Matthew 22:15-22
October 16, 2011
I got a letter home from preschool a couple of weeks ago that was talking about Grinnell Homecoming. That whole week there were going to be activities and special days in celebration of homecoming. On Monday they were supposed to wear goofy socks, on Tuesday Hawaiian shirts, on Friday they were supposed to wear orange and black, of course.
Before I read the whole thing, I glanced at the bottom portion of the letter. It was a tear off form that asked for a parent’s signature. I expected it to be a permission slip – you know, like, “I give my permission for you to put my child on a bus with no seat belts and drive at excessive speeds.” Instead, it was an “opt out” form. You had to sign it if you didn’t want your child to get a tiger paw tattoo on Thursday of that week.
In other words, on Thursday, every child was going to be branded with a tiger paw in a show of team spirit. My child is in preschool. Technically, she doesn’t even go to public school yet – her preschool just happens to be in a public school building. At age four, they want to tattoo her with a tiger paw so she can start learning that she is a Grinnell Tiger.
Now, I’m not against team spirit. I was in sports. I even marched at half time in the marching band at football games on cold October evenings! Okay – it was in the dome, so it didn’t require quite as much sacrifice as one might think, but still. I had team spirit.
But looking at this letter I found myself annoyed because my daughter was being taught at such a young age that we have “teams,” and that you root for “your team,” and that you want to “win,” and that school spirit includes things like branding yourself. You live in Grinnell – so that makes you a tiger. Grrrrrrrr!
Then, as the week went on, annoyance began to give way to a deeper level of disturbance. I began to think about how hard it is to raise a child to believe that her first and most important allegiance is to God. We like to give allegiance to things. We like to give allegiance to football teams, countries, families, ideas, political parties, religions and denominations. And we like to show our allegiance: with team shirts, flags, buttons, the way we dress, rings. We like images that signal to people what we believe, where we live, who we love, and how we vote. And the darker flip side of that is that teams, countries, families, political parties, like it when we do this because it means they have some claim on us.
In the midst of it all, I found myself wishing for a repeal of the second commandment: “You shall not make for yourself a carved image.” Odd wish, I know, for the probably one parent who signed the opt out form for the tattoo, but what I want is to be able to have a tangible image for God that I can tattoo on my daughter. Something equally as catchy as an orange tiger paw, as exciting, something that gets people as worked up as a mascot on game day. I want Lydia to have something tangible that tells her, “This is the team we are on, and it’s different in so many ways.” But darn that 2nd commandment, we don’t get to do that. No images of God for us.
It was worse for 1st century Jews. Let’s be clear, the issue of taxes was not an issue of team loyalty. But it was an issue of the power of images and the things that make claims on our lives.
They come to Jesus and ask: “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor?” This was a volatile question. Ever since the Jewish homeland had been added to the Roman Empire in 63 BCE, Rome had required a large annual “tribute” from the Jewish people. Rome didn’t collect the tribute directly from its individual subjects. Instead, local authorities were responsible for its collection and payment. It’s these authorities who send the Pharisees and Herodians to Jesus.
Though tribute included a per capita, or “head,” tax levied on all adult Jewish men, the annual tax due to Rome included much more. Most of this was gathered through taxes on land and agricultural production. All of this together contributed to “tribute” to Rome. It was the way the empire profited from its possessions.
Roman taxation was onerous not only because it was economically burdensome. It also symbolized the Jewish homeland’s lack of sovereignty. It was a constant reminder that their allegiance was to Caesar, first and foremost. They didn’t live in God’s creation, they lived in Roman territory – they had to do what Caesar said, they had to obey a king they didn’t choose or want, they were subject to laws that had nothing to do with the Torah. For Jews, paying taxes hit hard on both a practical and symbolic level. It was economically painful – impoverishing people who were already struggling to get by. And, it was a painful reminder of where they lived – Caesar’s realm…it was a reminder of the oppression of the Jews by an alien lord.
The spokesmen of the authorities set a skillful trap for Jesus. Either answer would get him in trouble. If Jesus were to answer no, you don’t have to pay taxes, he could be charged with advocating denial of Roman authority – in short, with sedition. He could be imprisoned or killed. If he were to answer yes, he risked discrediting himself with the crowd, who for both economic and religious reasons resented Roman rule and taxation.
Jesus’ response is masterful. As he so often does, he turns the question back on his opponents. He sets a counter-trap when he asks to see a denarius. A denarius was a silver coin equal to approximately a day’s wage, and it was used to pay taxes. His interrogators produce one. Jesus looks at it and then asks, “Whose head is this, and whose title?” And we all know the answer: “The emperor’s.”
Jesus’ strategy has led his questioners to disclose to the crowd that they have a coin with Caesar’s image on it. Immediately, they are discredited. Why? In the Jewish homeland in the first century, there were two types of coins. One type, because of the Jewish prohibition of graven images, had no human or animal images. The second type (including Roman coinage) had images. Many Jews would not carry or use coins of the second type. But Jesus’ questioners in the story did. The coin they produced had Caesar’s image, along with the standard and idolatrous inscription heralding Caesar as divine and Son of God. They are exposed as part of the politics of collaboration.
And so, even before the famous words about rendering to Caesar, Jesus won the encounter. But Jesus isn’t all about winning encounters. He goes on to respond to their first question so that people might learn more about who God is and what God is up to in the world.
He says, “Give to the emperor – or Caesar – the things that are the emperor’s. Give to God the things that are God’s.” Following immediately upon the disclosure that they are carrying a coin with Caesar’s image, the first half of the saying means simply, “It’s Caesar’s coin – give it back to him.”
This is in effect a nonanswer to the larger question, “Should we pay taxes to Caesar?” It can’t be seen as an endorsement of paying taxes to Rome or Rome’s rule. If Jesus had wanted to say, “Pay taxes to Caesar,” he could have simply answered yes to their question. There would have been no need for the drama of asking to see the coins of the Pharisees and Herodians.
The nonanswer is not simply a dismissal of the issue. The second half of Jesus’ response is both evocative and provocative: “Give to God the things that are God’s.” It raises the question, “What belongs to Caesar, and what belongs to God?” Or rather, where do I live: Caesar’s realm or God’s? And is there any way to live in both? What the Jewish people knew was that as long as they wanted to stay alive and out of prison, they had to subject themselves to Caesar. But they also knew that you can’t live in God’s realm while subjecting yourself to Caesar – God alone is lord.
Jesus’ answer was, in part, compassionate – not so much for those who were asking, but for those who were listening and struggling with how to be faithful to God and Rome at the same time. Yes, Caesar’s image in on the coin – yes you have to pay taxes – yes oppression is real and you are subjected to Caesar even though you didn’t choose it. But, that is not the end of the story.
Jesus asks the Pharisees and Herodians what image in on the coin. As soon as he used that word, “image,” he was speaking a language the people understood. Images were a big deal in the Jewish faith; and they were a big deal for two reasons: First, there was the 2nd commandment. They knew images that tried to make claims on your life were a BIG no, no. But the second reason the word “image” would have struck a deep chord for the Jews is because they knew their scriptures by heart, and they knew of the creation story. As much as the Lord’s prayer is solidified in our memory, so was the passage about God’s creation of humankind solidified in theirs:
Genesis says, “Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness;” So God created humankind in God’s image.”
“Give to God what is God’s,” Jesus says. Every good Jew would have realized the freedom in that statement. Just as the coin is stamped with Caesar’s image, and so belongs to Caesar, you are stamped with the image of God and so belong to God. And not only are you stamped with this image, but every part of creation. Even Caesar, for goodness sake, is stamped with the image of God. It can be done, he was saying. You can live in God’s realm even while a citizen of an oppressive regime, because you are stamped more indelibly than the coin…because when you answer the question of what belongs to God, you see that nothing belongs to Caesar that doesn’t also belong to God.
Notice, he’s not saying they are compatible, in the sense that you can be a good Roman citizen and a good Jew by just following the laws and rulers of both. Instead, he’s reminding them that no tattoo can obscure their true identity…you can have my coins…you can’t take away who I am at my core: a child of God. That’s what makes me who I am and what will determine how I act in this world…and that alone.
This question is pertinent today. There are so many things vying for our allegiance. We are not subjected to oppression and rule in the same way the faithful people of Jesus’ day were. But we are asked to give allegiance to many things. And the temptation is to believe that we can separate our lives into compartments, with our religion being just one aspect of our life. I’m a Christian here, an American here, a Grinnell Tiger here. In fact, many people have used this very passage from the bible to argue for such separations.
But this is not a passage about the separation between church and state. This is not saying that God and Caesar are equals that we choose between, nor are they symbolic names for separate realms. Quite the opposite is true. Humans bear God’s image. Wherever we live and operate – whether in the social, economic, political, athletic, or religious realm – we belong to God. Our primary loyalties do not switch when we move out of the church and into the voting booth.
This text actually operates subversively, as we know from Jesus’ life. In every context in which governments – or any other entity for that matter – act as if people have no higher commitments than to the state, or team, or party, or denomination, the fact that we and everything are stamped with God’s image means such things must be resisted. When the divine image is denied and people are made by political circumstances to be less than human, then Jesus brings a revolutionary word, a word that has to be spoken to both the oppressed and the oppressor. No matter who you are, where your image is stamped, or what authority you think you have, we have a higher allegiance to God and live in a realm where all people are equal because all people are stamped with God’s image. It is that reality to which I answer, even if it gets me in trouble with Caesar.
We are not to create images of God and worship them. But we do have an image of God, and it is compelling – and if we remember what it all means, it can inspire radical allegiance that will guide us as citizens of many complicated realms. We are stamped with the image of God. It’s not visible, but it’s a tattoo I won’t, in fact can’t opt out of. And it means in every aspect of life, no matter where I physically reside, no matter what other images I take on and bear that show my allegiance – either by force or voluntarily – my true residence is in God’s realm. And that frees me from secondary claims on my life. That frees me to act differently than those around me. That frees me because I know a reality that can’t be changed or taken away. And that has the power to undermine any realm that seeks to oppress or dehumanize us or others. And thanks be to God for this tattoo. Amen.
