In whose image?

Text: Matthew 22:15-22

Today we come to a curious scene from the Gospel of Matthew that illustrates how the leaders of the various local factions, suspicious and nervous about Jesus, are attempting to bring him down. Remember that Jerusalem at this time is an occupied city in an occupied territory. There was then no nation of Israel, there was only The Roman Empire and all of the territories in that Empire, from Britannia to the Nile Valley, up past Byzantium all the way to the Caspian Sea, are all under Roman rule, some more peacefully than others. 

Palestine was not peaceful. It seems that it never really has been peaceful. The area has been ruled by Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Turks, Egyptians, Crusaders, and of course in the time of Jesus, the Romans. It is a valuable area, a crossroads on the major trade routes from east to west (from the Far and Near East to the Mediterranean) and from north to south (from most everywhere to Egypt). It is important territory for major world religions as well. And so there has always been conflict there.

It’s important to consider this context when hearing the story of the attempts to entrap Jesus during what we now call Holy Week. Jesus had ridden into Jerusalem during a tense time, the buildup to Passover when the city was full of pilgrims, and he was being heralded as the Messiah. For some, that meant the hero who would overthrow the Romans and establish God’s rule instead. For others, it meant a canny troublemaker whose actions and words threatened to bring down the religious leadership that was permitted by those Romans to wield power in the land, presumably to then exercise power himself. Jesus had ridden into town as the Messiah and had immediately overthrown the tables in the Temple, a provocative act. The leaders, both political and religious, decided that it was time to take Jesus down.

So, they come and ask Jesus if it’s lawful (that is, if the Torah commands) for the Jewish people to pay a special tax to the Roman Emperor. As theologian David Lose puts it, they are asking if it is appropriate for oppressed people to pay their oppressors to oppress them, which sounds a little Monty Python-like, but I think is an accurate description of the situation.

If Jesus says, no, oppressed people should not pay their oppressors to oppress them, then the Roman officials are going to come after him.

If Jesus says yes, oppressed people SHOULD pay their oppressors to oppress them, then the Jewish people who hailed Jesus as Messiah will reject him.

But Jesus sidesteps the whole thing. First he asks for a coin, because Jesus, just like me, never carries cash. Second, the so-called religious elite DO carry cash - they carry the Emperor’s Tax Coin cash, they are part of the Roman economic system. Third, he does not take sides in the question. He says to give to Caesar what belongs to him and give to God everything else. 

Of course, here’s the catch: the people of God believe that everything belongs to God. We belong to God. We are made in the image of God, not in the image of Caesar. God’s image in imprinted upon us, from the time of our creation. And so Jesus not only again turns the tables, this time metaphorically on his interlocutors, but also calls them, as he did in the temple when he turned over the literal tables, to consider what they themselves owe to God.

Please understand that this passage is not enshrining some sort of “separation of church and state” as some have tried to portray it. In Jesus’s time, there was no such thing. Life was not compartmentalized in such a way then, and I think we would do well to avoid succumbing to that way of thinking now. As the people of God we believe that everything we have has come from God. So God is not just a Sunday thing. God is an every day thing.

But of course we also live in a society that has laws and systems and such. We are not withdrawn into separatist societies. We too are part of an economic system. So if we are to take Jesus’s words seriously, that all belongs to God but also there may be some things that are due to that system, then this means we have to practice daily discernment about what it is that we do owe to God even while we are paying our rent and and tuition and whatever else requires the coin of the realm. 

Naturally during this annual giving season, we all hope that you are giving this great thought. What is it that we owe to God, how do we use the coin of the realm that’s in our pockets to further God’s mission in the world around us?

But just as importantly, how will we recognize when we are being asked to pay something that oppresses us to continue oppressing us? What is it that is demanding our resources that is actually robbing us of the life abundant that God wants for us? And by the way, I don’t mean taxes. 

I’m asking what demands are being made upon us that rob God of our devotion by distracting us away from God in hopes of holding us enthralled to what Biblical people called idols, things created by humans that demand our allegiance but cannot give us life?

Jesus is asking us to consider our values, to consider our commitment to God, to recognize that it is God who has given us life and our many blessings even in the midst of living in a society that we enjoy. And he asks us not to participate in our own degradation by becoming slaves to that society and its demands. He asked us to discern what we owe to whom.

Discernment is usually not easy. It takes time and thoughtfulness. Many of us feel pretty short on time and maybe inexperienced in the careful consideration and re-consideration of what we have always done or what everyone else is doing that true discernment requires. 

But God is with us in this, as God is with us in all of life, from before even Moses. Every week in our prayers we thank God for giving us discerning hearts. So let us look into our hearts every day to find the path in which we will find ourselves free to turn away from those idols and follow Jesus into new and abundant life.