The Teaching: Risking Challenge

Matthew 22:15-22, CEB

15 Then the Pharisees met together to find a way to trap Jesus in his words. 16 They sent their disciples, along with the supporters of Herod, to him. “Teacher,” they said, “we know that you are genuine and that you teach God’s way as it really is. We know that people’s opinions do not sway you, because you don’t show favoritism. 17 So tell us what you think: Does the Law allow people to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” 18 Knowing their evil motives, Jesus replied, “Why do you test me, you hypocrites? 19 Show me the coin used to pay the tax.” And they brought him a denarion. 20 “Whose image and inscription is this?” he asked. 21 “Caesar’s,” they replied. Then he said, “Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.” 22 When they heard this they were astonished, and they departed.

INTRO

This week, we are continuing our Lenten Journey to “enter the passion of Jesus” together. As Rev. Dr. Marcia McFee reminds us, “Throughout the six weeks of Lent, we will “freeze-frame” moments in Holy Week so that we might put ourselves in the picture, thereby ‘Entering the Passion of Jesus.” On Ash Wednesday, we began by preparing the canvasses of our lives. We named the busyness in our lives that drives us to see life as happening around us rather than to us. We committed to slowing down and being intentional as we enter Christ’s passion. 

Next, we framed up Palm Sunday and the parade. Examining the division among the parade participants, we asked ourselves if we would join in. If so, we asked ourselves what we would risk to join Christ’s ongoing parade in the world. Last week, we continued the journey as we paused and framed up the temple. We asked ourselves if we and the church would stand by and be complacent in the world around us or if we were willing to risk righteous anger to stand up for the least, the last, and the lost in the world. We continued to ask ourselves, “What will you risk for the sake of the mission of Jesus Christ?” This week, we will continue as we frame up the teaching.

This morning, let’s again take a moment to slow down. Close your eyes, take a deep breath, [pause], and breathe out. Take another deep breath, [pause], and breathe out. Now, take a moment and imagine a world where your life revolves around only two things:  family and politics. Yes, you heard that right. Your family and politics are your whole life. What you talk about, worry about, and your life revolves around are only family and politics. As you look around the table, what body language do you see? Do you hear the deep sighs that often come with political talk? What emotions do you feel? [pause] Open may your eyes. I don’t know about you, but those two things can cause a lot of contention in our families. Amen? And if those are the two most prominent things in your life, how do you connect the two? What do you use to bridge the gap between family and politics? How do you make sense of your life in light of your family and politics?

In our Gospel lesson this morning, that is exactly what is at work in the question posed to Jesus. For those in Jesus’ time, religion functioned as “an overarching system of meaning that unified political and kinship systems (including their economic aspects) into an ideological whole. It served to legitimate and articulate (or delegitimate and criticize) the patterns of both politics and family.” As those questioning Jesus approached him, they attempted to ask Jesus to bring it all together. Take their political realities, take their family life, and bring it together with religion. Tell us what to do about taxes!

This task of living out dual allegiances is difficult for the teachers of the law, and while this is a trick question of sorts because, according to the legal experts, one cannot follow Judaism’s religious practices, its teachings, and its mandates for kinship and align themselves with Roman’s rule of law, its also a genuine question that they have and continue to wrestle with themselves. Priests and religious leaders work alongside their counterparts in the government only when necessary. This is why two groups come to Jesus as they strive to hold the line of allegiance to one or the other. Here, the priest and the governmental leaders pose a genuine question that is also meant to trap Jesus. It is still a valid and real question that both groups wrestle with. At the same time, it is meant to challenge Jesus.

I remember that, in seminary, one brilliant student always spent the whole semester thinking through the class. At the end of the semester, with all the theological language they could muster up, they would ask a question. The question was genuine, yet it also was meant to try and “outsmart” or trap the professor. This is what is at play in our scripture lesson this morning. The potential risk to the teacher is just a little different. If Jesus answered one way, the Herodians, the supporters of the Roman government, would hold Jesus in contempt. If Jesus answers another way, the disciples of the Pharisees will see him as failing his religious duties. If Jesus supports the tax, he is bound to lose some of his support from the general population as taxation is not only an economic burden but a symbol of lost freedom, which stands starkly against the celebration of the Passover feast, where the people gather to remember God’s liberating power. 

The question begins in a very interesting way. The two groups who question Jesus form an alliance of the political and the theological. On the surface, the question seems to be very political, “Does the Law allow people to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” From a political standpoint, it is clear what the law of the land states. Yet the Herodians team up with the Pharisees. Their question is not about the Law of Romans. They ask about the Law found in the Old Testament. Leviticus says, “The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine (God’s).” 

So, they phrase the question theologically, knowing that Jesus’ followers were listening; they are the ones farming the land, the ones whose farm had been given to them generations ago by God, and those who believe that God retains ownership of their land, not the Roman Empire. So the question becomes, “Should one have to pay taxes to use that which belongs to God?” 

Jesus' response was different from what either group had expected. Jesus asks to see a coin that is used to pay for the taxes. Now, when Jesus asks for this coin, he knows two things. First, he knows that the coin has Caesar’s image on it. Second, he knows that any Jew who has this coin violates the Old Testament prohibition on possessing idols or graven images found in Exodus 20. Immediately, “they” produce the coin. The text doesn’t say which group or a particular individual. It uses “they” to indicate that even the disciples of the Pharisees have this coin. By producing this coin, the disciples of the Pharisees admit themselves to sinning. 

You see, Roman’s imperial policy was sensitive to the fact that the Jewish religion had a strong objection to carrying coins imprinted with the image of Caesar. They allowed the Jews to coin their own non-idolatrous copper coin, which would suffice for everyday normal activity. Therefore, there was no need for anyone to carry the silver denarius. Jesus did not have a coin…but the disciples of the Pharisees did. Not only did they have a coin inscribed with Caesar's image that inshrined Caesar as a God, but they also carried it within the temple walls. The  

hypocrisy of the religious leaders is undeniable. While they do not “support the systems of injustice publicly,” they are clearly a part of the system.

As the coin is produced, Jesus asks them whose image is on it, to which they reply with the obvious answer, “Caesar.” Jesus then responds, “Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.” They were so astonished by Jesus’ answer that they left. They are astonished because Jesus’ response is an understanding of ownership. Caesar’s image is marked on the coin. Caesar owns the coin. Caesar’s power is in the ways that he exerts control and “ownership” over the empire and displays that ownership through power, military might, and control. 

At the same time, we must ask ourselves, “What belongs to God?” The Psalmist declares, “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it, for he has founded it on the seas and established it on the rivers” (Psalm 24:1-2, NRSVue). If everything on earth belongs to the Lord, then all that we have and are belongs to God.

 As one theologian puts it, “We belong not to our possessions, but to God. We belong not to the partisan political claims we make in election seasons, but to God. We belong not to the demands of our vocations, but to God. We belong not to the charms of our secular world, but to God. Christians may have to pay the emperor the tax, but that does not mean a neat division of loyalties that ends up giving Caesar far more than his due. Instead, our greatest loyalty is to the one who made us and to whom, in body and soul, we ultimately belong.”

This begs the question: Who here has been baptized? Raise your hand if you have been baptized. If you have been baptized, you have been called by name and claimed by the one who made you, the one to whom you belong. It doesn’t matter what political party you belong to. It doesn’t matter what your country of origin is. It doesn’t matter which country you are a citizen of. It doesn't matter whether you identify as “conservative” or “progressive” politically or theologically. Before we put any other label on our life, we are Christian. We are children of God. We belong to God. That loyalty extends above and beyond any other loyalty that we could have. This is the way that Jesus operates. For even looking at the image of Caesar’s face on the coin, Jesus sees a beloved child of God. However, Jesus doesn’t see anything else worth our allegiance.

Throughout this sermon series, we have been asking ourselves what we are willing to risk for the sake of the mission of Jesus Christ. As we hear the teaching of Jesus this morning, we must ask ourselves if we are willing to risk a challenge. Are we willing to challenge ourselves, our understandings, the things we have thought, the ways that we do things for the sake of the mission of Jesus Christ? Will we risk a challenge that may shake us to our core and completely change our understanding of life? 

For if we truly believe that the earth belongs to God and everything in it belongs to God, then we must begin to examine our lives. We must lay down the ways of this world. We must give up our earthly allegiances. We must challenge our ways of thinking and doing. We must acknowledge our sinfulness and seek God’s forgiveness. In risking a challenge, we have difficult conversations, and we evaluate even the areas of life we prefer to keep from God. For when we render unto God what is God’s, our very lives will begin to be transformed.

What will you risk for the sake of the mission of Jesus Christ? What will you risk? Your reputation? Righteous anger? Even challenging the ways of the world? For in offering all that we have and all that we are to our Savior, in asking forgiveness and turning to God’s ways, even our failures, shortcomings, and imperfections are made whole in Jesus Christ.

So, will you risk it all? Will give unto God what is God’s?

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.