Author: toddweir1

It is difficult for me to speak of this confrontation between Jesus and the Herodians over taxes without getting political. The temptation for the preacher is to get lost in a theological debate about separation of church-state relations or pondering the role of a Christian citizen in a democracy. While these are vital issues, Jesus was not trying to set down principles for church-state relations; he was in a struggle with oppressive and unjust power that would soon cost him his life. With the stakes so high for our Savior, can we be satisfied with even a principled and well-delivered sermon on our views of separation of church and state? I have handled the passage this way in the past, so my intent is not to be judgmental, rather, to move deeper into the heart of Gospel. As Thomas Long wisely advised, “The goal of preaching is not merely to explain what a passage meant in the past, but to recreate the original impact of the passage in today’s setting.”

You have heard the expression “You are what you eat.” If you follow the theological logic of the parable of the Wedding Banquet, you could say, “You are who you eat with.” A great image for the divine hope of a wedding banquet came to me in an email this week from a reader. A pastor in Queens, NY shared that his congregation has three different services; English, Mandarin with some Cantonese translation, and Spanish. There is also a large Telugu group in the English service and the congregation rents to a Pakistani congregation speaking Urdu, Brazilians using Portuguese, and Indonesians and North Indians using Hindi. Imagine a potluck dinner with all these worshiping groups eating together! Imagine a joint Pentecost service where each group would read aloud from Acts 2, in their own language, describing the first Pentecost.

World Communion Sunday is a creation of the Presbyterian Church, who began a Sunday to mark the unity of the church and a hope for peace in the world in 1936. It was designed to become an ecumenical service and was picked up by the National Council of Churches in 1940. Of course you know what happened in the world and to the church in the following 5 years. The Christian nations of the Western Hemisphere fought the most devastating war in history and 6 million Jews were exterminated. So much for the high-minded thoughts on unity and peace by the church. But it takes more than a world war to wipe up the hopes of the church for unity and peace, so here we are, 69 years after the first World Communion Sunday, undaunted in our hopes. What does the church need to do to truly move towards the hopes of World Communion Sunday? I believe we need to recapture the notion of stewardship brought out in our readings this morning, perhaps especially paying more attention to Christ as the suffering servant.