are really there. Forgive us, Holy One,
when we fail to recognize that You are always nearby, patiently waiting for us
to recognize Your presence and Your glory.
Help us when we lose our way, and forgive us when we forget to whom we
truly belong. Lover of justice for all
Your children throughout the world, open our eyes to see You; open our ears to
hear You; open our hearts to love You; and open our hands to serve You. In Jesus' name we pray. (Silent prayers are offered) AMEN.
Words of Assurance
Affirmation of Faith –
The 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:
(Continued prayers for
all those affected by the Coronavirus, for our schools, for our national
leaders. We also pray for those affected
by this season’s series of hurricanes and the wildfires that have damaged so
much.)
Make us
mindful of the needs of others, just as we are mindful of our own family
member’s needs. Make us aware and
sensitive to their needs and hurts, their sufferings and pain, as You are aware
of ours. Remind us that we are indeed
our brothers’ and our sisters’ keepers.
Because of that we lift up in prayer to You these personal prayers…
As we care
for one another and have lifted up their concerns in prayer, we also ask that
in this time of silence You listen to the beatings of our own heart and know
what lies within. Hear our prayers, O
God.
And in Christ’s name, we pray his prayer together…
We ask these things in
the name of Jesus Christ our Savior
who taught us to pray 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 To God Be the Glory
Scripture Readings
Old Testament: Psalm 99
1The Lord is king; let the
peoples tremble! He sits enthroned upon the cherubim; let the earth quake!
2The Lord is great in Zion; he is
exalted over all the peoples.
3Let them praise your great and
awesome name. Holy is he!
4Mighty King, lover of justice,
you have established equity; you have executed justice and righteousness in
Jacob.
5Extol the Lord our God; worship at his
footstool. Holy is he!
6Moses and Aaron were among his
priests, Samuel also was among those who called on his name. They cried to
the Lord,
and he answered them.
7He spoke to them in the pillar
of cloud; they kept his decrees, and the statutes that he gave them.
8O Lord our God, you answered
them; you were a forgiving God to them, but an avenger of their wrongdoings.
9Extol the Lord our God, and worship at
his holy mountain; for the Lord our
God is holy.
New Testament: Matthew
22:15-22
15Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he
said. 16So they sent
their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know
that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and
show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality. 17Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to
the emperor, or not?” 18But Jesus,
aware of their malice, said, “Why are you putting me to the test, you
hypocrites? 19Show me the
coin used for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius. 20Then he said to them, “Whose head is this, and whose
title?” 21They answered,
“The emperor’s.” Then he said to them, “Give therefore to the emperor the
things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” 22When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and
went away.
Sermon – Just like the hymns, you can click on the
sermon title to hear/watch a video of today’s sermon via YouTube.
(Matthew 22:15-22, Matthew 17:24-27)
The
disciple whose name was Matthew, a tax collector, is not the same Matthew that
pens the gospel by that name. But it is
interesting that the gospel writer includes two stories in his writing of the
gospel seemingly about taxes. We’ve
probably heard this one, our morning Scripture reading, quoted many times,
“render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s but unto God what is God’s” and we’ll come
back to that in a minute. But there’s
another story earlier in Matthew that talks about taxes and coins. This story is from chapter 17:24-27.
24When they reached Capernaum, the collectors of
the temple tax came to Peter and said, “Does your teacher not pay the temple
tax?” 25He said,
“Yes, he does.” And when he came home,
Jesus spoke of it first, asking, “What do you think, Simon? From whom do kings of the earth take toll or
tribute? From their children or from
others?” 26When
Peter said, “From others,” Jesus said to him, “Then the children are
free. 27However, so
that we do not give offense to them, go to the sea and cast a hook; take the
first fish that comes up; and when you open its mouth, you will find a coin;
take that and give it to them for you and me.”
So, in this story the disciples had come to
Capernaum and were walking along when tax collectors approached Peter about
Jesus needing to pay the temple tax. Now
this tax had been in place for generations.
It was a specific tax that did not go to Rome or to any governmental
agencies. This tax was for the building
and maintaining of the temple. It was an
amount paid yearly. And it was
equivalent to about two days’ worth of an average salary. This amount wasn’t exorbitant, but it is
still fairly costly. Peter, I’m assuming
was fairly certain that Jesus did pay it, and so said, “Yes, of course.”
Upon entering the house, Jesus already knew
what had happened and brought up the subject with Peter first. What is interesting about this quick exchange
between Peter and Jesus, is that Jesus did not expect to pay that tax. He cryptically asks Peter a series of questions. First, he addresses Peter by his original
name, Simon, rather than the name by which he gave him as the Rock on which
Jesus said that he’d build his church.
Second, Jesus asks Peter from whom do kings of the earth take toll or
tribute? Finally, Jesus offers two
possibilities. Kings get their tribute
either from their own children or from their subjects, which is it? Jesus wants to know. Obviously, although children will honor their
parents, tribute – or the tax – comes from those who have been conquered. Jesus clearly sees himself and perhaps Peter,
as well, as not part of the conquered crowd when it comes to the Temple. After, the Temple is his father’s house,
right?
But, in any case, rather than cause a stumbling
block or a problem, Jesus does something unusual. Even though he clearly felt that he did not
owe the temple tax from the question he posed to Peter, he told Peter how to
pay it. And it wasn’t going to come from
their own coffers. No, Peter was told to
go to the beach, cast out his hook and the first fish he reeled in would have
money in its mouth, evidently, a coin known as a Tyrian staple – enough for
both Jesus and Peter.
What I find particularly interesting about this
story is that over the years, many of our church’s and many members have
complained about the per capita payment – an annual payment that we are
supposed to collect from every member and that money gets splits in various
ways which goes to the higher governing bodies of our church to do their work,
to keep us connected as a denomination, to develop resources for us to use,
etc…. Many individuals don’t contribute
and entire church’s have refused to pay this amount citing reasons why they
don’t like it. Jesus proved to Peter
that he was not under any obligation to pay this temple tax, was not subject to
having to pay this temple tax and yet, Jesus paid it. Granted he performed a miracle to get it out
of a fish’s mouth. But still, he paid it.
A somewhat similar issue occurs in today’s
reading from Matthew 22.
Now,
it is the Pharisees turn to try and “entrap” Jesus. They open with flattery. Aristotle once said that the opposite of a
friend is a flatterer. They indeed are
what Jesus calls them: hypocrites. They
think they have the perfect question, one that is unanswerable. If he says Yes, he appears sympathetic to the
hated tax collectors, thus alienating all nationalists. If he says No, he’s risking a charge of
sedition or agitation against the authorities. Not surprisingly, Jesus refuses to be
entrapped.
So, he
says to the Pharisees, “Well, let’s take a look at one of these coins.” Surveying it, he asks an easy question: “Who
is this guy? Who has his likeness
stamped on it?” Caesar. Archaeologists have found these coins. You can go to the seminary’s museum and see
these coins. It has an image of Caesar,
and the inscription DIVI on it. Which
means, the divine. On the opposite side
of the coin it says, PONTIF MAXIM, the “high priest.” So, ironically, here is Jesus looking at a
coin stamped with Caesar’s image, and the words, Divine and High Priest. Here is God’s divine son, our great high
priest, studying Caesar’s coin.
So,
Jesus says to them, “render – the Greek word here is apodote which means
“give back,” as in return it to him. Must
be his. Let him have it.
But
then the real clincher line that Jesus says is, render, “give back” to God what
is God’s. And what do you think that
would be?
And
that would be… well, everything.
Jesus’
wisdom was met with stunned silence; Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and
under God what is God’s. We could
probably spend the rest of today mentioned all the things that we should render
or give back to God. Your lunch break at
work. Your shopping this afternoon. Your conversation with a neighbor. The stuff in your closet. Your anxieties in the night. Your portfolio, or your debt, or your
fantasies. Your time, your energy, your
brokenness. Your own life.
We owe our very lives to God.
And I
think that’s where these two stories meet.
In a literal sense Jesus paid Peter’s debt for the temple tax in the
first story. And Jesus paid the debt for
our very lives in the final ending of the gospel reading and says in this
second story that we owe our lives to God.
Because it’s all God’s anyway. So, give it back to God.
Benediction
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