Twentieth Sunday after Trinity, 2023. Year A.
Readings: 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10 & Matthew 22:15-22.
There aren’t many people who enjoy paying taxes, so I guess it’s disappointing that Jesus doesn’t use this exchange to provide us with a sound basis for a religious exemption from taxation.
Even if we may not enjoy paying taxes though, much of modern taxation is something that has a moral and ethical basis in principles of either charitable redistribution from the wealthy to the poor, or as insurance, where we all pay for things like a health service that we hope we will rarely need to use, but have the comfort of knowing is available and accessible if we do need it.
Ancient taxation rarely had that sort of moral aim and was normally purely a way for the rulers to support themselves to enjoy a standard of living that greatly exceeded that of the ruled who were paying for it.
And Roman tax gatherers were notorious for their greed, rapacity and corruption. Taxation was to be a source of dissent and rebellion throughout the Roman Empire for its entire history. In first century Judea though, the issue of Roman taxation carried extra, religious weight as well.
The historian Josephus tells us that there was a rebellion in 6 AD over the introduction of Roman taxation after the death of Herod the Great led by another Galilean, although called Judas rather than Jesus.
The trap the Pharisees are laying is to see if they can get this new Galilean troublemaker to also come out, in public, as an opponent of Roman taxation like his predecessor, and give them ammunition to maybe denounce him to the Roman authorities.
Taxation is a very concrete expression of sovereignty. I encountered an example of this in my job a few years ago with one of our customers, a Native American tribe that were operating a casino on their tribal reservation, which is permitted even in US states that don’t permit gambling because the supreme court ruled that tribal reservations are sovereign territory, outside of the control of the states that they were physically located in. This customer wanted us to add in a software check for online wagers to see if the online wager was being placed while the player was standing on tribal land, because if so, they refused to pay the state gambling tax on those wagers. The cost of implementing the check was far higher than the amount they would save, but it was a matter of principle – paying the state tax could be taken as an admission that the state had sovereignty over them. That was something that they were unwilling to risk.
For religious Jews of the time, who believed that they were a nation that was ruled directly by God, paying Roman taxes could similarly be viewed as denying the divine authority of God.
In addition, there were the Roman coins themselves, which had to be used to pay Roman taxes. Roman coins, like the denarius that Jesus requests, carried the image of the emperor – Tiberius at this point, although undoubtedly there were still plenty of coins with Augustus’s image still on them as well.
Obviously having an image is bad enough, given the second commandment, but around that image would have been the words ‘Tiberius Augustus, Son of God’, which just compounds the blasphemy for a monotheistic people. How can a mere man claim to be son of God?
So for observant Jews, even handling such money would have been idolatrous. It is not to the Pharasee’s credit that they are able to produce such a coin here, in the Temple courtyard, in the house of God. Not permitting such idolatry in the Temple is why there were money changers in the Temple for Jesus to throw out, so that only coins that conformed to Jewish law were present in the temple. Jesus turns them out because they are profiteering from the ordinary people, not because he objects to the temple coinage itself.
So here we have a question posed to Jesus where the ‘correct’ religious answer is fairly obvious, if somewhat dangerous.
Is Jesus just cleverly equivocating to avoid being entrapped and having a premature end brought to his ministry, rather than standing up for what he believes in?
Or is he actually answering a completely different question; the more interesting question that he wants to answer, like a good modern politician?
Jesus’ main message in the Gospels is pretty clear – the Kingdom of God has arrived. It is here and now. Most of his listeners don’t understand this because they are looking for a different manifestation of the Kingdom of God. So he has another message for those people who are seeking to establish the Kingdom through violence and rebellion against the Romans.
He warns them again and again, in parables and in apocalyptic visions, that the outcome of violence will be destruction and devastation for everyone. In Jesus’ time this might just be an accurate assessment of the power and brutality that the Roman state could bring to bear, but it is also a timeless reminder that violence will always create more violence. The zealots are hoping that God will intervene to bring them victory, but Jesus is here to warn them that God wants a kingdom built on love and sacrifice instead.
Jesus’ message is that the Kingdom of God is already here, and yet, 2000 years later, we look around us, and it sometimes seems that we are increasingly far from the full manifestation of that kingdom. We know that we are called to inhabit a liminal place – we are called to work in and towards a kingdom that is here, and is also yet to come – but sometimes that work can feel very unrewarding and unproductive.
The very fact of the incarnation tells us that the kingdom of God is a kingdom of this world.
It is not a kingdom that is a reward for us in heaven after we are dead.
It is not a kingdom that is only found within the walls of the church for two hours on a Sunday morning.
It is a kingdom that must and will transform the everyday world around us, inside and outside of these walls. Jesus tells the Pharisees that we should return to the world what is the world’s and to God what is God’s. This is obviously a false dichotomy, because the world is God’s anyway; but what Jesus is also saying to us here is that we should be in and part of the world rather than trying to withdraw from the world.
The way of the Essene or the hermit or the cloistered monk or nun may be a worthy way of life and means of worshipping God, but God demands more than worship from us. He demands that we should go out into the world, in the footsteps of his Son, and be the kingdom in the world. Jesus doesn’t call all of us to give up everything of the world for him either. Some, like the disciples, are called to give up everything and follow him. But the tax-gatherer, to use an appropriate example, is merely called to be honest and open in his dealings when gathering tax. That itself would have been behaviour so unusual as to have been a strong witness. The Kingdom that Jesus promises is not a place of self-denial or joylessness. Instead it is a great feast, where all are welcome no matter who they are, and where all are seated with equal honour, and where no one is forced to serve another, but all share and help one another willingly. A feast where we don’t exploit one another, or God’s creation.
That is the kingdom we are called to bring in. Our two hours on a Sunday morning in this building are a time to recharge our spiritual batteries – the other 166 hours a week that we spend outside this place are where we are called to discharge those spiritual batteries, and give to the world.
Amen
8 am version
The Pharisees are posing a question to Jesus where the ‘correct’ religious answer is fairly obvious, if somewhat dangerous. Is Jesus just cleverly equivocating to avoid being entrapped and having a premature end brought to his ministry, rather than standing up for what he believes in?
Or is he actually answering a completely different question; the more interesting question that he wants to answer, like a good modern politician?
Jesus’ main message in the Gospels is pretty clear – the Kingdom of God has arrived. It is here and now. Most of his listeners don’t understand this because they are looking for a different manifestation of the Kingdom of God. So he has another message for those people who are seeking to establish the Kingdom through violence and rebellion against the Romans.
He warns them again and again, in parables and in apocalyptic visions, that the outcome of violence will be destruction and devastation for everyone. In Jesus’ time this might just be an accurate assessment of the power and brutality that the Roman state could bring to bear, but it is also a timeless reminder that violence will always create more violence. The zealots are hoping that God will intervene to bring them victory, but Jesus is here to warn them that God wants a kingdom built on love and sacrifice instead.
Jesus’ message is that the Kingdom of God is already here, and yet, 2000 years later, we look around us, and it sometimes seems that we are increasingly far from the full manifestation of that kingdom. We know that we are called to inhabit a liminal place – we are called to work in and towards a kingdom that is here, and is also yet to come – but sometimes that work can feel very unrewarding and unproductive.
The very fact of the incarnation tells us that the kingdom of God is a kingdom of this world.
It is not a kingdom that is a reward for us in heaven after we are dead.
It is not a kingdom that is only found within the walls of the church for two hours on a Sunday morning.
It is a kingdom that must and will transform the everyday world around us, inside and outside of these walls. Jesus tells the Pharisees that we should return to the world what is the world’s and to God what is God’s. This is obviously a false dichotomy, because the world is God’s anyway; but what Jesus is also saying to us here is that we should be in and part of the world rather than trying to withdraw from the world.
The way of the Essene or the hermit or the cloistered monk or nun may be a worthy way of life and means of worshipping God, but God demands more than worship from us. He demands that we should go out into the world, in the footsteps of his Son, and be the kingdom in the world. Jesus doesn’t call all of us to give up everything of the world for him either. Some, like the disciples, are called to give up everything and follow him. But the tax-gatherer, to use an appropriate example, is merely called to be honest and open in his dealings when gathering tax. That itself would have been behaviour so unusual as to have been a strong witness. The Kingdom that Jesus promises is not a place of self-denial or joylessness. Instead it is a great feast, where all are welcome no matter who they are, and where all are seated with equal honour, and where no one is forced to serve another, but all share and help one another willingly. A feast where we don’t exploit one another, or God’s creation.
That is the kingdom we are called to bring in. Our two hours on a Sunday morning in this building are a time to recharge our spiritual batteries – the other 166 hours a week that we spend outside this place are where we are called to discharge those spiritual batteries, and give to the world.
Amen