Caesar's Coin

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas

October 16, 2011; 18 Pentecost, Proper 24, Year A, Track 1

Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Matthew 22:15-22) – The  Pharisees went and plotted to entrap Jesus in what he said. 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. Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?" But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, "Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the coin used for the tax." And they brought him a denarius. Then he said to them, "Whose head is this, and whose title?" 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." When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.

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We have a dramatic story today.  Some of Jesus’ enemies try to trap him.  First they flatter him, then they pull the trigger.  “Tell us what you think.  Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?”  If Jesus says, “Yes,” then he falls in the eyes of so many who are drawn to him, who recognize how oppressive it is to pay taxes to fund their occupation by the pagan foreigners, the Romans.  He loses allies.  If he says, “No,” they can arrest him for sedition.

Jesus calls them hypocrites.  “Show me the coin used for the tax.”  A note about location.  The place where rabbis like Jesus would take questions and answer them was the court of the Temple.  It was against the Temple law for anyone to bring a graven image into this sacred ground.  Yet, the questioners produce a coin used for the tax.  “Whose head is this, and whose title?” asks Jesus.  The word for “head” is “eikon.”  It means “image.”  The “eikon” is Caesar.  And on the coin was Caesar’s title:  “Tiberius Caesar, august son of the divine Augustus and high priest.”  It was a title that claimed divinity.  Tiberius, the son of the god, Augustus.  It was a religious title also – “high priest.”  So Jesus exposes the hypocrisy of these questioners.  They have brought a graven image of blasphemy into the Temple. 

Then Jesus answers them.  “It’s Caesar’s coin.  Give it back to him.”  [Pause.]  “And give to God the things that are God’s.” 

His hearers know the scripture’s claim.  “The earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.  (Psalms 24:1, NIV)  Everything belongs to God.  Our Psalm in today’s readings speaks of God’s sovereignty:  “God reigns; let the people tremble; God is enthroned upon the cherubim; let the earth shake.”  Who is supreme?  Caesar or God?  There is no doubt who is supreme in Jesus’ tradition. 

But note Jesus’ question:  “Whose ‘eikon,’ whose image is on the coin?”  The answer, “Caesar.”  The unasked question might be, “And where is the ‘eikon’ of God?  Where do you find God’s image?”  Jesus listeners know the answer to that question too.  Humanity bears God’s image.  When God created human beings, God created us in the image and likeness of God.  Later Christian tradition will speak of Jesus as the “eikon/icon” of God. 

It is interesting how political Jesus’ language and imagery is.  Jesus sets up alternative jurisdictions, and God’s reign predominates.  Over and over he speaks of the Kingdom of God, the Rule of God, the Reign of God.  He claims that the Kingdom of God breaks into earth in him.  And it was largely on the basis of that claim that he was executed in a political act as an enemy of the state.

Then the early church deliberately chose titles for Jesus that were the same titles that the Emperor claimed – “Divine.  Son of God.  God from God.  Lord.  Savior.  Redeemer.  Liberator.”  All of these were Caesar’s titles, that the church deliberately appropriated for Jesus.  No wonder Rome outlawed Christian practice and occasionally persecuted the church.  In the early years, the church mostly hoped to fly under the radar of the state, but when it did not, martyrs bravely faced arrest, imprisonment, torture and death to proclaim Jesus as Lord.

Now I could stop this sermon there, and simply restate what Jesus has said.  Therefore, “Give to God what is God’s.”  And the implication – everything belongs to God.  All authority is God’s.  That would be enough.

Because Jesus leaves unaddressed the perplexing question, “What is our relationship with Caesar, with the state?”  There is a long, complex history of Christians wrestling with that question.  So, for the record, at this point in this sermon, I’m moving from preaching, to meddling.  Which means, good people can and will disagree with me, and they will have solid arguments for doing so.  I’m not preaching so much as I am thinking out loud, and opinionating.  So I’ll accept the Pharisees and Herodians’ trap:  “Tell us what you think.”

I believe that the teaching of Jesus is essentially corporate and social in its focus.  In my opinion, traditional Christianity is not a religion of individualism.  The New Testament says almost nothing about personal spirituality or personal salvation.  Jesus didn’t come to be my “personal Lord and Savior.”  Jesus came to save the world.

The emphasis of the New Testament in on the Body of Christ, the Kingdom of God, the New Creation and the New Humanity in Christ.  New Testament symbolism is inherently corporate.  The picture that we have of the community of Jesus and of the early church is a vision of a cooperative society, a community of equals.  That requires us as Christians to have a social vision, not merely an individualistic one.  That moves us into social and political realms.

For traditional Christianity, the Church’s work is not only spiritual, it is also materialistic.  Archbishop William Temple famously said that Christianity is the most materialist of all religions.  We value creation and rejoice in the physical.  Through the sacraments we say that matter is a vehicle of the spirit.  Bread and wine, water, hands, oil.  And supremely, Jesus:  the Word made flesh.  God transforms stuff, including us and our money, into instruments of the divine.  God uses the material stuff of creation to transform creation.

How do we know what God wants us to do with our stuff?  When Jesus was taught what bottom line is for corporate judgment, the judgment of the nations, he taught that the criterion is what happens to the poor and vulnerable.  Do you remember the parable of the sheep and the goats?  Feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, visit the imprisoned.  That’s how the nations are to be judged.  That’s a social and political agenda.

The Hebrew Scriptures are full of admonitions about how God cares for the fate of the alien, the orphan, and the widow.  Today’s psalm like so many speaks of God as a “mighty Ruler” who is a “lover of justice.”  In the Hebrew Scriptures, justice is almost always an economic term, as we see in today’s psalm, “O mighty Ruler, lover of justice, you have established equity.”  Equity is an economic as well as a political term.

The Hebrew Scriptures condemn greed and express grave suspicion of wealth and of the wealthy.  We see Jesus pick up that theme in many places, but particularly in the story of Lazarus, the poor beggar living outside the home of a wealthy man.  The wealthy man knows poor Lazarus is there, but he does nothing to help him.  In a story not unlike Dickens’ A Christmas Carol – the wealthy man, writhing in judgment, wants to send word back to his brothers so that they will change their behavior and be generous.

So, for me, when Jesus says “Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s,” I sense a call from Jesus for us to embrace a different political and economic agenda.  Like every other part of the material creation, Caesar’s coin needs to be saved.  Redeemed.  Transformed.  Turned into sacrament.  Caesar’s coin needs to become a vehicle for the spirit, a vehicle for justice.  That’s what I want from my taxes.

I want Caesar’s coin to contribute to God’s desire for the material welfare of the least of these.  I want to see society transformed into liberty and justice for all.  I want the Kingdom of God and the New Humanity of Jesus.  And I pray with the Psalmist, “O mighty Ruler, lover of justice, you have established equity; you have executed justice and righteousness.”  O God, establish equity and execute justice.  And transform our hearts that we may participate in the work of your kingdom.

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Thanks to Kenneth Leech and his book The Eye of the Storm, for some of the ideas and maybe some phrases expressed in the sermon.

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