Caesar's Coin and God's Abundance

Matthew 22:15–22 NRSV

15 Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said. 16 So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality. 17 Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” 18 But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? 19 Show me the coin used for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius. 20 Then he said to them, “Whose head is this, and whose title?” 21 They answered, “The emperor’s.” Then he said to them, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” 22 When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.

Entrapment. A false binary. All or nothing thinking. A ploy, an attempt to make Jesus slip up. We see this numerous times through the Gospels, where the keepers of the established religious order try to trip Jesus up and make him into the criminal they want him to become. He’s a threat to the order of things and his wisdom teaching is confounding and liberating all at once. He must be stopped.

This text can be read through many lenses and teach us in a number of ways about the relationship between what belongs to the Empire and what belongs to God. It’s about allegiance. It’s about where we put our money. It’s about our treasure and its relationship to the two kingdoms we abide in: Empire, and the Kingdom of God.

I’ve had the opportunity to preach on this text a few times in my career and I always find this interaction between Jesus and the Pharisees to be rich for reflection and wisdom. While most of us know the rules to refrain from bringing politics into a public discussion, the Pharisees go right for it and challenge Jesus to pick a side. Will it be allegiance to the Emperor, to Caesar? “Teacher, we know that you are sincere and teach the way of God in accordance to the truth" — so you better not align with the powers of the world when we ask this question.

Do you see the bind? Or at least the attempt at a bind?

Let’s get clear on the context of this passage: The people of first century Palestine were under occupation and administration of the Roman Empire. Rome had extended its reach far across the Mediterranean Sea, spreading the Pax Romana, the peace of Rome, through its military might and well-organized political structure. In Jerusalem, at the Temple, where this exchange is taking place, people would come from around the countryside and surrounding cities to worship and give back to God from the abundances they had recieved. The temple was a sight of this exchange (remember, Jesus was enraged by the money changers at the temple: they’re there to help assist people in keeping their ritual vows as God’s people…whether they were honest or trying to make a buck off religious devotion is another avenue for us to explore, another time).

In the context of being an occupied people, with foreign powers they are required to support through taxes, this question from the Pharisees is so very charged. There is not a correct answer, at least on the surface.

If Jesus says that the coin belongs to God, which would claim religious devotion as superior to following the law of the land, he could be seen as a dissident by the occupying Romans. Certainly, in the crowd, there would be Roman citizens and maybe even some of the occupying leadership.

But if Jesus says that the coin belongs to the Emperor, to Caesar, Jesus gets himself in a different kind of trouble. He risks alienating the faithful follows to the Jewish law, where money was given to support the temple and pay for the needs there. If Jesus says give the money to Caesar, he threatens to undermine the power of the temple leaders, something that will lose him favor among the people in a different way. He’ll be a sellout, not someone speaking the truth, not someone faithful to the law of God.

Jesus’ reply is as astonishing as it is profound. What does he say?

“Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

What?

“Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

Instead of playing into the trap, Jesus blows the whole thing wide open with a response that denies neither angle and, at the same time, clearly points to the way of God’s law as over-arching all things, including allegiance to a political regime or law.

Who does anything belong to?

I have to throw in a story from yesterday because it unnerved me and fits perfectly into this content.

Asher and I, with some of his buddies, drove up to Ferndale to the Bellingham Comicon. If you don’t know what a Comicon is, it’s a Comics Conference. At the Ferndale Events Center, hundreds of people gathered to buy and sell rare comic books, collectibles, cards, and games. People dress up in costumes as their favorite character and it’s generally a lot of fun. The kids love it. I love it. It’s a fabulous gathering of all the nerdiest people in Whatcom County. I feel so at home there. :)

Anyways…Rome, Caesar, Jesus, the coin...

So, there was a booth at the Comicon where they were handing out huge fake dollars. The kids walked by and the attendant exclaimed, “Hey do you want a million dollars?” And handed each kid a Million Dollar bill, with Ben Franklin on the front, lots of zeros, all looking like a real bill.

The kids loved this, because it’s a million dollars, right?

So, we walk on and I get a chance to take a look at Asher’s bill. I turn it over. And on the flip side, it’s a fine print, step by step story of the gospels and directions on how to be saved and know Jesus. It’s a tract.

If you’re not familiar with tracts, they are little books or pamphlets that share an abbreviated version of the Gospel on them, somehow hoping that by the reader going over it, they would come to accept Jesus and be saved.

Now, there’s a lot of theological stuff here that we could go into and wonder about, but the point I want to make about it is this:

The Million Dollar Tract is a ploy. It is taking Caesar’s coin and trying to flip it to subversively share the message of Jesus. But the hang up is that it’s using money, the image at least, to tantalize people. Where Jesus, in our text today, splits the divide between what truly belongs to God and what must be owed to Caesar, this ploy is something almost the opposite, at least in my mind. It is using the power of the Empire, money, to perform a bait and switch on unsuspecting people. I find it, humbly, to be in poor taste.

Jesus’ response to the Pharisees is not about cooption and marriage to the Empire. It is not about Caesar owning any part of us.

It is, instead, about how the material things, like money, power, possessions, privilege, how all of those things are a part of an economy set up to keep the powerful in place and assign value to one’s monetary contributions over and above our true belonging in God’s family, God’s economy. It’s about setting right priorities about what we possess AND it’s a recognition that while the Empire will always want the people to feel need and scarcity, which keeps the established powers in their right order.

In the way of Jesus, the Kingdom of God, we participate in a very different kind of orientation to our possessions, our allegiances, our belonging. We proclaim a way of abundance, that God always provides enough for what we need.

We are a part of such a different economy. We share, we embrace God’s abundance for and with each other. We give Caesar his coin and we live off the rest, blessing one another, giving back to our neighbors in need. We have more than enough.

We give us. The parts of us that can never be bought or convinced. The parts of us that are not satisfied with the powers and principalities that overshadow and oppress. We give our selves to this, because what else is there to give it to? In Christ, we embrace a legacy of connection and the pursuit of making whole what is broken. We do this by giving up what we have to each other. We live in Caesar’s world, but Caesar cannot have our heart, our desire, our soul. And so what we give, what we put ourselves to — it belongs to the Holy One, above all things and in all things.

How does this extend to the public spheres we live in? Our politics, our families, our work?

When we think of the wars currently in full movement today…what does the Christian do in such times? What is Caesar’s, the powers of the world that we live within; and what belongs in God’s abundant way?

God’s way would lead to cessation of violence, right? That this world has enough for us all. That we can all coexist, co-belong, and honor one another. We heard this last week as Jeff spoke on the way that God loves our cultures and celebrates our diversity of identities. So in God’s abundant way, we would seek the end to violence against anyone, Jew or Palestinian, Ukrainian or Russian...

The Caesar’s of the world wants us to pick sides. Caesar wants us to commit our coins and our identities to an allegiance that will ultimately rob us of ourselves. Caesar wants to help us find an enemy to blame. Caesar speaks to us of scarcity, not-enough, that leads us to hold onto what we have and fight for it.

But in God’s abundance, in God’s design and purpose for humanity, isn’t it about something else? Something of healing, something of commonality, something of enough?

Caesar will continue to make demands of us. We will be taxed. We will vote. We will pay into the health care system. We will abide by the laws of our world. Not because we belong to these things, but because as disciples of Jesus, we move through the world not needing to belong to the structures that we find ourselves in, but participants in a much grander story — a story of more, connection, enough, abundance.

Pair this, of course, with the words of Jesus, who invites us to come as we are, weary and heavy laden, and find rest. To lay our burdens down. To lay what we have down, entrusting it all to Christ. It makes foolish the ploys of the world. God’s economy eschews our power dynamics and blurs the lines of what is rightly the possession of the empire. God’s economy, the economy of abundance, says there is enough for us all and that shalom, the peace of God, can and will reign and heal our divisions.

And so, today, what do we do with this?

First, we give Caesar his coin. We subvert the powerful by abiding by their laws, all the while knowing that we are bound to something else.

Second, we practice liberation for others, helping each other see that there is enough, that we have each other’s backs, that even when we give away our coins to Caesar, as oppressive as that can be, we are set free in community with one another because we share, we collaborate, we support each other. We care for the orphan and the widow who do not have enough today. We share of our bounty when we have it. We do things like eat a big meal together, knowing there is enough for us all and that all are welcome at the table, coins or not. (By the way, that’s a plug for our Deacon’s lunch downstairs after church — come, partake in the plenty of your Christian community, no strings attached).

And we go out into the world and do what Jesus does: we subvert these powers and use them, see what I said there, use them to empower and lift up those in need, here and now. It all belongs to God. And God has enough, abundance, to cover us all.

Caesar, take your coin. It never belonged to me and it never really belongs to you, either, even though you claim it. We belong to the Creator of All Things, the God of Abundance and Grace. In Christ, there is enough.