Matthew 22:15-22
This passage contains what some political figures would call “a gotcha question.” It is intended to trap Jesus because there is no safe answer.
The people hated this tax . . . not just because nobody likes giving their money away, but because of all the taxes they paid, this one was particularly onerous. “It was the Imperial tax paid as tribute to Rome to support the Roman occupation of Israel. That’s right: first-century Jews were required to pay their oppressors a denarius a year to support their own oppression.”[1] No wonder the people didn’t like it.
But there was more. The tax had to be paid in Roman coins, and the Roman coin carried not only the image of Caesar engraved on it, but also a proclamation of his divinity. So simply carrying the coin was an affront to the Jews’ religion. It forced the people to break the first two commandments—to carry a graven image that declares someone other than Yahweh to be God.
So if Jesus says “Yes, you should pay the tax,” then they could spin his answer to mean that he is breaking the commandments. But if Jesus says “No, you should not pay the tax,” then he will receive an unwelcome visit from representatives of the Roman Empire.
One writer puts it this way: “This is a good trap. If Jesus says no [don’t pay the tax], he risks joining the long line of dead instigators against Roman rule. If Jesus says yes, he risks joining the long line of impotent prophets with little to offer a proud people languishing under the occupation.”[2]
Instead he says “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” Or as the King James version states it, “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.” In this case I like the King James version better because the best translation is “to give that which is required.” The word “render,” although a bit archaic, has that implication so I like it better in this context.
Anyway, let me tell you what this text does not mean.
This is not, as some people claim, an argument for the separation of church and state. First-century Jews would have had no understanding of such a concept. They could not imagine dividing their lives in that manner, no way of thinking “this is political” and “this is religious.” The two were intricately woven together.
A second misinterpretation is to suggest that Jesus didn’t care about mundane things like money. Some preachers have said this story is proof that Jesus cares only about the heart, and what we do with our money is up to us. But Jesus talks about money rather frequently in the gospels, so there is no support for such an interpretation.
And this passage is not saying that “our duty as Christians is to support the government no matter what. All three of these interpretations are dubious.”[3]
This leaves me with two primary interpretations that I think are valid for us today. One is that the coin represents the part of our lives that does, indeed, belong to the world order or the empire or the government. We have certain obligations that must, by law, be met. But all the rest belongs to God. And it’s not an equal scale. It doesn’t mean this goes to the world and this goes to God in a balanced equation. It means this coin goes to the world, but God gets everything else. So the rest of our money . . . God’s. Our time . . . God’s. Our gifts and talents, our passions and priorities . . . all of these belong to God.
If we really believed that, what a difference would it make in our daily lives? Since this is stewardship season, let’s start with talking about money. If I believe that the portion of my income not going to the government actually belongs to God, how would I spend it? Would I spend less on myself and more on others? Would I care less about the stock market dips and more about the poverty rate hikes? Would I pledge more and hoard less?
There is a danger here, of course. If we fall into the pattern of thinking we owe God our money or our time, we could start to resent it. Much better that we view everything as gift, so that we want to give back. It’s even simpler if we just ask if God would be pleased with our choices.
“I think Jesus invites us—actually, demands of us—that we be thinking regularly and relentlessly about how all of our decisions—what we buy, who we vote for, how we spend our time—should be shaped by the confession that, indeed, the whole world is God’s and everything in it—including us!”[4]
I heard about a preacher who, during a sermon, asked everyone to pull out their credit cards. Then she handed out permanent markers and asked them to draw the sign of the cross on their card. Someone who was sitting in the congregation that day said, “For the next several months it was nearly impossible to buy something and not reflect on whether or not this purchase aligned with my own . . . values.”[5]
If it works that way, maybe we should draw crosses on our hands, so that our hands never hit. Maybe we should draw crosses on our dashboard, before we lose our temper with that rude driver. Maybe we should draw crosses on our ballots, so that we would remember to consider our values when we vote. I wonder if it would work.
But this still isn’t the whole picture. There is another way of interpreting this scripture, and for that we need to look again at the coin. When Jesus asked, “Whose image is this?” on the coin, the Pharisees would have heard an echo, a connection to the first chapter of Torah, when God created man and woman in God’s own image. The coin bears Caesar’s image so it belongs to Caesar. You bear God’s image so you belong to God. So give yourself to God.”
This is like the last option in some ways, for it involves giving of ourselves to God. But the emphasis here isn’t on the giving. It’s on the being. You bear the image of God. You bear the likeness of God. That means you are God’s beloved creation. And what difference would that make, if we took it to heart?
This week I entered the world of Twitter. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, Twitter is a popular social networking service where people put short messages (no more than 140-characters) called “tweets.” Topics are grouped together by using common hashtags, which are words or phrases preceded by the pound (#) sign.
A popular hashtag this week was “My love life in three words.” Most of the responses fell into some predictable categories. First were those who named names, either their real-life sweethearts or their superstar dream boyfriends. Then there were the food responses. Apparently some people think their love life can best be described with the words “Wendy’s chicken nuggets,” “Ben and Jerry’s,” or “Pass the wine.” Quite a few people used variations of “what love life,” “in my head,” and “basically non-existent.” Then there were the sad answers—“worse than yours,” and “pretty little liars”—as well as those that I hope were a joke, like “another restraining order” and “cash or charge.”
But two of them got to me: “Searching…searching…searching,” “Never ever settling,” and “Hope seems lost.”
In light of this text, perhaps the three words that describe our love life—or, rather, our life of love—should be: “In God’s image.”
This text forces us to ask: Where does our allegiance lie? Does it lie with the empire? Or does it lie with God? “Pledging one’s allegiance to the empire by consuming everything one is asked to consume or thinking everything one is told to think, choosing between red and blue, will not help you to love your neighbor, [will not help you to] know who your neighbor is, will not help you to become the person you were meant to be, [will not] give you peace or contentment. The empire does not have the power to do anything like that. The empire cannot love you.”[6]
Yet we give it our allegiance day after day.
A year or two ago I was in a restaurant when I saw, at a distance, a woman who looked like my mom. It took me a second to realize I was looking in a mirror.
I can see an image of myself in my mother. I have seen images of myself in stranger places . . . in a mother with a hungry baby at the WIC office, waiting for assistance; in a man who hates asking for help but has no other choice; in parents carrying their wounded child to the hospital they can’t afford. If I accept that I bear the image of God, I cannot help but see that others do, too.
When we realize we bear God’s image, we know that we are God’s beloved. And when we know that we are God’s beloved, we know that others are God’s beloved. When we know that others are God’s beloved, we recognize the image of God in them. And when we recognize the image of God in them, we see that they are us. And when we see that they are us, we know God.
I bear a resemblance to my mother. But I bear the image of God. It’s just not often as obvious.
[1] Lose, David. “Pentecost 19A: Money, Politics, & Religion (Oh My!),” Oct 13, 2014, www.davidlose.net
[2] Mendenhall, Doug. “Whose Image Is Stamped on Your Heart?” www.odysseynetworks.org
[3] Pape, Lance. https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2201
[4] Lose, David. “God, Caesar, and the Power of a Good Question.” October 9, 2011.
[5] Lose, David. “Pentecost 19A: Money, Politics, & Religion (Oh My!)”
[6] Rathburn, Russell. “The Empire Cannot Love You.” The Hardest Question. thq.wearesparkhouse.org.