Give unto Caesar
I expect like me, you are finding you are using cash less since lockdown. It’s so much easier to social distance by waving a bank card at a scanner. And this is a significant change. A coin is passed between many hands, whereas no one holds my bank card except me. Looking at a pound coin with its image of Queen Elizabeth reminds me at some level that I am a citizen of the United kingdom and the image of the monarch on the coin is a symbol of national identity – of unity, maybe, and of belonging.
But of course if I lived in a country with tyrannical rule, where the freedoms of indigenous people were ruthlessly surpressed, that would all be different. If I was a Uigher person living in China, picking up a coin and looking at the image would just remind me of the tyranny that my people and I were living under.
This is the context for the conversation about money and taxes in our gospel passage today. For Jewish people, the coin with the image of Caesar on it – and with words blasphemously claiming that Caesar was a God, no less – would be one more bitter reminder of life under Roman occupation. Rome and its brutal overlords had an very effective system for taxing their colonial subjects, and failure to pay up on time would result in punishing fines that would drive people into destitution. And refusal to pay was effectively a refusal to bow to Roman rule – a very dangerous position to take.
And the Pharisees use this to goad Jesus. It’s not an innocent enquiry, a catch question, designed to trip him up. Jesus, are you saying we should kow-tow to blasphemous Roman rule? If so how can you be speaking up for God? Jesus, are you saying we should oppose Roman rule by refusing to pay our taxes? If so, you are inciting rebellion against the state – and you know where rebels end up – on a cross with nails through their hands.
Jesus side steps the question, and turns it into a bigger question about where our ultimate loyalties lie. All though his ministry he has been announcing that God is King, that God’s kingly rule is beginning. It is not the kingdom of Caesar that commands our loyalty, it is the kingdom of God.
Look at the coin, says Jesus. Whose image is on it?
The emperor’s
Well, give to the emperor the things that are the emperors, and give to God the things that are God’s.
Give to the Emperor what is in his image, and give to God what is in God’s image.
And what is in God’s image?
We are. We read it in the creation story of Genesis. “ In the image of God he created them, male and female he created them.”
Giving to God what is God’s mean giving ourselves, our love, our life, our loyalty. If we read on a few verses in Matthew we find Jesus reminding his questioners that the greatest commandment is that of loving God with heart and soul and mind. Giving to God what is God’s is the returning of our lives to him who gave us our life. The Caesars of this world, the tyrants who rule with contempt for God’s ordinary people, they may be able to command taxes, but they cannot command the movement of heart and soul that is due only to God.
Give to God the things that belong to God. It’s good to hear these words in the season of harvest, with its theme of generosity and responding to God’s grace. It’s a reminder that our primary commitment as Christian people is to the kingdom of God, not to the kingdoms of this world: to the kingdom where God’s blessing is for the humble, the merciful, for those who are hungry and thirsty for justice.
Give to God the things that belong to God. As we have heard it, so let us do it.
Amen
Frances Eccleston, 18.10.20