“Things that are God’s”
“Things that are God’s”
Exodus 33:12-23 Matthew 22:15-22
Year A, Twenty First Sunday after Pentecost
October 22, 2023
Pastor Andy Kennaly, Sandpoint, Idaho
Jesus is in the Temple court, a holy place. He’s telling one parable after another, teaching about God and how very different God's character is than the way the religious rulers were teaching. He is challenging the religious leaders, really calling into question the way they have done things for a long time, including their assumed beliefs about the way God works in their world, and points out how they've given in to systems that oppress because they find personal gain. Because Jesus is upsetting the status quo, because he's challenging the assumptions of those in power, because he's perceived as a threat to some, the Pharisees have decided to find a way to kill him. They were plotting, looking for a way to kill Jesus so they sent this group to trap him with a very well orchestrated question about a hot topic: taxes. And it's an unlikely union, Pharisees and Herodians, groups that rarely got along and do not agree on most things, and yet Jesus becomes for them a common enemy, uniting their quest for destruction, as they cling to power and control and attempt to appease the Empire in order to protect their way of life.
Judea became a Roman province in the year 6. The tax they are discussing in the Temple Court is a flat-tax that hits the poorest people the hardest. This census-based tax they are testing Jesus on also was not well received by devout Jews because it could only be paid with Roman coins. For devout Jews, using a Roman coin was considered blasphemous, irreverent to God because they had an image and inscription of the emperor. With the picture of Caesar, the inscription read, “Tiberius Caesar, august son of the divine Augustus, high priest.” Some of them also read, “Tiberius Caesar, son of god.” As you can imagine, to Jews who were very strict about observing the Law of the Torah, the Hebrew Scripture code, the Ten Commandments, that say, “Do not worship any other god,” and “do not make any cast idols,” paying taxes with Roman coins was unacceptable.
The trap is this: if Jesus says, “Don’t pay taxes,” then they will arrest him for sounding like a rebellious Jew wanting to go against Roman authority, even though the poor, the class that Jesus belongs to, the poor would be very glad about not paying this unfair tax. And yet if he says, “Pay taxes,” then he will lose credibility with the crowds that followed him, those masses of people who want to get out of Roman oppression and were finding Jesus as a possible leader to change the world.
Jesus is Master of the situation, not only seeing through the plot, not
only showing that these questioners were actually liars as they flattered him, but Jesus even shows their devout faith observance is hollow, they are already compromised by their allegiance to the state, and they have no concern for those people in their culture who are marginalized. Their full allegiance is not to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, not to Torah observance and God’s righteousness, but for convenience and comfort, their faith is compromised and Jesus exposes them for who they really are.
As much as these verses discuss taxes, the issues are much larger than this. These verses use taxes as the example, but taxes are not the real issue. There are other, larger questions that come. As one commentator on this text says, it "offers little or no guidance for tax season. But it does raise the provocative and still relevant question: what belongs to God, and what belongs to Caesar? And what if Caesar is Hitler, or apartheid, or communism, or global capitalism? What is to be the attitude of Christians toward domination systems, whether ancient or modern? (Marcus Borg, http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/2000/04/What-Belongs-To-God.aspx, quoted from At the Edge of Enclosure by Suzanne Guthrie, an online lectionary resource).
Jesus asks them for a coin. It's against religious law for them to actually have a coin, especially in the Temple Court, and yet they show him one. The crowds can already see the compromises. He asks the religious leaders who are trying to trap him a question about image. "Whose head is this, and whose title?" Coins have imprints of famous politicians, and even our coins have presidents. So they tell him the coin has an imprint of the emperor and they know that the title on the coin pronounces the emperor as divine. Jesus has just pointed out, once again, their split allegiance. And by asking about image, Jesus pushes this further by saying, give to the emperor what is the emperor's and give to God the things that are God's.
Wouldn't it be great if we had perfect line items budgets with categories that make it clear about what belongs to God and what belongs to the State, or what belongs to other aspects of our lives?
In terms of simplicity, wouldn't it be great if we could just call the Pharisees and Herodians the bad guys, call Rome the big bully and thank God that Jesus showed them! Wouldn't it be great if our own lives were beyond the capacity of corruption, clear in our loyalties, and blameless in our level of righteousness before God? But instead, like Matt Skinner of Luther Seminary says, these texts are "constantly poking at us and saying, 'Where is your true allegiance here, where's your true loyalty here, what does faithfulness to God look like in this situation? What does faithfulness to God look like in light of where I am now?"
(WorkingPreacher.org podcast, Sermon Brainwave #378).
Remember in Genesis God creates humanity, saying in the first half of Genesis 1:26, Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness. As created beings we are made in the image of God, so to give God what is God's means nothing less than giving all that we are, who we are as people, to the God who creates us in God's own image. Contemplative, experiential faith also awakens to God’s image present in all other created beings. Indeed, the Earth herself is a living entity of which we are one member in a vast interconnectedness with everything else as the Living Christ is expressed through matter, and divine life is shared as God lives in and as our life, in our nothingness without God, and our essence of Love in God.
“Give to God the things that are God’s” is Jesus’ way of pointing out that these people, whom Jesus calls “hypocrites,” they say they are God’s people but they are missing the breadth and depth of life with God beyond the confines of our own egos, dualistic judgments, codified religious doctrines, and culturally conditioned reactions. The word, “hypocrite” in the time of Jesus meant “actor” as he points out they are playing a learned role rather than their true identity as those created in the image of God. They have been co-opted and blinded by their own desires, and they are acting like interested students asking the Teacher a question, but under this cloak, their misguided intent is malicious and harmful.
Before we wrap it up I do want to briefly visit the passage from Exodus because it gives us a great image at the end, where God passes by and Moses gets to see the backside of this glory. God protects Moses in the cleft of the rock and it is only in the passing, after the movement, that Moses is able to see the glory.
This is how life is. We are in the struggle, we are swimming in dualism and the judging mind, we are often blinded to our own ways of harming others and the planet, and yet we may cry out for God. We all have struggles, pain, and grief, often mixed with other emotions. Much of the time, we don’t notice the ways God is sustaining us, covering us in the cleft of the rock, but God is. Much of the time, we get caught up in the measuring and counting, deciding what is churchy, or involves faith, and what does not, much like the Caesar coins of the Empire’s treasury. Often times, our perspective becomes all-encompassing as a gauge for what reality is, when really we have lost touch with our own True Self and the broad eternality of God’s larger Reality, which is all about grace and love.
But sometimes, it’s in hindsight that we see God was helping, was at work, and the way things came about were more than random or by coincidence. God’s active Spirit still moves, God’s glory and presence is always there, and we, like those hypocritical Herodians and Pharisees, can be “amazed” as our limiting narratives give way to God’s eternal story. Thanks be to God for helping us wake up to awareness as we live into Presence and make known “things that are God’s.” Thanks be to God for the grace and peace to seek Jesus out, not to trap him or manipulate, but to truly learn as we follow the Way of Love. As God’s Presence is among us, may God be glorified, now, even as forever. Amen.