Thinking allowed

Civic Sunday 20 September 2026

on Monday, 21 September 2026 at 11.43 am by Simon Kershaw
categorised as sermon

Ser­mon preached at the Civic Ser­vice at St Ives, before the Deputy Lieu­ten­ant, the High Sher­iff, the Vice-Chairs of Cam­bridge­shire County Coun­cil and Hunt­ing­don­shire Dis­trict Coun­cil, the May­or of Peter­bor­ough and oth­er neigh­bour­ing towns, and the Town May­or and Coun­cil of St Ives, togeth­er with a detach­ment from 42 Engin­eer Regi­ment (Geo­graph­ic), and youth organizations.

Read­ings: Micah 6.6–8; Mat­thew 22.16–21

Here’s a ques­tion to start a sermon –
why are we here?

Don’t worry,
I’m not ask­ing one of those great exist­en­tial questions –
“what is the mean­ing of life?”
Or “are you saved?”

No, I mean it much more literally.
Are you here because you were invited?
Or – did your com­mand­ing officer tell you to come?
Maybe your par­ents said you had to go
and brought you to the Cattle Mar­ket car park.

Well, of course, the real reas­on we’re here
is for Civic Sunday,
when our Town May­or and Council
come cere­mo­ni­ally to church,
as they have for hun­dreds of years;
an oppor­tun­ity to give thanks,
and cel­eb­rate all the good things about our town.

And people come to this church for all sorts of reasons.
Last week­end, for example, was the Her­it­age Open Days,
and sev­er­al hun­dred people came here
to explore the architecture,
and the vest­ments that were on display.

Among the prom­in­ent fea­tures that people stop and look at
is the big col­our­ful stained-glass window
at the end of the south aisle –
over there, to your right.
It’s not the best win­dow in the church,
but I reck­on it’s far from the worst either!
You may not be able to see it prop­erly from your seat,
but if you get a chance later do have a closer look,
or per­haps come back anoth­er time.
And there’s a pic­ture of it
on the back of our order of service,
so you might like to have that before you.

It’s a typ­ic­al col­our­ful Vic­tori­an window.
There’s Jesus in the middle,
wrapped in a red cloak.
Over to the left are his disciples,
per­haps cower­ing a bit behind their leader.
And on the oth­er side there’s a group of people
clearly in dis­cus­sion with Jesus.
The one at the front,
wear­ing a green cloak,
is point­ing to some­thing in his right hand.

It’s a small coin.

And under­neath
in small lettering
that you per­haps can­’t read without your glasses on
is an inscrip­tion beginning
“Render there­fore unto Caesar”.

I hope you might recog­nise these
as words that we just heard read by our Town Mayor.
That’s the story that this win­dow depicts.

So – what’s going on?
Well, in Jesus’s time
if you wanted to wor­ship at the temple
you needed spe­cial temple money,
not ordin­ary every­day Roman coins.
But what Jesus’s ques­tion­ers produce
is an ordin­ary Roman coin, a denarius.
They’d been try­ing to trap Jesus:
they wanted him to say that a reli­gious person
did­n’t have to fol­low the rules of the state.
And Jesus replies that they
– and we –
all have to do what the Emper­or Caesar requires,
what the state requires.

But,
and this is the import­ant bit,
Jesus says we should also do what God requires as well.

So what is it that God requires of us?
What does God want us to do?

And that[s where our first read­ing comes in.
The proph­et Micah lived
some 700 years earli­er than Jesus –
so get­ting on for 3000 years ago.
And maybe you think
that someone who lived nearly 3000 years ago
has­n’t got much to say to us in the 21st century.

So let me remind you what Micah said.
He says that God
does­n’t really care about temple sacrifices,
or about reli­gious ritu­al generally.
You might think
that’s a strange thing for a preach­er to say:
that God does­n’t care about reli­gious ritual.
This ancient Jew­ish proph­et says
that what God cares about is –
to do justice,
to love mercy,
and to walk humbly with God.
These are rules that go to the heart
of Jew­ish-Chris­ti­an mor­al­ity and ethics.
The mor­al­ity and eth­ics that form the basis of our society.

And we can tease this out a little more;
tease it out into two basic themes
that can guide each of us in our lives.

The first of these themes is:
com­pas­sion.
So, com­pas­sion is about see­ing things
from the oth­er person’s point of view.
It’s about hav­ing sym­pathy and empathy –
sym­pathy and empathy with people who are suffering;
sym­pathy and empathy with people we know –
and with people we don’t know.
It might mean going out of our way
to help a per­son or group dif­fer­ent from us,
or who we don’t even like,
or who per­haps don’t like us.

That might be … mem­bers of a life­boat crew
risk­ing their lives
to res­cue people try­ing to cross the sea.
It might mean sol­diers risk­ing their lives
to keep the peace between war­ring parties,
or defend those at risk.
Or it might mean …
sit­ting and listening
to a per­son who just needs someone to talk to.
I’m sure you can think of oth­er examples.

And the second of my two guid­ing themes
is … recon­cili­ation.
Reconciliation.
This is about not hold­ing grudges for slights and wrongs –
wheth­er real or imagined.
Recon­cili­ation is about say­ing “sorry”,
it’s about
not wait­ing for the oth­er per­son to say “sorry” first –
or maybe even at all.
Even if they don’t, even if it’s their fault,
we can still work for that recon­cili­ation.

Recon­cili­ation stops hate from eat­ing away at our lives,
it stops hate and con­flict spreading,
and it lets people and groups
over­come past issues, past conflicts –
in our per­son­al lives and between lar­ger groups.

Now maybe you’re think­ing that this all sounds very well.
Com­pas­sion and Recon­cili­ation – lovely ideas,
but it isn’t always easy to carry them out, is it?
Because it takes prac­tice and awareness.
We have to prac­tise com­pas­sion and reconciliation
so that they become ingrained in us.
We have to prac­tise them
in the small ordin­ary every­day things
so that if we are called upon
to exer­cise them in some­thing important
they have become our nat­ur­al way of doing things.

And this is the mes­sage for all of us.
It’s the mes­sage for young people
set­ting out on life’s journey.
It’s the mes­sage for sol­diers on the battlefield –
or guid­ing oth­ers on the battlefield.
It’s the mes­sage for politicians –
May­ors and Coun­cil­lors at all levels of loc­al government,
and for nation­al and inter­na­tion­al politi­cians too.
For all of us here.

Com­pas­sion and Recon­cili­ation.
If we equip ourselves with these two
then we shall be doing justly and lov­ing mercy,
and we shall be giv­ing to God the things that are God’s.

Finally, then, let’s return to that win­dow over there.
We’ve seen that it shows Jesus
remind­ing us to give to God the things that are God’s.
So now let your gaze wander upwards,
above the col­oured can­op­ies in the middle of the window
right to the top.
And in that top light is an angel,
an angel with rain­bow-col­oured wings,
hold­ing a scroll.
And what do you think is writ­ten on that scroll?

It says …
“do justly, love mercy, walk humbly with thy God”.
It’s the key verse from our oth­er reading.

So I invite you
to take away this ser­vice leaflet
when you leave the church.
Stuff it in your pocket.
And later, when you get home,
take it out and look at the picture,
and recall these two bible verses:
“Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s
and to God the things that are God’s”;
and
“What does God require?
Do justly, love mercy, walk humbly”.

And then – prac­tise com­pas­sion and recon­cili­ation,
prac­tise them in the little things of life,
make them your core values,
and togeth­er we will make our town
and the world around us
a bet­ter place for ourselves,
for our children,
for everyone.

Amen.

(1248 words)

0 Comments