Pentecost 21

May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

SEASON: Pentecost 21
PROPER: 24A
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: October 17, 1999

TEXT: Matthew 22:15-22 -The Great Effort at Entrapment
Then the Phariusees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said . . . . "Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor or not?" . . . . Then he said to them, "Give therefor to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are god's."

ISSUE: The signficicant issue of this passage is that the Pharisees and the Herodians are attempting to entrap, dishonor, and essential eliminate the influence of Jesus. In response Jesus challenges their genuine allegiance to doing the will of God, and making every genuine effort to please God. The passage often mistakenly used as a text for keeping church and state separate was never an issue at Jesus' time. Yet whether or not we truly, genuinely, live our lives in an effort to please God is still the concern of the scripture for us today. Adoration and praise of God along with giving and thanksgiving are part of our calling. Living godly lives of caring with sensitivity to human need is an important ingredient of human life. But the world does tend to "squeeze out" our attentativeness to God with many worldly and selfish distractions.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The gospel passage from Matthew's account regarding the paying of taxes to Caesar was a very sensitive and hot issue at the time Matthew records this story. It was also a very important story of the early church as it is recorded all of the synoptic gospel accounts, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. To fully appreciate the passage requires us to keep in mind what was essentially going on in the story account. We can get very caught up in whether it was appropriate to pay taxes to Caesar, and people equate this with the modern issue of separation of church and state. That's an interesting debate, but not what this passage itself was concerned about. The main issue of this story is that there was a very definite movement to entrap Jesus and to discredit him among the people. To publicly raise the issue of the appropriateness of paying taxes to Caesar and putting Jesus on the spot as this question does put him in a very dangerous position in this attempt to answer it.
Lets consider some of the background, and the issues in Jesus time that are a part of this event. The pharisees and some Herodians come to Jesus to put the question to him. The first thing that they do is to set him up with all kinds of flattery. They address his sincerity. He is indeed an honest man, in what was a very dishonest world. He shows deference to no one, and he cares nothing about what people think. (That was not really true. Jesus raised the issue "Who do the people say that I am?") The pharisees and the Herodians place him high on a pedestal, and then pose a question to him that they are sure will bring him down with a great fall: "Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor or not?" The question implies is it in accord with the Torah (the Law) of God's people to pay tax to a foreign pagan government.
Keep in mind that taxes in this period were exhorbitant, and the head tax in question in this passage was a full day's wage for poor peasants. The day they pay the tax, their families don't eat that day, not to mention many other taxes and tolls that were levied. It is also significant that the pharisees, religious leaders team up with the Herodians when they ask this question. The Herodians were the opposing part of the pharisees. Pharisees resented and hated foreign rule and domination. The Herodians were people supported King Herod who was a puppet king of the Romans. Thus, two opposing parties team up to entrap Jesus and to challenge his honor among the people. If Jesus says "Yes" to paying the tax, he will alienate himself from the masses of peasants. The pharisees will challenge him, because the Torah and the commandments called for a total allegiance to God alone. If Jesus says "No, it is not appropriate to pay taxes to Caesar," then the Herodians would report him, and he would be arrested and condemned for sedition, rebellion, insurrection. This question was really loaded. It might be seen as one of the most vicious attacks by the authorities up to this point. It was a really challenge to Jesus and a significant threat to his honor in that community.
(Let me also insert here that when Matthew is writing this passage, it was after the Jerusalem Temple had been destroyed, and there was great hate of the Romans, so this whole issue of submission and allegiance to Rome was still a very hot issue for the early Christian church community. How were they to deal with the hated enemy? St. Paul too struggled with this issue, and wrote in romans 13 that world authorities had to be respected. But in Col 2:10, Paul writes that Christ is superior over all authority.)
Jesus was an artist at meeting the challenges of the pharisees and ususally ended up humiliating and insulting them. The only except to that, remember, was when the Caananite woman asked him to heal her daughter, and Jesus had said that he came only for the house of Israel, and it was not appropriate to give the childrens' bread to the dogs. She replied stumping Jesus with the challenge: Don't the dogs get to eat the crumbs that fall from the master's table. Other than that one incidence, Jesus has always come out ahead in his riposte against the pharisees. So in this case what does he do?
Jesus calls for the pharisees who've asked the question about paying the head tax, to produce the coin used for paying the tax. They do. It is a big mistake on their part, and it is their first humiliation. For them to possess the coin is their first humiliation. The coin had the image of Tiberius Caesar on it with the inscription: Tiberius Caesar, Augustus, son of the divine Augustus, high priest. What were the pharisees doing with a coin that bore the image of a Caesar who was considered to be a god? They may have gotten it from the Herodians, but why were the pharisees associating with the unclean Herodians and their Roman coinage? Obviously they are hypocrites. Jesus sort of rubs their noses in that point. Some of them are not so pure as they try to pretend to be. He has humiliated them in fron of the the crowd.
Jesus second point of humiliation is when he says: "Render or pay back to Caesar (the emperor) the things that are Caesars, and pay back to God the thing that are God's." The clear and insulting implication is that the Herodians and the pharisees are not giving to God, the honor they should be giving God. They are all, all of those people gathered there, utterly amazed at his triumph in this very tricky situation. It was a very serious charge that Jesus lays on the Herodians and the pharisees, those religious leaders, that they are not pleasing God. The issue is to be pleasing to God, and they are according to Jesus not doing that very thing. Here is where they are lacking.
What is it that Matthew is trying to tell us in this story when he relates it to the early church? The world is trying to entrap Jesus and to squeeze him out. What was it that Jesus was trying to tell the world? Jesus was certainly trying to reveal the wonder of God, the grace, the love, the healing, the forgiveness of God. Incorporating the loveliness of God into themselves was to be their way of life. Jesus was raising the issue of whether or not people were honoring God in their lives. Do they really love the Lord God with all their heart and with all their mind, and with all their strength . . . . or are they allowing themselves to become distracted by all of the other distractions and things of the world. Give to the world what you owe the world, but the bigger and greater issue is to Give to God what you owe God. How do you respond to the grace of God.
Last weeks parable of the Wedding Feast was concerned with the fact that the King is throwing a grand party and feast, but many in those invited did not appropriately respond. they are busy with other worldly things. One man who gets invited doesn't dress up in an appropriate response to the great invitation. They don't put on the new garment that says God is first and foremost in my life. What does anyone owe God? More, of course, than we could ever repay. But the passage asks us to consider how do we respond to God, and how important is the way of God in our lives.
God gives to us the gift of life. We live and breathe and are consciously aware of all that is around us. We have skills, the ability to reason, talents in varying degrees. We are given challenges which adds dimension and vitality to life. We have a freedom of response to what is given to us. We are assured through our faith of the love, the forgiveness, the mercy and compassion of God. That's all spelled out in both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. How then do we respond in such away that we expresses thanksgiving to God that has some vitality to it? Life and saving grace are given. How do we respond to the gift in away that extends, that continues to convey, that exhuberates the joy or the gifts of God? I can't quite find a word that express how you accept God's love, and then live a life that responds appropriately or that is resonant with, or that is a song of God's praise and adoration.
One response is to just give up and to live in the world. Just paying homage to Caesar, to the world. Another response to God's gifts to us is bound up in just trying to be righteous in a way that becomes pharisaical. It's like raising the question: Is it lawful to be a homosexual, or to ordain a homosexual? The church gets itself all involved in this one issue focused on one group in society. Yet, righteous heterosexuals fail to acknowledge their own terrible problems with marriage, the outrageous promiscuity that permeates in real life and on TV, and adultery that abounds around us. We focus on other people without seeing our own faults. Mercy, understanding, compassion get squeezed out, in the way that pharisees and Herodians tried to squeeze out Jesus, and how the priority of a compassionate and merciful God gets squeezed out. Jesus was so desperately saying, I think, that we have to live in the world and we do pay Caesar, but we are also God's, and we have to learn how to live into the fullness of God as well.
We live in a world where there are expectations being place on us all the time. We do have to pay our taxes. We are expected, at least we have been in the past, to serve in the military. We have the demands of family, work, children, social responsibilities. But how do we set God into all that. Do we pray enough, study, enough, worship enough" Do we keep focused on God and the Christ so that our judgments and our moral stance, coupled with God' mercy and compassion keep appropriately in balance. The life of Christ was a life closely associated with God, the Abba, the intimate Father. His life was a giving sacrificing, compassionate life. It touched and touches the world in a profound and significant way. May God help us to keep our priorities appropriately arranged so that we are both enveloped in and extentions of God's redeeming grace.