[Sermon] Whose Image?
Mary Denny
October 18, 2026 + Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost + A Wider Table Week 3
A Roman coin, a trick question, and an invitation to look again. TLCS member Mary Denny reflects on Jesus’ encounter with the Pharisees and Herodians, who tried to trap him in an either-or about taxes and found their own compromises exposed instead. Jesus turns the question toward the image on the coin, and with it the image we bear: each of us and all of us, created in the likeness of God. Drawing on Psalm 8, Mary reminds us that everything belongs to God and that we are crowned with glory and honor. That belonging shapes how we live as citizens and neighbors. Join us to consider what it means to carry God’s image into the world this week.
Sermon Transcript
From YouTube's automatic captions, lightly edited by AI for readability.
I greet you this morning with Paul’s greeting to his beloved Thessalonians: Grace to you and peace.
When I first responded to Pastor Hector’s request to reflect with you today on the readings, I hadn’t seen the texts. Soon I discovered that “give to Caesar what is Caesar’s” was today’s gospel reading from Matthew. My first reaction was, “Oh no, taxes and politics, so uplifting.” Maybe I can just avoid the whole thing and focus on those inspiring Thessalonians. I was a bit like Jonah, looking for a big fish. In my case, a big fish tail, as a way of avoiding the work on the message of God that was presented to me.
But then I looked at my October bill from Snohomish County for property taxes, my newly arrived midterm ballot, some charitable requests for support and advocacy, and I reconsidered. Maybe thinking about civic life from a gospel perspective can help energize our spirits and orient our hearts to what really matters as we seek to serve all who are invited to God’s wider table.
I begin with a comment from Pastor Hector’s sermon last week. In reflecting on those reluctant wedding guests, he noted that an encounter with Jesus is both an invitation and a judgment. I would add, from my study of the gospels, that God initiates the invitation and we influence the judgment by the way we respond.
In the gospel today, Jesus invites some people who seek to destroy him to reconsider their fear-based perspective with one based on confidence in God. Let’s look a little bit at the circumstances of the story as Matthew presents it. The stories we have been reading in recent weeks are from late in Matthew’s gospel. During the day, Jesus is preaching in the temple precinct, and at night he escapes to Bethany, about two miles away.
Jesus has already entered Jerusalem for the feast of Passover, humble and seated on a donkey with a colt, from an eastern gate. His entry is a parody on the militant imperial entrance by the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, who has arrived from his seaside resort through Jerusalem’s western gate. The crowd has turned Jesus’ humble entry into a lively parade to welcome a prophet. This excites the hope of the thousands of Jewish pilgrims from all over the Mediterranean in the city for Passover, that major feast that commemorates the liberation of the Jewish people from Egyptian oppression. It is a very provocative moment. Pilate and his legions, extra legions, have arrived in Jerusalem to assure that the massive celebration does not become riotous and seditious. So Jesus has already made Pilate’s job harder.
Next, on the same day in Matthew, Jesus drives the sellers and the money changers from the temple district. He cites the teaching of the prophets against corrupting temple sacrifice. The temple leadership soon learns what Jesus has done. They also hear the chanting of the crowds, even the children. They are furious at the disruption at the beginning of Passover. They find Jesus as he is healing the blind and the lame in the temple district. They confront him with their anger at what he has unleashed. He quotes the Psalms and replies that the crowds and their children are just praising God. Then he leaves for Bethany.
Before these two prophetic actions, Jesus was regarded as threatening by the established leadership. But after these actions, Jesus is a marked man and his days are numbered. The challenging parables we have been reading in recent weeks are part of Jesus’ preaching in the temple district during the last week of his life.
Today’s reading presents one of three confrontations in Matthew between Jesus and the temple leadership. They send emissaries, both religious and civil, Pharisees and Herodians, to trap Jesus in an either-or choice that will only discredit him no matter how he answers. They begin with flattery that happens to be true, but their only intent is fawning comments to disarm him. Clearly Jesus has not curried favor with the powerful, and he can’t be bought. If he is partial to anyone, it’s the poor and the vulnerable.
Acting as if they really want Jesus’ guidance, the delegation asks, “Tell us what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor?” They mean lawful according to the law of Moses. Roman law is crystal clear. For a hundred years, Rome has compelled the payment of tribute by the conquered people of Judea and Galilee. Among the most onerous of the taxes is the head tax on each adult male. If Jesus says yes, the Roman taxes are lawful, he will discredit himself with the crowd who chafe at the tribute system, both economically and religiously. If he says no, he can be accused of sedition by the Roman authorities.
Jesus does not make an either-or choice. Instead, he calls them out. “Why are you testing me, acting and posturing as if you really want to engage with me? Show me the coin used for the tax.” Someone from among the emissaries produces a Roman denarius, a silver coin worth about a day’s wages. The insincerity of the emissaries’ concern for Mosaic law is immediately apparent. They have in their possession a coin bearing a graven image: the head of the emperor Tiberius, inscribed with the title “son of Augustus, son of God.” Jews are prohibited from possessing graven images of humans or animals, much less one bearing an idolatrous image of a false god. The emissaries are outed as collaborators with the imperial system. Jesus has not answered their either-or question, but their compromised position is now clear.
In light of the imperial image on the coin, Jesus invites his questioners to reconsider their perspective. He invites them, and us, to a change of heart, a change of priorities and perspective. While the questioners are amazed by Jesus’ response, they quickly respond by backing off and walking away.
These emissaries from the religious and civic leadership are fearfully trying to maintain order in a very difficult situation. The profound resentment of the Jewish people at the burden and indignity of Roman sovereignty over them is just below the surface, and it has in the past overflowed repeatedly into insurrection. The leadership in Judea has managed to find a tenuous way of operating with Roman authorities that avoids provoking Roman reprisal. They are preoccupied with placating the imperial powers to at least maintain current order. They feel as if they are holding the lid on a powder keg. And they’re right. In forty years, violent insurrection will explode, and Roman reprisal will be devastating.
In this tense, risky moment, Jesus invites a shift of focus from fearfulness to confidence in God and the things of God. In fact, the most frequent admonition in the gospels is “Do not be afraid.” We, like the Pharisees and the Herodians, can get preoccupied with civil authority and forget that it is derived from God’s authority. We are invited, as they were, to consider what it means to give to God the things that are God’s as our first priority, and to view civic engagement in that context.
So what belongs to God? We just told our children, the psalmist provides an inspired response: “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, and the world and those who live in it.” So what belongs to God? Everything. In particular, in light of that denarius bearing Caesar’s image in today’s reading, let us focus for a moment on what bears God’s image: each of us and all of us. As we just told our children, from the very beginning of humankind, Genesis tells us we are intentionally created in the image of God.
With joy and confidence, like children in the temple on that first Palm Sunday, may we say, “Yahweh our sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth. What are human beings that you should be mindful of us? Who are we that you should care for us? Yet you have made us barely less than God and crowned us with glory and honor. You have made us responsible for the works of your hands, putting all things at our feet. Yahweh, our sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth.”
With the joy and confidence of the psalmist, let us focus on how we live the divine meaning at the very heart of our existence. With all the world, we belong to God. With all the human family, we bear God’s image. Further, as Christians, we have known the divine favor of baptism in Christ and the call to new life in God’s graced community. We get some hints of this lively call to stewardship in God’s creation from Paul’s affectionate remarks to the young faith community at Thessalonica.
Briefly, around 50 in the common era, Timothy, Silas, and Paul arrived in Thessalonica, very similar to our own circumstances: a cosmopolitan port city in Macedonia on the north shore of the Aegean. The three begin their ministry by attending Sabbath services at the Jewish synagogue. The three spend several months interpreting the scriptures concerning the messiahship of Jesus to the synagogue community. Then they form a separate faith community among receptive Jews and the Gentiles who have worshiped with them. Other threatened members of the synagogue foment civil unrest, seeking to have Paul and the others arrested. With the help of this new community, the three itinerant disciples leave town under duress. The local community, even when persecuted, continues to thrive.
A few months later, in Greece, Paul writes to encourage them. He notes their ongoing work of faith, labor of love, and steadfastness of hope in the Lord. He has recently heard about them from Timothy, who is just back from visiting with them. He affirms their response to the work of the Spirit among them. He notes that the quality of their faith together has set a corporate example throughout Macedonia and Greece. Paul hears about their example wherever he goes, especially how they have turned from worship of idols to serving a living and true God.
And here is the connection with the gospel. Confidence and joy prevail in this community as they realize they belong to God and live accordingly. Their example radiates outward. They are a lamp on a lampstand.
So how do we today live out that core experience of being God’s own in our civil life? The ELCA Churchwide Assembly, in its 2025 statement on faith and civic life, has offered us considerable guidance. I’d just like to highlight a few of their comments for our own individual and corporate discernment.
First, they say, in the scriptures the Hebrew word shalom epitomizes the richness of the loving aim of the Creator for all creation. Shalom describes God’s intention in creation of an abundant peace, well-being, goodness, truth, beauty, justice, freedom, joy, wholesomeness, love, all woven together.
Second, the church teaches that human civic activity and political power are sustained by divine power and can be evaluated ethically by God’s intention that human beings use, increase, and share such power so that human structures and systems serve the well-being of all with good order and justice.
Third, when early Christians claimed that Jesus is Lord, they were making a claim with a political implication: Caesar is not Lord. Some scripture messages make a political claim in the sense that all government is accountable to God, and that Christians should not give their primary loyalty to any government.
Fourth, all power can be assessed by its adherence to divine creative purpose. It can be assessed by the extent to which power is distorted and misused for the sake of domination and exploitation. This is true whether in government, civic interaction, organized religion, business, law enforcement, or family.
Fifth, the church says, with Martin Luther, that to rebuke those in authority through God’s word, spoken publicly, boldly, honestly, is not seditious but a praiseworthy, noble, and particularly great service to God.
Finally, healthy patriotism is to love one’s country, to pray for its well-being, to be committed to its success, to have a sense of pride in it, to criticize it, and to work for its reform when necessary.
So we come to our present moment, the here and now of our agency with God in furthering that kingdom of shalom, serving that wide table, both individually and corporately, here at Trinity. Personally, I will certainly pay those property taxes. Vote. Petition this week for the preservation of our forests and national parks. Support the training of citizens as election observers at polling places this November. I am happily participating in Trinity’s Congregational Council. And perhaps most challenging of all, I will speak lovingly to and about family members whose political leanings are very different from my own.
In our Trinity community, our agency with God leads us to constantly reach beyond ourselves to address a critically unmet need, from early childhood education by our continuing support for Trinity’s Preschool and the CDC. We continue to serve the needs of the marginalized and vulnerable through the advocacy of Diversity and Inclusion Ministries, Neighbors in Need, Living Water, the Quilters Ministry that collaborates with Lutheran World Relief, and more. On Tuesday nights, we host youth and cops playing basketball and volleyball. We have regular concert series, and we continue our cooperative arrangements with the Lynnwood Neighborhood Center.
May our awareness of God’s call, the Spirit’s guidance to wider service, continue to expand our vision of who is welcome at God’s table. May we find inspiration in the prayerful third verse of of “Lord, Whose Love in Humble Service.”
As we worship, grant us vision,
till your love's revealing light
in its height and depth and greatness
dawns upon our quickened sight,
making known the needs and burdens
your compassion bids us bear,
stirring us to ardent service,
your abundant life to share.“Lord, Whose Love in Humble Service.”
Grace to you and peace, and thank you for your kind attention.
