The Tribute Money -- Titian
Caesar’s Coin
16 October 2011
Proper 24A
10:00 a.m. Eucharist
Congregation of the Good Shepherd
Beijing, China
Exodus 33:12-23; Psalm 99; 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10; Matthew 22:15-22
The Pharisees went and plotted to entrap Jesus in what he said. So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, "Teacher, 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. Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?" But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, "Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the coin used for the tax." And they brought him a denarius. Then he said to them, "Whose head is this, and whose title?" They answered, "The emperor's." Then he said to them, "Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's." When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away. Matt. 22:15-22
God, take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.
In the news this week, we read of demonstrations throughout the United States, Canada, and even in Hong Kong protesting social inequality, war, and corruption in the political, banking and credit sectors, and seeking to “occupy” business districts of major cities. A year or so ago, we read of protests from the other end of the political spectrum by people styling themselves as heirs to the U.S. founders’ tax revolt that threw British tea into Boston harbor. Rebels and protestors on both sides claim the moral high ground; believers on both sides think that God is on their side. “Justice” cries one side; “liberty” shouts the other.
Poster by this Week's Protesters
In today’s Gospel reading, people ask Jesus to endorse a tax revolt against the Roman Empire, a revolt for liberty, justice, and holiness itself. The people ask this not because they seek such a revolt. The Pharisees here are careful legal casuists who believe that one can pay Roman taxes and still keep God’s Law. The Herodians are supporters of the local royal family who are Quisling collaborators with the Roman occupiers. Both have marked Jesus as someone who has rejected the status quo, and want to force Jesus to take a public position that will either get him massacred by a mob outraged that he is a closet Roman stooge, or executed by a Roman Imperial state anxious to keep conquered peoples under tight rein and the revenues flowing.
“Is it right to pay taxes to the Roman Emperor?” they innocently ask.
The Roman Procurator in Syria, Quirinius had provoked a district wide revolt just 25 years or so before by conducting a census to establish base lines for the tax (cf. Luke 2:2). The revolt had ended with the Romans’ crucifying en masse several thousand captured tax rebels, and was the origin of the Zealot guerilla fighters who throughout the New Testament are called lestes, or bandits. They took the payment of taxes to the Romans not only as a sign of political enslavement, but also as an idolatrous act forbidden by God, since the currency used bore images of men trumpeted to be gods in violation of the Second Commandment.
The scene in today’s Gospel takes place in one of the outer courtyards of the Jerusalem Temple (Matt 21:23). It is Passover week; the city is crowded with masses of the devout commemorating God’s delivery of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. Political tensions are high and the risk of sudden outbreak of mob violence is great. The previous day, Jesus drove out moneychangers (Matt 21:12) from the outer courtyard of the Temple, provoking the question “What gives you the authority to do such things?”
The money changers, you will recall, were there to “assist” the devout by taking their unclean and idolatrous Roman coins and exchanging them—at a small commission, of course—for kosher Temple currency that worshippers could use to buy the sacrificial animals queued up in assembly-line fashion for fully commercialized slaughter at the altar. Caesar’s money could not enter the Temple because it was unclean, so the religious establishment had let this thriving industry grow in the outer courts.
Second Temple Coin
Jesus’ public act of driving out this commerce, so needed to allow the sacrificial rites to proceed within the larger context of a political economy run by non-Jews, has led people to think that he is a closet tax resister, come to Jerusalem on a donkey to the adulation of crowds. Later in the week, at his hearing before Pontius Pilate, they will charge him with this very crime—promoting tax resistance against the Romans—to argue for his execution (Luke 23:1-4).
If Jesus says “yes,” he marks himself as an Imperial tool, a quisling, and a disloyal Jew, fair game for the rage of the mob. If he answers “no,” he commits treason and marks himself for Roman execution.
Jesus says, “In what coin is the tax paid? Can you show me one?”
Roman Denarius
They produce a Roman denarius, the coin for a common laborer’s wage for a day. It is a common enough in archeological digs from the period, bearing an image of Tiberius Caesar on its front, with the inscription, “Caesar Augustus Tiberius, son of the God Augustus.” On its back is a picture of Tiberius’ mother Livia, wife of Augustus, seated in the posture of the Goddess Pax, or Peace.
Jesus asks, as innocently as they had seemingly asked their question, “Whose image is that? And whose inscription?”
Jesus has thus caught those who had been setting a trap for him.
They are in the Temple, in the same space that Jesus yesterday cleared of moneychangers because, he said, they demeaned God’s House. By producing a Roman coin in this spot, those setting the trap for Jesus show to all the on-lookers present that they have carried a coin with an image—an idolatrous image, one with a clearly idolatrous inscription—into the sacred precincts.
Their sheepish reply shows they know they have been had, “It bears the Emperor’s image and his inscription.”
Jesus replies, “Well then, if this coin belongs to Caesar, then give it back to him!” And then he adds, slyly, “And what belongs to God, give to God.”
Christians over the centuries have understood this saying of Jesus in a variety of ways, generally understanding it as some kind of comment on the limitations of Christian’s obligations to earthly rulers. They usually have pointed to Jesus’ reply to Pontius Pilate’s question about Jesus being a king, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over” (John18:36). Christians have on this account identified two separate realms, two separate spheres: God’s workings versus earthly political activity, the Church versus the State.
Sometimes, we have interpreted this in light of St. Paul’s comment in Romans 13:1 “Let every person be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God and those which exist are established by God.” In other words, since it is God who set the earthly rulers in their positions over us, we owe obedience to them as a duty to God. By definition, the Christian is a citizen who abides by the law of the land.
This view became almost universal within Christianity after the Emperor Constantine, who made Christianity the state religion supported by force of law and arms. Many argued that the state is an empire operating within a greater empire, God’s kingdom, and that Christian rulers gained their legitimacy from Church consecration. They said this with straight faces, apparently unwilling to notice the unedifying fact that it was the earthly rulers who usually dictated terms to the Church under the arrangement.
Look at the results of such an interpretation. The cross, previously a sign of Jesus’ passion, became fused in people’s minds with the Sword of Constantine, wielded under the phrase In Hoc Signo Vincis, “With this sign, conquer!” IHS for "IHSUS, Jesus," became IHS "In hoc signo." Christians murdered Christians in riots and even wars over exquisitely fine points of Christology, and exiled whole classes of people to maintain doctrinal purity and unchallenged political power. In the East the leading Churchmen became creatures controlled by a corrupt and oppressive Byzantine court. In the West, The See of Rome, claiming an ever more powerful role as monarchial ruler of the Western Church even as the power of the West’s earthly rulers declined with the end of the Empire, eventually became such a symbol for corruption, abuse of power, and oppression that some, like Henry VIII and Martin Luther, actively embraced the idea of the Church subservient to earthly leaders. The low point was the prostitution of the Church in Germany—both Protestant and Roman—in support of the Third Reich. The kingdom within a kingdom of the Constantinian settlement has become a Reich within a Reich!
But this idea of two spheres is not what is intended in Jesus’ “render unto Caesar” saying.
Pre-Constantinian Father Tertullian, in De Idololatria, points out that when Jesus says to give the coin with Caesar’s image back to Caesar, he adds “give back to God what is God’s.” Tertullian asks, “What is it that has God’s image? Why, human beings, of course, since ‘God created human beings in his own image’ in Genesis 1.” In other words, it is not a question of two spheres, but one alone: God’s. We—all that we are, all that we will become—are the coin that bears God’s image and which we must give back to God. Caesar’s coin with its image, because it distracts from this real issue, is thus labeled idolatry.
When Jesus says “What belongs to God” he probably has in mind a lot more than even just us. As Psalm 24:1 puts it: "The earth is the Lord's, and all that it in it; the world, and all those who live there."
This idea of one sphere only coheres with much of what Jesus teaches elsewhere. In his response to this tax revolt question, he shows that he sees many other deeper questions hiding beneath the surface of the presenting issues. The tax coin is standing in for a whole lot of other things.
He is not in favor of idolizing Caesar by any means. But he is not in favor of revolting, for he knows that even such things as this can be just as corrupted. “Go ahead and give Tiberius that coin, since it plainly belongs to him. But there are bigger fish to fry—like how we pay back to God what is his!” He does not believe that you should get worked up over paying taxes, whether out of an outraged sense of political insult (a loss of “liberty”) or maintaining your ritual or moral purity (not committing “idolatry.”) If you are already up to your neck in swamp mud, you shouldn’t start going all sentimental about keeping your cheeks free of the filth. Jesus knows that we are living in occupied territory. Not Romans occupying Palestine. The Powers and Dominions, the evil systems that reign here, occupying God's good creation. And he says, do what you need to do to get by under such an occuppation. But don't let it fool you one bit.
The problem is that money stands in for so many other things for us. It objectifies value and worth, work, and honor. “How much is that person worth?” we ask, oblivious to how we have reduced the person to mere possession of pieces of the economic pie. “I have done right by her,” says the man about to be divorced for emotional abandonment, thinking only of the money he has sent her way over the years. “Oh, he doesn’t work, then?” we ask about a stay at home father, just because his work isn’t quantified by measurable currency units. The proverb says it all, "Money is Power."
Jesus will have none of this.
Talking about money and devotion to God elsewhere, Jesus says, “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” (Matt 6:23-25).
Money is not the only idol out there. Political programs promising redemption, whether from the Right or the Left, have a way of standing in for other issues, just like money. What matters for Jesus is an open-hearted trust and devotion to God, and the acts of mercy and social justice that result from this.
As Mother Jemma announced this morning, I am about to retire from the U.S. government after 25 years of service to devote my life full time to ministry in Ashland, Oregon, at Trinity Episcopal Church there.
I have had many years to think about the contrast between what works and gets you ahead in government and what Jesus taught, between Caesar’s coin and God’s economy. While I am very grateful that I have been able to serve my country with some very, very smart, competent, and moral men and women, I have seen, like many of them, systemic problems in the way governments in general work. Let me share some of my observations with you by way of contrasts between the coin of the dominions of this world and God's economy.
Caesar’s coin is to do the expedient. God’s is to do the right, do the beautiful.
Caesar’s coin is to control. God’s is to serve.
Caesar’s coin is what is in the national interest. God’s is what benefits those who need it most.
Caesar’s coin is achieving goals and benchmarks. God’s does not worry about results.
Caesar’s coin is force and violence. God’s is gentle love.
Caesar’s coin is judgment and punishment. God’s is grace.
Caesar’s coin is reputation and public image. God’s is character and service.
Caesar’s coin is making your point. God’s is listening.
Caesar’s coin is taking credit and proper branding. God’s is slight embarrassment at having to have been lucky enough to be there for a good thing, and a preference for anonymity.
The world we live in is occupied territory. All of us live under the Dominions, and as such, we are all in Caesar’s game, and have to pay in Caesar's coin. In the degree that this is so, we play by Caesar's rules. But as Jesus said after his arrest, "those who live by the sword die by it." There is a much more important game afoot. There are much, much more important issues that we should focus on.
I pray that during this week, in meditation, reflection, and prayer, we all take note of the idols in our lives and then move to put them in their place. Let us identify and name the Powers. If you are in the thrall of an idol, then stand up, get off your knees.
Give back to Caesar what he owns. But give to God what is God’s.
In the name of Christ, Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment