Matthew 22:15-22
A lot of people had the day off this past Monday for Columbus Day, which is still a Federal Holiday although a growing number of businesses and institutions no longer observe it. Some people are now observing Indigenous Peoples Day instead, in honor of the original inhabitants of the North and South American continents who were displaced by European immigrants.
Which day do you observe?
Last Monday was also the anniversary of the first time the Pledge of Allegiance was recited in the public schools. On October 12, 1892, several thousand students in the New York Public Schools system started their school day by reciting the Pledge of Allegiance which had been published a month earlier in The Youth’s Companion magazine.
The pledge was written by Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister and Christian Socialist, who was removed from his pulpit in Boston for proclaiming that Jesus was a Socialist and for preaching against capitalism which he said is essentially evil because it is based on greed. Interestingly, he later went to work in advertising. Bellamy believed in the absolute separation of church and state and he intentionally did not include the phrase “under God” in his pledge. Those words were inserted at the urging of President Eisenhower in 1954 during the Cold War.
Not everyone likes the Pledge of Allegiance. The Amish, the Mennonites and Jehovah’s Witnesses have always refused to recite the pledge, insisting that all our allegiance properly belongs to God, so in 1943 the Supreme Court ruled that students could not be forced to participate in the pledge.[1] Not everyone abstains from the pledge on religious grounds. Some have refrained from reciting the pledge for reasons of civility and inclusivity. Both the Rotary Club and Kiwanis Club of Palo Alto and the Palo Alto Chamber of Commerce voted in 2019 to forgo reciting the pledge so as not to offend noncitizens or others in attendance who might object.
How do you feel about the pledge? Do you recite it or do you abstain?
What about having a flag in church? Are you in favor or opposed?
Which side are you on?
Do you lean right, or do you lean left?
Do you favor autocracy or democracy?
Are you a Republican or a Democrat or a Democratic Socialist or a Libertarian?
Are you aligned with the Progressives or the Conservatives?
Are you Pro-Life or Pro-Choice?
Do you support the separation of Church and State or are you a Christian Nationalist?
I don’t know about you, but questions like these make me itch. These are loaded questions. Binary questions. Sorting questions. Questions like this have an agenda and they are as old and merciless as politics.
In today’s gospel lesson, we get a terrific example of a political sorting question calculated to get Jesus in trouble one way or another. The really fascinating thing about it is that the Pharisees and the Herodians, two political factions who usually wanted nothing to do with each other, came together to ask this question. That’s how much they wanted to discredit Jesus. That’s how much they wanted him out of the way.
After buttering him up with a compliment about his impeccable impartiality they drop their bomb, their loaded question: “Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?”
The particular tax they were asking about was the Tribitum Capitis, a tax of one denarius per year levied on every adult man and woman in the empire who was not a Roman citizen. This tax was first administered in Israel in 6 CE when Judea was officially annexed as a Roman province. Its specific purpose was to pay for the occupation and administration of Rome’s conquered territories.
The Herodians were big supporters of Herod Antipas and Herod Antipas was a big supporter of Rome, so the Herodians were all in favor of the tax as a way to help pay for what they saw as the many benefits of being part of the empire—good roads, improved trade, aqueducts, strictly enforced law and order, and so on.
The Pharisees, on the other hand, were not enthusiastic fans of their Roman overlords and were not at all happy about the tax that paid for the soldiers who filled their streets so that a foreign power could dominate every aspect of their lives in their own homeland. They also had a very serious problem with Roman money.
Roman currency was not just money, it was also political propaganda. Every coin served as a reminder that Rome had complete control of the economy. On one side of the Roman denarius was a portrait of the emperor to remind everyone that just about every aspect of public life was governed by the emperor and his tyrannical hierarchy of officials. The other side of the coin depicted Pax, the goddess of peace, to remind the people that Rome kept the peace… with swords and spears.
To devout Jews like the Pharisees, the images stamped on these coins were a kind of idolatry. But worse than the images was the inscription on the coins: Tiberius Caesar, Son of the Divine Augustus, Pontifex Maximus. The coin proclaimed not only that the emperor was the son of a god, but also the high priest of the empire’s religions. All of the empire’s religions. Including theirs.
When the Pharisees and the Herodians team up to ask Jesus their loaded question, they think they have him trapped. If he says, “No, it’s not right to pay this tax,” he will make the Pharisees and a lot of others in the crowd happy, but he will be guilty of sedition against Rome, and the Herodians won’t waste a minute bringing it to Pilate’s attention. If he says, “Yes, it’s perfectly fine to pay the tax,” then he will disappoint the crowd and give the Pharisees ammunition to discredit him.
But instead of falling into their binary yes-or-no trap, Jesus exposes it. He makes it clear that he is aware of their bad intentions and he makes the crowd aware that there is no sincerity or honesty in their tricky question. He reveals their malice and antagonism with a very straightforward question of his own: “Why are you trying to trap me, you hypocrites?”
Jesus probably could say a lot more about their hypocrisy and attempted entrapment, but like all good rabbis, he knows a teaching moment when he sees one. “Show me the coin used for the tax,” he says. It seems clear that he doesn’t have one. That’s an important detail that should not be overlooked.
Jesus does not have the coin. But someone does. Someone, probably one of the Herodians, hands him the silver denarius, and Jesus, holding it up for all to see, asks, “Whose head is this, and whose title?” “Caesar’s,” they reply.
I imagine this was a tense moment. I can imagine him holding that coin in his hand, evaluating the stamped metal portrait in his palm for a long moment before he hands the coin back to whomever gave it to him and says, “Then give back to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”
When they heard this, the text says, they were astonished, so they left him and went away.
What exactly was Jesus saying? What does it mean to give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s?
On the face of it, it sounds easy. On the face of it, it sounds like another simple binary division, like we can divide life into two compartments: on one side of the line are the things that belong to God, spiritual things, and on the other side of the line are secular things. Like politics. Or economics.
If only life were that simple. But it’s not. Life is complex and complicated. Sometimes we struggle to find a path that doesn’t compromise either our faith or our alliances and allegiances or our obligations.
What really belongs to Caesar? Does his own likeness? Genesis tells us that we were created in the image and likeness of God, so in that sense, isn’t Caesar’s own likeness something that, in the end, belongs to God?
Does the silver in the coin that bears his picture belong to Caesar? He may be in possession of it or exercise some control over its distribution and its value in the marketplace, but isn’t God the one who brought into being both the silver and the man whose image is stamped on it? Long after Caesar has been gathered to his ancestors, the silver will pass to other hands and be melted down for other uses and only God will know where it is. Psalm 24 tells us, “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it.” So when all is said and done, doesn’t everything belong to God in whom we live and move and have our being?
When Jesus says, “Give back to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s,” he is asking them to locate themselves in the tension between Caesar’s dominion and the reign of God. And he is asking the same thing of us.
The coin that was used to pay the tax in question was a perfect symbol of empire’s dominance. With the emperor’s likeness it proclaimed his singular sovereignty. With its depiction of the goddess Pax, it proclaimed the empire’s definition of peace, a peace obtained and maintained by violence and force. With its inscription that asserted the divinity of the emperor and affirmed him as Pontifex Maximus, it declared the empire’s control of religion and made a claim on everyone’s faith. And the fact that this silver denarius was the standard day’s wage throughout the empire made it the symbol of the empire’s vast economic power. It was, in and of itself, a statement. It said, “If you’re going to participate in the economy, you are participating in empire. If you buy or sell anything, you are participating in empire. When you go to the market to buy olives and flour and oil and fruit and lentils, the basic necessities of life, you are going to have to compromise your religious principles because you are going to use the empire’s coin to do it.”
And this is where it is important to remember that Jesus did not have the coin.
Jesus did not have the coin.
What side are you on? In a world that confronts us with so many binary choices, how do we decide where to stand? Is there a way for us to speak truth like Rabbi Jesus without carrying the coin of someone else’s agenda or dominance?
“Give back to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”
It seems so simple, but it’s not. It is, in fact, immensely complicated. Like life.
When Jesus tells us to give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s he isn’t sidestepping the tricky tax question. Instead, he is asking us to do some serious thinking. Philosophical thinking. Theological thinking. And practical thinking. He acknowledges that we live with difficult questions and he asks us to not simply settle for clichéd or easy answers. He asks us to think about what’s best not just for ourselves but also for our neighbors who live with us in the interconnected religious, social, economic and political webs that both enrich and complicate our lives.
What belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God? Jesus won’t answer that question for us in advance because there is no easy answer. There is only your answer. And my answer. And the way we answer that question shows us the shape of our faith. You might even say it’s the currency—the coin–of our faith… in Jesus’ name.
[1] West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette
