…After the religious leaders realized that Jesus had stumped every one of their opposing groups, a legal expert poses one final question. What is the greatest commandment?

Essentially that is the question we are still arguing today. We are destroying each other, even in the church, over laws and policies and judicial rulings on everything from abortion to the environment to education to immigration to marriage to guns to healthcare and the list goes on and on. But in all of our fighting, nobody is listening. All we care about is that the laws of Caesar's Kingdom align with our personal beliefs, no matter how those laws might affect people who do not share our beliefs or who do not have the same opportunities and privilege we have.

That is why Jesus' answer is so crucial for us"

LOVE GOD... LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR... PERIOD.

It's really that simple...

...or is it?…

…Today, as in Jesus’ day, the state often seeks to use religion for its own purposes, and like the religious leaders of Jesus’ day, we are quick to fall in line for the sake of the many benefits our complicity may garner us with the state, such as tax-exemption or social status. As Todd Weir writes,

Power interests like emperors can pressure you to do stuff you don’t believe in… They want to stamp their image on you and sometimes you feel like you can’t escape it.

In asking whose image is on the national currency, Jesus reminds us that we are not stamped with the image of an eagle or an American Flag and we are certainly not stamped with the image of an elephant or a donkey, despite how many would try to pigeonhole us for political gain…

…we have all been in situations where we find ourselves dressed inappropriately. We are either underdressed, overdressed, or simply not dressed for the occasion.

The same is true in God’s Kingdom. We’re not talking about what we wear to church. Jesus is not demanding that men wear three piece suites and ladies go back to hats and gloves for Sunday morning worship. But when it comes to the Kingdom of God on earth, there is a dress code and it doesn’t just apply on Sunday mornings.

In Romans 13:14 Paul tells us to “put on Christ” and to the Galatians he writes, “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ (Galatians 3:27)…

We may not think of ourselves as the kind of people who would want to kill Jesus to gain our heavenly inheritance, but how often do we think of salvation in these terms. We pray a prayer asking God to forgive us and thanking our Heavenly Father that through the gift of his son, we can receive the inheritance of eternal life. And then we take our “inheritance check” and go on about our lives, knowing it is safely tucked away in our spiritual bank account so that we can cash it in when we die.

Essentially we have done what both the prodigal son and these tenant farmers have done. We have valued the gift more than the giver and the inheritance more than the father / landowner. We forget that “the land” is not ours…