It Is Not A Forced-Choice Test

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In today's Gospel, the Pharisees want to talk about taxes. Well, what they really want to talk about is how to trap Jesus in His words, which is ridiculous, because you cannot trap God. Nevertheless, they come to our Lord and ask Him about whether Jews ought to pay taxes. Should the faithful people of God do such a thing? Should we obey pagan leaders when they exercise their authority over us?

Often, in Christian circles, this exchange is portrayed as something of a forced-choice test, a broken dichotomy between God and Caesar. In other words, you must give to God His due, and to Caesar his due, and ne'er the twain shall meet. It is as though God inhabits certain corners of your life, and Caesar inhabits other corners, and you can put yourself into various boxes or pigeon-holes, depending on the moment.

But this is not a forced choice.

Are You Serious?

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Is the Lord's invitation to the marriage feast of His Son serious? In today's Gospel lesson, you have heard how our Lord Christ compares the kingdom of God to a king who gives a marriage feast for His Son, to which He invites guests. However, the invited guests disdain the King's invitation, stay away, and even deal scornfully with His servants, who were merely sent to call the invited to the feast.

What is this kingdom? The kingdom of heaven is not an earthly kingdom. There are no governors, no presidents, no Congress, no elections.

How Will You Die?

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Jesus said, “And the one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him.”

Either way, you are dead. Either you fall on Jesus in broken-hearted, empty-handed, beggarly repentance or you get crushed by the weight of your own engineered pseudo-salvation crashing down against the resistance of your own self-justification. But either way, you are going to be broken when you encounter Jesus.

Jesus told a parable against the unbelief of Israel. A man planted a vineyard and let it out to tenant farmers who were supposed to tend it and give a share of the harvest. He sent a servant to collect, and he was beaten and sent away empty-handed. He sent another, and he was mocked and scorned and sent away empty-handed. He sent a third, and they wounded him and cast him out. He sent his son. “His beloved son.” And they took one look at the son and said, “This is the heir. Let us kill him and the inheritance will be ours.” And they threw him out of the vineyard, and they killed him.

Stop here for a moment and consider.

Michael vs. the Dragon

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth. And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven diadems. His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it. She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne, and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, in which she is to be nourished for 1,260 days.

At the fullness of time, according to the will of God, Mary, the Mother of God, appeared in midst of the heavens, clothed with the radiance of the sun, bedecked with the royal garments of God, because she, having been overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, was greatly pregnant with none other than the eternally uncreated, only-begotten Son of God come into the flesh. She is borne aloft by the moon, the lesser light, and encircled by the twelve stars, the witnesses of the one Holy Church from ages past and in time to come.

“Salvation Belongs to the Lord”

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

“O Lord, how many are my foes! Many are rising against me; many are saying of my soul, there is no salvation for him in God.” What a state to be in, to be surrounded by your enemies, outnumbered by your foes, and to have voices continually whispering in your ear that your faith is a lie and your God is a fraud.

Many are saying of your soul, “There is no salvation for you in your God.” The devil's lies float on clouds of air and land as softly as a butterfly. But they bite like the worst mosquito in history. And they itch and fester and plague just as badly as any mosquito bite. The whispers, or shouts, that tell you that God is dead, if He ever existed in the first place. Or maybe it is that He is there, but He does not love you. How could your God be a God of love when He committed the most heinous example of divine child abuse ever?

Sweet Bitterness

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today, the Church remembers and gives thanks for the life and work of St. Matthew, as is right and salutary. We rejoice to remember those who have gone before us in the Faith, remembering their example of godly living and joining in their steadfast confession of the Faith once given to them, now delivered to us. St. Matthew now resides among the great cloud of witnesses, in whose midst we we one day stand as well.

So who was St. Matthew? The Gospels tell us that he was also called Levi. Scholars reckon that this is simply a case of a guy having a Hebrew or Aramaic name, and also a Greek or Latin name. Simon is Cephas is Peter. Saul is Paul. And so on; it was a common occurrence in the ancient Near East.

That Matthew is called Levi indicates that he was a Jew. Which fact makes it such an indictment of his character that he worked as a tax collector. Often we are told to think all sorts of hateful things about tax collectors. They are cheats, crooks, swindlers. They are out to steal from everyone who crosses their desks. They take delight in putting the screws to the little guy. Such is the case with Zacchaeus. He was all these things, and freely admitted it, and made it right when our Lord called him to faith. However, about Levi we have no such record. Following the Eighth Commandment, we ought simply to think that he did his job within the constraints of the laws of Rome. As far as we know, Levi was an honest tax collector.

Who Satisfies You?

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Bless the LORD, O my soul,
and all that is within me,
bless his holy name!
Bless the LORD, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits,
who forgives all your iniquity,
who heals all your diseases,
who redeems your life from the pit,
who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,
who satisfies you with good
so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's.

We chanted these words from the mouth of David this morning, and we rejoice to confess the wondrous works of the Lord with the Blessed Psalmist, and to give thanks to the Lord for all His gracious benefits to us. It is psalms like this that make the soul joyful and exultant in the Lord. And this is good, right, and salutary.