Text: Matthew 22:15-22
Date: Pentecost XVIII + Proper 24 + 10/23/11
Here are a few excerpts from today's sermon by Pastor Allen Lunneberg...
- Though in some societies like democracies or representative republics we can have some influence on government, still, Caesar’s in charge. And we are explicitly commanded to obey, as St. Paul wrote to the Romans, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment…
- Along with Martin Luther we call this the distinction between the kingdom of the left hand (government) and the kingdom of the right hand (the kingdom of God, the Church). The one works only according to Law, force, reward and punishment. The other works only according to the Gospel, mercy, grace, faith, hope and love. Mixing the two inevitably leads to either libertinism or legalism. Let Caesar’s things remain Caesar’s and God’s things God’s.
- In faith we will, as St. Paul said today, “wait for God’s Son from heaven, who he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come” (1 Thess 12:10). You will then be asked to join together in the koinonia, the fellowship of faith, to witness, to tell the story, if God wills, all over again in the Advent of a new Church Year. God grant you grace, mercy and peace as we live out our faith in the shadow of a hostile world by the bright hope of God’s glorious Gospel.
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