Sermon for October 19th Our Gospel reading tells us that the Pharisees and the Herodians attempted to trap Jesus by asking him a trick question about whether or not it was acceptable to pay taxes to the Romans. It is one of the most well-known bible passages, and Jesus’s response is similarly famous, “Render to Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and to God that which is God’s” (I still prefer that translation). Since the last time I preached on this I have learned a couple of things that I believe really enhances the tension implied in the moment. Besides just the notion of paying taxes to an oppressive occupying power, the issue in this case is what was implied in the use of the coin. As would be revealed when Jesus asked whose image was on it, it contained an image of the emperor’s face. As a historical development, this was new. Coins were usually minted with an emblem symbolic of an empire, Roman coins usually depicting the Roman eagle. To put a human face on a coin had not been done, until that is, there came a new idea that the emperor was divine. Most of us know that the Romans believed their emperor was divine; however, we may be assuming too much here, that this was a long standing accepted pagan belief, one which we can easily cast aside as primitive nonsense. However, what I learned was that the concept of viewing the emperors as divine was, relatively speaking, brand new, and in fact quite controversial, not only in Israel, but in Rome itself. Born in 63BC, Gaius Octavius didn’t become Caesar Augustus until 27BC when he consolidated his power by defeating the forces of Antony and Cleopatra (think back to Elizabeth Taylor movie … Roddy McDowell played Augustus). But even then he only took the title ‘Divi Filius’, which means ‘Son of the Divine’, and was not declared actually divine himself until after his death in 14AD. Moreover, in the environs of Rome itself there was always hostility to the emperor, with memories of the old Republic strongly in the minds of the citizenry, which led to retired military officers, those most likely to lead a revolt, being encouraged to live far away from Rome itself, such as at Philippi, where Paul founded one of the early churches. It also meant, and this was truly news to me, that the further away from Rome you went, the more quickly there grew a “cult of the emperor”, as those seeking to prove their allegiance or seeking advancement, such as Pontius Pilate, would want to align themselves with the new ruling regime, that of the emperor, as opposed to the old boy network of old Roman society. Enter this group in our Gospel called the Herodians. Herod the Great, the wicked Jewish king who sought to destroy the infant Jesus and who authorized the murder of all the newborn Jewish males in Bethlehem, was also one of the sycophants who tried to cajole favor from Caesar Augustus. He had built not one, but two temples dedicated to Augustus, one at a brand new city, not surprisingly named Caesarea, in which the temple included a massive cult statue of Augustus which looked to anyone with eyes to see exactly like Zeus. This would be where Jesus would later take his disciples, point out the very statue in question, and ask them, “Whom to men say the Son of Man is?” followed by the more personal, “Who do you say I am?” These questions about statues and coins were, therefore, current events, brand new, and totally controversial. The Herodians had cast their lot by not only cooperating with the emperor, but by encouraging his cult to coexist (maybe they even made bumper stickers) with Yahweh worship in Jerusalem. The Pharisees, on the other hand, as I hope we all remember, maintained that the Jews should honor only God, that to even hint at ascribing divinity to the emperor would be the utmost blasphemy, and so the very fact that these two groups, who let’s be clear, hated each other’s guts, would come together to trap Jesus is telling; because we should know going in that they themselves would answer the question in diametrically opposed ways, the Pharisees screaming “no”, while the Herodians saying “yes”. The trap was quite simple; if Jesus said “no”, the Herodians could have him arrested for sedition, but if he said “yes” the Pharisees could have him tried for blasphemy. Before we get to his answer, we should remember that he already addressed these questions, in two separate actions, each one pricking the consciences of each group. First, we remember that he expelled the moneychangers from the temple, cleansing it from the taint of worldliness, reminding those present of the spiritual importance of God’s house of prayer, but doing so in a way that was clearly a politically subversive act. But second, there is the rarely discussed story, found only in Matthew, in which Jesus’s disciples were asked if he paid the “temple tax”. St. Peter asked Jesus about it, and Jesus asked him, “What do you think? From whom do kings of the earth take toll or tribute, from their children or from others?” Peter answered, “From others”, and Jesus responded, “Very well, then the children are exempt; however, so that we do not give offense to them, go to the lake and cast a hook; take the first fish that comes up, and when you open its mouth you will find a coin. Take it and give it to them for you and me”. How many of you are familiar with that story? As I said, it is not well known and rarely discussed, and for an obvious reason, I think. Many see it as an embarrassing example of an obviously legendary tale made up later and which somehow snuck its way into the official record of the Gospel, but which because it is so ludicrous, cannot possibly be true, and to regard it as such brings the believability of the entire story into question; and so ignore it, or try to hide it. However, I would ask you one question? Did the gospel every say that Peter actually did this? Could it be that Jesus was simply making a point, that it’s not about magic, but rather that paying the tax is such a trivial matter that the means for dealing with it will be provided to you by God’s providence? Could he have been saying that God did not command them to pay it, but pay it anyway? Could the outrageous silliness of the example itself be Jesus’s satirical commentary on the neurotic intensity that people place on insignificant questions of debate? And so we come back to a different coin, one which Jesus asked to see, as he asked the Pharisees to show him a coin used to pay the tax. They gave him a denarius, which we have found was used by Jesus in his parables (two of them in the past four weeks), and which represented one day’s worth of wages. Then he asks the question, “Whose head is this?”, and we all know the answer, “Caesar”. Now we should note something important here. The coins used in the Temple as the “temple tax” had no pictures of humans on them; the denarius was used only for secular commerce. At this point alone Jesus could have claimed victory, since this conversation took place within the Temple boundaries where simply carrying a coin with a pagan image would be considered idolatrous; and the fact that the Pharisees were in possession of a denarius there was itself an indication of their hypocrisy. We know Jesus’s answer, “Render to Caesar that which is Caesar’s and to God that which is God’s”. We know that it showed his remarkable skill in avoiding the trap, in turning the momentary allies back upon themselves where they could resume their enmity to their corrupted hearts’ content, and that it left them unable to defeat Jesus in any way short of eventually seeking his murder. But is that all? Is the story one simply of Jesus being too slick for his enemies, and the point that our faith is simply the most nuanced and cool? Of course not; we might want to think about the whole notion of the “image and likeness” that was stamped, not on a coin, but on a soul, our soul. We look back at the Old Testament reading from Exodus. We are told there that after the people of God had broken God’s commandment against making idols by worshiping a golden calf, God had actually threatened to no longer be with them or go with them on their journey. Thus, in today’s text, Moses pleads with God. How can anyone know that God had been with them if God leaves? How else can we fulfill our mission? Stay with us! Show us your glory! We want to see you! We know of the 2nd Commandment, “Thou shalt not make any graven image”. We know how seriously the Jews took the idea that God is infinite, and no image could ever represent him. Moses implores, “Show me your glory”, and God, replies, “I will make all my goodness pass before you … but you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live”. But then in way that speaks more of tenderness than of thundering, God places Moses carefully in a safe place, the cleft of a rock, then covers Moses protectively with his hand, and allows him to glimpse his back. Looking at the face of the emperor on a coin, Jesus was aware that the Scriptures said that no one could see the face of God and live. Yet it would not be too long before St. Paul would tell us that this was only because the face of God had not yet been shown to us. In 2nd Corinthians he would write of Jesus, “For it is the God who said ‘Let light shine out of darkness’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus”. In case we didn’t catch it the first time, he then said in Colossians that Jesus is “the image of the unseen God, the firstborn of all creation, for in him all things in heaven and earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers; all things were created through him and for him”. It is the actual face of God that speaks the words, “Give to the emperor the things that are the emperors and to God the things that belong to God”. And the usual response is to then examine the relationship of church and state, to acknowledge our dual citizenship, one foot in this world, one in the other, perhaps highlighting and even encouraging a further split between the physical and spiritual world. I’d like to challenge this by encouraging us to go deeper. Just as the coin presented to Jesus was imprinted with an image, we have been imprinted, as we have been made “in the image and likeness of God”. The emperor minted many coins, but they were made from the same mold and all looked the same. God, however, created many human beings in the Divine image, and yet not one of them looks exactly like each other. The endless variety of humanity, its diversity, if you will, reflects the infinite power of God, whereas the limitation of the emperor’s power was manifested in the sameness of the imperial coins. We can go one step further. If we are to “give God what belongs to God”, and if we are made in the “image of God”, and if we “are reborn in him who died and rose again for us”, we are encouraged to look into the face of each other and see the face of Jesus. In fact, if you Google the following phrase, “Seeing the face of God in each other” you will find something amazing; it has one hit, and that is that it is the title of the Episcopal Church’s official manual on anti-racism training. Seeing the face of God in each other calls us to put away the notion of the other as fundamentally different, or alien, or dirty, or hostile. In fact, it challenges the very notion of what it means to spend our currency, to view a coin as simply a way of exercise power, through commerce, buying and spending, seeing people as commodities. Seeing the face of God in each other says that when we “render to God” we are not so much consumers choosing how much of the pie we can buy, but rather that each of us has inherent value and God gives us the power, as Jesus said in another parable, to “go do business on behalf of the king”. Our church’s focus on the far too often unexamined assumptions we make and inequalities that exist because of human-made systems calls us to look deeper at how we relate to each other. It is not simply about race. It is not simply about feeling bad about the past. It is not simply a question about a coin and a political debate in a dead empire centuries ago. It is about living life, making decisions, exercising power, and recognizing who we are, what we are worth, and how we are to do business with each other. “Rending to God what belongs to God” is serious business, because we are in possession of precious currency, human souls. Amen.
Posted on: Mon, 20 Oct 2014 03:24:01 +0000
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