"Render unto Ceasar"

The Rev. Paddy Cavanaugh, October 22, 2023

Readings: Ex. 33:12-23 (Moses wants to see God’s glory), 1 Thess. 1:1-10, Matt. 22:15-22 (Render unto Caesar)

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, amen.

If you had been contemplating tax evasion – or pledge evasion – this morning, the Gospel lesson may have complicated these plans for you. Today we hear the famous ‘render unto Caesar’ passage in Matthew, as it is translated in the King James Bible. The situation presented to us is this: the Pharisees come to Jesus and pose a question to him in bad faith. The question is whether it is lawful for faithful Jews such as themselves to pay taxes to the Roman emperor. Now, why is paying taxes for them a problem? Their problem is not the obvious financial inconvenience of taxes. Observant Jews at the time had no issue with the notion of taxes in general. Every adult Jewish male was expected to pay a modest tax for the work, worship, and upkeep of the Temple, that functioned much like our pledge to support the ministries of our parish today. Rather, the issue with paying Roman taxes was the moral dilemma of whether or not it was in their interest, as a colonized people, to pay taxes to their colonizers. Because the Roman empire had taken over the region of Palestine in the 1st century by use of military force, which, in a sadly familiar situation, resulted in much religious and political conflict.

So in essence, the Pharisees pose the question to Jesus of whether or not to pay Roman taxes in order to force him into two possible wrong answers. The first wrong answer would be to say yes, we as Roman subjects ought to obey the law of the land and pay our taxes to Caesar. This answer would have rendered him a traitor to his own people. The Jewish tax collectors who levied exorbitant fees from their own people on behalf of Rome were reviled as betrayers of the highest degree.

The second wrong answer would be to say no, we as a colonized people ought not to willfully participate in our own economic exploitation by our colonizers. While this answer would have been popular with many in the Jewish community, it would have rendered him an insurgent in the eyes of the Roman state, which would have landed him, well, where he ended up eventually anyway – crucified on a cross. 

But Jesus did not come to die for us to deliver us from taxes. Instead, Jesus gives one of his most clever and profound responses in all of the Gospels. Jesus first asks the Pharisees for a denarius, the standard coin used to pay taxes (Matt. 22:19). Now the Roman denarius was much like our coins today, like this quarter. On its side was the face of the reigning emperor, Tiberius, who was the son of the famous emperor Caesar Augustus, and Caesar Augustus had been officially deified – or declared Godlike – by the Roman empire for his exploits. So to say that the current emperor, Tiberius, was the son of the divine Augustus, as the coins did, was essentially equivalent to saying that Emperor Tiberius was the son of god. And this, of course, is blasphemy – hubris in the highest degree. Ironically it is the same charge of blasphemy that would be leveraged to have Jesus – the true Son of God – to be crucified later on.

So Jesus directs the Pharisees’ attention to the likeness of Tiberius, the supposed son of god, on the coin to make his poignant case that we are to “give therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.” (Matt. 22:21) In this one simple line Jesus, both avoids incriminating himself, and makes a sophisticated political and theological statement about how we are to order our obligations to the state and to God.

You see, this language of likeness, which he uses in regard to the coin, is the key to understanding what Jesus is saying when he says render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and God what is God’s. When asking the Pharisees whose likeness is on the coin, Jesus uses the Greek word eikon, which means image, or likeness. It is the same word we still use for the holy icons of Jesus, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the saints that we see in churches today. Icons, or images, are not the actual thing depicted, but they are likenesses which point us to the essential nature of the thing they represent. But more importantly, Jesus uses this word eikon, or likeness, to draw a parallel between the things created in the image of Caesar, namely his money, used to facilitate the economy of a false God – and things created in the image of the true, living God. The Greek translation of the Old Testament uses the same word eikon, likeness, when describing the creation of humankind. The first chapter of Genesis states that “God created humans in his image, in the image of God he created them.” (1:26-27) 

We – you and I – are icons of God. We bear God’s likeness and, despite our faults, our very being points to the goodness and love of God in creation. And so in light of this, Jesus is telling us that we are to give back to God that very thing that is given to us, our lives and all that they contain. We give back to God what is given to us because we are made in the image of a God who is giving. A God who gave us our lives and who gave us his only son to die for the sake of our lives. It is our nature to give because giving is inherent to God’s nature, and we are made in the image of God. Our bodies, lives, and livelihoods are the currency by which God’s holy economy of love is made real.

Our lifelong practice of giving our all to God also frees us from the self-serving desire to enthrone ourselves as God, as Caesar did. Because Caesar’s economy is still thriving and mesmerizing us today. It is the economy of unfettered accumulation, self-interest, and the exploitation of labor and natural resources. The currency of Caesar’s economy, the thing that bears his likeness, is… coins. Shiny, pretty objects, that are useful – but are valued only their use, for their ability to get us the things that we want. So give them, Jesus says. Give the things that Caesar, or the IRS, wants, and do not miss them. Some will be used well, for the welfare of the people, and some will be misused, for the hungry wants of empire. 

But God’s want, God’s hunger, is for us, not because we are useful objects, but because we bear God’s loving image. This message of God’s unqualified love for us, regardless of accomplishments and merits is a bedrock of our children and youth ministry – from the toddler atrium to EYC – because we know the world will be selling a much different message.

The currency of God’s economy is the mutual giving and sharing of love in whole human lives, modeled most purely in Jesus’s self-emptying act of dying to give us life.

When Jesus says we are to render unto God what is God’s, he means giving up all that we are – and I promise this is not just a sneaky stewardship appeal. Though our material resources are important for supporting mission of God’s church, what God really wants is us. God desires our hearts and minds, our fears and prayers, our pains and joys, and our time, and our love. Why? Because God loves us, and wants us to love him and love one another. Our acceptance of God’s love and our practice of giving it up in imitation of Christ reorients us to the reality that God’s love, engrained in our image, is the currency of the true kingdom. The one where God’s true son reigns in glory. 

So as we prepare to receive Him into our hearts this day, may his love prepare us to give up our hearts. For they too, belong to God. Amen.