10/19/14
When I was in my twenties, I was having dinner at a friend’s house - I’d known him and his parents all my life - and somehow it came up in conversation that, as a voter, I was registered Independent. My friend’s father politically very active, with very strong opinions, and he looked at me with incredulity and said, Why are you registered Independent? I said that, in all good conscience, I didn’t think I could align myself with the principle of either party. And with considerable exasperation, he said, It’s not about principle. It’s about the acquisition of power.
I remember that I couldn’t stop myself from laughing at that, at such a bald expression of disbelief that anyone could think otherwise. I suppose he forgave me for being young.
As we head into the final two weeks of the current election cycle, with all the noise around it that gets louder every day, it’s a particular blessing that the lectionary gives us this gospel story to remind us of something essential, about what politics is, and what it’s not. The story occurs as part of the final confrontation between Jesus and the Pharisees, whose power Jesus threatens.
The Pharisees look pretty pathetic from the beginning in this story. They don’t confront Jesus themselves, but send their disciples instead; they have evidently told the disciples to butter him up first, in which they are patently hypocritical: (“We know you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one” – this is overselling); and they send along as allies people who are their natural political enemies: Herodians; that is, supporters of King Herod, the Roman puppet ruler: these are people who have power through the Romans.
But most pathetically of all, they don’t ask Jesus a question to which they really want an answer: it’s not about principle, it’s about the acquisition of power. They just want to trip him up, they want him to get himself in trouble, and they come up with a question designed to do just that. They ask him, Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not? This is not a question about taxes in general: Jews in first century Palestine paid a number of taxes: temple taxes, land taxes, customs taxes. They’re talking about taxes paid to their Roman occupiers. And by asking if it’s lawful to pay those taxes, they mean is it in accordance with the law of Moses, the Torah. They’re asking, are you a faithful Jew, a covenant person, if you pay taxes to the Romans?
This was a very hot political question at the time. The tax they’re asking Jesus about was a head tax, a census tax: every Jew between the ages of 12 and 65, male and female, slave and free, had to pay to the Romans an annual tax of one denarius (Not a lot of money: this was approximately a single day’s wage for a laborer.) The vast majority of the population, the common people, didn’t like the tax, because they didn’t like anything connected to Roman rule, and over the years of the Roman occupation that feeling sometimes boiled up into open revolt.
This is why the Pharisees have Herodians – supporters of Roman rule - along on this little mission: they think Jesus will get into trouble no matter what he answers. If he says no, it’s not lawful to pay tax to the emperor, he gets in trouble with the Romans; if he says yes, he gets in trouble with the common people who despise the Romans and who have been Jesus’ main source of support from the beginning of his ministry. So they think it’s a win-win for them.
Jesus’ answer to the question is famous – or, at least, people think they know it well. He calls for a coin, a denarius, which is the one used to pay the tax; asks, whose head is on it; and, when told it’s the emperor’s, says, Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.
These words have been interpreted in slightly varying ways: that God and politics should be kept separate, and things like taxes have nothing to do with the life of faith; or that religion is a matter of the heart, and Jesus doesn’t care about mundane things like what we do with our money; or that the law is the law, and our duty as Christians is to support the law under all circumstances. I know of one well-respected contemporary writer, not a Christian but who’s smart enough to know better, who says that, with these words, Jesus “shrugs”, as if to say, Why is this a problem? As though the two realms, that of emperor and that of God, were clearly separate and clearly defined, as clearly as the time that we spend in church is distinguished from the rest of our week. (Which, unfortunately, is true for a lot of people.)
None of this could be further from the truth. None of these interpretations get it right. Earlier in the gospel of Matthew, Jesus clearly states, No one can serve two masters: you cannot serve God and wealth. In today’s story, he reminds his hearers of who their real master is. When Jesus calls for the coin, he asks, Whose head is this, and whose title? The emperor Tiberias’ title, engraved on every denarius along with his likeness, is this: “August son of the divine Augustus, high priest”.
Divine. That should be a red flag to anyone who believes in God (certainly any believing Jew would react to this.) Jesus is reminding his hearers of the law’s prohibition against idolatry; he is reminding them that there is one who is divine, and no one else; he is reminding them, as I said last week, of whose world it is.
This story is not about the separation of church and state. Jesus is not providing us with a means of understanding the rules of the different realms of our lives. There is only one true realm: the kingdom of God; how can it be otherwise? There are plenty of other mini-realms, by which we humans attempt to imitate that one which we all inhabit; but these mini-realms are all human creations, which means that at some point, they’re going to break down. And when we try to live by them alone, and put the realm of God aside, we are deluding ourselves, we’re living in falsehood.
Jesus is not telling us either to pay our taxes, or not to pay our taxes. He’s talking at a far deeper level than that of our politcal leanings. He is saying, What does your existence as a member of the kingdom of God, the one true realm, ask of you now, today? That’s the question. Then decide if it applies to your taxes.
I’ll give you an example of what I’m talking about, from fairly recent history.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor/teacher/theologian, was a young man in Germany during Hitler’s rise to power; he was a leader of what was known as the Confessing Church, a coalition of Protestant churches which arose in opposition to Nazism. Under Nazi totalitarianism, there was a very distinct separation between church and state, and it was brutally clear which one of them held the power. In the late 1930’s, just before the war, Bonhoeffer was sitting with a friend in an outdoor restaurant when a table of Nazis stood and began singing a Nazi song. Times being what they were, everybody else in the restaurant gradually stood up and joined in. Bonhoeffer got up along with them and began to sing as well. His friend was shocked, and said to him, What are you doing? Bonhoeffer said, We have more important battles to fight. He knew that by not standing and singing, he would be shining a big dangerous light on himself, and thereby would be putting himself and his movement at greater risk than was necessary.
Five years later, Bonhoeffer was arrested for his part in a plot to kill Hitler, spent a year and a half in jail, and was eventually executed. In both instances – first acting falsely, as though in sympathy with the Nazis, and then attempting to break a commandment in trying to kill their leader – Bonhoeffer was giving to God the things that are God’s, and giving to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s.
When Jesus answers the Pharisees’ question as he does, he puts the responsibility on us, as he does throughout his ministry. That’s the point. Jesus is always raising the bar, ethically. He doesn’t take us off the hook by identifying separate realms of human loyalty: he reminds us that there is one commitment that governs all others. And this is a joyful commitment – one we can embrace – because it’s a commitment that doesn’t bind us: it sets us free. This is the respect that God gives us, that is God’s love. When we give to God the things that are God’s, we’re living in the real world; we’re living in the truth. Let us keep that always foremost. Thanks be to God.
When I was in my twenties, I was having dinner at a friend’s house - I’d known him and his parents all my life - and somehow it came up in conversation that, as a voter, I was registered Independent. My friend’s father politically very active, with very strong opinions, and he looked at me with incredulity and said, Why are you registered Independent? I said that, in all good conscience, I didn’t think I could align myself with the principle of either party. And with considerable exasperation, he said, It’s not about principle. It’s about the acquisition of power.
I remember that I couldn’t stop myself from laughing at that, at such a bald expression of disbelief that anyone could think otherwise. I suppose he forgave me for being young.
As we head into the final two weeks of the current election cycle, with all the noise around it that gets louder every day, it’s a particular blessing that the lectionary gives us this gospel story to remind us of something essential, about what politics is, and what it’s not. The story occurs as part of the final confrontation between Jesus and the Pharisees, whose power Jesus threatens.
The Pharisees look pretty pathetic from the beginning in this story. They don’t confront Jesus themselves, but send their disciples instead; they have evidently told the disciples to butter him up first, in which they are patently hypocritical: (“We know you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one” – this is overselling); and they send along as allies people who are their natural political enemies: Herodians; that is, supporters of King Herod, the Roman puppet ruler: these are people who have power through the Romans.
But most pathetically of all, they don’t ask Jesus a question to which they really want an answer: it’s not about principle, it’s about the acquisition of power. They just want to trip him up, they want him to get himself in trouble, and they come up with a question designed to do just that. They ask him, Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not? This is not a question about taxes in general: Jews in first century Palestine paid a number of taxes: temple taxes, land taxes, customs taxes. They’re talking about taxes paid to their Roman occupiers. And by asking if it’s lawful to pay those taxes, they mean is it in accordance with the law of Moses, the Torah. They’re asking, are you a faithful Jew, a covenant person, if you pay taxes to the Romans?
This was a very hot political question at the time. The tax they’re asking Jesus about was a head tax, a census tax: every Jew between the ages of 12 and 65, male and female, slave and free, had to pay to the Romans an annual tax of one denarius (Not a lot of money: this was approximately a single day’s wage for a laborer.) The vast majority of the population, the common people, didn’t like the tax, because they didn’t like anything connected to Roman rule, and over the years of the Roman occupation that feeling sometimes boiled up into open revolt.
This is why the Pharisees have Herodians – supporters of Roman rule - along on this little mission: they think Jesus will get into trouble no matter what he answers. If he says no, it’s not lawful to pay tax to the emperor, he gets in trouble with the Romans; if he says yes, he gets in trouble with the common people who despise the Romans and who have been Jesus’ main source of support from the beginning of his ministry. So they think it’s a win-win for them.
Jesus’ answer to the question is famous – or, at least, people think they know it well. He calls for a coin, a denarius, which is the one used to pay the tax; asks, whose head is on it; and, when told it’s the emperor’s, says, Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.
These words have been interpreted in slightly varying ways: that God and politics should be kept separate, and things like taxes have nothing to do with the life of faith; or that religion is a matter of the heart, and Jesus doesn’t care about mundane things like what we do with our money; or that the law is the law, and our duty as Christians is to support the law under all circumstances. I know of one well-respected contemporary writer, not a Christian but who’s smart enough to know better, who says that, with these words, Jesus “shrugs”, as if to say, Why is this a problem? As though the two realms, that of emperor and that of God, were clearly separate and clearly defined, as clearly as the time that we spend in church is distinguished from the rest of our week. (Which, unfortunately, is true for a lot of people.)
None of this could be further from the truth. None of these interpretations get it right. Earlier in the gospel of Matthew, Jesus clearly states, No one can serve two masters: you cannot serve God and wealth. In today’s story, he reminds his hearers of who their real master is. When Jesus calls for the coin, he asks, Whose head is this, and whose title? The emperor Tiberias’ title, engraved on every denarius along with his likeness, is this: “August son of the divine Augustus, high priest”.
Divine. That should be a red flag to anyone who believes in God (certainly any believing Jew would react to this.) Jesus is reminding his hearers of the law’s prohibition against idolatry; he is reminding them that there is one who is divine, and no one else; he is reminding them, as I said last week, of whose world it is.
This story is not about the separation of church and state. Jesus is not providing us with a means of understanding the rules of the different realms of our lives. There is only one true realm: the kingdom of God; how can it be otherwise? There are plenty of other mini-realms, by which we humans attempt to imitate that one which we all inhabit; but these mini-realms are all human creations, which means that at some point, they’re going to break down. And when we try to live by them alone, and put the realm of God aside, we are deluding ourselves, we’re living in falsehood.
Jesus is not telling us either to pay our taxes, or not to pay our taxes. He’s talking at a far deeper level than that of our politcal leanings. He is saying, What does your existence as a member of the kingdom of God, the one true realm, ask of you now, today? That’s the question. Then decide if it applies to your taxes.
I’ll give you an example of what I’m talking about, from fairly recent history.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor/teacher/theologian, was a young man in Germany during Hitler’s rise to power; he was a leader of what was known as the Confessing Church, a coalition of Protestant churches which arose in opposition to Nazism. Under Nazi totalitarianism, there was a very distinct separation between church and state, and it was brutally clear which one of them held the power. In the late 1930’s, just before the war, Bonhoeffer was sitting with a friend in an outdoor restaurant when a table of Nazis stood and began singing a Nazi song. Times being what they were, everybody else in the restaurant gradually stood up and joined in. Bonhoeffer got up along with them and began to sing as well. His friend was shocked, and said to him, What are you doing? Bonhoeffer said, We have more important battles to fight. He knew that by not standing and singing, he would be shining a big dangerous light on himself, and thereby would be putting himself and his movement at greater risk than was necessary.
Five years later, Bonhoeffer was arrested for his part in a plot to kill Hitler, spent a year and a half in jail, and was eventually executed. In both instances – first acting falsely, as though in sympathy with the Nazis, and then attempting to break a commandment in trying to kill their leader – Bonhoeffer was giving to God the things that are God’s, and giving to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s.
When Jesus answers the Pharisees’ question as he does, he puts the responsibility on us, as he does throughout his ministry. That’s the point. Jesus is always raising the bar, ethically. He doesn’t take us off the hook by identifying separate realms of human loyalty: he reminds us that there is one commitment that governs all others. And this is a joyful commitment – one we can embrace – because it’s a commitment that doesn’t bind us: it sets us free. This is the respect that God gives us, that is God’s love. When we give to God the things that are God’s, we’re living in the real world; we’re living in the truth. Let us keep that always foremost. Thanks be to God.