The need for a universal morality

Sermon for Pentecost XXI, delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville KY
Text: Matthew 22:15-22

In 2023, I preached on this passage, and like any preacher with a few years spent in the pulpit, I am challenged with writing another sermon on this passage. The first sermon was perfect and said everything I wanted, so what else could I say? I went back and looked at what I wrote and realized that my theology, my own beliefs had changed, and I wanted to explore that change. In 2023 I wrote about voting as part of giving what belongs to Caesar, to Caesar. 

 “This is another instance where we run into having to give time to Caesar and time to God, and in both   cases in my eyes, they are equally important and we have equal responsibility for both. However, equal importance and obligation brings us close to blurring the lines between them, like seeing voting as a religious duty or attending worship services as a civic duty.” 

It was that last line, “voting as a religious duty, or attending worship services as a civic duty” that stood out to me. Since then I have read an article in The Atlantic written by David Brooks in 2025 that looks at the moral decay in America.

Now, when I say moral decay, I mean that Mr. Brooks is not being a curmudgeon, tut-tutting the “newfangled” things kids are doing these days. He recounts the history of morality, starting with  biblical times when the community determined what was moral or immoral, and that the community determined what your identity and role was. If you were a carpenter, well, your son was gong to be a carpenter, too. In medieval times there was some allowance for individual identity, but the community still determined morality. He then talks about the Enlightenment in the late 1600s, whose ideas are the bedrock of our Declaration of Independence and Constitution. The Enlightenment swept away community-based morality that had led to endless wars in Europe in favor of individually-determined morality that was to lead to individual fulfillment. He ends his article noting that individualism has led us to where we are now. We are adrift morally because we have no common moral foundation other than what we believe individually. We have entered into endless culture and political wars because everything is now relative, and we desperately search for a universal morality through legislation, social influence, and sheer volume of voice. 

Morality is at the heart of what Jesus talks about when he says to give to God what is God’s, and to Caesar what is Caesar’s. In the days of community-based morality, the determination of what belonged to whom was easy - just listen to the religious leaders and elders, the same people who Jesus is confronting. His challenge was not so much to community-based morality as it was to the reason for morality. It was a choice between being right with the law or being right with God above the law. He took that moral reasoning further by distinguishing what was of faith to give to God and what was of the secular world to give to Caesar. My belief that the line between religious and secular duties could be blurred has now changed to an inversion, where worship is now seen by some as a secular duty, and voting a duty of faith. In Jesus’ time, it would have been like worshiping Caesar and paying taxes to the chief priests.That inversion of  duties of faith and secular life comes from the struggle to find a universal morality, and we fight over which of those duties belongs to God or to Caesar as we search for it. Jesus was setting that boundary for the Pharisees, and that is something that we need to do in our time.

So, how do we find a universal morality that allows us to resolve these unending social wars? How do we stop seeing each other as a moral threat to our country? I can think of two places to start, one being Paul’s image of the body of Christ, and the other, a sacramental life. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians in chapter 12 is where he introduces his idea of the unity of the faithful in his time, in a city with a large diversity in beliefs and cultures. He says that even though we are all individuals with different roles to play in the community, we form a unified body through faith in Jesus. All parts of the body are important and needed, and one part cannot discount, or disparage, or reject another part because of function or appearance. In the same way, we can look at ourselves as part of the body as it appears in many forms: this congregation, your circle of family and friends, the people you work with, the people nearby or online, and those who you disagree with. This image of being part of a body brings clarity to what is moral or not, that is, what builds up or tears down the body and what the body does to give to God or to Caesar. What keeps this body of Christ healthy is what is given to God, and what the body does in the world is what is given to Caesar. Being part of something greater than us individually is at the heart of finding a universal morality that lets us determine what is given to whom.

The second place to start is a sacramental life, the Eucharistic prayers [see pp. 362-363] and receiving the consecrated bread and wine as the body and blood of Christ. Some denominations have a similar view of the sacraments, but it is inaccessible to many other Protestant denominations. At the heart of a sacramental life is a recognition that something profane, or common, has been dedicated to God in some way and becomes holy. So, what could be given to Caesar is consecrated and given to God. What we determine to be sacramental is to be set aside for God and to be given to God, not just be given lip service in the name of righteousness. As the body of Christ, it is up to us, together, to determine what the body does that is to be consecrated and dedicated to God, and what belongs to Caesar. The beginning of that consideration, that conversation, is to look to the life Jesus lived, the one he calls us to live, to understand what the kingdom of God looks like in this age. This recognition of what is part of a sacramental life begins to define what is universally moral, that is, what belongs to God is not to be profaned, or given to Caesar.

What I am talking about may seem hopelessly naive or unrealistic in today’s context, and I admit to being somewhat idealistic. But the reality is that we already live a sacramental life as the body of Christ within these four walls. What is to prevent us from living that life outside, out there, among other people? Yes, we are called individually by Jesus to have faith in him, but that does not mean that we express or exercise that faith in isolation from everyone else. Salvation comes to a community as much as it might come to an individual. Likewise, what we give to God and Caesar is not fully ours to determine alone, but determined as a community, as the full body of Christ, even as we give of ourselves individually to God and to Caesar. To know what is morally right is to submit ourselves to the entire body of Christ, to live a morally humble life where what belongs to God as a sacrament is clear. What is to be given to the secular world is clear as well, and we give willingly what is due to either one.