Matthew 22: 15-22 (Common English Bible)
Jesus the Christ came to pursue a world where hungry people can be fed, thirsty people are satisfied and poor people are elevated. It is difficult to follow this in a world still following a Caesar mindset. If it feels easy, that is because we’ve gotten too comfortable than we should be.
We may feel that we have to choose between the kingdoms of the world or God’s kingdom. However, Jesus tells us that we can live in both kingdoms if we let our faith interact with the world. In all we do and interact with one another, we should allow God’s reign to be expressed in the world around us.
The gospel story this Sunday is about such an interaction with the divine and the worldly. The Pharisees and supporters of Herod Antipas, called Herodians, wanted to trap Jesus in a no-win situation. Compare it to a coin-flip, when the coin-flipper says, “heads I win, tails you lose.” But it was a strange alliance between the Pharisees and the Herodians. They usually didn’t associate with one another. The Pharisees were very strict about their religion and the Herodians were very secular. The Herodians were comfortable with living under Roman rule. They received kick-backs from Rome by helping to enforce Caesar's will. But the Pharisees and Herodians did have one thing in common. They both viewed Jesus as a troublemaker who had to be dealt with.
Matthew wrote his gospel sometime between 80-90 AD. The priestly tax on the Temple in Jerusalem no longer existed because that Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD. So to add insult to injury, the Romans made the Jewish people redirect that tax money to support a pagan Temple in Rome dedicated to the Roman god Jupiter. Taxes were a very volatile issue in 1st century Judea.
The kind of taxes in this gospel story were considered poll or “head” taxes. All people within the Roman Empire had to pay the tax, men, women and even some slaves. It also had to be paid by Roman currency. When a denarian, a coin worth a day’s wage, was produced for Jesus, the inscription on the denarian probably read, “Tiberius Caesar, son of the divine Augustus.”
The inscription on that coin points to why this tax caused controversy in the time of Jesus. Paying taxes to an occupying empire was hated. Even worse was using a currency that pictured a person claiming divinity. This was more humiliation of the Jewish people by the Roman Empire.
When Jesus inspects the coin shown to him, he declares, “Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and give to God things that are God’s.” The Pharisees and Herodians are brainlocked. Jesus has trapped them with their own trap. The coin makes a claim. It claims the emperor’s divinity and claims Tiberius as the mediator of the emerging emperor worship. If Jesus had said to pay the tax, that would be blasphemy to his religious disciples and followers. If Jesus had said “no” to the tax he would’ve been accused of sedition against Rome and face possible execution. Jesus was basically saying, if you deal with the Romans then you’re obligated to them. Notice that Jesus did not carry that Roman coin. He had to be shown one.
No one I know likes to pay taxes. But I view taxes as the price we pay to live in a civilized society. Taxes are used for a lot of good things, such as building schools, medical-clinics, fire-departments, assistance to people who need care and many other worthy projects. But unfortunately, and all too often, taxes are used for uncivilized things like we’re seeing now in the Middle East in the rush for war.
But as God’s followers, we do not belong to the charms and violence of the secular world, but instead we belong to God. Our greatest loyalty is to the One who created us in mind, substance and soul. We should give to God the things that are God’s and testify that all creation on earth and the universe belongs to God. And the kingdom of God on earth should take precedence over any nation on earth.
The kingdom of God would eventually defeat the kingdom of Caesar, not by war, but by the victory of God’s love. And that same love triumphed over an even bigger obstacle, which is death itself because of the resurrection of Jesus. If we are sincere in our hearts to be Christ’s disciples, one must ask the question, “whose image is this.” All of us are created in God’s image. We are given to God what belongs to God, including our own lives.
People are left wondering what to do in a world still dominated by a Caesar mindset, but realize that God is still the creator of everything? How can one know what belongs to God or a nation? Remember, those bracelets of several decades ago, WWJD? It might be time to resurrect them if they concentrate on the gospels. The words of Jesus or as relevant today as they were in the 1st century.
In the end, what Jesus teaches us is a critical interpretation of the world and a conscientious engagement on what we believe is true. From Matthew’s gospel the goal of life is not merely to oppose any evil empire, but to love people, including enemies and to create God’s kingdom on earth.
AMEN
