Prayer: Great and awesome God, just and righteous beyond all our prejudices, loving us all without partiality, allow us to sense your presence within and among us, that we know we are your people. Call us by name and let your favor rest upon us, that we may have no need to feel superior or seek fame and fortune over others but instead, that we may we extend your grace to all we meet, imitating Christ and extolling you in all our words and deeds. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen. (Adapted from Taught by Love, by Lavon Bayler. Cleveland. United Church Press, 1998, p.151

Today begins our congregation’s Reconciliation emphasis. To be reconciled is to be restored from brokenness to wholeness. It is to be put again in right relationship with God and neighbor when things have gotten off balance.

In the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Reconciliation is the name of a vital program of the church and it is one of the special offerings we take up each fall. The church’s Reconciliation ministry was begun in the late 60’s as one means of addressing the issues of racism and poverty in North America, both in the church and in society. Today the church’s anti-racism/pro-reconciliation ministry is supported from the Reconciliation office.

Next Sunday, Rich Haines and Marshall Barnes who have been trained to lead anti-racism/pro-reconciliation workshops, as has Joy Omslaer, will lead our worship service and tell us more about their involvement in the wider church’s ministry of reconciliation.

I want to do what I can to set the stage for them today by talking about how it is that we can become reconciled and what it means for us to live as reconciled people.

The question that comes to mind for me is to whom are we reconciled? The answer is easy. We are reconciled, brought back into balance and harmony whenever things that are out of balance are put right. There is no doubt that today there is a need for racial reconciliation, for economic reconciliation, for political reconciliation, and certainly for spiritual reconciliation. The truth is that we are from time to time out of harmony with our God and Jesus Christ, our neighbors, and ourselves.

We know that living in a state of non-reconciliation can leave us feeling lonely, isolated, and away from the familiar places we know. We can be left feeling not only cracked, but utterly shattered. We just don’t feel right and we long for reconciliation.

So what do we do? Our lessons today suggest some answers. They tell us that reconciliation comes when we know to whom we belong. Belonging to Christ gives us a sense of spiritual balance - it helps us to find what we need to keep our faith intact.

One day Jesus was confronted by people wanting to trap him. They ask what seems to be a simple question. “Jesus, good and wise teacher, in touch with God, and all, is it permissible for devout Jews to pay taxes to the Roman government with coins that were stamped and shipped here from Rome”?

Do you know that smug, smirk-filled look of someone who just knows they have you beaten? I imagine that the questioners of Jesus were looking at him that way. They think they have him where they want him. “Their intention is to place Jesus on the horns of a dilemma. If he argues against paying the tax, they will be able to accuse him to Pilate of anti-Roman activity. On the other hand, if he supports the tax, he will be bound to lose some of his support in the general population, for whom the tribute was not only an economic burden but also a hated symbol of lost freedom” (Interpretation series. Matthew. Douglas RA Hare. Louisville, John Knox Press. 1993, p. 253).

Jesus answers their question with one of his own, and by the way he knows the answer to the question he asks. “Let me see the coin you have to use to pay the tax. Who’s face is on this coin”? Jesus knows that head’s is the image of Caesar’s face, and he knows that tails carries the inscription, “Tiberius Caesar, Son of the Divine Augustus, Pontifex Maximus”, or chief priest of the empire (Hare, 254). Jesus goes on to say, “go ahead and pay the taxes to the Roman government. Give the emperor what is his”. But then Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God, Creator of heaven and earth goes on to say, “But give to God that which belongs to God” (Matthew 22.21).

Jesus understands fully that “in Jewish religious thought, foreign kings had power over Israel only by permission from God. Taxes may be paid to Caesar because it is by God’s will that Caesar rules. When God chooses to liberate his people, Caesar’s power will avail him nothing. Jesus is saying, if Tiberius wants a few coins, give them gladly, because giving them up will remind you that a person’s life does not consist in the abundance of his or her possessions. What counts above all else is living accordance with the Father’s will” (Hare, 254). Understand whose image is stamped on you”.

Maybe we need to think about whose image is on us. We need to think about it because we are living in a time when there is strong competition among images wanting to stamp themselves on our souls. I heard Walter Brueggemann say at the Ohio Ministries Convocation this past January that all of us no matter whether we understand ourselves to be liberal, conservative, theologically or politically, or somewhere in between, tend to name the same four norms, or ways of understanding our culture. It is as if these norms are stamped on each of us. We tend to believe generally that our military strength will make us secure, and it does provide one form of national security, but it tends to attract other military powers. We tend to believe that consumerism, the habit of buying more and more things will prove that we are successful, and it does provide us with what we need and want to live good lives, but those goods will not bring ultimate satisfaction to our souls.

We tend to believe therapy - both physical and emotional, will fix what is not right in us and they can give us a sense of well being in both body and spirit, but we will still have some necessary work to do in our own healing. And we tend to believe that technology of every sort, from computers to remote controls will make our lives more efficient, and it can, when it works, ease our work load and put information at our fingertips, until the batteries die, or the computer crashes. It’s all good, except when we look to the military, and consumerism, therapies and technology to save us. They almost never do, not, not in a permanent way, and we are always deeply disillusioned when they fail us. But we really should not be disappointed in them because the truth is they cannot save us because they are not where our eternal hope lies.

Our hope lies in the love of God and in the redemption on the cross of Jesus Christ for us, so we remember that while Caesar’s image is on our money, the image of God is in all of our being. If the image on our souls is anything other than God’s image given to us in Jesus Christ, then we are in trouble.

Reconciliation comes as we remember to whom we belong, and it comes as we celebrate what God has done for us. That is the work of the church. Paul wants the Thessalonians to celebrate being the church, and as we read his words to them, we can celebrate being a church on the way to reconciliation too. Look at the joy Paul has for them. In what is believed to be Paul’s earliest letter to a church, he tells the community of Thessalonica, whom he prays for and whose father and ministry delights him, how much they mean to him. People are talking about them, telling Paul what they have heard about Paul’s time with them. He rejoices that they know that little will be done in the church unless they have faith that God is active in their lives. Surely we know the same thing. Otherwise we are a social club. We may do good works, our fellowship may be great, but our sense of ministry will be lacking.

Paul reminds us that ministry is a labor of love. All that we do is done in response to God’s love for us and our love for God’s people. We labor as we wait for that day when Christ returns for his expectant and working church, whenever that day comes.

As the Thessalonians watch Paul their life begins to reflect the attitude that he describes in his letter to the Philippians. They speak of absolute reconciliation with God, and pray that we can affirm them as words for us:

“I want to know Christ, and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own” (Philippians 3.10-12).

I was at the board meeting of the Ohio Council of Churches last week, and was challenged by the preacher in the worship service who said that it is not enough for us to preach Jesus, but we must also live Jesus. We know he is right because when we live Jesus, people are fed, children learn, adults are nurtured, everyone is cared for, justice is proclaimed, and God is praised because that is what Jesus would do.

When we are reconciled enough to live Jesus, people will take notice. Our lives become an example to others who see our faithfulness, our love, our hope, our joy, our hospitality, our service to others and say, “I want my life to be like yours”. They will know who we are because they will see us being a faithful church.

People who visit here often tell me that they can sense a spirit of excitement around here, they see what we cannot see sometimes, that we are a church that is about something because the spirit of God is in this place. Others are noticing too. During a break at the Council of Churches meeting Terry Marsh, the pastor of First Christian Church in Mansfield, introduced me to another board member with these words. “This is LaTaunya Bynum. She is the pastor of one of the Disciples multi-cultural congregations. Her church is a model for the rest of us.” That is what our faithfulness to being a church for all of God’s people means to people who know us, I trust it means the same to us. In that setting, I didn’t have to tell our story, it is getting to be well enough known that others are telling it.

Lastly, to live a reconciled life is to live a converted life. It is to live a life changed from one way of living to another. The Gentile Thessalonians turned from idols and began worshiping the living God. Some of us may need that same conversion. All of us are called to live lives reconciled to Christ today. Like the Thessalonians, we can hear and respond to the good news of Jesus Christ. We have heard his words of love and hope. We can be filled with the power of the Holy Spirit to know deep inside of us that the breath of God blows through right now and into eternity.

Others of us may need our own conversions renewed. It just may be that we become reconciled as we remember again that God has trusted us with this church. God has trusted us, not just me, or the officers, or the board, but every one of us. Our fullest possible reconciliation comes when in response to Christ giving up his life for us, we do all that we can to serve the church as we serve people.

When we serve the church, we can offer ourselves in renewal and reconciliation to the church, to Christ, and to each other, and to ourselves. We can give our best to the church and say of ourselves:

“My church is composed of people like me. I make it what it is. It will be friendly if I am. Its pews will be filled, if I help fill them. It will do great work, if I work. It will make generous gifts to many causes, if I am a generous giver. It will bring other people into its worship and fellowship if I bring them. It will be a church of loyalty and love, if I, who make it what it is, am filled with these traits. Therefore with the help of God, I shall dedicate myself to the task of being all the things I want my church to be”. (“I Am My Church” newsletter of Northwest Christian Church, Columbus, Ohio).

May God’s spirit continue to fill up this place. Thanks be to God, Amen.