The celebrated reply of Jesus to the Pharisees and Herodians, “Give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar — and to God what belongs to God”, is often understood as a lesson about the respective responsibilities of religion and the state. Yet there is something far more profound in our Lord's answer. It concerns not simply what we must give, but to whom we ultimately belong. The question put to Jesus was carefully contrived. The Pharisees and Herodians, otherwise unlikely alli

You can almost see the feast in Isaiah’s description, the table laden with food, and wine, rich, expensive and delicious food and wine. This is quite usual for a wedding feast in most cultures, like the feast in today’s Gospel parable. There are oxen and fat calves, and much more, as befits a wedding feast flowing with rich wine lasting for many days. After all, it is the wedding feast of a king’s son. The mystery is why the guests turned away. Did they think they could have

This image of the vineyard is one of the less-common images for the people of Israel, but it pops up in three of our readings this Sunday. In fact, this Sunday is the third week in a row that we’ve had Jesus telling a parable about a vineyard. They have all been taken from roughly the same section of the Gospel of Matthew. Much like his parables about sheep, fishing and making bread vineyards feature in Jesus’ parables because of the place that wine had in ancient Israel. To