What Belongs to God
Matthew 22:15-22[1]
We have a
saying: “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” Nobody likes
to be played for a fool. When we find out that someone we may have trusted has
actually deceived us, it sticks in our craw. Maybe for years, or even decades.
And the worst is when somebody “sets us up” to play the fool. That can be just
downright cruel. Unfortunately, we live in a world in which there are people
who take a kind of perverse pleasure in showing others up in this way. I can’t
say that I understand it, but it seems that those who feel inferior have a need
to “prove” that they’re smarter or better than others in this way. I’d have to
say that the times when I’ve been “played” like this have been some of the most
unpleasant experiences of my life.
In our
Gospel lesson for today, Jesus was being “played” by the Jewish leaders. There
are several clues about this. First, the Pharisees and the Herodians were at
the complete opposite ends of the spectrum in the Jewish world. “Herodians”
were known as collaborators with the Romans. The only thing they had in common
with the Pharisees was their desire to get rid of Jesus. Otherwise, these two
groups would have seen each other as “enemies.” Second, the way in which they
approached Jesus was clearly dishonest. No one but a disciple of Jesus would
have said “we know that you teach the way of God truly!” The Pharisees and the
Herodians certainly did not believe that!
So it
probably didn’t take a great deal of supernatural insight for Jesus to see
through their scam. It was pretty obvious that he was being set up. And I would
imagine that the Jewish leaders were proud of themselves for coming up with
this particular trap for Jesus. They assumed that whatever answer Jesus gave,
he would lose. If he said that it was indeed lawful to pay the tax, he would
have lost favor with the people. Taxation was the way in which empires like
Rome paid for their conquests. They taxed the people they conquered. So you can
imagine that paying this tax was something disgusting to the people.
On the
other hand, if he suggested that they shouldn’t pay the tax, he would have
given them grounds to denounce him to the Roman authorities. Not paying the tax
was tantamount to rebellion, and the Romans were particularly effective at
quashing even a hint of rebellion. When the Jewish people did launch a
full-scale revolt some 30 years later, the Roman war machine ground them down
so thoroughly that there was no Jewish nation until 2000 years later! For Jesus
to advocate not paying tax would have meant a death penalty.
But they
underestimated Jesus. They took him to be someone like themselves: hypocrites
whose main concern was holding onto their power, prestige, and wealth. That’s
part of the story here. Throughout this section of Matthew’s Gospel, the Jewish
leaders repeated tried to set Jesus up for embarrassment or worse. The tension
between the Jewish leaders and Jesus was running high, and they were looking
for any way to get rid of him.
Jesus
offers a simple solution to their question. He asks the Jewish leaders to show
him the coin they used to pay the tax. It was a Roman Denarius. It was the
standard wage given to a day laborer for one day’s work. The thing about coins
in that day is that most kings, even “puppet” kings, minted coins with their
image. The image on the Denarius would have been that of Caesar. The implication
was that a coin ultimately belonged to the one whose image was on it. In fact,
because Caesar’s image was on this coin, pious Pharisees would at least make a
show of refusing to use it.
Since
Caesar’s image was the one on the coin, Jesus made a simple suggestion: give back
to Ceasar the coin that belongs to him. But he goes on to remind them that the God’s
claim on our lives goes far beyond what you do with your money. The clear and
consistent witness of Scripture is that God calls for us to love him with all
our heart, our mind, and our strength. In effect, Jesus answered the question
put to him by saying, pay Caesar his tax, but give your life to God!
I think
Jesus was pointing them and us to a fundamental truth in Scripture. In one
sense, everything belongs to God, including a coin with a man’s image on it.
But God’s claim on our lives goes far beyond the money in our pockets. Not only
all that we have, but also all that we are belongs to God: our families, our
careers, our abilities, our hopes and wishes, and even the hours in our days.
It all belongs to God. Jesus managed to take what was a “set up” meant to
entrap him and turn it around to point his accusers to the basic truth they had
forgotten in their hypocrisy: we’re meant to give back to God what belongs to
him, and that means all of life!
[1] ©
2020 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm, Ph. D. on 10/18/2020
for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.
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