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.” When they heard this they were amazed, and leaving him they went away. (Matthew 22.15-22)
On this Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time, we find Jesus still embroiled in conflict with the religious leaders of the Jews, a situation that has been the case since his entry into Jerusalem a short while earlier and his cleansing of the Temple of money changers, the latter incident provoking the question from the leaders, “By whose authority do you do these things?”
This so-called controversy section of Matthew’s gospel is focused on that singular question of who has authority in this situation. The chief priests and other religious leaders believe themselves to be the rightful authority on all matters religious. Hence, they see Jesus as an interloper, a backwoods preacher from Galilee who is stealing the stage from them.
We have seen the back and forth arguments between them and Jesus for the last several Sundays, every effort made by the religious leaders to discredit Jesus, and Jesus’ response coming by way of four parables, each one carrying a direct inference to the hard-heartedness and blindness of the religious leaders who refuse to accept Jesus as one sent by God.
Instead, they choose to see him as trespassing on their territory and they will try every move in the book to remove him from the public arena, either by embarrassing him or permanently doing away with him if nothing else works. Jesus’ response to their antagonism, coming, as we have seen, in four parables that are unflattering to the religious leaders, only adds accelerant to the hostility, resulting in a series of questions that they direct towards Jesus, hoping to ensnare him, as Matthew explains in the first question that they address to him, the question that we find in the section selected for this Sunday’s reflection.
Clearly, the question is a trap, prefaced by fake flattery and bold chicanery on the part of the Pharisees who say to Jesus, “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.” The irony is on full display because, in fact, both statements are true, but the Pharisees are using these attributes as a trickwire, hoping to lure Jesus into a carefully crafted trap that they have set up for him.
That trap is found in the question that they next pose to Jesus. “Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?” Of course, the question is in the service of their getting Jesus to take sides in a political argument, not in the service of the truth. The Pharisees, always presenting themselves as clever by half, know that a positive response to the issue of the Roman tax will alienate the many staunch adversaries of the imperial occupation of Judea found among the Jewish inhabitants, whereas a negative response will put Jesus in the bull’s eye of Roman authorities who will not tolerate any dissension on the matter of taxation. They salivate as they wait for him to step in the doo-doo.
Much like King Solomon who was notable for his wisdom, Jesus cuts the baby in half, answering the question with the simple response, “Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.” It is a reasonable and inoffensive answer. In effect, it forces the listener to make the decision, based on deciding what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God. With his answer, Jesus throws the ball back into the court of the Pharisees.
The exchange ends with the simple statement, “When they heard this they were amazed, and leaving him, they went away.” For some reason, that phrase has not been included in the lectionary today, an unfortunate exclusion because the words “they went away” are an important clue that the Pharisees have not learned anything from Jesus’ answer, but instead are intent on staying the course, still rejecting him.
This incident has often been used as an argument for a position on political matters such as separation of church and state, but that would be an overreach so far as I see it. Also, pressing it to fit into some political philosophy simply does not align with Jesus’ overall preaching about the Kingdom of God in contradistinction to the kingdoms of this world, his many statements about the Kingdom of God clearly showing his stand.
It serves us better, I believe, to look at Jesus’ answer more in terms of a spiritual challenge, which would be more in sync with his typical stance, rather than wanting to see it as some statement on the right of a political entity to impose taxes or make other decrees. Looked at more closely, Jesus’ response moves the discussion to a higher level, challenging his listeners to consider their understanding of the authority of God, rather than focusing on the authority of Caesar.
That argument is supported when we recall that Jesus first asked for a coin that was used to pay the tax. Taking the coin that was provided by the Pharisees–a Roman coin for that matter–Jesus asked whose image and whose inscription were upon it. When they answered, “Caesar’s,” then he gave his answer. We should not underplay the importance of the question that Jesus posed about the image and the inscription that read, “Tiberius Caesar, august son of the divine Augustus, high priest.”
Any Jew would have recognized the importance of the word image, understanding immediately that the first commandment forbade the worship of false images. Also, the Jews were well versed in the understanding that God had created man and woman in his “image and likeness,” as recorded in the first creation account in the first narrative of creation found in the Book of Genesis.
With both of these strongly religious undertones to the word “image” well-known and understood among the people, Jesus’ question actually moved the meter from the image of Caesar imposed on the coin to the image of God imprinted on humankind. Suddenly, the scale is tipped, with the question becoming more about what belongs to God than it is a question about what belongs to Caesar.
That question, of course, was at the forefront of the Hebrew scriptures, found in the ever-recurring phrase “I will be your God and you will be my people,” the essential elements in the covenant relationship between the Most High God and his chosen people contained in those few words. It was something everybody knew and everybody understood, even if not everybody abided by it.
With his answer, Jesus opens up the hypocrisy and the faint-heartedness of the Pharisees and other religious leaders who claim to walk in the way of God but who, more often than not, have wandered far from his path, choosing to walk away from him, even as they now walk away from Jesus. Jesus is saying in so many words the same thing that the writer of the Letter of James will say when he wrote, “Draw near to God and he will draw near to you.”
In short, Jesus puts the same challenge before the Pharisees that he has put before them on many other occasions. If humankind carries upon itself the image and likeness of God, then we belong to God, not Caesar, and it is the rule of God that should guide our ways, not the rulers of this world. Rather than quibble about the right of Caesar to take from his citizens what is owed to him, the bigger question to be answered is whether or not we are giving to God what is owed to him, carrying, as we do, his image upon our persons.
As I said, the overarching question at the heart of this controversy section is the question of authority, particularly who has authority over our lives. Jesus has made clear from the start of his mission in Galilee even to this moment in Jerusalem that he is beholden to no one but God, not to the authority of earthly rulers and not to the religious leaders of Judaism, a fact apparently recognized even by the Pharisees who are willing to half-heartedly acknowledge that he was “a truthful man, teaching the way of God in accordance with the truth, and not concerned with anyone’s opinion.”
Here again, as at every moment in his mission, Jesus reminds his listeners, including us, that our obligations as persons made in the image and likeness of God are first and foremost to our Creator, not to the potentates and powerful of this world. Jesus’ answer strips away the facades of the Pharisees, as it does our facades, asking us to whom we ultimately belong. Do we belong to God, or do we belong to Caesar?
An off-the-cuff answer won’t serve us well as we hastily insist that we belong to God. It is going to take more than words to prove our real allegiances. Our actions, or our fruit as Jesus frequently said, will be the final determinant of whose authority we hold sacred in our lives. The Pharisees continue to serve as cautionary tales, earning reproach from Jesus for their walking away from God while at the same time claiming that they were walking with God. “You hypocrites,” we hear him say to them today when they confront him. He has looked at their actions and he knows that their hearts are much further from God than they would want to believe. Their walking away from Jesus is but the latest of many other times that they have walked away from the ways of God.
Looked at in this way, it becomes clear that the exchange between Jesus and the Pharisees provides us with far more to consider than a simple question of the right to tax. Jesus uses the question to assert the supremacy of the Most High God, reminding us that our lives are meant to serve him. Even as we live in this world, our eyes should always be on the ways of God, shaping our lives to conform more and more to the divine image that he has gifted to us.
If, on the other hand, our image falls short of that divine imperative, instead resembling the image of Caesar, imitating his ways more than the ways of God, then we have much work to do if we want to claim to be children of God. Our mouths can make the claim, but if our feet do not follow, then we are little different from the Pharisees, at best hypocrites, at worst frauds.
As we listen to the tense and terse exchange between Jesus and the Pharisees, we want to see that the coin with Caesar’s image that the religious leaders hold easily in their hands carries a significance far beyond its pecuniary value. Their actions show that they have given to Caesar far more than what belongs to Caesar, paying not just a toll tax to him, in this way becoming a wake-up call for the rest of us. We belong to God, and if our lives belie that truth by our actions, then we are carrying the wrong image upon our persons, choosing Caesar’s as the coin of the realm rather than the ways of the Most High God.
–Jeremy Myers
