Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen

First of all my apologies for an unintended irony this morning to all accountants and business folks who were running against the October 15 deadline for business income tax returns due this past night at midnight. You’re tired and I apologize that we are dealing with taxes again this morning. Rest assured, it is October 16, you turned it in, - and I have to say, I am really glad about Jesus’ positive reply regarding paying taxes - we’d be in worse trouble than just deadline stress without them!

Jesus’ answer to the Pharisees on whether it is unlawful to pay taxes in an unjust regime of course has a different take than they had expected. Jesus first of all puts things in perspective! He refuses to be tricked into an understanding in which the power of the emperor/ the government and the power of God would be competing.
(By the way, the Pharisees themselves did pay the tax in question however unwillingly, - while it was the Zealots, militant nationalists, who refused to pay this much hated annual per capita tax, to be paid in coins imprinted with the emperor’s image and name: “"Tiberius, emperor, august son of the divine Augustus; (pontifex maximus, or) high priest.”)

Jesus who tells of a very different kind of kingdom and justice than the Roman empire was, must have hated this annual tax just as much as every Jew around him. Yet with his bold claim to be God’s son, to be the first representative of this different way of ruling the world, he breaks the pattern of either-or putting God’s power above all else, even above the Roman emperor who claimed to be divine and was worshiped as such.

It is interesting to note that in his reply to the Pharisees in our story Jesus actually does not say “give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s and give to God the things that are God’s,” as if we had a choice to select from, but he says, “return to the emperor the things that are his and return to God the things that are God’s.”

Return, give back.
The coin with the emperor’s visage on it actually really was the Romans’ property. The people in Judah, in Galilee and elsewhere had to buy it with their own money in order to then literally return it as their tax money. That’s easy to understand

But how does one return to God what is God’s?
What is it that we got from God in the first place?
Several things come to mind:

If that much hated and to any believing Jew sacrilegious tax coin was imprinted with the emperor’s visage and inscription, then the coin to be returned to God should have God’s image on it. That coin, dear congregation, is none other than you and me!
Hear this from Genesis 1: “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them.” (Gen 1:27) God’s coinage in this world is every human being that was created. Even after Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden for their disobedience, even after the flood came and ended, the promise is repeated each time: We are created in the image of God.

So, we are to give ourselves back to God - our whole selves. Whereas taxes are always only a portion of one’s property, God wants all of us, not just a portion, but all of us, body, mind, soul, things seen and things unseen, things known and things unknown. God makes a universal claim on us.

We may get scared by such a pervasive claim. But this is only scary as long we still live in the mind frame of the either-or: how much do I give to the government, and much to God? How much do I give to my family and how to God? How much of me belongs to my spouse, to my parents, to my children, to my job, to my homes, my business, my collection of art, of cars, of stuff, how much of me belongs to my political views, my obsessions etc. etc., and how much of me belongs to God?

One of the most helpful reminders how to return ourselves to God in whose image we are created is our weekly offertory prayer.
"Merciful Father, we offer with joy and thanksgiving what you have first given us - our selves, our time, and our possessions, signs of your gracious love. Receive them for the sake of him who offered himself for us, Jesus Christ our Lord."

This prayer, dear congregation, is still one of the high points in the liturgy for me personally. That which could look like an impossible, burdensome claim on us: the offering up of self, of time and possessions, is in God’s kingdom not a burden, because self, time and possessions come first of all as God’s gracious gifts to us. We merited not a single one of these nor do they belong to us- neither self, nor time, nor possessions. They are all God’s gracious gift to us in the first place. “Here I am,” says the prophet albeit reluctantly given the task at hand. “My times are in your hand,” sings the Psalmist. And Zacchaeus to whose house Jesus comes says, “I will pay back four times.”

Only on the basis of such fundamental insight are we able to live, to function, to continue. Everything is given to us, our life, our breath, our everything. We know it and therefore we come here to be constantly reminded of it. And therefore it is with shouts and outbursts of joy and thanksgiving, merciful Father, that we offer what you have first given us - our selves, our time, and our possessions, signs of your gracious love. And by our offerings and the things we do with them, we are telling the world the story of who we are, what our hope is and to which kingdom we belong.

As much as we like to give, to return, to offer self, time, possessions freely, flowing out of our own gratefulness, we know that our coin of self, time, and possessions is often not as whole and shiny as we liked it to be.

As people of faith, we know that although we bear God's image on us, in the way we carry it, our coin will always be prone to be broken, chipped, dull. God's image can even be destroyed beyond recognition. Because we are always both, saints and sinners, justified and sinful. Yet in the faithful God's image remains recognizable, in those who return to God offerings of self, of life stories, of times bright and dark, of possessions large and small. We humbly offer our gifts "for the sake of him who offered himself for us, Jesus Christ, our Lord".

Jesus Christ our Lord is the only one who returned himself fully to God - for our sake.
In the Eucharist, in anticipation of the kingdom in communion with our resurrected and living Lord, the image of God is imprinted anew, time and again, on every seeking soul.

May the peace of God which surpasses our understanding guard your hearts und your minds in Christ Jesus.
Amen.