In this morning’s Gospel Jesus is asked a question that has a great deal of relevance for us as we go about the business of living out our faith today. Jesus was asked about the legality of paying taxes to Caesar. Of course, that’s something that doesn’t directly apply to us today because the Roman Empire and the Caesars came to an end a long time ago. But, nevertheless, the underlying question contained in that specific question and specific set of circumstances is still relevant to us. That is, what do we do when something is legal, but we disagree with it on account of our faith? Do we do that thing because it is legal, or do we take a stand against it because it goes against what we believe to be right?

This really was the dilemma that Jesus’ interrogators tried to put him in. At that time, the part of the world that Jesus lived in was part of the Roman Empire and so paying taxes to Caesar was the law. It was a very unpopular law, but then isn’t that always the case when it comes to paying taxes! But for the Jews it was especially unpopular. Jewish nationalists hated it because it represented their subjugation under Roman rule. And to devout Jews it was offensive because the Roman coinage it had to be paid in was both idolatrous and blasphemous. The tax was a kind of poll tax, one denarius, per person. But the denarius bore the image of the emperor Tiberius, an idolatrous image. And the inscription on the denarius was even worse because it read ‘Tiberius Casaer, august son of the divine Augustus, high priest’ although in Latin, of course. And to ascribe divinity to a human being, even the emperor of the mighty Roman empire, was blasphemy to the Jews. So it seemed that whichever way Jesus answered he’d be in trouble. If he said it was unlawful to pay the tax, he’d be in trouble with the Romans, and the Herodians, the supporters of king Herod too because they owed their position to Rome. If, on the other hand, he said it was lawful to pay the tax, he’d be in trouble with his own people.

Jesus got out of this dilemma by turning his answer into something of a spiritual challenge. As the Roman coinage belongs to Casaer anyway, let him have it, but give to God the things that belong to God. And, as any Jew would know, and the Great Commandment reminds us, what belongs to God is our love, our heart and soul and mind. To put it very briefly, Jesus’ answer was, you can give Casaer his money, but give yourselves to God. So how do we apply that in our own lives?

I think something that can help us to do that, is a promise that I and Fr Alex, and all Anglican clergy made at the time of our ordination. It’s called The Oath of Canonical Obedience which says,

I, (name), do swear by almighty God that I will pay true and canonical obedience to the Lord Bishop of, (diocese), and his successors in all things lawful and honest: so help me God.

A very important part of that oath is that we only swear obedience in all things lawful and honest. We don’t swear obedience to, nor are we obliged to show obedience to anything unlawful, immoral, dishonest or corrupt, nor anything that falls outside the Church’s canon law. And this is something that we can apply whenever we’re faced with the question of obedience to something that we don’t agree with or we think is wrong on account of our faith.

Despite the difficulties we face as Christians in this country, and I’m not going to go into that because these things are well publicised, we don’t face official sanction for practicing our faith. It’s not illegal to be a Christian. We’re free to belong to the Church and come to church to worship when we want to. But in many places, for much of the Church’s history, that’s not been the case, and in some places it’s still not the case today. And in those cases and those places, the only way Christians can give to God what belongs to God is by doing what the secular authority says is illegal, they have to break the law. And many have and do.

We also know, very sadly, that some people in the Church have acted illegally and unlawfully for their own ends. People who abused their position and authority and harmed others in doing so. These are examples of things that scripture tells us are abhorrent to God so they’re not only illegal and unlawful from a secular point of view but they’re a failure to give to God what belongs to God, and a failure to love others as Christ commanded us to. Again, I don’t want to go into these things because many of these are also well publicised. But for us, the problem is far more likely to be one of honesty, of ignoring a law because it suits us to ignore it, or of applying the law in a dishonest or immoral way. And this also happens.

One of the things I’ve often spoken about and against is the way in which people can be discriminated against in local congregations. The way in which people in a congregation can get a bit too big for their boots and start to ‘Lord it’ over others in direct contradiction of Christ’s teaching.So, for example, one of the church wardens in this benefice is actually a vicar’s warden, I appointed them to the post. That being so, I have the right to appoint someone else to that post. But would it be right for me to do that simply because I’d had a disagreement with the present warden? And I have known people removed from posts for just that reason. On the other hand I’ve also come across a situation in which a parish office holder said, at the end of an interregnum, that if they (and that was a collective they) don’t get on with the new vicar they’ll make his life so unbearable that he’ll leave. While strictly speaking this kind of thing isn’t illegal, no one is going to go to prison for it, it may well be unlawful in that it goes against accepted, and acceptable standards of behaviour. It certainly goes against the teaching of Christ and so it’s an example of people not giving to God the things of God. It’s an example of people not giving themselves to God, heart, soul and mind but of acting as those who belong to Caesar, to the world, act rather than how those who belong to God act.

But perhaps where we see people in the church applying the law in a dishonest or immoral way most of all is where that thing of Caesar’s we read about today is involved, where money is involved. In fact, the example I mentioned a few moments ago about someone being removed from their post was brought about by a disagreement about whether the church should spend a rather large amount of money or not. But the example that springs most readily to my mind concerns a funeral I was asked to do at a church which was in interregnum at the time. The funeral took place in the church and was followed by a burial in the churchyard and as I was chatting to the funeral director after the burial, I was absolutely astonished when he told me the fee that church had charged for the funeral. I won’t mention the figures, but it was almost 60% more than the same service would have cost at the church I was serving in at the time.

Every year the Church Commissioners produce a list of fees that we are obliged to charge for the various services we carry out. In addition to the statutory fees that we have to charge, there are also fees that the PCC can set, fees for heating, a verger, a choir if we have one, bell ringers if we have them, and so on. So fees can vary from church to church. But for the life of me, I cannot understand how one church can charge 60% more than another for the same service. And to me, this is an example of a law, if not being applied in a dishonest way, then certainly in a rather immoral way by   exploiting a pastoral situation, not to mention a bereaved family, in order to make money. A few extra denarii to give to Caesar PCC bank account. The family concerned may well have been able to afford that funeral without difficulty, I don’t know. But that’s hardly the point. We’re called to support widows and orphans and the fatherless, to carry one another’s burdens, to mourn with those who mourn. We’re not called to exploit the law so that we can boost the parish’s bank balance at their expense. That’s Caesar’s way, the world’s way, it’s not God’s way and so it shouldn’t be our way.

So, is it lawful to pay tax to Caesar, or not? In other words, do we obey the law even though we disagree with it? Although Jesus’ answer to that question shifts the focus from the temporal towards the spiritual, he answers it well enough. The answer is ‘Yes’. Acting lawfully only becomes a problem for us if the law prevents us from fulfilling our duty to give to God the things that belong to God. If the law prevents us from following our faith as we know we should. The bigger problem for us is in how we apply the law in our lives as Christians. We’re not called to ignore the law because it suits us to ignore it and neither are we called to apply the law in a dishonest or immoral way to suit our own ends. We’re called to act lawfully at all times, but for us, to act lawfully is to act according to the teaching and example of Christ. To love as he did and to give ourselves heart, soul and mind to God, as he did. We can give to Caesar, what belongs to Caesar, to the world what belongs to the world, but we always have to remember to give to God what belongs to God. And we belong to God.

Amen.

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Propers for the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time, 18th October 2026

Entrance Antiphon

To you I call; for you will surely heed me, O God;
turn your ear to me; hear my words.
Guard me as the apple of your eye;
in the shadow of your wings protect me.

The Collect

Almighty ever-living God,
grant that we may always conform our will to yours
and serve your majesty in sincerity of heart.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.

Amen.

The Readings

Isaiah 45:1, 4-6

Psalm 96:1, 3-5, 7-10

Thessalonians 1:1-5

Matthew 22:15-21

Prayer after Communion

Grant, O Lord, we pray,
that, benefiting from participation in heavenly things,
we may be helped by what you give in this present age
and prepared for the gifts that are eternal.
Through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

If I were to ask you to name a poem by William Blake, how many of you would be able to do that? Probably not too many, I would have thought and yet most people do know at least one of his poems because Blake wrote the poem that we now know as the hymn And did those feet in ancient time, which we usually know by the name Jerusalem. But Blake wrote many other works too and one his later works was The Everlasting Gospel.  

The Everlasting Gospel is an interpretation, or perhaps reinterpretation would be a better word, of Jesus Christ and his teachings. As a poem it isn’t always easy to read and as an interpretation of Jesus and his teachings it can be even more difficult to read. And yet in places The Everlasting Gospel is quite profound in its truth and wisdom, perhaps especially in what it says about the way Christians behave. Take this for example: 

The vision of Christ that thou dost see   
Is my vision’s greatest enemy.   
Thine has a great hook nose like thine;   
Mine has a snub nose like to mine.   
Thine is the Friend of all Mankind;           
Mine speaks in parables to the blind.   
Thine loves the same world that mine hates;   
Thy heaven doors are my hell gates.   
Both read the Bible day and night,   
But thou read’st black where I read white.   

How true that is. We all call ourselves Christians, followers of Christ, and yet we so often disagree about what that means and how to actually do it. On the whole, we all read the same Bible, and yet we disagree on how to interpret what we read. Some ignore those parts of the Bible they don’t like, or even leave them out completely and produce their own particular version of the Bible (and in my experience, those who do this are the very same people who shout the loudest about being ‘Bible based’ and use that term as the basis of their condemnation, and even hatred (and no, that’s not too strong a word at times) of those who disagree with them). And in the process of all this we argue and fall out, and we tear the Church apart. We do all these things and still call ourselves ‘Christians’. But where in Jesus Christ’s teaching and example do we find justification for any of this?  

I don’t know about you, but when I read the Gospel, I hear Jesus saying that we should love our neighbour as ourselves. I hear him saying that his disciples should love one another, just as he loves us. And when it comes to those whose interpretation of things and way of doing things and denomination of the Church differs from mine, rather than criticising or condemning them for those things, I call to mind the passage from Mark’s Gospel when the disciple John, says to Jesus,   

“Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” But Jesus said, “Do not stop him, for no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. For the one who is not against us is for us.” 

And yet how often do people in the Church act in just the way John described; set ourselves up against and try to stop those who do things in Christ’s name simply because they don’t follow ‘us’, because they don’t belong to our little group and don’t do things our way? What are all our petty, stupid arguments about denomination and tradition and churchmanship other than this very thing which Jesus Christ, the one whom we all claim to follow, says we should not do?  

And we all do it. And by all I mean the Church. We all do it. We all call ourselves Christians, followers of Christ and yet we do the very things he told us not to do. We’re the very kind of people he told us not to be. We all do it and we all think we’re right and everyone else is wrong and in our self-righteous pride, treat one another appallingly, in the most un-Christian way because of it. I must admit that, of all the things I could complain about in and about the Church, it is this that I find by far the most tiresome and, I must also admit, that I find I have increasingly less patience with as the years go by. To put it very bluntly, if we’re going to call ourselves Christians, we ought to start acting like Christians, that is, in the way that Jesus said we should act.  

But of course this is the great problem isn’t it? We, and again by we I mean the Church, we all think that we are acting in a Christian way. But in fact we’re often not doing that because, to put it in William Blake’s terms, we act according to our version of Christ and think everybody else’s version is our enemy. We hate what they love and visa versa. We think our way is the way to heaven and theirs is the way to hell, and they think the same of us. And we all read the Bible subjectively, never objectively, because we all read it through the prism of our own opinions and prejudices.    

And when we do this, what are we doing other than acting in the same way the tenants in this morning’s Gospel acted. The Church is the Lord’s vineyard, and we have been left in charge of it. But instead of looking after it in the way the Lord intended and called us to, we’ve decided to treat it as our own possession, something that belongs to us and so we can treat in the way we want to treat it, regardless of whether that way is the way the Lord intended. And when we ignore the teaching of Christ so that we can be in charge of the Church, which is exactly what we are doing when we carry on in the way I’ve described this morning, to all intents and purposes we’re throwing the Son out of his Father’s vineyard and killing him so that we can have it for our own. But, if we are the Bible based Church so many claim to be, if we do take Jesus’ words seriously as we all claim to do, we must know how wrong this is. We must know the danger doing this puts us is because as we read at the end of this morning’s Gospel, 

“When therefore the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” They said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons.”  Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes’?  Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits.”  

All I’ve said this morning applies to the Church as a whole, to parish churches and to individual members of the Church. And in the past few weeks it’s been shown that they to apply to this benefice. But the very essence of the Church and of the Church of England itself is that there is a place for everyone and everyone is welcome. And parish churches are not private clubs for people who agree with us and are prepared to do things only our way.  

The Church faces many problems, it always has done, but to me, the Church’s biggest problem is how to put an end to the intolerant, un-Christian way individual members of the Church and the different denominations of the Church can, and often do, behave towards one another. Most of it doesn’t matter, it’s petty and stupid, and trivial and irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. What matters is our own salvation and how we can proclaim the message of salvation to the world.  

And we can’t and won’t do the cause of either much good if we can’t love one another as Christ commanded us to do. Being a Christian has nothing to do with what we like or don’t like, with how we think things should be or not be, with what we’re used to or not used to. It has everything to do with following the teaching and example of Jesus Christ. All of it, not just the bits we like or agree with.  

The late Swiss theologian Hans Kung put it, quite brilliantly, I think, in his 1968 book The Church. Kung was speaking about Church unity, specifically between the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches, but what he said applies to all Churches and just as much to individual congregations and Christians as it does to that wider issue. He wrote, 

‘Church unity is not a matter of one Church returning to another or joining another; it’s not a matter of the subjugation of one Church by another, but of the submission of all Christians to Christ. The road to Church unity is one which takes us on a common journey in which we must all move towards Christ. And the closer we come to him, we’ll find that we will necessarily, move closer to each other.’ 

We might call ourselves Anglicans, or Catholics, or Methodists, or Baptists, or Lutherans, or Calvinists or by another of the many titles we have to use because of the division our pride and selfishness have caused in the Church but collectively, we all call ourselves Christians, followers of Jesus Christ. So for our own good, for the good of the Church both locally, nationally and worldwide, and for the good of the world too, perhaps it about time we all started acting like it.  

Amen.  

Propers for the 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time, 4th October 2026

Entrance Antiphon 

Within your will, O Lord, all things are established, 
and there is none that can resist your will. 
For you have made all things, the heaven and the earth, 
and all that is held within the circle of heaven; 
you are the Lord of all. 

The Collect 

Almighty ever-living God, 
who in the abundance of your kindness 
surpass the merits and the desires of those who entreat you, 
pour out your mercy upon us 
to pardon what conscience dreads 
and to give what prayer does not dare to ask. 
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, 
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, 
God, for ever and ever. 

Amen. 

The Readings 

Isaiah 5:1-7  

Psalm 80:9, 12-16, 19-20 

Philippians 4:6-9 

Matthew 21:33-43 

Prayer after Communion 

Grant us, almighty God, 
that we may be refreshed and nourished 
by the Sacrament which we have received, 
so as to be transformed into what we consume. 
Through Christ our Lord. 

Amen.