Tax Time?

Exodus 33:12-23
12Moses said to the LORD, “See, you have said to me, ‘Bring up this people’; but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.’13Now if I have found favor in your sight, show me your ways, so that I may know you and find favor in your sight. Consider too that this nation is your people.”14He said, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”15And he said to him, “If your presence will not go, do not carry us up from here.16For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people, unless you go with us? In this way, we shall be distinct, I and your people, from every people on the face of the earth.”17The LORD said to Moses, “I will do the very thing that you have asked; for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.”18Moses said, “Show me your glory, I pray.”19And he said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you the name, ‘The LORD’; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.20But,” he said, “you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live.”21And the LORD continued, “See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock;22and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by;23then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen.”
Matthew 22:15-22
15Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said.16So 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.17Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?”18But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites?19Show me the coin used for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius.20Then he said to them, “Whose head is this, and whose title?”21They 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.”22When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.
Our calendars say “October 16th” today, but according to the text this morning, it is April 15. Tax Time. And the question posed to Jesus is, is it lawful to pay taxes to the government, or not?

In many ways, this question makes no sense to us. Of course we pay taxes. We pay taxes on everything- gas, clothes, cigarettes, our income. The only two sure things in life are death and taxes. But to the people in 1st century Palestine, this is a loaded question. The Pharisees and Herodians are trying to trick Jesus.

And they start with flattery- “We know that you are sincere. We know that you teach the way of God, and that you show no partiality”- and they use an idiom which means, literally, “you do not look at other’s faces”. Which is ironic, because Jesus’ answer is all about faces, and icons, and images.

But first comes the “Gotcha” question: “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, to Caesar?” The Jewish people have been taxed by the Romans—in fact, Jesus’ own story began with a tax. Mary and Joseph must travel to Bethlehem, for the census, that all the world should be counted—which was Rome’s way of ensuring an accurate tax roll. Back to the present of the story, the Pharisees and the Herodians think they have him- if Jesus answers “Pay the tax”, then he is colluding with the Roman occupiers, and will lose the support of the common people. If he says “don’t pay the tax” then he is a revolutionary- and a traitor.

Jesus answers their challenge with a question and a challenge of his own: “show me the money”. Actually, he says “show me the coin.” Now coins of the Roam Empire had the image, the icon, of Caesar on them. At this time, archeologists remind us, it would have been "Tiberias Caesar, son of the divine Augustus and our high priest." The coin would have had on the other side an image of the imperial mother, Livia, as the goddess of peace.

And Jesus’ point is this: faithful Jews were to follow the 10 commandments- and the first two are: 1) You shall have no other gods before me, and 2) “You shall make for yourself no graven images”- But the coin of the realm violated both. They featured another god, namely Caesar, and his cast image on the face of the coin.
Which begs the question: what are faithful Jews doing with one of those coins in their pockets? God has forbidden false images and idols. Here are religious leaders, within a stone’s throw of the Holy of Holies, with miniature blasphemies in their change purses. Whether they know it or not, Jesus has just nailed them for hypocrisy. By identifying Caesar’s face on the coin, they have revealed their own inconsistencies. Jesus has just caught them in hypocrisy. Gotcha back!
But this story isn’t a “Jesus is really clever and gets the best of his opponents” story. This story is about whose we are, and who we are, to whom our allegiance is due, and in whose image we are made.

Many of us have heard the moral of the story, the tag line, like this: “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and render unto God that which is God’s”.

Which would be easy, and great, if our lives were neatly divided into God areas and not-God areas, two separate columns in the book of life. And some faith traditions have made distinctions between spiritual kingdoms and authority, and temporal kingdoms and authority. But we understand that God is Lord of all our life—not just a portion of it, not just part of it, not just Sunday morning, but all of it.

“The earth is the Lords, and the fullness thereof,” Psalm 24 says, “the world and they that dwell therein”. That’s us- all of us, all of our life. Despite what we might think, given how much of us our jobs and the banks and the credit card companies own, we are the Lord’s. Our baptism was the sign and seal of that—that God claimed us.

Which is comforting—but doesn’t make Jesus’ challenge any easier. Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and render unto God the things that are God’s- well, that looks like all of it, doesn’t it? Does that mean we don’t have to pay taxes?

Do you remember the story of Jonah we acted out a few weeks ago? In that story, the people of Ninevah even had their animals repent, put on sack cloth and ashes- because all of life, all of their belongings, all of everything was involved in repenting and turning to God.

Jesus challenge to us is to see that everything—everything—belongs to God, is under the authority of God. God’s claim on a person has no limits—it embraces all areas of life. In First Peter, the author writes advice to the church: “Honor everyone. Love the family of believers. Fear God. Honor the emperor”. (1 Peter 2:17) Which sounds like the emperor is held in high esteem- certainly a prescription for paying taxes. But when we look carefully, we see that the emperor is held in the same esteem as everyone else. We are to love the family of believers, the church. And we are to fear God.

Moses feared God, although not in a cowering way. And not in a highly anxious, worrying about what kind of God this God is way. Moses feared God, revered God—and yet was able to go toe-to-toe with God, to argue with God on behalf of the people. Moses had a sense of awe that made him brave. Because Moses knew what kind of God, God is. Not a god like Caesar, capricious and vain and scary, but a God who says “I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will show mercy on whom I will show mercy”…and that is us. We who are made in the image of God, as Genesis says.


So we have Caesar’s face on the coin, and we have the living God, in whose image we are made. A cold metal face on a coin, or the presence of the living God. Which will you choose? To whom do we belong, to whom do we give our allegiance?

I want us to try something this week. When you go home, I want you to look around at your life. The tv? The car? The cat? Your children? But I also want us to wrestle with what Jesus meant when he said “Render unto Caesar…and render unto God.” Because, to be honest, we live in both kingdoms. We pay taxes in the kingdom of Caesar, and we talk about, we pray about, we live in the kingdom of heaven. We are not, I don’t think, going to stop paying taxes any time soon. Some people talk about the church “being in the world but not of the world.” How does our faith shape our daily decisions, including our economic ones? How do we negotiate living out this life of faith, given the economic reality we are in, we who are the 99% the occupiers of Wall Street have been cheering about?

So, as the church, I want us to struggle, together, about what it means to give our whole lives to God. What it means to be made in the image of God—and how that shapes our behavior, our talk, our spending—the whole shebang—all of it, all of life. We can work on discerning, together, how to live before the God in whose image we are made.