Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar

OCTOBER 29TH, 2023

Matthew 22.15-22

So, today Jesus is talking about money. He has a fair bit to say about money, actually. He teaches us to use our money to help those in need, for example in the story of the Good Samaritan. He challenges a rich young man to give away all that he has, to make himself literally poor as a precondition for discipleship. We can’t serve two masters - it’s hard to love God if we love money. Jesus draws attention to a widow putting two small copper coins into the temple treasury, praising her as an example of generosity. On the other hand, he criticises the Pharisees for tithing in relation to external things but neglecting to give God what really matters. He challenges us with the story of the workers in the vineyard - all get a day's pay, even the ones who get there late. And he warns us all, 'where your treasure is, there your heart will follow.' So, be careful what you invest in!

In our gospel reading today, we see the Pharisees and the Herodians - the Jewish religious leaders who owed their positions of authority to their loyalty to the occupation government – trying to trick Jesus on the question of paying taxes. The question is a trap – if Jesus agrees with the zealots and revolutionaries that it’s OK not to pay taxes, then that’s going to get him into trouble with the Romans, and if he says you should pay your taxes to the hated occupation army, then he’s not going to be very popular with the common folk. So it is a trick question, a dangerous question. And, as he does so often, Jesus wriggles out of the trap with a clever one-liner: just give the government what belongs to the government - and give God what belongs to God.

It’s an answer that gets Jesus out of trouble – for the time being – but it’s an answer that continues to cause headaches for the rest of us because it looks ambiguous. On the surface it looks straightforward enough – this is the sphere of life where you’ve got your loyalty to God, everywhere else you’ve got your other loyalties. The self-serving interpretation is that you can get about the secular business of your life however you please, just as long as you're giving God some of your time - and of course money - on Sunday. Just give God his share.

It’s also a saying that gets called on from time to time by those outside the Church to tell Christians when to butt out – for example when politicians don’t much care for criticism they are copping from the pulpit – ‘Just stick to your praying, leave the business of running the country to us. This is Caesar stuff!’ Being a Christian, in this secular view of things, is almost a disqualification for getting involved in public debate at all. Both of these extremes, I’m sure you realise, are just plain wrong. You can’t compartmentalise your faith.

So, Jesus' quick-fire answer raises a few questions. ‘Give to Caesar the things that belong to Caesar.’ Well, OK, but what things are those? This part of Jesus’ answer poses a challenge to the Herodians but it’s just as much a challenge to modern Christians who live comfortably enough within a secular capitalist system - because it calls into question our relationship with systems of economic and political power. What if in your country Caesar is giving tax breaks to the rich while the poorest families can’t make ends meet or even afford a roof over their heads? Or if Caesar is giving lip service to climate action but pursuing policies that will leave our grandchildren a burning planet? What is the coin that properly belongs to Caesar in that case? Well, as I’ve suggested to you before, as Christians we need to have a social conscience informed by our faith, and maybe that’s part of the coin we owe to Caesar.

So the Herodians are squirming, but the same time, the Pharisees go away shaking their heads because Jesus answer challenges them and their comfortable religiousity where it hurts - ‘and give to God the things that belong to God.’ Because essentially Jesus is asking them - and us - well, ‘what have you got that doesn’t belong to God?’ And the answer is obvious. It’s obvious to Jesus’ opponents who as religious Jews would have recited the Shema every evening: ‘hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ And it’s obvious to us. It all belongs to God.

I think at the heart of Jesus’ pointed answer is the challenge to work out for ourselves how we balance the competing priorities and demands of our lives, knowing that absolutely everything we do – spending time with our family, contributing to our community, paying our taxes, donating to charities or humanitarian appeals, as well as the offerings we bring to church – that all these activities are variations on how we serve God in our day to day lives. So what Jesus is actually demanding from us is some honest self-examination. Is what we give to God really the first-fruit of our lives, or is it just what’s left over at the end of the week, the loose change from the dressing table? Does our gift to God of money and time and effort cost us something, is it disciplined and sacrificial? Because our gift to God reflects our awareness that our whole life is a gift from God.

The coin that Jesus asked for and inspected was a denarius, a coin issued by the Roman occupation government with an image of the Emperor Tiberius. On it would have been the inscription, ‘Tiberius, son of the divine Augustus’. It was an emblem of the official Roman religion, and of course was deeply offensive to Jewish religion and nationalism. We have the image of the late Queen on our own coins. Next year the King is going to start to appear. But it’s much the same deal. It’s the image and an ever-present reminder of secular power and authority. And it makes the claim that our lives are shaped by our relationship to this power and authority.

But as Christians we know a deeper reality, which is that our own lives and all of created reality reveal the image of God our Creator. We struggle to live with the understanding that God’s image is upon everything and everyone. Perhaps we struggle to understand that we are made in God’s image even as we live within the compromises and competing claims of our everyday lives. But this is a vital part of what the Church teaches, both about God, and about the world we live in.

In the second century the Church battled against the heresy known as Gnosticism, the claim some Christians made to special knowledge. The Gnostics believed that only the spiritual realm was important - the world was error and illusion, just something to pass through on the way to heaven. In a wonderful argument based on the first few chapters of the Book of Genesis, Saint Irenaeus refuted their claim. All living things, he said, are made out of dust - and animated by the spirit of God which Genesis tells us is the breath of life. The material world is diaphanous - it shines with the Spirit of God. Because in the beginning the inert matter of the created world is given form and breathed into life by God. Which means God’s image is impressed on all creation like a maker’s stamp. And when the eternal Word of God chooses to take on created flesh and blood, that makes creation holy. As the Prologue of the fourth Gospel expresses it, the eternal Word of God pitches a tent and lives among us - Christianity points to the God whose spirit is interwoven with the DNA of all creation and who lives and dies and rises again among us.

And that makes a bigger claim than a penny with a king’s head on it. Because it turns out the penny with God’s head on it - the coin stamped with the image of God - is you. It is every human being you encounter, and you see the face of Christ in friends and strangers alike, even the faces of men and women we find it difficult to love, and the faces of enemies. Which of course is why our Lord instructs us to love those who hate us. And we also see the imprint of God on the non-human creation, in animals who like us know love and fear, and can teach us gentleness, and in the beauty of the natural order.

The metaphor of a coin is not accidental, and it raises the question of who owns whom? The coin in your pocket - even the banknote now that we don’t use coins - is an asset, for sure, you can exchange it for something you need or want - but the image on it constantly reminds you that you live within a network of obligations to others, and that you are subject to authority. You use the five-dollar note, but the country makes demands on you. It’s also about trust - the scrap of tin or nickel or the polymer sheet is useless without the stamp that gives it value.

It's the same with God’s coin, with the reminders of God’s creative love you see whenever you talk to another person, or kiss a spouse or hold a grandchild. In one another, and in all the ways we exist within God’s creation and use its bounty, we deepen our understanding of the ecology of divine love within which our lives unfold and have their limits. And in how we love and serve the world that God has created, we give back to God what belongs to God.