Matthew 22:15-22
Henry David Thoreau is best known for two things: his year living on Walden pond, and his night spent in jail. The first inspired a small book, the latter an essay titled “Resistance to Civil Government,” though it is more commonly referred to as “Civil Disobedience.” The contested matter was several years of poll tax that Thoreau refused to pay, objecting to the Mexican-American War and to the continuing evil of slavery. It might have been more than one night had not someone paid the tax on his behalf but against his will.
Thoreau was not the first tax resistor in history, nor would he be the last, and I am not talking about the assault weapon-toting anti-government lunatics associated with states like Idaho and Texas. During the latter years of the Cold War, and again during the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, faithful progressives found ways to avoid paying their taxes. While I was sympathetic with their causes, that was never really an option for me. As a disabled Army veteran, I receive money from the Federal government every month, so they’d just deduct what they think I owe.
Admittedly, there are moments, like now for example, when I am not aligned with our government’s priorities and wish that I could place my tax money in escrow, as if the Federal government were a delinquent landlord. Most of the time, however, I’m actually happy to pay my taxes. I know it sounds silly, but I like things like fire trucks and public schools and health inspectors.
Taxes were a big deal in Galilee and Judea in the time of Jesus. The idea of taxes themselves was not the problem. Though there was always a certain amount of grumbling about corruption in the Temple, people generally offered both money and agricultural products, from bread and beer to whole lambs, to maintain the sacrificial cult. Even Jews in the Diaspora paid a Temple tax.
Taxes paid to Rome were another matter altogether.
This is part of the stink that hangs about Matthew, the disciple called from his tax collecting table. A Jew collecting taxes for Rome was seen as a traitor, cooperating with the enemy. To make matters worse, tax collectors were commonly understood to be corrupt, taking their own cut of the proceeds.
And Roman extractions did not stop with coin. If your village was ordered to provide a certain amount of barley and failed to do so, your leaders would be murdered, your homes would be burned to the ground, and you would be sold into slavery, all as a warning to the next village on the list.
This is the setting for today’s reading, a test of the position of Jesus in relation to resistance to Rome and re-establishment of an independent kingdom.
And I’m going to suggest that there is more than one way to read the story
First, there is the interpretation with which we are most familiar. “Render unto Caesar” reflects the separation of church and state, and the obligation of the Christian to obey civil government. We hear about the wall between church and state all the time, much like the wall between faith and business.
Neither of these would have made any sense during the time of Jesus. In fact, they would not make any sense for a millennia and a half after the execution of Jesus. Muslims charged a non-believer tax, the jizya. Jews were often forced into ghettos, but were useful for their business practices. Christians imposed a state religion, murdering or driving out theological diversity. Religious freedom is a product of the 16th century, and even today, is still not universal.
The sects of pre-Rabbinic Judaism were as much political factions as they were religious. They mostly believed in a restored Davidic kingdom. The only question was how that was to come about, a continuum from armed resistance to heavenly intervention.
The Jewish prophets spoke about all aspects of life, the diplomatic conduct of kings, the unethical behavior of merchants, the personal fidelity of the Abrahamic people.
It is exactly this idea that religion is a thing and real life is a different thing that has been the source of so much trouble.
When peasants, inspired by the Protestant Reformation, decided to throw off feudalism since they were already throwing off popes, Martin Luther aligned himself with the nobility, and crafted the doctrine of two kingdoms, church and state, basing his thinking on Paul. But Paul expected his Roman citizenship to protect him. It didn’t. And Paul expected the Second Coming of Jesus and the re-creation of the world as God’s just and caring realm to happen soon. It didn’t.
The legacy of Martin Luther’s Two Kingdom can be seen first in the slaughter of those peasants in 1525, then again in the German Christian movement’s nationalism, in the complicity of nominal Christians in the Holocaust, a horror that targeted not just Jews, but also the profoundly disabled, queers, Roma, and many others.
“Render unto Caesar” cannot be an endorsement of the Roman occupation as a permanent state of affairs in the time of Jesus.
Another option is the key phrase “render unto God what is God’s.”
Think, again, of the prophets.
Through them, God repeatedly says the same thing. “I don’t need your sacrifices. I just want you to stop being jerks to one another.”
God says, “If I wanted a bull, I’d take a bull. Everything is mine anyways.”
If we render unto God what is God’s, what is left for Caesar?
These are wildly different ways of reading the same text, and since all of these stories were written down long after the actual events and we have nothing in Jesus’s own hand, we have no way of knowing what is true. But it wouldn’t be much of a multiple choice exam if there were only two choices, so let’s consider a third.
The gospel says the Pharisees, conspiring with the Herodians, sought to trap Jesus. The trap is that any answer Jesus gave would make someone mad. Endorsing payment to the Roman Empire would anger many Jews, especially the poor who followed Jesus and were being crushed by Caesar’s taxes. It would be treason to the Jewish cause to endorse paying Caesar. Endorsing a tax boycott would be considered an act of insurrection against the Empire. Those Roman soldiers were not in Galilee and Judea to enforce alternate side of the street parking for donkeys.
The third option is that Jesus knew it was a trap and refused to take the bait. Mark, the earliest extant gospel, says that he knows their hypocrisy. Luke calls it craftiness, while in our reading from Matthew it is called malice.
And just to add a little context, the Mosaic Law we typically call the Second Commandment bans graven images. During the few years of Jewish independence under the Hasmonean Dynasty, the images on coins were symbols or plants, never human or even animal. Those testing Jesus were more than willing to violate this prohibition when it came to using Caesar’s coins, the silver denarius that featured a bust of Tiberius with the words “Tiberius Caesar, son of the divine Augustus” on one side, and a seated female figure on the other, with the words “High Priest.”
Maybe the answer to the question posed by the Pharisees is that he does not answer. Or better yet, he gives what looks like a non-answer, but that contains Answer B on further reflection, everything is God’s. Because maybe he’s clever like that.
What is the correct answer? Who knows? We don’t even know for sure if this actually happened, though it feels like it has historicity to me, both in the context of a populist movement leader from 1st century Galilee and in its ambiguity.
Given this lack of certainty in the text itself, any modern certainty in interpretation says more about the interpreter than it does about Jesus. Those who teach this as a blanket endorsement of a particular government receive some very real privilege under that government, and would happily teach the opposite should they lose that privilege, refusing to “render unto Caesar.”
I would love a life of easy answers. I would love to give you easy answers. That just isn’t how the world works most of the time, and I am just smart enough to know what I don’t know, honest enough not to pretend.
Heck, I might not even preach this sermon the same way the next time this story comes up in the Lectionary, should I choose it for the sermon text.
But I can help provide some historic context, share with you the history of interpretation, place it in tension with our modern problems. The rest is up to you. May you have the spiritual practice necessary for the journey, and a heart open to all that belongs to God. Which, by the way, includes cattle, coins, and you. Render away.
Amen.
PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE concluding with the Lord’s Prayer
Let us pray.
Most Amazing God,
we evolved as social creatures,
millennia of learning and transmission
of culture and science,
at each step expanding our circle of connection,
our circle of care.
We need first responders in our local communities,
regionally and even internationally
as crises exceed the capacity of one group,
especially in this time of human-made climate disaster.
At our best, we work together,
funding governments that seek the common good.
Grant our civic shepherds wisdom and patience.
Grant us enough wisdom
to rid ourselves of the narcissists and sociopaths,
that we might work with You
to create a just world for all.
While the elite collaborated with empire,
Jesus fed and healed and preached revolution.
We pray as he taught us, saying:
Our Father