Matthew 22:15-22 NRSV
15 Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said. 16 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. 17 Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?" 18 But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, "Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? 19 Show me the coin used for the tax." And they brought him a denarius. 20 Then he said to them, "Whose head is this, and whose title?" 21 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." 22 When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.
Matthew 22:15-22 is a pronouncement story on tribute to Caesar. The source is Mark 12:13-17. The context in Matthew is that this incident becomes the first of four test questions Matthew presents us in 22:15-46. For Matthew, the crucial factor is not the substance of the controversies, but the fact that the Pharisees and other leaders are seeking to discredit Jesus because they perceive him as a threat to their authority.
In this case, 15 Then the Pharisee who strictly obeyed Torah and sought to have a good relationship with the political realities contained in being part of imperial Rome, went and plotted to entrap him with a deceitful and deceptive question in what he said. 16 So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, people who wanted the continued reign of Herod in Palestine. These groups do not come to Jesus with an innocent inquiry concerning the opinion of Jesus. Rather, they want him to choose a side in a controversial political and religious controversy. They even prepare the way with flattery. Saying "Teacher,” or rabbi, a title he did not earn through proper educational channels but earned through his public teaching. However, his questioners want to challenge the validity of the title. “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.” They use such truthful statements for perverted purpose, that of setting up Jesus, baiting him to engage in divisive controversy. 17 “Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful (according to Torah) to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?" To pay the tax was submission to the political reality. To refuse was to engage in treason from a political point of view. Refusal subverted Roman authority. Leviticus 25:23 forbids the sale of land to outsiders, for it belongs to God. Caesar usurped by force the Holy Land. Discontent with Roman rule led to the refusal of people to pay the tax. The deception behind the question becomes clearer when we realize that religious leaders helped to collect the tax (Josephus, Jewish War, 2.403-5).
One element of this episode to which I direct your attention is the skill with which Jesus does not take the bait to involve himself in a fruitless controversy. Many people have honest questions about life and God. Jesus welcomes such questions. Sometimes, however, our questions are not so honest. Beneath the question are often selfishness and a desire to protect our interests. Yet, even if badly motivated, such questions reveal a deeper need than we know. We have a need for someone to reveal to us our attempts to deceive and accuse others, as well as remove the defenses we have against the truth challenging us. Today, many of us could learn from Jesus the importance of not taking the bait. Baiting people one suspects to be an opponent seems to have become a popular technique. Baiting is a way to draw the other into an angry disagreement and avoid civil discourse. Baiting draws you into a power struggle rather than genuine conversation from which mutual learning can occur. The power struggle can be as simple as showing yourself to be in possession of knowledge or logic the other does not have. Baiting has the goal of escalating a matter into a crisis. Getting people into a power struggle is a way to manipulate people and situations to get what you want. People doing the baiting want to engage the power struggle debate in order to avoid doing something. If they succumb to the one doing the baiting, they discover that no explanation will satisfy questions. Such baiting is often a way of inviting us into a hurtful and painful dialogue, rather than a potentially therapeutic one. The reason is that the other is trying to do something with their words. Philosophers of language would call this a performative use of words. What they want to do will vary, but it often involves some variation of showing their superiority over you. If you do not take the bait, you can ignore the question while not ignoring the person. People baiting you may not even be aware of how much they have revealed themselves in their attempts. They have revealed a hurt, pain, and anger that does not need the deepening and expansion that taking the bait would mean. Rather, they have revealed their need for healing. They have revealed a deeper level of need that the one at the receiving end of the baiting needs to have enough perception to notice and to re-direct the conversation for the good of both.[1] To move a conversation forward with healing and growth will mean engaging people who look at the world differently from us with dignity and love. It will mean thinking the best of those with whom we disagree, even while acknowledging the darkness in them that has led them to bait us. We need to learn from this episode not to be the one doing the baiting of the other or to take the bait offered by the other. The other is a person and a neighbor. Superficial divisions like skin color, income bracket, political affiliation, sexual orientation, gender, nationality, or religion ought not to become an occasion for throwing stones at each other. Learning to build bridges will be a far more helpful conversation than succumbing to the bait. Most of our social discourse already has enough hurt. It might be time for some people to refuse to take the bait.
To return to the episode, 18 But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, "Why are you putting me to the test, something Satan did in Matthew 4:7 and his opponents did in 16:1 and 19:3, you hypocrites? He exposes their hypocrisy by saying,19 “Show me the coin used for the tax." And they brought him a denarius. Since they had the coin, they expose themselves as accepting the political reality of Roman domination. They work with that reality by helping Rome to collect the tax. Careful observance of Torah would have forbidden handling the coin, let alone aiding in collection of the tax. The prohibition against the “graven image” in Exodus 20:4 would have forbidden handling such coins. Along with the image, the words on it might have been “Tiberius Caesar, Son of the Divine Augustus.” Their question has behind it an attempt to undermine any prestige and authority Jesus had built up among the people. Their reason for questioning Jesus is concern for their continuing authority and prestige among the same people.
The response of Jesus, upon first reading, is unfulfilling to most of us. 20 Then he said to them, "Whose head is this, and whose title?" 21 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." Such a non-answer hints that all those who use the coin receive benefits by participating at some level in the Roman system, so they owe something to Caesar. We who participate in the economic, political, and cultural order have some obligation to support it through paying our taxes. Government prints money for its purposes. Money has various images upon it that make it clear that the country considers it valuable. Recognizing such human claims is important for us to live in this world. God has placed us in this social world. The social system of financial exchange, laws, political life, economic life, military life, and civic life do have a claim upon us. We receive much benefit from these arrangements. Through taxation, we experience in quite personal ways the claims of our social world upon us. Yet, that obligation invites us to consider the role of wealth and money. This leads me to the second lesson I find in this episode. Jesus does not answer the question. We want to know which side of the political and religious divide he stands. Does Jesus support Jewish separation from Rome or even rebellion? Does he think they should pay the tax? We do not know. He does not tell his contemporaries what to do. He refuses to side with a political agenda. He does not satisfy our curiosity. What belongs to Caesar? What belongs to God? His saying has a puzzling wit about it that invites us to ask further questions as an internal conversation. It redirects our questioning to the authority of God in our lives.
Could it be that, as with many of the sayings of Jesus, the point is to stimulate an internal conversation that makes us uneasy? We need to determine for ourselves what belongs to the emperor and what belongs to God. He at least hints that such matters are insignificant when we are discussing political and economic arrangements. They are not necessarily at odds with each other, but we do need to keep them in perspective. We ought not to use obligation to God to avoid obligation to the political and economic arrangements in which we live. Do not use perceived obligation to God as a convenient escape from your obligations to the political, economic, and cultural order in which you live and on which you depend. We might tease out of the saying something more if we play with the notion of an image. All the emperor asks is to return to him the coin he made. You, as listener and reader, bear the image of God (Genesis 1:26). You belong to God. The emperor does not own you. God owns you. That which belongs to the emperor is insignificant in comparison with that which belongs to God, that is, your very self or soul.
I offer a word from Henry David Thoreau taken from his little book, Civil Disobedience:
Christ answered the Herodians according to their condition. "Show me the tribute-money," said he; -- and one took a penny out of his pocket; -- "If you use money which has the image of Caesar on it, and which he has made current and valuable, that is, if you are men of the State, and gladly enjoy the advantages of Caesar's government, then pay him back some of his own when he demands it; 'Render therefore to Caesar that which is Caesar's and to God those things which are God's' -- leaving them no wiser than before as to which was which; for they did not wish to know."
Today, most of us not being so concerned with taxes, other than the inconvenience of the amount, a pressing question along similar lines is something like: to which political ideology do you subscribe? To ask this question of Jesus is to answer it. We Jesus found his allegiance to his Father so significant that any other allegiance was a secondary matter. Yet, Christians today who have made such commitments want some assurance that Jesus with them. Jesus evades this question, not because it is unimportant, but because something is of much greater importance. Regardless of where your political loyalties reside, does God have your full allegiance and loyalty? Are we playing games theologically and spiritually, keeping our preferred political tribe happy with us rather than pleasing God? When you ridicule and express anger at those who have differing political loyalties than you do, have you revealed where your true allegiance lays? When you call your political opponent fascist, Nazi, white nationalist, is it possible that you have revealed the depth of your commitment to your ideology, a commitment that you do not have to God? The intensity with which a Christian may hold to a political ideology may well reveal a deeper theological and spiritual issue than the person may feel comfortable facing. We too would like to draw Jesus into our controversies and make him decide, but Jesus wisely wants to turn the tables around and prod us toward re-evaluating the standards by which we think and live.
22 When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.
Of course, the episode raises the matter of taxes. Paul struggled with the notion of taxes as well, siding with the expedience of paying the tax (Romans 13:1-7).
Other matters interest me today. A third lesson from this episode involves the history of interpretation. This episode has provided opportunity to reflect upon the relationship between church and state. For Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon, this saying became part of the biblical support for the notion of two kingdoms, one spiritual and one secular. One focuses on the gospel and the other focuses on human institutional life, such as work, family, political and economic arrangements, and cultural values. Both realms belonged to God and thus serve divine purposes, one cared for life on earth and the other for life in eternity.
A fourth lesson, also from its history of interpretation, is that the episode has provided an opportunity to reflect upon civil disobedience.
The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority. --Martin Luther King Jr., Strength to Love (Fontana, 1972), 62.
Here is a citations from one who knew something about civil disobedience: Mohandas K. Gandhi:
Jesus evaded the direct question put to him because it was a trap. He was in no way bound to answer it. He therefore asked to see the coin for taxes. And then said with withering scorn, "How can you who traffic in Caesar's coins and thus receive what to you are benefits of Caesar's rule, refuse to pay taxes?" Jesus' whole preaching and practice point unmistakably to noncooperation, which necessarily includes nonpayment of taxes.
A final lesson we can tease out of this episode is the spiritual danger of our attachment to money. We who participate in the economic, political, and cultural order have some obligation to support it through paying our taxes. Yet, the obligation invites us to consider the role of wealth and money. When Jesus said to his opponents, “Show me the money,” he revealed their reliance upon the system. One can find a lot of meaning in money. Maybe these reflections should lead us to re-consider the role of money in our lives. Let us explore the passage in that light.
Many persons witness to the dangers of money. Bob Dylan once said, “Money doesn’t talk, it swears.” Another witness is from Henrik Ibsen.
Money may be the husk of many things but not the kernel. It brings you food, but not appetite; medicine, but not health; acquaintance, but not friends; servants, but not loyalty; days of joy, but not peace or happiness.
Yet another witness:
Who steals my purse steals trash—
‘tis something–nothing,
‘Twas mine, ‘tis his, and has been slave to thousands—
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him
And makes me poor indeed.
—William Shakespeare, Othello: Act 3, 3, 159–164; lines spoken by Iago
Jesus prods his contemporaries to re-think their relation to God, to Rome, and to money. In his book A Stewardship Scrapbook, William R. Phillippe notes that the Reformer John Calvin taught that material goods are instruments of God.
“Money becomes the means God uses to help persons. So God put wealth at our disposal … so that we may organize our life and the life of our community … to bring shalom, the fullest possible, sustainable life for all persons everywhere … to organize the society in which we live in a responsible way, in solidarity with all others. But Calvin also warned that the devil brings sin among us, and we become selfish and ingrown and try to insulate and isolate ourselves from the community. Thereby, we negate the good values of our money. We then come to idolize our money and give it a place it should not have, so that it becomes divine and has power over us.”
We often become selfish and protective when it comes to our questions about the relationship between our money and our faith. We think of wealth as belonging to us. We might like a separation between what we do with wealth and what we do with the claim of God upon us. However, government prints money for its purposes. Money has various images upon it that make it clear what country considers it valuable. Recognizing such human claims is important for us to live in this world. God has placed us in this social world. The social system of financial exchange, laws, political life, economic life, military life, and civic life do have a claim upon us. We receive much benefit from these arrangements. Through taxation, we experience in quite personal ways the claims of our social world upon us. Yet, viewed in another way, such claims are insignificant. We possess things, but only for a brief time. The wealth we have used to belong to someone else. After we die, it will belong to someone else. Such human claims are temporary. We ought not to invest much worry over such claims.
Here is the question we need to answer. God has made everything that exists and called it good. Everything God created declares the glory of God. In a distinct way, God has marked human beings with the image of God. Ownership of this world is in the hands of God. Each of us belongs to God. This reminds me of the sentiment expressed in a hymn by William H. How in 1864:
We give Thee but Thine own,
Whate’er the gift may be;
All that we have is Thine alone,
A trust, O Lord, from Thee.
It also reminds me of the sentiment in the chorus, “We are an Offering,” by Dwight Liles in 1984:
We lift our voices, we lift our hands
We lift our lives up to You
We are an offering
Lord use our voices, Lord use our hands
Lord use our lives, they are Yours
We are an offering
All that we have, all the we are
All that we hope to be
We give to You, we give to You
The claim of God is upon creation and upon each human being. The question each of us must answer with our lives is whether we will live in a way that acknowledges the claim of God upon us. If we give to God what already belongs to God, we acknowledge the true owner of everything that exists.
[1] Bruce, Michael. "Don't take the bait! Philosophy and / of power struggles." Psychology Today, February 1, 2011, psychologytoday.com. Retrieved March 25, 2017.
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