A worship service was held at 10.30am in the church building on Sunday 18 October.  The service was simultaneously broadcast on the Church Facebook page.  For the next four weeks, you can catch up here.

The Bible passage is Matthew 22:15-22 and Duncan led and preached.  We also heard from Ron Archer who spoke about his recent visit to Taizé.

Duncan spoke about Matthew 22:15-22 where a group of people were trying to catch Jesus out by asking him ‘Is it right to pay the poll-tax to Caesar or not?’

The story continues ‘But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, ‘You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me? Show me the coin used for paying the tax.’ They brought him a denarius, and he asked them, ‘Whose image is this? And whose inscription?’ ‘Caesar’s,’ they replied. Then he said to them, ‘So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.’ When they heard this, they were amazed. So they left him and went away.

Duncan teased out the lessons for us from this. We can’t really separate the spiritual part of our lives from the secular part, for we are God’s people.

Duncan said ‘There aren’t two columns in life, a God column and a ‘rest of our lives column’. Our lives are stamped with the impression of God [just as the coin in the story was stamped with the image of Caesar]. We are all made in the image of God.  God’s signature is written across our very beings.  And our calling, a challenging one, is to give to our God what is his!

‘If we are to grow and live into the image of God, we begin by imitating Jesus. We follow his example. That’s why what we do Sunday by Sunday is so important. We pay attention to Jesus in order that we might follow him.’

‘Notice finally,’ Duncan said, ‘that Jesus doesn’t give any clear-cut answers. All he says is ‘Give to the emperor [the state] what is the emperor’s and give to God what is God’s.  There are no simple  answers.  We need to work it out in the day-to-day maelstrom of life. But what I can say with authority is that Jesus is our best guide.’

The uniqueness of Jesus.  Throughout his sermon, Duncan focussed on the uniqueness of Jesus as seen in his interaction with his critics.

‘I hope you will see with me afresh today that there is something wonderfully unique and distinctive about Jesus. There’s no-one like Jesus,  and there never has been anyone like Jesus. As we often sing in the song, ‘My Jesus my saviour Lord there is none like you’.

Jesus is not simply a little wiser than everyone else or a little more compassionate, or a little more courageous. In Jesus, along with his disciples and even his opponents today we meet one who challenges our deepest assumptions about God, about ourselves, and about what it means to live faithfully in God’s world.

Have we really considered how extraordinary Jesus is.  In the midst of all the turmoils of life, he is uniquely able to help us, to guide us, to save us, to give our lives meaning and hope.  Today’s story shows that Jesus uniquely understands the reality of the world. He understands human beings.  He sees beyond the façade of human lives to all the fears and motives and pretensions.  And finally, he knows how to live.

Everything in this story is pointing us towards One whose wisdom can be trusted and whose way of life can be followed.’