The 29th Sunday of Ordinary Time, October 18, 2020

The Feast of St. Luke

Matthew 22:15–21

I am home from retreat.  The flights came and went on time and on the final leg I had a window seat and no one sitting in the seat next to me.  I’m very tired, but ready to resume my work.

The Pharisees went off and plotted how they might entrap Jesus in speech. They sent their disciples to him, with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are a truthful man and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. And you are not concerned with anyone’s opinion, for you do not regard a person’s status. Tell us, then, what is your opinion: Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?” Knowing their malice, Jesus said, “Why are you testing me, you hypocrites? Show me the coin that pays the census tax.” Then they handed him the Roman coin. He said to them, “Whose image is this and whose inscription?” They replied, “Caesar’s.” At that he said to them, “Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.”

“Teacher, we know that you are a truthful man and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. And you are not concerned with anyone’s opinion, for you do not regard a person’s status.”  The Pharisees and the Herodians know this is not true of themselves, and do not therefore think it true of anyone.  This is precisely why they think they can trip up the Lord Jesus with the question they are about to ask.  Still, despite themselves, they do speak the truth about the Lord: he was a truthful man teaching the way of God in accordance with the truth, and who was not concerned with anyone’s opinion.  So many of us and so many of our teachers and authorities calculate and measure out our opinions and positions based not on truth but on what others will say or do in response.  Our bishops, for instance, seem to employ whole banks of public relations people who write out scripts for them to deliver.  Whenever there is a need for them to speak out, their remarks are sculpted and polished as though meaning and sincerity has been quite prohibited.  But most of us do this as well, whether at work, for fear of losing our jobs, or in other public places, for fear of losing friends or positions of trust.  Now, we must be prudent in how we deliver the truth so that we speak it without hope of personal gain or out of a desire to hurt someone, but whether we speak in a whisper or shout from a rooftop, we need to speak the truth, and the truth needs to serve God.

“Tell us, then, what is your opinion: Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?”  The problem here was not the paying of money.  Paying this tax meant an acceptance of Rome’s rule.  The Pharisees certainly grumbled against it, while the Herodians, whose legitimacy depended upon Roman support, supported it.  Ironically, the Pharisees who squirmed under Roman rule and thought of it as standing in the way of a new, restored Kingdom of Israel, would later show their obeisance to it in bringing the Lord Jesus before the Roman procurator Pilate.  Pretended sincerity always comes out in the open.  A lie is a very hard thing to keep alive.

“Show me the coin that pays the census tax.”  Interestingly, Jesus calls for one of them to show him a coin, rather than to have Judas, who held the common purse, give him a coin.  This also shows the hypocrisy of his questioners: if they rejected the Roman tax, they would also reject the Roman coins, Roman currency.  They would not touch it.  “Whose image is this and whose inscription?”  The Lord acts as a teacher of children here.  He begins with the very fundamentals: What is this everyday thing that I have in my hand?  What does it look like?  Where does it come from?  Whose is it?  The mention of the image on it may remind us that the Jews were forbidden by the law from making any “graven image”.  In fact, we do not have depictions of people made by the ancient Israelites.  Statues or other images exist of the great Assyrian and Babylonian kings, of the Egyptian pharaohs, of great and even humble Romans.  But there are no contemporary portraits of Kings David or Solomon, and no portrait of the Lord Jesus made during his lifetime — not even a bit of description of him in the Gospels.  The Lord may have intended to warn the Pharisees of their coming exposure as hypocrites in this way.  At this point they should have taken their cue from the incident involving the woman caught in adultery and suddenly melted away.  They were about to get caught in their own snare: “He has opened a pit and dug it; and he is fallen into the hole he made” (Psalm 7, 15).  

They replied, “Caesar’s.” At that he said to them, “Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.”  If Caesar’s image is on the coin, then it is his coin, and rendering it back to him does not morally affect or implicate the giver.  We also think of the Lord saying, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasure on earth . . . but lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven” (Matthew 6, 19-20).  The possession of money does not advance a person in grace.  Jesus, by treating Caesar’s coin and his image with contempt in this way shows up the Pharisees as those who pay attention to “a person’s status”.  The Lord answers them by saying, How is this even a question for you?  And by telling them to pay “to God what belongs to God”, he implies that they are not doing this.  

We must be men and women of integrity, worthy of respect but uninterested in having it.  And we must also recognize that what we lawfully give to “Caesar” here, that is, to our rulers, pales in comparison with what we should be giving to God.  We have to keep in mind during these days of political acrimony that we cannot subvert what belongs to God by giving it to Caesar.  We cannot vote for politicians supporting abortion, for instance, and think that this is a purely legal matter.  When political or legal opinion conflicts with God’s law, the Christian does not work against God’s law.  The Christian sees that the question posed to Jesus is also posed to us.  Do we give ourselves to Caesar, or to God?