Entrapment

The Pharisees went off and plotted how they might entrap Jesus in speech. They sent their disciples to him, with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are a truthful man and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. And you are not concerned with anyone’s opinion, for you do not regard a person’s status. Tell us, then, what is your opinion: Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?” Knowing their malice, Jesus said, “Why are you testing me, you hypocrites? Show me the coin that pays the census tax.” Then they handed him the Roman coin. He said to them, “Whose image is this and whose inscription?” They replied, “Caesar’s.” At that he said to them, “Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.” (Matthew 22.15-21)

As we can see in today’s selection from Scripture, the controversy over Rabbi Jesus’ authority has not lessened as his stay in Jerusalem continues, but only increases, the Pharisees becoming more and more oppositional and interrogational. The fever of hatred is growing, not breaking. The evangelist Matthew sees crucifixion around the corner, these daily contests between the Pharisees and Rabbi Jesus the stepping stones towards enmity and calamity. 

Already in Chapter 12, ten chapters prior to the present one, Matthew set the stage when he tells us that “the Pharisees went out and plotted how they might kill Jesus.” With Rabbi Jesus now standing in the city square of Jerusalem, having left the backwaters of Galilee, the Pharisees are increasingly tightening the net that they have put around him.

So, it is not without significance that Matthew begins this particular altercation between the Pharisees and Rabbi Jesus with the statement, “The Pharisees went off and plotted how they might entrap Jesus in speech.” His choice of the word “entrap,” often translated as “set a trap” or “ensnared,” makes clear how the evangelist sees the activity of the Pharisees. 

Interestingly, this is the only time the word is used in the New Testament, indicating to us that Matthew chose it carefully, intending us to see that the Pharisees are trying to lure Rabbi Jesus into a snare or a trap from which he cannot escape, much the same as a hunter might do with an animal. And once trapped, the Pharisees intend to do the same thing to the Galilean teacher as the hunter does with his prey–they will kill him.

It is crucially important that we approach a study of this specific episode with that understanding. It is how Mathew introduces it and it is how it is best understood. Ignore that reality and we can easily slip into a fool’s errand in trying to decipher Rabbi Jesus’ political philosophy. Unfortunately, reams of paper have been spent in using this exchange in service of some church and state doctrine that, for all intents and purposes, doesn’t exist.

Better, then, if we stay with Matthew’s purpose. The Pharisees want to entrap Rabbi Jesus, something they have attempted before and something they will do again in the pages ahead. In this instance, they set up a binary. An either-or situation with payment or non-payment of the head tax as the binary. They believe they can lure the Rabbi into a no-win situation by the question, “Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?”

We can imagine the glee they have in putting the question before Jesus. Matthew tells us that Rabbi Jesus immediately recognizes their “malice,” their interest not really in the question that they pose, but in the answer Jesus gives. If he answers that it is not lawful to pay the tax–a position of many Jews who harbor animosity towards the occupation of their lands by the Romans–then he suffers the risk of bringing down upon his head the wrath of the Roman officials.

However, if he answers that it is lawful to pay the tax, then he alienates any number of Jews, including those in the crowds that follow him, who see payment of the tax as an affront to their national identity. The question seems to be a no-win for Rabbi Jesus, exactly what the Pharisees intend. Siding with one or the other, he ends up antagonizing one of the two groups.

But, as always, Rabbi Jesus is not outwitted by the Pharisees and he deftly avoids the traps that they set for him. His response is simply, “Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.” Of course, there is a little more behind the statement, the key found in the phrase “what belongs to.” Since the head tax had to be paid with Roman currency–which obviously belonged to Caesar–he is saying to give to him what is his.

Likewise, when he says that they should “give to God what belongs to God,” he is issuing a challenge of his own to his adversaries because, in the end, they are failing to give God what is justly due to God. And what, we may ask, should they be giving to God? That answer was already provided by the eighth century Hebrew prophet Micah who told the people, “He has shown you what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”

Rabbi Jesus, who ably reads the hearts of the Pharisees, knows well that they are not giving to God what belongs to God, that is justice, mercy, and humility. They may return to Caesar the coin that belongs to him, but they do not return to the Lord God what belongs to him–lives spent in seeking the good through justice, mercy, and humility.

The evangelist tells us that the Pharisees, upon hearing the answer that Rabbi Jesus gives to the question, are speechless, clearly bettered by the Galilean Teacher who turned the tables on them. Matthew writes, “When they heard it, they marveled and left him and went away.” Truth be told, they were the ones now ensnared, their sins proof enough that they are not giving to God what belongs to God.

So, what are we to do with this particular stand-off between the Pharisees and Rabbi Jesus? What message does it carry for us? Two thousand years later, is there a lesson we can learn from it? It seems to me that it offers, in fact, several lessons, the first being the most obvious. That is, we want to give to God what belongs to God. Unless we also act justly and love mercy and walk humbly with God,” then we are little different from the Pharisees whom we will hear Rabbi Jesus describe here as hypocrites when he says to them, “Why are you testing me, you hypocrites?”

He is able to make the accusation because of their failure to live according to the dictates of the Lord God, all the while parading through the streets as holier-than-thous, pointing fingers at others who have failed, but hiding their own faults behind their big titles and fancy robes. That is the quicksand that every follower of Rabbi Jesus has to avoid–hypocrisy.

And the surest way to insure we do not lose our souls in that quicksand is to give to God what belongs to God. If our focus stays on living justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God, then it will be difficult to make the charge against us that we are hypocrites little different from the Pharisees and enemies of Rabbi Jesus.

A second lesson that we might want to take from this encounter between Rabbi Jesus and the Pharisees is to avoid entrapping other people in our snares. As we have seen, that is the impetus for the entire exchange. The agenda of the Pharisees is straightforward. They want to “entrap Jesus in speech.” If they can do that, then they can control him and achieve the outcome that they want, which is to diminish him in the eyes of his followers.

Again, the fact that the only instance of the word “ensnare” to be found in the New Testament is in this immediate text gives it singularity and particularity, much the same as the lone traffic light in a small town does. In both instances, we do well to observe it carefully. Ignore either, and harm may come to us in one way or another.

Certainly, we can take a similar approach to ensnarement of others, finding ourselves behaving in the same way as the Pharisees, out to settle a score, win a match, or come off as the best and the brightest against a less skilled adversary. And surely there are any number of instances when we behave in this way and I’m not talking about the scrabble board here.

But I don’t think we want to limit ensnarement to verbal one upmanship. There are many ways that we can ensnare people, understood here as setting a trap or putting them in a cage. For example, we ensnare others when we dismiss them as unimportant, unnoticeable, or inconsequential. In treating them in this way, we have entrapped them, making an escape nearly impossible.

Any bigotry on our part is a sure and certain way to ensnare others, constricting and restricting others to fit with our own prejudice and small-mindedness. Our mindset puts them into a category, disallowing them freedom, individuality, and rights. It should not be all that difficult to see how we do this with the materially deprived, the marginalized, and the immigrant. Our attitudes ensnare them in multiple ways.

Similarly, our actions and attitudes towards the unprivileged and the imprisoned easily ensnare them, dehumanizing and demonizing them, just another set of bars behind which they have to live. In other words, there are many ways to entrap people, forcing them to live in a certain way because of our machinations and manipulations. 

The remedy, of course, is to open the doors and to open our arms, welcoming and accepting others, particularly the “other” whom we are quick to dismiss and dismantle because they do not meet certain criteria that we deem either essential or consequential. Rather than ensnaring others, we seek to embrace others, seeing in them not a stranger or a danger, but as a brother or a sister.

The native people of Hawaii have a word “ohana” that is loosely translated as family. But it means much more. It is an attitude and a spirit characterized by a sense of community and commonality. Rather than seeing others as apart and different from oneself, everyone is seen as family. As a result, there is an innate bond that brings people together, regardless of status or state. Everyone belongs.

As we have seen, the Pharisees failed to see that. Instead of magnanimity, they carried malice in their heart. Theirs was a binary world in which everything was black or white, good or bad, in or out. Hoping to ensnare Rabbi Jesus, forcing him into a no-win situation, they learn to their dismay that he doesn’t fall into the trap that they have set for him.

Rather than choosing a side, he reminded them that they should give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God, in this way challenging them to a generosity of spirit that they neither had nor wanted. The challenge still stands.

–Jeremy Myers