The twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost - October 18, 2026 Preached at St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal church in Albuquerque, New Mexico

SMAA - Proper 24- October 18, 2026

Before we begin our reflection on the word today, I want to offer a personal word of deep thanks to this church.

I first became aware of your ministry and profoundly grateful for it during a moment of profound crisis when immigrants were being dropped off at the El Paso bus station by ICE with no help, no resources, and nowhere to turn. Buses from Albuquerque picked them up and brought them to the Bosque Center. Upon arrival, this church along with a dedicated interfaith coalition stepped up. You welcomed them, cared for them - body and soul - and helped them safely reach their final destinations.

Now you have continued this ministry of care and compassion by becoming Pen Pals to people in detention and accompanying newly released them upon their release.

Your ministry embodies a truly radical, beautiful act of gospel compassion. Thank you for showing this Diocese what it means to stay close to the vulnerable and to walk the path of Christ’s love in action.

How is your Spirit?

We gather this hour in a moment that feels heavy, fractured, and exhaustingly consequential. The air is thick with the anxiety of an upcoming election where it feels like everything we hold dear is on the line. We look across our pews, across our dinner tables, and across our fences, and we see a nation deeply divided. We are bruised and cynical. Some of us are terrified; some of us are hardened; many of us are just trying to survive the noise without losing our souls or our capacity to love.

Into this tense, fragile reality, our scriptures drop like a sharp, cleansing light.

You heard the Psalmist sing: God will come to judge the world with justice, love and peace.

You heard to Paul praise the Thessalonians for turning away from the hollow idols of their day to serve the living and true God.

And heard, most searchingly, to our Gospel lesson from Matthew, where Jesus is handed a Roman coin bearing the profile of Caesar. The trap is set. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?

It is a question designed to force a false choice: Are you with God, or are you with the state? Are you a nationalist or a dissident? Do you protect the borders of human empire, or do you stand with the vulnerable?

Jesus refuses the trap. He looks at the denarius and asks a question that cuts straight to the marrow of our political anxiety: Whose likeness and inscription is this?

Caesar’s, they reply.

Then give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, Jesus says, and to God the things that are God’s.

For generations, we have tried to domesticate this verse into a neat little boundary line—drawing a map in our minds where politics, voting booths, tax codes, and earthly laws live in one column, and prayer, piety, and Sunday morning worship live in another. We have tried to partition our citizenship. We say, Give the government its due, and keep God out of it, or conversely, God belongs in my private heart, but policy is just pragmatic realpolitik.

But Jesus blows up that two-column ledger.

Think about it. If the coin bears Caesar’s image, and therefore belongs to Caesar, what bears God’s image?

You do. Your neighbor does. The stranger does. The migrant, the asylum seeker, the detainee sitting in a windowless holding cell, the judge presiding over an immigration court, the Border patrol protecting our borders, the politician crafting harsh rhetoric, and the voter casting a ballot—every single one of them is stamped with the divine likeness, forged in the very sanctuary of the Almighty from the opening chapters of Genesis.

If Caesar’s face on a piece of silver means it belongs to him, then the breath of God inside every human being means everything belongs to God. We cannot neatly cordon off our political choices, our legislative systems, or our treatment of the vulnerable as secular matters that do not concern the Almighty.

And this brings us squarely to the bleeding edge of our life together today: our immigration system, our detention centers, our crowded immigration courts, and the human souls caught in the machinery of the state.

We live in a nation wrestling with borders, security, and law. These are real responsibilities of earthly governance—part of the Caesar’s realm that maintains civic order. But when earthly laws and political platforms dehumanize people, when border policies trade compassion for cruelty, when immigration courts become revolving doors of deportation and despair rather than houses of justice, and when human beings are reduced to talking points on a debate stage, we have a crisis of worship.

We are rendering to Caesar what belongs to God.

When we look at a frightened mother seeking refuge and see only a political threat; when we look at children in detention and view them as collateral damage for an election cycle; when we allow partisan ideology to blind us to the image of God stamped upon our neighbor—we are offering the worship that belongs to the Creator of the

universe up to the idols of national self-preservation and political victory.

The prophet Isaiah reminds us in the alternative first reading reading that God uses even foreign powers like King Cyrus to accomplish purposes of liberation and justice, declaring that there is no other; besides me there is no god. Isaiah’s vision reaches across every border, reminding us that God’s sovereignty does not stop at the Rio Grande, nor is it dependent on the platform of any political party.

As we approach what many are calling an existential election, the temptation to demonize our political opponents is overwhelming. We want to put our opponents in the Caesar of darkness column and ourselves in the God of light column. And yet, Jesus stands in the middle of our gridlock, refusing to take our partisan bait.

Instead, he calls us back to the image we bear.

If we belong to God, our politics must be marked by the character of God. And what is God's character? Psalm 96 tells us that God judges the world with righteousness and the peoples with equity. Scripture consistently tells us that the Lord watches over the stranger, defends the orphan and the widow, and demands justice for the oppressed.

This means that as Christian citizens participating in an earthly democracy, our vote, our voice, and our public witness cannot be detached from divine mercy. We can care deeply about the rule of law while simultaneously insisting that the law must never eclipse God's mandate for human dignity. We can honor the structures of civil society while holding them accountable to a higher standard of radical hospitality, equity, and love.

What does it look like to give to God what is God’s in this election season?

• First and foremost—let’s begin by giving to God our gratitude, loyalty and love for this life….it’s challenges and joys as well as for God’s love for us through Jesus Christ.

• It looks like refusing to let fear turn our hearts to stone.

• It looks like looking past the talking points of immigration debates to see the sacred, breathing icon of God sitting in a courtroom or standing at a border or sitting behind the bars of the detention facilities.

• It looks like demanding a system of immigration and detention that honors human worth, respects due process, and rejects the lie that security requires cruelty.

• And it looks like loving our political adversaries—our neighbors who vote differently than we do—with the same stubborn, unearned grace that God has poured out on us.

Empires rise and fall. Presidents are elected and replaced. Political parties wax and wane. The currency of Caesar will eventually tarnish and pass away. But the kingdom of God—a kingdom of righteousness, peace, and radical mercy—is an everlasting kingdom.

So yes, participate in the civic life of our nation. Vote. Speak out. Engage the broken systems with courage. But as you do, remember whose you are. Do not give your ultimate allegiance, your moral soul, or your capacity for love to any earthly throne.

Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, but give your whole heart, your whole life, and your unwavering commitment to justice and mercy to God, who inscribed His very image upon your soul.

In other words, Caesar can have the coins but Caesar does not have us.

Let us pray…..

Gracious and Sovereign God,

You whose reign stretches far beyond the borders of human empire and whose sovereignty is tethered to no political party, we bow our hearts before you in these fragile times..

Forgive us for the ways we have tried to partition our citizenship—for carving up our lives into neat ledgers where Caesar claims our anxieties and you are left only with our private piety. Remind us, as we look into the faces of our neighbors, 

our adversaries, the vulnerable, and the stranger, 

whose image we truly bear.

As an election looms and the noise of the world threatens to harden our hearts, pour out your Spirit upon us. When fear tempts us to see a threat where you see a beloved child, 

anchor us in your equity and righteousness. 

Give us the courage to engage our civic life 

with passion and purpose, 

but keep our souls anchored to an everlasting kingdom.

Deliver us from the idols of national self-preservation and political victory. Instead, stamp our public witness with your radical mercy, that our voices, our votes, and our lives might honor the divine likeness written upon every human soul.

Take our divided nation, take our anxious hearts, 

and use us as instruments of your peace.

Continue to soften the hearts of this church in the ministry of compassionate action to the vulnerable.

To you, who alone are God, belongs all glory, honor, and allegiance, now and forevermore. Amen.