No witticisms this time; on with the thing!
Matthew 22:15-22; 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10; Psalm 96:1-13; Isaiah 45:1-7
There’s a lot going on in our gospel lesson this week. Jesus just finished making the Jewish leadership quite upset at him, and they’re not getting ready to trap him. Now, in just the second verse of the gospel, things get really interesting. The Pharisees and the Herodians both come to Jesus with a question. This is weird. The Pharisees were quite nationalistic, and highly opposed to the Roman occupation. The Herodians, on the other hand, were the collaborators. They used the Roman occupation in order to further their own position. Understandably so, the two groups did not like each other very much. Yet Jesus was enough of a threat to them that they sought each other out to trap him.
So they come to Jesus rather sneakily. “Honored Teacher!” they say, “We know that you are an honest man and you teach the truth about God, not what people want you to say, and you don’t treat one person any different than any other. We have question for you: Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” Doesn’t the whole thing just feel slimy, especially when the text says they were trying to trap him?
Now Jesus, being the son of God and therefore rather clever, says to them, “You hypocrites! You’re just trying to trap me. Does anyone have a denarius on them?” So someone reached into their purse and grabbed one, and gave it to him. “Whose picture and inscription is on the coin?” “Caesar’s” was the reply. See this is where things get really cute; Jesus says, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”
This is a great answer for the situation. He doesn’t make Rome too mad; he doesn’t make the Jews too mad. Unfortunately, at the same time, it causes some other issues. First, what is Caesar’s? Obviously the coin, because he commissioned it to be minted. So, if you have a Roman coin and are living in Roman lands, pay the tax. That’s simple enough. But, what is God’s?
That’s the more complicated issue, which is made even more complicated by the utter simplicity of it. Let me give you a few quotes: Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth;” Psalm 24:1, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it;” Matthew 28:18, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to [Jesus];” Revelation 4:11, “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being.”
Shall I go on? The whole world “belongs” to God. He gives it to people to take care of it, but it’s still His. There’s the complicated in Jesus’ statement: “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”
Now there’s really two ways we have to think about this to process it. The first is in line with other passages, especially in Paul’s writing, about how to deal with secular authorities. Jesus recognizes the obligations we have to secular governments, and as Christians we are called to fulfill those obligations. Does anyone like taxes? No, but we should pay them if that’s what is expected of us. We’re to submit to secular authority, insofar as it does not directly conflict with our own submission to God, as we are submissive to God first. (Reference Romans 13:1-7, Acts 4:19 and surrounding, Acts 5:29 and surrounding, and 1 Peter 2:13 and following.) Thus, “give to Caesar what is Caesar’s.”
The second is messier, but really only because of its scope, and I hinted at it when talking about the first. How do we deal with God’s authority? Lutherans have something called the “two kingdoms doctrine” that tried to deal with this. I will always remember this, because part of my certification interview for LCMC involved the question, “How did the two kingdoms doctrine fail during the mid-20th century?” It basically says that God ordains a spiritual government, through the Holy Spirit, to lead people to follow Christ and a secular government that, in Luther’s words, “restrains the unchristian and wicked so that they are obliged to keep the peace outwardly.” In essence it separates how God rules into these two ways, and the two oughtn’t overlap. Now for the curious, this failed because the National Socialist German Workers’ Party’s used this doctrine to help establish its legitimacy in the second quarter of the 20th century, and, with a few notable exceptions, the Lutheran church in German bought it, but that’s just for the curious.
Back to the topic at hand. We’re to give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and submit to secular authority, and give to God what is God’s. Now, in prepping for this sermon I ran across an interesting statement from Tertullian, a Carthaginian theologian from the early 3rd Century. He writes, “[give] the image of Caesar, which is on the coin, to Caesar, and the image of God, which is on man, to God; so as to render to Caesar indeed money, to God yourself. Otherwise, what will be God’s, if all things are Caesar’s?”
As it says in Genesis 1, we were created as God’s image. So what ought we, as God’s image, do except give ourselves to God. Next week’s gospel continues this theme while exploring the greatest commandment, but God should be the first priority in our lives. If He isn’t, we’re likely in some mighty fine trouble. And really, our challenge and call as Christians is to always give God what his already his own, our very lives.