Text: Matthew 22:15-22 Revised Standard Version (RSV)
The Question about Paying Taxes
15 Then the Pharisees went and took counsel how to entangle him in his talk. 16 And they sent their disciples to him, along with the Hero′di-ans, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are true, and teach the way of God truthfully, and care for no man; for you do not regard the position of men. 17 Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?” 18 But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why put me to the test, you hypocrites? 19 Show me the money for the tax.” And they brought him a coin.[a] 20 And Jesus said to them, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?” 21 They said, “Caesar’s.” Then he said to them, “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” 22 When they heard it, they marveled; and they left him and went away.
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
You’ve probably heard the old saying, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” That’s certainly true of this passage.
We read here that there are two groups represented in the crowd that’s trying to trick Jesus. The one group is made up of some Pharisees, who are very familiar to us. The other group consisted of people called “Herodians” – they might be a little less familiar to us.
The Herodians, as you might guess, were followers of King Herod. They were pro-Roman – kind of the first-century equivalent of the Vichy collaborators in France during World War II. Here’s the odd thing about it – they’re standing in the same crowd with a bunch of Pharisees, people who were staunchly anti-Roman. Normally, these people would have absolutely nothing to do with each other!
Strange bedfellows, indeed. But, referring back to that saying I just quoted, each group saw Jesus as their enemy, and they had the same objective, which was simply to get rid of him, one way or another. The Pharisees wanted to be rid of Jesus, because he posed a direct threat to their authority. Even more, as we have heard in the last few weeks, Jesus tells one sharp parable after another, parables which publicly challenge the Pharisees’ very standing before God, not just before their community. They had never experienced anything like this before – in fact, they had gotten used to the idea that they were “the good guys” in their society, and had for generations been treated that way. They were the ones, after all, who stood up for the little guy, the common people. But now, here was this Jesus, who many scholars believe was a Pharisee himself, turning the table on them, pointing out their hypocrisies, challenging their hold on the people. This was simply intolerable. Jesus had to go!
The motivation of the Herodians, on the other hand, was more economic than religious. As followers of Herod, who was only in power by the good graces of Rome, they knew which side their bread was buttered on, and wanted at all costs to maintain the status quo – they were doing very well by the Romans, and wanted it to stay that way. No hayseed upstart from Galilee was going to upset their apple cart. Jesus had to go!
Once that was accomplished, there would be plenty of time for these groups to argue with each other about their other differences.
There’s another odd thing going on here besides just the coming together of two groups who normally couldn’t abide each other – and that is the matter of the coin. The coin that the Pharisees and Herodians produced was, of course, a Roman coin – the only currency that was acceptable for paying taxes to Rome. Moreover, on its face was the likeness of the Emperor, as well as an inscription stating that the Emperor was divine. A god. So, by even holding this coin, these detractors of Jesus were openly breaking the first two Commandments – not too well thought out, it seems to me, for people who claim to be the religious leaders of their people. But such was their fearful desperation to trap Jesus that they willingly took that risk.
Fearful desperation…fear.
When I started out to write this sermon, fear was not the theme I thought it would take. Yet, the more I thought and read, the more it seemed to me that fear is exactly what’s really at the heart of this lesson, not taxes, not political or religious affiliation, not even the ongoing feud between Jesus and his numerous detractors. It is fear.
The Romans ruled out of fear. They fine-tuned their policies and procedures to maximize fear. Anyone who got on their bad side for the merest infraction would find themselves thrown in prison, or worse. Crucifixion was both a form of execution as well as a highly effective and highly visible deterrent – when you walked down the road toward the gates of any city in the Roman Empire and viewed the bodies of people on crosses on both sides of the road, you knew exactly who was in charge, and the last thing you wanted to do was wind up on one of those crosses.
The Pharisees fear that this Jesus will upset their apple cart and point out that their hold on the people is far more tenuous than one might think. The Herodians fear that this Jesus will upset the Romans to the extent that they will react against all Jews, including them, and that they will be tarred with the same brush as this rabblerousing Nazarene and their position in society will be ruined.
This was not the first time, nor would it be the last, when people cast aside their ethics, their morality, their religion, and their integrity in an attempt to make themselves secure, however they defined “security.” If love can be said to be the emotion of light, then its cousin, fear, is the emotion that lives in the dark corners of our souls, festering and brooding, ready to appear without warning whenever our equilibrium is upset. Once that genie gets out of the bottle, bad things are sure to happen.
But one thing is certain: The rule of fear cannot last. The Roman Empire is long since gone. Its mighty buildings lie in ruins – the famous Coliseum looks as it does today because for centuries it was used as a quarry for the building of other buildings! So much for the “Eternal City” and its structures. Rome’s power is nothing but the topic of history lectures today. Rome’s language, Latin, is today considered a “dead language.” The same is true of Herod and his followers – Agrippa II, the last ruler of the Herodian Dynasty, died in 92 A.D.
Yet this lesson of history is one that we seem to keep having to re-learn. Since the fall of Rome, countless other empires, large and small, have risen – and fallen – when their power to instill fear and efforts to control their populace eventually failed. Nazi Germany leaps to mind, as one example. The Soviet Union, and its satellite countries, is another.
The other night, I watched again the movie “The Lives of Others,” made in Germany in 2006. It’s about an officer of the Stasi, the East German secret police, one Captain Gerd Wiesler, who’s charged with ferreting out any dirt on a supposedly true-blue believer in the Communist ideology, a playwright by the name of Georg Dreymann. The film follows the methodical process in which Dreymann’s apartment is bugged, his every movement is watched, as are all his friends and associates, including his girlfriend – who eventually is forced to become an informant. It’s not what I would call “light feel-good entertainment” by any stretch of the imagination, and – as you might guess – it doesn’t end well.
But the reason I mention it at all is that this film reflects the attempt on the part of the East German government to control its population through intimidation and fear – and, if we read between the lines, we see that while the people feared their government, their government also feared its people – hence the existence of the secret police in the first place. In the movie, Captain Wiesler becomes not only sympathetic to the playwright Dreymann, but actually intercedes for him from behind the scenes – and we see that, in this fear-driven and fear-controlled environment, any human feeling, any compassion, any act of kindness or mercy, is not only frowned upon, but is seen as an act against the security of the State, and is to be met with severe punishment.
But again, the German Democratic Republic no longer exists. Its power was broken by the spirit of its people; the Berlin Wall came down, and its few remaining sections are now just places where tourists can take pictures and buy souvenirs. Fear lost, one more time.
Yet, we all know that fear still exists – around us, and in us. What is the antidote to fear? It’s as simple as looking into the bathroom mirror in the morning and remembering that the person whose face is looking back at you is someone very special indeed, and in fact is a person made in the very image of God. If you start every day like that, it makes it very hard for fears of any sort to take hold. I’m looking at a church full of that antidote right now. People like us, people of faith, of integrity, of decency and goodness, ordinary people who routinely do extraordinary things (I see it constantly) – we conquer fear every time it raises its head. We do this by standing together in the face of the trials of life, reminding each other who – and whose – we are, so that we do not let our momentary fears create in us a kind of amnesia.
We may be in the world, but we are not of the world – Jesus’ answer to the Pharisees and Herodians helps us to keep that in mind so that we might rightly set our priorities: “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” The coin that came from Caesar should go back to Caesar. But, far more important are those things we should render to God, which can be summed up in one word: Everything. Our hearts. Our minds. Our strength. Our very souls. It is not the world, with all of its exertions of coercive power, that wins in the end; it is God, our God who creates, sustains, nurtures, redeems, and saves. No matter what the cost. No matter how bad things get, no matter the hardships, God is there, doing all of that, and that all the time. No Caesar of any age can possibly compete with God.
And we are here today to boldly proclaim that, because God is with us, because Jesus has called us, made us His own, and redeemed us, fear does not, cannot, and will not rule us. We are strengthened to boldly go forth and replace fear with love, and hope, and joy, and peace. For that is our legacy, and that is our mission!
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.