“Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar?” It’s a bit of a weird question. Just give it a moment of thought. If the law says, “Pay taxes,” then it is certainly lawful to pay taxes—being under Roman rule, the law in Judea was to pay taxes to Rome. However, this was a question designed to trap Jesus in His own words, as evidenced by the buttering-up He received: “Teacher, we know that you are true and teach the way of God truthfully, and you do not care about anyone's opinion, for you are not swayed by appearances.” If He answered “No,” then the Herodians—supporters of Roman rule—would have been angry; Jesus would be labeled as a radical and insurrectionist (a little foretaste of what happened when Jesus was brought before Pilate). If He answered “Yes,” then He would have angered the Pharisees and the religious right of His time, certainly giving them more ammo in their attempt to thin His crowd of followers.

“Whose likeness and inscription is on the coin?” “Ceasar’s,” they answered.

“Fine then, render to Caesar those things which are his.” If you’re going to carry around in your pockets money that bears the image and name of someone else, then you have been granted permission to use someone else’s coin for your legal transactions. And when he calls for some of it to be returned—a sort of fee for your use of his tender, a tax—then you are obliged to render to him that for which he asks. This is the law. A simplified explanation, perhaps, but the illustration stands.

When one hears this parable, the natural inclination is to look at what the all of the people are doing. These people are invited to a feast. When it came time for the feast, they are fetched by a servant, but each of them gives excuses and declines showing up. Additionally, they take those who came to fetch them and treated them spitefully and killed them. Of course, this would incense the one who invited them, and in the parable, he destroyed the invitees and burned up their cities.

Then, there are other people brought to the feast, and again, the attention is on them. The hall is filled with guests, but one of them isn’t wearing the proper wedding garments. It was traditional in the time of Jesus that when you invited someone to a wedding feast, you provided them the appropriate attire. When he’s approached about it, he hasn’t an answer. So, he is bound hand and foot and thrown into outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Those hired vinedressers, the tenants, were foolish and blind. Anyone reading or hearing the parable could tell that. Even the chief priests and elders of the people knew it.

In the parable, a landowner planted a vineyard, dug a winepress in it, and built a tower. He leased it to the vinedressers then went off into another country. The lease isn’t too difficult to understand—the rules are easy to figure out here. It’s the owner’s vineyard, winepress, and tower. The tenants are hired. They were to tend to the property, care for the vineyard, harvest the grapes, and give the owner what is his. In return, they got to live on the land and keep some of the harvest.

Jesus said,

How dear to God are these little ones! Jesus says that their angels always see the Face of His Father. There are angels assigned to His little ones, and they are always before the throne of God. These angels, messengers of God, are much more than part of God’s creation that merely gaze upon the Face of the Father. St. John wrote that under the leadership of Michael the archangel, the angels of God cast the dragon and those angels who followed him from the Face of God. The dragon is the devil and Satan, that serpent of old. (cf. Revelation 12:7-9) The prophet Daniel also wrote of Michael, the great prince who watches over the sons of the children of Israel, who on the last day will come at the time of great conflict, but that the people of God would be delivered through it. (cf. Daniel 12:1-2) It is these warrior-messengers of God that keep watch over the little ones, and they are always before the Face of the Father.

It all begs the question; who are “these little ones?” Well, you’d certainly be right in calling them children, but “these little ones” are more than children.

At the end of Matthew 19, Jesus said to His disciples,

Then, chapter 20, today’s text, starts.

Preaching on today’s Gospel, Luther wrote,

What Luther is getting at is precisely what I hope to get across in the sermon today.

After all, many can and do debate about the different hours. As Luther put it, some say that the hours represent different ages in the history of mankind. Some might say that they are meant to show the different stages in the life of a man when he might come to faith, either in the first hour, such as from birth, to the eleventh hour, such as on his deathbed. And I’m sure there are other possible explanations as to what the hours might mean.