20 PENTECOST - PROPER XXIV -
A - 17 MATTHEW 22. 15-22
Today’s gospel passage
follows three parables in succession in which Jesus has basically condemned the
religious leaders of his day for failing to carry out their divine mission of
being the light of God to the world. In doing so Christ implies that God was
about to take the mission away from them and give it to the Gentiles unless
they repented and recommitted themselves to the divine task that had been
entrusted to them.
By the end of the second
parable, the one of the vineyard, the Pharisees and scribes were conspiring
against Jesus for they perceived that he was directing the parables towards
them. The parable of the wedding feast, in last week’s gospel reading, was the
straw that broke the camel’s back.
In today’s reading Matthew
has the Pharisees and the Herodians, and unlikely duo, coming together to try
and entrap Jesus into saying or doing something that they can use against him
in a trail before the Sanhedrin or better yet before the Roman governor
himself.
They begin the encounter with
a compliment: “Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God
in accordance with truth, and show difference to no one…” They then proceed to
ask their question whether one should pay the Roman tax hoping to trap him with
his answer.
However, Jesus knows what is in their heart
and avoids the trap. He calls them hypocrites. They are carrying around in
their pockets the hated coinage of a self-proclaimed god. The coin was hated by
the Jews because of what was on it. It was stamped with the image of Caesar and
the wording proclaiming him as “son of god…high priest.”
Any self- respecting first century Jew would
have shuttered at the thought. Hundreds of years before, the prophet Isaiah had
proclaimed to God’s anointed, King Cyrus, that there was only one true god. “I
am the Lord, and there is no other: besides me there is no god…”
Rome, since 6 A.D., had
imposed a head tax of about 25 cents per person on the population of Judea. It
was regarded as a badge of servitude to Rome. The Pharisees objected to having
to pay the tax. The Herodians favored the tax, for they were sympathetic with
the family of Herod, who ruled the Jews as Rome’s puppet.
For Jesus to have sided with
the Herodians would have alienated all who longed for Israel’s freedom; to have
sided with the Pharisees would have laid Jesus open to charges of subversion.
Jesus asks to see the coin and they produce it.
He out flanks them with his
response. His answer has the effect of thrusting his answer back to his
interrogators, for one must determine what is rightfully Caesar’s and what can
be claimed by God alone.
Of course, the Pharisees
answer the obvious when asked whose image is on the coin - Caesar’s. “Then you
had better pay Caesar back in his own coin hadn’t you?” Meaning they should pay
the tax. Then to their astonishment, he adds “and you had better pay God back
in his own coin too!” More astonishment. What did Jesus really mean?
Was he saying that the
kingdom of God is more important than the kingdom of Caesar? He was not trying to give an answer for all
time on the relationship between God and political authority. That wasn’t the
point. He was countering the Pharisee’s challenge to him with a sharp challenge
in return.
We can only fully understand
what Jesus was doing when we see his answer in the light of the whole story.
The kingdom of God would defeat the kingdom of Caesar, not by conventional
means, but by the victory of God’s love and power over the even greater empire
of death itself. However, that day was yet to come.
What Jesus is revealing in
his response to us is who we are, what we are, and what we can be. Israel was
chosen by God and entrusted with a divine mission. However, she had become
corrupt and had lost focus. Maintaining the status quo was more important than
proclaiming God’s kingdom and teaching how one is to enter it.
Thus, Jesus’ first sermon/ teaching was to
echo John Baptist - “Repent, for the kingdom is near.” But they turned a deaf
ear to his cry as they had done to John. The more Jesus taught, preached,
healed and proclaimed the kingdom, the more they knew they had failed.
Instead of turning back to
God and resuming the mission, they rejected him and sought a way to rid
themselves of him so that things could go on as before. But God would have none
of that, even if it meant His Son would have to die on the cross.
The coin, then, is symbolic.
It is the symbol of what some work for, even slave for. The world has come to
believe that the coin is a measure of our value, the symbol of our worth.
However, the true measure of our value has to do with the likeness and the
inscription born on our bodies and souls.
As Caesar has cast the
denarius in his image, God has cast each of us in His own image. Our souls have
been stamped with the divine image and inscribed with God’s name. At our
baptisms we were reminded of this as the sign of the cross was traced on our
foreheads with the words “you are sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as
Christ’s own forever.”
We may not be able to see
that indelible mark as we stand before a mirror, but God sees it. It is there
for all eternity. Neither can the world see the outline of the cross we bear.
Our works testify to it. It is the things we say and do that are in accordance
with God’s will that witness to the fact that we belong to Him and that our
allegiance is to God and God alone.
The important word in Jesus’ response is “render,”
it means more than just to give, but give back. Our dues to God and to man are
alike for values received. To God we owe all and must pay all; though there are
many things which are not Caesar’s, there are none which are not God’s. AMEN+
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