19th after Pentecost, October 19 2014
Exodus 33.12-23, Psalm 99, 1 Thessalonians 1.1-10, Mathew 22. 15-22
St Andrew’s Scots Memorial Church, Jerusalem
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus of Nazareth argues for a certain simplicity of speech. Do not swear at all, he tells his hearers. Do not swear by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great king. Let your word be “Yes, Yes” or “No, No”. (Mt 5.34f, 37)
In today’s gospel reading, we discover it’s not as simple as that. You can say yes but be heard to say no. In all our first three gospels – Matthew, Mark and Luke – Jesus says give Caesar what is Caesar’s, yet in Luke’s account of his trial before Pilate, his accusers say, “We found this man perverting our nation, forbidding us to pay taxes to the emperor”. (Lk 23.2)
When we have understood how a yes can be heard as a no, we shall have gone a long way towards understanding today’s gospel.
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We won’t get very far in understanding with our usual distinction between religion and politics. We think of politics as the realm of the public, where decisions are made about economic policy, education or health, housing and employment, what we do or don’t do about climate change, and suchlike things. We may think that politics is too important to be left to the politicians, we may even think that politicians don’t deserve the time of day. But politics, in our view, is very different from religion, which is personal, private, individual. Religion is spiritual, politics is practical, and we shouldn’t get the two muddled up.
This is a very modern way of thinking. It derives from the treaty of Westphalia, the 18th-century enlightenment, and the rise of modern capitalism. And it has its own merits.
But in the world in which Jesus lived, it makes no sense.
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In the world in which Jesus lived, the vital distinction is between worshipping the one true God and worshipping idols. We are beginning to discover that in today’s world this is the vital distinction too.
Read what Jesus says in the light of our contemporary distinction between religion and politics, and it will seem banal and even boring. Religion is one thing, politics another. Pay your taxes, and come to church.
But his debate with the Pharisees and the Herodians comes four chapters before he says to his followers: “You know that after two days the Passover is coming, and the Son of Man will be handed over to be crucified.” (Mt 26.2) It is part of a series of tense arguments in which death is on the line; and we are told explicitly that the Pharisees and the Herodians are out to entrap Jesus.
When Octavian defeated his rivals and became Caesar Augustus, emperor of Rome and all its subject lands, including Judea, Samaria and the Galilee, he proclaimed that Julius Caesar, his adopted father, had become a god. When Augustus died in the year 14 of our common era, Tiberius his successor did the same for him. Augustus in his lifetime, and Tiberius in his, were both called “son of the god”. In this context, to say that Jesus of Nazareth is the son of the one true God isn’t just a religious statement, it’s a political statement, and a subversive one at that.
The Roman empire depended on taxes to keep the imperial elite and their local satraps in the luxury to which they were accustomed. From the standpoint of people here and elsewhere in the empire, these taxes were a heavy imposition. In the year 6 of our common era, when Jesus was a boy, a Galilean named Judas staged an intifada, upbraiding his countrymen for paying tribute to the Romans after having God for their Lord and inciting them to revolt. A generation after Jesus died on a Roman cross, a much more serious revolt broke out. It lasted four years and ended in the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple.
The Romans liked to discourage that sort of thing.
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So when the Pharisees and Herodians come to Jesus and ask him whether it is lawful to pay taxes to the emperor or not, this is not an academic question.
“Teacher,” they say with obsequious flattery, “we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality.” You have this dangerous habit of telling the truth regardless of the consequences.
And then they ask him this trap question.
If Jesus says no, it is not lawful to pay the tax, he can be handed over to the Roman authorities and dealt with summarily, as indeed he will be. If Jesus says yes, it is lawful to pay the tax, he loses all credibility with the people.
But Jesus wasn’t born yesterday, and he springs the trap by turning the question back on his questioners.
“Show me the coin used for the tax,” he says. The implication is that he doesn’t carry such coins, and very quickly we see why.
They bring him a denarius, and he asks them, “Whose head is this, and whose title? Whose image, and whose inscription?”
The image is the image of Tiberius and the inscription describes him as august and the son of God. The coin is thus doubly blasphemous. What are they doing with such things in their pockets or purse?
It’s a neat response, turning the tables on his accusers, who are now the accused.
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And then he answers their question in the way we so often misunderstand: Give the emperor the things that are the emperor’s and give God the things that are God’s.
This is not the neat division of labour we are inclined to think. The two parts of his answer are best understood as opposed to each other, as antithetical: Give Caesar the things that are Caesar’s or give God the things that are God’s.
For the question is really about the fundamental choices we make as we go through life.
If you are so caught up in the imperial system as to be carrying around coins with the image and inscription of Tiberius on them, you have already declared where your loyalty lies. So pay the tax.
If on the other hand you remember that you are made in the image and likeness of God and have inscribed on your body, in the form of circumcision, your loyalty to the one true God, then give God what is God’s: give God yourself.
The question is now no longer about Jesus and where he stands. It’s about his accusers and where they stand.
On the surface, Jesus is saying yes to their question: give Caesar what is Caesar’s, pay the tax. In fact, he is calling in question their whole compromised existence.
It’s a killer response, and indeed it is part of what gets Jesus killed. This is why they are amazed. Amazement here doesn’t mean that they are astonished by the brilliance of his answer or the ease with which he avoids their trap. Amazement means that they are furious.
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With nothing more to say, they leave him and go away. But only for the moment.
Five chapters later in Matthew’s gospel, the Jewish elite will hand over to Caesar, not the coin that bears his image and his false title “son of God”, but the one human being who truly bears God’s image and truly bears that title.
The cross on Calvary is taken up into Caesar’s purposes but also into God’s: Caesar’s favourite weapon, the cross, becomes God’s chosen instrument of salvation.
And Jesus dies there.
Some years later, three unknown Jews – Paul, Sylvanus, and Timothy – show up in Thessalonica. They tell the locals that there is one true God, that this God has a true son, and that God has proved the point by raising him from the dead. The locals believe them, and their lives are changed.
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Christians and Jews often argue about who really is the chosen people; Muslims, in their own way, sometimes join in too. It’s an argument that generates more heat than light, and it is in the end a waste of breath.
In the opening sentences of what is probably the earliest writing in the New Testament, Paul tells us what it means to be chosen: it means to turn to God, to turn away from all idolatry, to acknowledge that we are made in the image and likeness of the living and true God and that we have inscribed on our bodies our loyalty to this God – in the Christian case, through our baptism.
It means, quite often, suffering as well as joy. It demands that we wrestle with what serving God means in a world that seems more and more broken. But it means to find the true direction in our lives, to know where we are going and who is going with us.
That is the pearl of great price and the treasure of heaven; and that is why, in spite of the suffering or perplexity that may come our way, we rejoice.
Sources
Joachim Jeremias, Jesus’ Promise to the Nations (London: SCM Press, 1967)
Joachim Jeremias, New Testament Theology, vol. 1 (London: SCM Press, 1971)
Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man: A political reading of Mark’s story of Jesus (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1988)
Tom Wright, Luke for Everyone (London: SPCK, 2001)
Tom Wright, Paul for Everyone: Galatians and Thessalonians (London: SPCK, 2002)