You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Another week, another test. For the past few weeks our Gospel passages have chronicled one long game of “gotcha” between Jesus and the religious leaders, them trying to catch him saying the wrong thing, he neatly sidestepping their loaded questions. In last week’s test, he prevailed yet again over the Sadducees, but another set of examiners was waiting in the wings. This week we see the Pharisees get back in the game – and since they were legal specialists, they asked Jesus a question about the Torah, the Law.
When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”
Easy A. Jesus answers with the best known of all the commandments:
He said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment.”
No surprises here. This is indeed the most basic command, where Israel’s relationship with God begins. Jesus might have checked the box and moved on – but he wasn’t finished. He went on to cite a much less known commandment and put it on a par with the first: “And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’"
What’s this? An obscure half-verse from Leviticus is up there with loving God? Yes, Jesus says – “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
He isn’t making this up – he is quoting the Law as given by Moses. Nonetheless, in combining these two commandments Jesus presents a radical new way of seeing God and justice. It’s not enough to love God. We have to live out that love by the way we love our neighbors and even ourselves.
We’ll unpack these different kinds of love throughout this week. Today let’s explore this linkage Jesus makes:- Do you associate loving yourself with loving God?
- Do you connect God and neighbor?
- Do you feel the most love for God, for your neighbor, or for yourself?
- How might the way we love our neighbor increase our love for ourselves?
- How might the way we love ourselves – or not – connect to our ability to love God?
Sit with these questions in prayer as a kind of diagnostic on your "love life." Talk to God about it, notice where your energy increases.
It’s good to know where we excel in love and where we can grow, for in the realm of God, love is all and all is Love. We need that reminder all the more these days, when there is so much fear and conflict felt and expressed and acted upon. I am ever called back to John’s reminder that, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.”
The absolutely best action we can take is to love actively and consciously, and increase our capacity for love every single day.
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Can institutional religion and institutional government co-exist in harmony when their aims are often so divergent? The Pharisees, in their sly interrogation of Jesus, implied that support for the state (admittedly, in this case a brutal occupying force…) was incompatible with support for God. “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?”
Jesus refused to indulge that duality – he seemed profoundly disinterested in engaging the question. After all, from the point of view of eternity, support for both the civil state and the church are temporal. Jesus is interested not so much in where we give our money as in how we give our hearts.
As human beings, we are both political and spiritual. So our societies necessarily contain both such structures, with different goals and ways of operating. Religious and civic life exist in essential and overlapping but basically distinct realms. When those realms live in creative tension, somewhat equally balanced in power and influence, human societies do alright. We go off the rails when either becomes too dominant - especially, I'm sorry to say, when it's religion that tries to run the show. Such is the power of Margaret Atwood’s 1986 novel, “The Handmaid’s Tale,” which has seen new life as an award-winning television series, warning a new era about the incompatibility of theocracy and democracy. The danger posed to democracy by the "Christian Nationalism" movement, which is anything but Christian, is profound.
This week we are exploring how best to live in the tension of our dual citizenship, how to reflect the values of heaven on earth, and hold up the needs of earth before the power of heaven.- How do you feel called to live that dual citizenship, bringing your spiritual self into the public square?
- When do we challenge secular values with gospel values?
- How and when might we invite the power of the Holy Spirit to work through us for secular good?
It's easy to get disgusted with government. We can instead wield the spiritual power we've been given as well as our civic freedoms, being both engaged citizens and prayer warriors. The healthiest way for church and state to mingle might just be in us.
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Exactly six months from today, Americans will be required to file tax returns and pay any tax owed. For my money, April 15th is the most patriotic day in the American calendar. There is nothing more patriotic than investing your resources (mandated or not…) in the future you desire for your country.
When did we allow the conversation about taxes to become so negative, in whatever country we live? Public service and tax-paying used to be marks of a good citizen. Taxes are the way a healthy society funds the services, infrastructure and systems of justice that allow its citizens to thrive. Though they can be an instrument of oppression, under fair laws in an open society, taxes are a shared good; it should feel good to participate.
In Jesus’ time perhaps paying taxes to Caesar, the head of the often brutal Roman Empire, might not have been such a happy thing. But for us, who have a great deal of control over our destinies, despite governmental chaos and corruption, paying taxes can be something to celebrate. I hate paying speeding tickets, but I remind myself they’ll fund some county program that is needed and get over it.
What does this have to do with our spiritual lives, which is why we read Water Daily? Opening up our view of taxes is yet another way to help us release our grip on the money we think is ours. If we can see taxes as an investment in the future of the wider community, perhaps we can more freely share our resources in the community of faith, to fund the ministries through which God is working transformation. Can we loosen our grip and pledge big this season?
Christians have dual citizenship in this life. We are residents of this world with all the responsibilities and joys of being members of societies. And we are citizens of the heavenly realm, that already/not yet space of inbreaking power amidst our heart-breaking powerlessness. As long as we’re here, we are invited to invest in both realms the gifts God has given us – our money, time, privilege and talent.
We can love our country and invest in its people and future AND love our God and look forward to our eternal future. When we open our hands to give, it is amazing how quickly they are filled.
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Did God ordain governments? Some see governments as purveyors of chaos and corruption, when their actual purpose is to prevent those things and secure a safe and equitable society in which all citizens might thrive. We know too many cases where government works against the values we hold, though it is also society’s chief agent of justice.
Some passages in scripture read as though God very much works through political systems and leaders, even ones outside the people of Israel (read up on the Cyrus passages in Isaiah, also appointed for this Sunday…). Saint Paul, writing in Romans 13, seems to feel that no ruler on earth can exercise power without God’s authority – which makes me wonder what he thinks about corrupt and oppressive rulers, of which his day saw as many as ours. Jesus, in the passage we are exploring this week, seems to take governments as a given, not saying where they fit in God’s plan. As he tells Pilate under interrogation, “My kingdom is not of this world.”
Government is a natural human phenomenon, as is institutional religion. Human beings have to organize around power, supplies and spirituality, and all organizations soon take on a life and culture of their own. Like the human beings of which they are comprised, governments exist on a continuum between good and evil, helpful and self-serving, visionary and banal. Government, in a functioning democracy, is us, and we are it. We don’t get to call it a “them.”
So where does that leave us as people of faith? Perhaps it leaves us with a call to be agents of healthier government and a more life-bringing body politic. In recent years our rhetoric has grown more and more polarized and shrill, though the urgency of justice sometimes calls for turning up the volume. Many Christians have sought to find an appropriate place as promoters of equality and resisters of evil. What if Christ followers participated primarily as peacemakers, not trying to convince the irrational, but refraining from demonizing, holding up the values of justice and equity and freedom?
Sound like a pipe dream? We have at our hands the power that transforms worlds. Surely we can pray for our governments and those who claim a desire to lead us.
I don’t know if God ordains governments. I do believe God will work through anyone who asks. Let’s ask.
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Then Jesus said to them, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” Sounds simple, right? Give to God the things that are God’s. But what belongs to God? Doesn’t the emperor also belong to God? And if everything belongs to God – why does God need our gifts? Our offerings? Our pledges?
Maybe God doesn’t need anything from us. Maybe we need to give, because things get squirrely when we don’t, and because we are transformed when we do.
It is tempting to see the two kinds of “giving” that Jesus talks about here as similar, parallel tracks. We owe the government our taxes to pay for the goods and services we need governments to render. We owe God our “dues” to pay for… what? Clergy and church buildings? Charity?
Once we equate giving our money and resources for God’s mission to “taxes” or “dues,” it becomes an obligation, a contractual exchange. That is not what giving is intended to be for Christians. We are not called to give to God. We are called to give in relationship with God, to give because it is the best way we know to reciprocate in gratitude for all that we’ve received, to join into the celebration of blessing.
When our giving is stunted, it may be that we are not all that grateful, not feeling very blessed. We give because it sets us free, opens us up, changes our hearts. We give because we love seeing what happens for others when we do.
Where does giving bring you the most joy?
Where do you feel the least willing?
Both answers offer ground for prayer – and action. Maybe we are being invited to give additionally in both categories. Maybe we want to strengthen our gratitude muscles.
We are to give as God has given us – and in Christ, God gave us everything. The great U2 song, “With or Without You” is not about a human relationship, but the struggle to exist in faith and intimacy with the God you cannot see. (The “she” in U2 songs often refers to the Holy Spirit or to grace…)
See the stone set in your eyes
See the thorn twist in your side. (A Pauline reference.)
I can’t live, with or without you,” Bono sings.
And then comes the repeated refrain which applies to both God, and to us in relationship with the God whose essential nature it is to give, a nature we gradually take on: And you give, and you give, and you give yourself away.
And we never run out.
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
In this week's gospel story we witness yet another confrontation between Jesus and the Jewish religious leaders, this time over whether to pay taxes to the Roman oppressors. They thought this a tidy trap – if he said "No," they could have him arrested for sedition; if "Yes," they could brand him a collaborator before his adoring crowds. Win/win, right?
Not for them. Jesus asks for a Roman coin. "Whose image do you see imprinted here?" he asks. "Caesar," they answer. "It's easy," he replies, "You owe this to the one who issued it. Give to the emperor what belongs to him, to God what belongs to God." And he dances out of another trap.
Genesis tells us that humankind was made in the image of God. Saint Paul asserts that Jesus is the perfect image of the invisible God, and that we are united with Christ in baptism. So we are stamped with the image of God in birth, and in rebirth. We are the coins God has issued to the world, if you will, the currency by which God's generosity is realized.
What are coins? They are utilitarian, sure, yet also precious. And they are used to purchase things of value to their possessor. They can bring dreams into being. What is God’s dream? That all of God's children thrive in freedom and plenty and wholeness.
Does it change your self-perception to think of yourself as a coin bearing the image of your creator, the currency of the Almighty in the creation? How might we be expended as "God's coins" to bring that dream of God into being?
In prayer today, we might offer ourselves anew to God for service, and ask the Holy Spirit to show us where God wants to spend us today, or this week, or this year, or this lifetime. What visions come up as you sit in stillness with that question? Does anything resonate with your own dreams?
The currency we have bears the likeness of temporal authorities, and that's the realm in which we spend it. We bear the likeness of God, and so we give ourselves to be spent in God's realm. Bought with a price, we can more than double our value.
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Jesus' parables often end with a tag line; this one's is: "For many are called, but few are chosen.”
I guess this refers to the banquet hall being full of people who were invited without regard to their suitability, to be evaluated and sorted out later. It’s not much comfort, is it, the idea that just being in the room doesn’t guarantee inclusion in the household of God.
Are we “in?” Do we want to be? Are we actually at the party, or just hanging out on the sidelines? Put another way, are we lukewarm church-goers or passionate Christ-followers? I've heard this verse adapted to describe Episcopalians: “Many are cold, but few are frozen.” What is our temperature at this feast?
Try to imagine yourself at a feast, a celebration, whatever that looks like for you. Bring the details to mind. The room is crowded. Where are you? Near the table, hugging a wall somewhere, or in between? Why are you where you are? Where is Jesus in that room? Can you have a chat with him?
I’d like to believe we are both called and chosen; I’ve never held to doctrines like predestination or election. At the very least, we are all invited, and we all have a choice to be present to the feast or pass it by. I hope you pull up a chair and pick up a fork – a sentiment conveyed much more eloquently in the 17th century by the priest and poet George Herbert:
Love (III)
Love bade me welcome. Yet my soul drew back
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lacked any thing.
A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:
Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?
Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
So I did sit and eat.
- George Herbert, 1593-1633
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
