Render Unto Caesar

'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.

One of the things that I love most about Jesus is that he very seldom acted from a place of duality; that is, from an either/or position.  Jesus wasn't the kind of guy who would say something like, "You’re either with me or against me, for example!"  Throughout his ministry, though, Jesus dealt with people who did have this frame of mind:  it’s either A or B, and there is no such thing as C!  Yet Jesus always seemed to find another, unexpected third way.

  

 We could think of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as one great big third way, which takes the either/or dynamic of Jesus' time and flips it on its head.  For us 2000 years later it all makes sense, obviously, because we know Jesus was right, but when we consider the experiences of the communities of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John it becomes pretty radical to imagine Jesus giving those folks an option that they had never before considered.  There were many folks who operated from a dualistic model, but our Gospel this week highlights two particular groups:  the Pharisees and the Herodians.  

The Pharisees were the religious zealots, who pushed hard against the Roman occupation by insisting that Jews must fully embrace their Jewish identify, and how they did this was to obey every letter of the Law. To do so meant not associating with Gentiles (like the despised Romans), keeping the Sabbath holy, and obeying all of the dietary laws.  The Pharisees looked at Jesus, who did not always follow these rules, and said he was bad Jew.  

The Herodians were political collaborators.  Their name came from King Herod, the Jewish King of Judea who had been installed by the Romans in order to appease the Jews; after all, the Jews would not abide a foreigner being in charge of them.  These folks, along with the tax collectors and other collaborators, benefited from the Roman occupation.  As they looked at Jesus they saw someone who was a seditionist, a trouble-maker, and they were sure that he was going to start an uprising against Rome, which would cause problems for their fellow Jews.  These are the kinds of folks that Jesus finds himself caught between.   

We see this play out in the Gospel, as these two groups conspire with each other to trick Jesus and humiliate him in front of a huge crowd.  It is Tuesday of Holy Week when we pick up the story, and Jesus has already entered Jerusalem and flipped over the tables in the temple.  Everybody is watching him, and these two groups particularly are waiting for him to make a mistake.  They then approach Jesus, butter him up a little, and then drop this bomb on him:  Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor or not? 

An artist's rendering of Matthew 22: 15-22.

Well, this is a pickle, isn’t it?  If Jesus sides with the Pharisees and says no, it’s not lawful, don’t pay taxes to the emperor, he risks being arrested right then and there and being branded a seditionist.  If he says yes and sides with the Herodians  he risks discrediting himself with the crowd and coming off as a Roman sympathizer and a bad Jew.  The mastery here of the Pharisees and Herodians is that no matter what Jesus says the response is going to be unpopular, and his movement may very well wither away.

This is where Jesus’ brilliance shines through, where he offers that third way.  He does not actually answer their question, at least not in the manner which they expect.  Jesus asks for a coin—did you ever notice he didn’t carry any money himself??—and asks the questioners whose face and title is on it.  They reply, "The emperor's."  (The title, written under Caesar's image, read "Son of God.")  Right there Jesus has ticked his questioners and .  How?  Coins were not used as payment in most ancient cultures until the days of great military empires like Persia and Rome.  The coins bore the image of the conquering king and were used as a means of keeping the occupied and defeated peoples in-check.  When Jews in Roman-occupied Palestine DID use coins, though, they refused to use the ones with Caesar’s image on them because that breaks the second commandment—“thou shalt make no graven image”—instead they used one with a palm leaf on it, the symbol of Jewish resistance against the Romans. The coin produced here, of course, bears the image of Caesar and the inscription that read “long live the Son of God.”  Because, remember, Caesar believed he was, in fact, the Son of God.  By having that coin on them Jesus’ questioners are exposed as collaborators, and without even answering their question Jesus has discredited them and the Roman occupation that they represent.

But then he goes a little further, saying “Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s and to God the things that are God’s.”  (Or in the more romantic language of the King James Version:  "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's.")  Do you see what he does there?  Jesus separates Caesar from God, which, again, seems obvious to us now, but during that time one did not dare make the claim (at least publicly) that the emperor and God were not one in the same; after all, every Caesar claimed to be divine.  Some have taken this phrase to mean that Jesus is saying that we Christians are, in fact, folks with dual citizenship, and as such must obey our civil authorities, just as we obey our heavenly authority.  Moreover, passages like this one were preached regularly in the 1930s and 1940s during the rise of fascism in Europe, which resulted in many Christians remaining silent during some remarkably horrible times because they had been told by their preachers that Jesus intends for us to fully obey and render unto our authority figures. But this isn’t really an endorsement of Rome, hence the disinction between Caesar and God and calling attention to the fact that the denarius had false title inscribed for Caesar.  Had Jesus wanted to endorse Rome he would’ve just said, “Yes, pay taxes to Caesar.”  But he doesn’t.  Instead, he mocks the very institution of occupation, which Rome represents.  Furthermore, as Shane Claiborne points out in his excellent book Jesus for President, Jesus leaves it up to the hearer to define what is Caesar’s and what is God’s.  Think about that for second. Jesus never actually says who gets what between God and the emperor.  Rather, he lets the crowd discern and make that decision for themselves.  This is the third way!  It's a harder, more complicated way than the dualistic approach, but it is the masterful method with which Jesus weaved his Gospel tapestry!

If we think about it, what does actually belong to "Caesar?"  What does actually belong to any power or principality?  Their brand may be stamped on the money, but they can have it, Jesus says because God’s stamp is on EVERYTHING! All things that live, move, and have their being have God's stamp on them, even those Caesars who claimed to be gods themselves.  Sure, authority figures can issue money and build towers and temples and monuments to themselves, but eventually the rust and moths consume them and they fall into the dust.  Yet God continues to endure!  And God will continue to do what God has always done:  breathe life into the dust.   

So the question for us isn’t so much whether or not we should pay our taxes.  The question for us to ponder is the same one that that crowd on Holy Tuesday was left with, the third way of Jesus:  what is Caesar's and what is God's?  Many churches, including mine, are smack-dab in the middle of their stewardship campaigns.  Could there be a more fitting Gospel??  I invite you, then, brothers and sisters, to prayerfully ask yourself, as you take stock of all of your stuff:  what of mine belongs to "Caesar" and what belongs to God?  May we all have the grace to ponder that question, and may we all give and act accordingly. 

Cover for Shane Claiborne's Jesus For President, which you can purchase by clicking here.