By Anita Fast
Matthew 22:15-22 (click the link to read scripture)
Commenting in 1789 on the newly established U.S. Constitution, Benjamin Franklin wrote "In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”
He wasn’t the first person to have said something similar, as it seems to encapsulate two widely accepted truths. Everyone dies (though there is disagreement as to what happens afterwards), and governing authorities finance themselves through taxes (though there are MANY disagreements about how much and whom should be made to pay).
In Jesus’ time, taxes were also a big deal and also inevitable. Like us, Jews paid different kinds of taxes. There was the annual temple tax to keep it running. There were land taxes and customs taxes. Taxes and fees to have fishing rights on the Sea of Galilee. On top of these taxes, Jews were made to pay an annual poll tax to Rome.
This was the specific tax in question in our scripture reading today. It was tribute money. The Jewish people paid this tax directly to the emperor, payable in coinage created just for that purpose, and used to fund precisely the military occupation that oppressed them.
The silver coin was a denarius, and bore an image of the emperor Tiberius, with the inscription: “Caesar Augustus Tiberius, son of the Divine Augustus.” A little piece of portable propaganda.
The Romans had minted other coins for the Jews to use as currency within Palestine without the imperial inscription. However, they were required to pay the poll tax to Rome with the coin bearing the image and inscription of the Emperor's divine claim. It was the Romans' way of saying, "This is who your true lord is."
The tax was, understandably, not popular with the people. Not only did it fund their own oppression, but the image and inscription claiming divine honours were viewed as idolatry according to Jewish law and the Second Commandment.
And so, the question posed to Jesus about whether the tax should be paid to Ceasar or not was anything but straightforward. It was a set-up, meant to entangle Jesus. To trap him with no good way out.
The Pharisees, deeply religious and highly ambivalent about Rome, yet opposed to Jesus - team up with their political and ideological rivals - the Herodians. The Herodians were staunch defenders of King Herod and supported the foreign troops on their land because they were given privileged positions and stability in exchange for their loyalty.
The Pharisees and Herodians concoct a brilliant plot - first declare how righteous Jesus is - a man of great integrity who teaches the way of God in accordance with truth. Then ask a question, the answer of which will either undermine his integrity and suggest he’s a collaborator with Rome (pay the tax), or give the Herodians all the reason they need to have him arrested as an enemy of the State (don’t pay the tax).
Jesus can smell the hypocrisy in the question, and brings their duplicity to light not only to evade the trap, but to place before his followers the real question worth asking.
“Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites?” denounces Jesus. “Show me the money for the tax”.
By asking the Pharisees and Herodians to produce the coin, Jesus flips the trap so that its mouth opens toward his accusers. They pull a denarius out of their own pockets, inside the Temple courts no less. Jesus thus exposes their hypocrisy: they were already actively participating in and benefiting from Caesar's economic and idolatrous imperial system.
Jesus concludes with a statement which is less of an answer to the question of the tax, and more of a re-ordering of power and a reminder to the people about who and whose they are. “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s”.
His interrogators marveled. The Greek word can also suggest awe or shock. However, it's the second part of their response that stands out to me. “They left him and went away”.
They weren’t willing to take up the implication of the non-answer which posed a better question. What belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God? Whose image is on the coin, and by implication, whose image are we?
They left Jesus and went away. We must not.
The question is a critical one now as it was then. The trap is also ours, as it was theirs and there is no easy Yes or No answer at the intersection of faith, politics, and money.
‘Render unto Ceasar what is Ceasar’s and to God what is Gods’ was ambiguous enough that the Herodians could neither accuse Jesus of sedition, nor evade the implication that they were entangled with Empire in a way that undercut their obligation to God. The reminder is also our own.
A poignant and evocative poem by the late Wendell Berry, powerfully exposes our complicity in the destruction caused by consumer capitalism, global trade, nation-building and political violence. The poem is called “Questionnaire”:
Question 1. How much poison are you willing
to eat for the success of the free
market and global trade? Please
name your preferred poisons.
Q. 2. For the sake of goodness, how much
evil are you willing to do?
Fill in the following blanks
with the names of your favorite
evils and acts of hatred.
Q. 3. What sacrifices are you prepared
to make for culture and civilization?
Please list the monuments, shrines,
and works of art you would
most willingly destroy.
Q. 4. In the name of patriotism and
the flag, how much of our beloved
land are you willing to desecrate?
List in the following spaces
the mountains, rivers, towns, farms
you could most readily do without.
Q.5. State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes,
the energy sources, the kinds of security,
for which you would kill a child.
Name, please, the children whom
you would be willing to kill.
Many interpretations of Matthew 22 throughout history have understood this passage to teach that civic authorities are divinely sanctioned to hold power on earth and we must obey, or alternatively have privatized faith and the sacred away from the secular, both options leaving us spitting out answers to this Questionnaire in the name of ‘Rendering unto Ceasar’.
But Jesus wasn’t validating Caesar's kingdom as an equal-but-separate kingdom to God’s. Instead, he was stating a stark asymmetry with its antithesis: “Render unto God that which is God’s”. That is, everything.
We may be entangled with Empire, at once oppressor and oppressed, but do not be fooled by earthly claims of power, or temptations to form ourselves into the image of that power.
The good news is that this is a story about a trap that ultimately fails to entrap. And so I ask that we listen to the deeper invitation into the Spirited life that frees our hearts and minds and actions to live beyond the trap. The place Jesus speaks out of - to live knowing that the trap is not the defining part of our lives.
Or, another way of saying this, is that we can move from one question where there’s no good answer, to the world of the question Jesus poses where the answers are multiple, and the question sticks with us – destabilizing yet also centering, provoking us to imaginative action, guiding the way.
Whose image is this?
Whose image and what inscription are written on our bodies, on the bodies of our neighbours and enemies whom we are called to love? Whose is the land and sea and sky and all the creatures there-in? God’s, sings the Psalmist.
Everyone listening to Jesus that day knew this. The Pharisees, the Herodians, the crowds - the good news was for them all. As it is for us.
The Spirit dresses up like you and me! We carry the image of compassion, of mercy, justice and beauty! Our entire lives, souls, and allegiance are given back to God because God has given the Divine Life, Spirit and Covenant to us.
When we know this truth, we can resist being “stamped” and owned by worldly political ideologies, national or other partisan identities, consumerism or investment portfolios. Whether its slogan is ‘Make American Great Again’, or ‘Build Canada Strong’, the empire’s breath reeks of the God-image-bearing bodies irrelevant to its projects.
Yet we are freed to celebrate God’s image and inscription everywhere and look boldly back at every and any suggestion that there will always be collateral damage, always a price we wish we didn’t have to pay, always simply a lesser of two evils, and name it for what it is. A lie. A trap to make us accept the unacceptable as the cost of doing business.
It is a deep spiritual and material challenge. It is tempting to follow those who left Jesus and went away.
But it is Jesus who we follow.
May we fully inhabit the world God loves.
We belong to God.
We are not alone.
Amen