Coin
Matthew 22:15-22
October 16, 2011
My father collected coins – pennies – but we didn’t really know how much had collected until we discovered them after his death. It takes a long time to roll thousands of pennies and they are quite dirty and grimy. We couldn’t figure out why he had collected them, for while there were a few really old ones, they weren’t that valuable.
Later on I met a few people who really like old coins, 2000 years old are preferred and it was not their monetary value that allured them. It was what those coins can tell us about the people who used them and the world in which they used them. What are people going to think about us 3011 when they see we’ve bought things with a loonie? Nothing there has changed, for money brings out the best and worst in us, but sometimes something quite surprising.
The Pharisees didn’t have money in mind, but they were going to use it to protect their power and position. Concluding that it was necessary to create a righteous trap for Jesus to fall in, they set up a kind of theological speed trap. “Entangle him in his talk” was their strategy.
Yet they were playing hard ball. The speed trappers they were sending out were students, probably young guys Jesus and company would not have recognized at first and would have let their guard down. The Pharisees counted on that for along with these students were the hardliners, the Herodians or supporters of Herod’s puppet Roman administration. The Herodians were something like the Stazi, the East German secret police, always ready to hear an inappropriate word.
As it turns out, the students were not that smooth or slick, for Jesus smelt them out right away. A sarcastic edge to their buttering up praises of Jesus, trying to sucker him into the trap, “You care for no person, for you don’t how powerful a person is. Why, you’re practically God!”
Ooh, Jesus wasn’t taking any of this stuff, a projection of their own arrogance and self-important disregard for their inferiors. Did they care for anyone, because they were clearly superior to anyone?
Then the zinger: “Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” Lawful? Whose law are they talking about, Caesar’s or Judaism’s? Do you ever ask whether it is lawful to pay taxes to Brad Wall or Stephen Harper? No, you probably don’t, but you get the idea! Obviously, another kind of “law” is being suggested here – though with these strange bedfellows in search of a common prey, the suggestion a little devious. If Jesus said, “Sure it’s legal to pay taxes to this occupying foreign government,” his own people would have defrocked him and worse. And if he had said, “No way, it’s not ethical to support the Roman war machine and government that oppresses and kills innocent people,” the Herodian henchmen would not have allowed Jesus to leave that spot free – with the student Pharisees smiling and nodding approval.
Then Jesus asks for the real zinger: You bunch of hypocrites, give me one of those tax coins, and before you knew it, someone had produced one. Whose image is on it? Caesar’s, of course. My ancient coin collecting acquaintances knew that such images of the different Caesars typically made a reference to the Caesar’s divinity. These were graven images, hand-held idols, and even a bad Pharisee shouldn’t be caught dead with one. But they were alive and now had to listen.
Give to Caesar the things that belong to Caesar and give to God the things that belong to God. Sounds pretty ambivalent to me, maybe even wishy-washy lukewarm, but the Pharisees and the Herodians, two groups of public figures who always had something to say about everything, had absolutely nothing to say. They walked away and didn’t dare challenge him anymore.
Most people hearing this story and its punch line don’t challenge it either. When you are dealing with God and taxes it’s too hot for most of us to handle, so we leave it lying on the ground, don’t touch that thing! Nothing lukewarm about this. Don’t most people in the church tend to take care of Caesar’s things before they ever get around to God’s things? Are these two recipients balanced and equal or isn’t it just the fact that Caesar’s stuff is bigger, more important and never open to debate? Does God’s stuff ever cost us anything?
Back to what is lawful. When Richard Latimer was convicted and sentenced to prison there was a letter signing campaign throughout the Presbytery for compassion and for a reversal of the verdict and members at this church had it available for others to sign and quite a few did. There were a number of church members throughout the Presbytery who said that Latimer was convicted by a court of law and that ended it. The Church, nevertheless, has always said there is another way to look at the law. Segregation in the US South was absolutely legal. The oppressive governments in the Near East had all the legal systems and courts behind them. Residential schools and Japanese internment camps were all fully sanctioned by our legislatures and governments, even by our churches.
But, is it lawful? Is it lawful to make sure God’s things in our church and in our society are nourished and flourishing? Or does God simply get the scraps from Caesar’s table? We of Knox-Metropolitan have been given a coin, and in the next while we will debate what things God needs and what things Caesar needs.
Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan