The Rev. Dn. James Wesley Holcomb III- Bearing the Image of Christ

And I speak to you in the name of one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Please be seated.

My beloved friends, today's gospel presents us with a question about this owing.

What do we owe Caesar?

And Jesus turns us toward a far greater question.

Not about owing, but one of belonging.

To whom do our lives belong?

The Pharisees, they send their people with the Herodians to ask whether paying the Empress tax is lawful.

Not because they're trying to seek truth, but because they simply want to trap Jesus.

Have you ever met folks like that?

They're really not asking you something in a sincere way.

They're just trying to catch you up.

And this is why there's a little verse of scripture that says, foolish and unlearned questions avoid.

But they weren't seeking the truth.

They were just trying to catch Jesus up in their political rumru.

They praise him for teaching God's truth while their intentions betray the very truth that they profess to respect.

And Jesus, flipping the thing on them, they as he asks for a coin and points to the emperor's image and says, Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's.

The coin bears Caesar's image, but we are reminded by Holy Scripture that as the beloved of Christ and those that of us that are a part of the creation of God, we bear not the image of Caesar, not the image of where we come from or our ancestries, but we bear ultimately the image of God.

Each one of us.

And so Caesar is owed attacks, but there's a few things that Caesar is never owed.

Caesar is not owed our worship.

Caesar is not owed our conscience.

Caesar is not owed our allegiance.

These things belong to God.

And as disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ, our lives belong to God.

And our faith is the fruit of that life reflected in how we live every day.

And my friends, when I speak of faith in this context, I mean more than what we believe.

I'm referring to how that belief becomes visible and tangible and real in the way that we fulfill our responsibilities.

A faith that shows up in the way we use our treasures and our talents and the things that we possess, in the way we use our points of privilege and power for the benefit of others and the way we love and treat one another.

And there are times, very real times, when what we profess with our lips does not always line up with what we do with our hands and our feet.

But know this not every moment of human failure is an instance of hypocrisy.

So if no one has ever told you before, let me give you a news flash.

There's no rule keeping.

There's simply minds that are open and hearts that are turned towards God.

This idea of Christian perfectionism that we have to have it all right at all times, I beg you to just throw it out the window.

Because it's not about flawless performance.

It's not about keeping all the rules and checking off the list.

Don't lose sight of that.

And don't allow anyone to take that away from you.

Because sometimes we get under the burden of legalism that we have to do it like this and we have to say it like that.

And even in our own tradition, as good Episcopalians, with our liturgical worship, there is a temptation to focus on the wrong thing.

We love our liturgy and it should be done well, but we can become so consumed with perfection.

See, even the cardboard agreements, that we miss the entire point of what the liturgy is inviting us into to share in the very work of the ultimate liturgia, the ultimate gift and work that was done on the behalf of the people given to us free and our Lord Jesus Christ.

And when we participate in the liturgy, it becomes something that forms us and shapes us.

We shared with the Sunday school class this morning that it is in the Holy Eucharist that we gather to celebrate week after week that God gathers us.

God forms us through the scripture and through the preaching.

Then God feeds us at the altar, and then God sends us out.

And that, my friends, is the grace and mercy of God at work among us, changing us and fashioning us more and more into God's own image.

And that is why today's collect offers us this prayer.

Preserve the works of your mercy, that your church throughout the world may persevere with steadfast faith in the confession of your name.

And we do not pray this because the church has always lived faithfully.

I think all of us could write an essay on the ways in which the church, both as institution and as community, has sometimes fallen short of being faithful.

But yet, in the midst of that reality, the hope and the joy that's offered to us is that God's mercy endures to every generation.

And because God's mercy sustains us and God's grace is constantly there for us, we have the ability to get up and to live the life of faith that we confess.

Empowered by the sacraments of the church, guided by the preaching and the reading of Scripture, and encouraged by the fellowship of our siblings in Christ.

And know this that the Christ who calls us to render unto God what belongs to God is the same Christ who loved us so and gave his own life for each one of us.

And so we have this opportunity to ask ourselves, what am I withholding from God?

Where might my actions fail to reflect the faith that I profess?

What am I willing to do about it?

How am I willing to allow the Holy Spirit, who is alive and well and with us even now, to move within the recesses of our own heart and show us these opportunities for us to lean in to being faithful?

And these, my friends, are questions we cannot afford to leave unanswered.

Because we must take responsibility for the choices we make.

We must acknowledge where we have fallen short, not to hold anything over our heads, but to embrace a posture of humility and awareness that God is still working with us, inviting us, calling us, bidding us to join in this work of growth and forward movement.

And when we become aware of the ways in which we have fallen short, take courage.

Seek forgiveness where we may have caused harm.

Seek the opportunity to make right what has been done wrong.

And when we leave this place, we leave determined to make our faith visible in new and radical ways.

In the ways that we speak, in the ways that we help people feel like they really belong in that pew right there.

In the ways that we extend mercy, even when we feel like we have every right to hold that aught against our sibling.

In the way we live a life that allows every man, woman, boy, and girl to see Jesus in us.

For my friends, it's when we fall short that God's mercy calls us back to faithfulness.

In fact, Holy Scripture lets us know that God's strength is made perfect even in the midst of our weakness.

And as we get ready to come to this, the Lord's table, we come not because we've gotten everything together.

We come because we have a heart to try to do the right thing, to grow and to learn and to be sustained by the Holy Sacrament.

We come to receive the grace and mercy of Christ.

The Christ who restores us and the Christ who strengthens us to live what we believe.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.