Sunday, October 18th, Proper 24
Matthew 22:15-2 (The Message, Eugene Peterson)
May I speak to you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Let me begin by sharing the paraphrased version of our Gospel Lesson this morning found in Eugene Peterson’s The Message Paraphrase Bible:
15-17 That’s when the Pharisees plotted a way to trap him into saying something damaging. They sent their disciples, with a few of Herod’s followers mixed in, to ask, “Teacher, we know you have integrity, teach the way of God accurately, are indifferent to popular opinion, and don’t pander to your students. So tell us honestly: Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?”
18-19 Jesus knew they were up to no good. He said, “Why are you playing these games with me? Why are you trying to trap me? Do you have a coin? Let me see it.” They handed him a silver piece.
20 “This engraving—who does it look like? And whose name is on it?”
21 They said, “Caesar.”
“Then give Caesar what is his, and give God what is his.”
22 The Pharisees were speechless. They went off shaking their heads.
The Sermon: It’s a Trap!
As you may have read in this week’s issue of Canterbury Tales, our Gospel Lesson for this morning, known as the coin debate, has vexed readers ever sense it was written. The word vexed meaning, of a problem or issue, difficult and much debated, and problematic.
Therefore I am thrilled to be preaching on this passage for my first official sermon as your new Assisting Priest here at St. Augustines!
Did you catch my sarcasm there? It’s a Trap!
As we saw in last week’s parable of the king’s feast, Jesus is on the attack, and his criticism is focused heavily on the religious group known as the Pharisees. The Pharisees were an extremely orthodox sect of Jewish leaders distinguished by their strict observance of the law, and pretensions to superior sanctity. In short, they thought they were the cat’s meow! In last week’s story, they were represented by Jesus as the condemned wedding guest, “where they were bound hand and foot, and cast into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 22:13).
So you can imagine the Pharisees as on-lookers to Jesus are not too pleased with the condemning message he is shouting from the rooftops here!
Which takes us to our Gospel lesson for this morning. The Pharisees here in Matthew 22 team up with the most unlikely of bed-fellows, a group of folks known as the Herodians. They were followers and supporters of Herod, the King of Galilee, who owed his power to the Romans, and who worked hand in glove with them, receiving political favors and kickbacks in return.
These two groups absolutely despised each other. I reckon as the the ancient proverb states, an enemy of my enemy is my friend, and the two groups of Jewish leaders combine to form a kind of super-foe, launching their counterattack by first buttering up Jesus’ ego, saying,
“Teacher, we know you have integrity, teach the way of God accurately, are indifferent to popular opinion, and don’t pander to your students” (Mat. 22:16).
And then directing at Jesus a carefully formulated question, that in the famous words of Admiral Ackbar, rebel leader from Star Wars Episode Six: The Return of the Jedi, once discovering the evil plot of the Empire during the battle of Endor, cried out, “It’s a trap!”
They purposely ask Jesus this question in public while the crowd looks on and listens. Their aim was to trap Jesus by making him discredit himself through his own words in the presence of the people. Their carefully laid trap was oh so subtly framed. You see Palestine was an occupied country and the Jews were subject to the Roman Empire, so the question was, “tell us honestly: Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not” (Mat. 22:17)?
The question which the Pharisees asked set Jesus in a very real dilemma. If he said that it was unlawful to pay the tax, they would promptly report him to the Roman government officials as an enemy of Rome, and his arrest would certainly follow. If he said that it was lawful to pay the tax, he would stand discredited in the eyes of many of his Jewish followers. Not only did the people resent the tax, as everyone resents taxation, they resented it even more for religious reasons.
To a Jew God was the only king; their nation was a theocracy, so to pay tax to an earthly king was to admit the validity of his kingship and thereby to insult God. The more zealous Jews insisted that any tax paid to a foreign king was equal to committing the sin of idolatry. Whichever way Jesus answers, he would be trapped by his enemies.
But Jesus being Jesus, asked to see a denarius, worth about a day’s wage and stamped with the Emperor's head in the same way our coinage is stamped today with the heads of dead presidents. In the ancient days coinage was the sign of kingship, and that coinage was held to be the property of the king whose image it bore.
Jesus then asked whose image was on the coin. The answer was of course that Caesar's head was on it. "Well then," said Jesus, "give it back to Caesar; it is his. Give to Caesar what belongs to him, and give to God what belongs to him” (Mat. 22:21).
Matthew then tells us that our defeated super-foe, “walked away speechless, shaking their heads” (Mat. 22:22). Other translations read, they were amazed or they were astonished.
I shared this story with the congregation at Grovetown Episcopal Lutheran Mission as a new series I’m calling, Gospel Ruminations, as a way for me to get participants’ in-person feedback on the Gospel lesson for the following Sunday (and thus help write my sermon). Think of it as a kind of call and response to scripture if you will. What they shared with me was fascinating, and what I believe to be the stuff of solid life application.
First, everyone agreed that nobody likes to pay taxes, especially taxes where nothing is gained, such as the tax in our story this morning, where all the proceeds went directly into Cesar’s pocket. We also discovered that the very topic of taxes is a hot button subject that is sure to draw various and different responses. Vexing indeed!
Second, we observed that Jesus’ answer was a both/and solution, “Give to Cesar what belongs to Cesar, but give to God what belongs to God (the two clauses forming a kind of contradiction). His answer here even resembles many of the holy mysteries of our faith, such as understanding the Trinity as three in one, distinctively different persons that make up the relationship of the one unified Godhead. Or to use another example, how predestination and free will are somehow both at work in our lives. These are holy mysteries that cannot be understood with the rational mind.
We deduced from this that Jesus followers seem to have a kind of dual citizenship, being a citizen of the particular country in which we live, as well as being a citizen of heaven. We find ourselves, on the one hand, called to be responsible citizens. In fact, failure in good citizenship is also failure in Christian duty. Untold troubles can descend upon our country when Christians refuse to take their active part in civic duty, and leave it to the selfish and self-seeking to run the country. The Christian has a duty to Caesar (or for us, to Uncle Sam) in return for the privileges which the rule of government brings to them.
Yet on the other hand, we are called to be citizens of heaven. There are matters of religion and of principle in which the responsibility of the Christian is to God and to God alone. It may well be that the two citizenships will never clash, for they do not necessarily need to. But when the Christian is convinced that it is God's will that something should be done, it must be done. In the same way if the Christian is convinced that something is against the will of God, they must resist, and take no part in it.
Our dual citizenship presents us with a prickly pear indeed, and falls into the theological category of the now, but the not yet. Now we are citizens of the United States where we have certain civic duties we must follow, yet, we are also raised to the heavenly places and seated at the right hand of God in Christ Jesus. As the Apostle Paul writes in his letter to the Galatians, “Set your minds on the things above, not on earthly things. For you died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God” (Col. 3:1-3).
The third application we ruminated on comes from an unfolding of Jesus’ astonishing answer in the face of his opponents, saying, “give to God what is his” (Mat. 22:21). I asked the folks at GELM the question, what belongs to God? The congregation responded, everything belongs to God. As the Psalmist declares, “The earth is the LORD’s and all that is in it” (Psalm 24:1).
This application takes us into the immense places of Jesus as the LOGOS, or the Word of God, which John tells us in the prologue of his Gospel, “that all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made” John 1:3).
I’ve always thought of the pre-incarnate Jesus as a kind of divine paintbrush by which God the Father creates creation, or as Paul writes in Colossians 1:15-17,
We look at this Son and see the God who cannot be seen. We look at this Son and see God’s original purpose in everything created. For everything, absolutely everything, above and below, visible and invisible, rank after rank after rank of angels—everything got started in him and finds its purpose in him. He was there before any of it came into existence and holds it all together right up to this moment.
If it wasn’t for the LOGOS (the Word of God, the Son of the Father, Jesus Christ) nothing would exist. This cosmic and glorious Jesus cannot be put in a box or caught in a religions trap by any mere mortal, for he is the fountainhead, the wellspring of life, or as we say in Compline, in his light we see light.
And this seems to me to be the most important takeaway from our Gospel lesson this morning: that we were created, redeemed, resurrected, and loved infinitely by God the Father in Christ Jesus. Well actually that is the Gospel Message. We know this Good News to be true because scripture bears witness and the Holy Spirit reveals it, in fact causes it to burn brightly within our hearts.
So as you hear the words of Jesus this morning, may you, unlike the Pharisees, walk towards and not away from Jesus. May you find yourselves today truly set free from the trap of Pharisaical religiosity, and truly AMAZED in the eternal love poured out into our hearts though Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
References:
Barclay, William. “William Barclay’s Daily Study Bible.” studylight.org.
Brown, Jeannine. “Commentary on Matthew.” The workingpreacher.org.
Lucas, George. “Star Wars Episode Six: Return of the Jedi.”
Peterson, Eugene. “The NIV/Message Parallel Study Bible.” Copyright 2008 by Zondervan Publishing, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
St. Augustine of Canterbury Episcopal Church. “Canterbury Tales.” The Twentieth Sunday After Pentecost.
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