Gospel According to Matthew 22:15-22
October 22, 2023
Trinity Episcopal Church, Brooklyn, CT
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
Tell us, Jesus, is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?
Those dastardly Pharisees, they never give up, do they. Trying to trap Jesus. Taunting him with such politically loaded interrogations as Is it lawful to pay taxes ?…indeed! But these plotting pundits are relentless in their intent to trap Jesus into saying something that will sink his fledgling career as the so-called Son of God. Which, by the way, is the exact credential written on the Roman denarius in question.
Just below the head of Caesar the coin read: Tiberius Caesar: Son of God. The emperor Tiberius Caesar’s Father, Caesar Augustus, had been declared a God by the Roman State, and so his son was also, naturally, the Son of God. You see the problem.
And so the Jewish elite attempt to stuff Jesus, that other itinerant Son of God, into the black or white no-man’s land of declaring his allegiance….either to God or to Caesar. And, not for nothing, there was no such thing as a separation of church and state in the first century Roman Empire. We have some context for understanding that separation, but no one in Jesus’ time would have any idea what that meant. Church and
state were one and the same. The coin said it all: Tiberius Caesar, Son of God. And so it was a simple calculation, to reject the state was tantamount to rejecting God.
And so the Pharisees think they have got our rabbi now. Tell us, Jesus, is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not? A trick question if ever there were one. And although the question is clearly a taunt to get Jesus to sign his own demise on the dotted line by denouncing the official authority of the realm, these Jewish elites seem to be asking a deeper question, one that continues to be more than relevant today, two thousand years hence:Is living a lawful life in this world compatible with a life devoted to God? Or not? Is it possible to love God with all of our heart and soul and might, and to live according to God’s Law – and to participate in the structure of the state and live according to its law?
And that question still feels more than relevant. And so here we are, two centuries later, waiting with baited breath to hear Jesus’ response. But as we could have expected, Jesus does not take the bait, he does not give his questioners, or us, a straight answer…..sadly, this seems the one thing about Jesus that our contemporary politicians seem to have embraced with proficiency. Not giving us a straight answer.
Nonetheless, Jesus’ response is brilliant. He says: Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s,
and to God the things that are God’s. Great answer! But, what? How do we know which things belong to the emperor and which things belong to God? Maybe more importantly, what things do not belong to God?
And this is a question that has occupied a good part of my own inner Pharisee for the better part of my adult life. And I am guessing that I am not alone. How are we to reconcile the commandment to love God,
with all of our hearts and souls and might….with every fiber of our being, and the requirements of a cold hearted beauracracy?
How do we decide when following the law of the land violates the law of love? How do we know how much of our time and talent and treasure belongs to God and how much belongs…..not to God.
It is no accident that this passage shows up just at the start of our church stewardship season.
As we begin to contemplate how much of our earthly gain we can pledge to God…..through the church.
But this question is not just meant to be raised once or twice a year when we are called to pay our taxes or ponder our pledge. This passage is not included by Matthew (whom, I will remind us all, is a tax collector himself ) as a hook for stewardship season. It is a question which is at the core of who we are and how we live as Christians, disciples of Christ, in this world which is not Christian, or Jewish, or inclined toward God in any foundational way, as far as I can tell.
And so I fear that Jesus’ answer to the Pharisees is anything but Good News….at least for those of us who are….human. For the real answer, after we get past the comfort of the apparent permission to pay our taxes and parking tickets, the real answer is that….uh oh, when we get right down to it, we cannot easily separate what belongs to God and what does not. In fact, we cannot separate it at all.
Every week we sing: Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Do we really mean that? Because if we do, then what Jesus is saying is that everything, and I mean everything we have, belongs to God. That means that nothing that we have does not belong to God.
And that means that we, as Christians, are called to live lives that constantly, incessantly, unrelentingly,
ask the question, am I using God’s gifts for God’s purposes, or am I not? With every dime we spend, with every hour we commit, with every vote we cast, with every talent we offer, with every word we speak, with every breath we take we must be asking: Am I using God’s gifts for God’s purposes?
Last week I saw a TED talk by Krista Tippet.[1] She is the wise and wonderful host of the National Public Radio show On Being. And in her presentation she suggested that there are three grounding orientations that can help to keep us focused on…..God’s purposes (my words, not hers) in this world that seems to be constantly pulling us away from….God’s purposes. Or in the parlance of this morning’s Gospel, three things that we might think about to help remind us that we belong to God and not to Caesar.
Here are her three thoughts to ponder:
- See the generative story of our time. She says that catastrophe and disfunction seem to be raging all around us all of the time. And so it is easy for us to lose sight of who and whose we are; to see our own stories as enveloped in bad news and despair. But catastrophe and dysfunction are not our story. Because things are always and ever going right all around us. All of the time. There is good news happening virtually everywhere. Amazingly good news. First of all, every one of us just took another breath. We are still here. Yay! And, we don’t have to look any further than these pews to see people helping each other in myriad and wonderful ways. There is selfless service happening in the nooks and crannies of this world all the time. Acts of kindness, large and small. Mercy and justice flowing in the most unlikely places. Sacrificial love offered to strangers by by strangers.
It’s happening all the time. In plain sight.
The problem is that we are wired to focus on the disastrous rather than the divine. We are more comfortable with rupture than rapture. Because in order to keep us alive, our brains are designed to keep us on the alert. To avoid predators and pitfalls that might threaten our very existence. It’s a survival mechanism….focussing on danger rather than delight. But our hard-wired attention to the death traps around us very often prevents us from attending to what is good and productive and life-giving.
So the first pointer in keeping our eyes peeled for God’s purposes is to take in the good. To see our stories as grounded in a sea of good news and wondrous opportunity, and to let that perspective shape our idea of the world and who we are within it. To over-ride our hard-wired focus on the pain in our midst and instead celebrate the promise that comes with belonging to a loving God.
- Stop looking for answers and live into the questions. This advice is actually from the poet Ranier Maria Rilke who said: “Live your questions now, and perhaps even without knowing it, you will live along some distant day into your answers.” The meat of this life is in the big questions, not the final answers. And so we must try to love those things that feel unresolved in ourselves. Those are the places where God’s purposes are working themselves out.
Maybe we don’t have the answers to our deepest questions because we are not ready for them. And, once we have the answers, the journey is over. Krista’s second point to ponder is that a new reverence for the questions that keep us engaged with God’s purposes is far better than an obsession with figuring out the answers.
- And number three. Measure every calling by its relevance and relationship to wholeness. If what we are doing does not promote wholeness, it is not part of God’s plan. Wholeness is always both the yardstick and the tell-tale sign that we are on the right track with God.
Three simple reminders.
To See our lives as surrounded by promise rather than pain. To live fully into our questions without angsting over our lack of answers. And to weigh everything on a scale of its proximity to wholeness.
I offer these Tippet tidbits because amid the hubbub of life as we know it here and now, I think we need to be reminded every chance we get, of who and whose we are. Reminded that we do not belong to Caesar. We belong to God. And by the transitive property of God, We belong to each other, and each other’s wellbeing.
Yesterday at our healing service I shared an anecdote about Margaret Meade that you might too have seen on Facebook. A rare Facebook find. But I found it very interesting and helpful in resetting my own yardstick regarding who and whose we are.
Anthropologist Margaret Mead was asked by a student what she considered to be the first sign of civilization in a culture. And the student expected the answer to be related to productivity or prosperity. Expected the first sign of civilization to be the excavation of fishing or hunting gear, or maybe iron tools, or clay pots, or basic utensils. Some item of use.
But no. Margaret Mead said that the first sign of civilization in an ancient culture is the discovery of a femur, you know, a thighbone that had been broken and then healed. She explained that in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die. You can’t run from danger, you can’t get to water, you can’t hunt for food. You become defenseless prey. You get eaten. No animal survives a broken leg long enough for that bone to heal.
And so a broken femur that has healed is evidence that someone has taken time to stay with and tend the one who has broken their leg. Someone has bound up that wound, carried that person to safety, and ensured their recovery; ensured their healing. Healing. A word that has the same etymologyical cognate as the word whole. So the first sign of civilization is that someone has ensured the return to wholeness of someone who has been broken.
The first marker of community is not grounded in productivity, or power or popularity. It is grounded in kindness and care. Grounded in healing. Grounded in returning each other to wholeness. We stop being lone wolves and become a people of God when we begin to care for each other. Walking with each other through the adversities of life is the mark of the best that human society has to offer. The best that we can be as children of God.
And so when the Pharisees ask Jesus if it is lawful to pay the emperor his due, the answer is…..Sort of like the emperor who had no clothes but was treated as though he were wearing the finest threads in the land. The answer is that anything of any worth is due to the emperor’s is an illusion. The emperor actually has nothing of value to offer or require.
And not just because everything we have belongs to God. But because most importantly, we do. We belong to God. Jesus tells us so in this morning’s reading And I think we should believe him! And act accordingly.
Alleluia! Amen.
© October, 2023 The Rev’d. Dr. Gretchen Sanders Grimshaw
[1] TED Talk. Krista Tippett, Three Practices for Wisdom and Wholeness. https://www.ted.com/talks/krista_tippett_3_practices_for_wisdom_and_wholeness
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