Whose Are You? And You? And You?

Matthew 22: 15-22 

Then the Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap him in his words. They sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians. “Teacher,” they said, “we know that you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You aren’t swayed by others, because you pay no attention to who they are. Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay the imperial taxa a to Caesar or not?”

But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, “You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me? Show me the coin used for paying the tax.” They brought him a denarius, and he asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?”

“Caesar’s,” they replied. 

Then he said to them, “So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s,a and to God what is God’s.”

When they heard this, they were amazed. So they left him and went away.

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Since today is a day that we are emphasizing the importance of having and reading and studying the Bible, whether it’s a Bible that belongs to us, or one that you pull out from the pew, I’m going to ask you to grab hold of a Bible, so that we can look together at what is going on with Jesus at this time that Matthew is reporting. Please turn in your Bibles to the New Testament, to the gospel according to Matthew, and then find chapter 21.  Either put your hand up or give me some sort of sign when you have it so I know when to go on.

OK. So if we look at the very start of chapter 21, what we see there is that Jesus is coming into Jerusalem. And the story at the very start of that chapter is the story of Palm Sunday, of his entrance into the city of Jerusalem, riding on a donkey, with the people shouting Hosanna.

And as soon as he gets there he starts stirring things up.  In verse 10, we read that the city is in turmoil over him. In verse 12 we see that he goes into the temple and immediately drives out all those selling and buying things there. He overturns the tables of the money changers and the people selling doves to be used as sacrifices.

Now, the temple in Jerusalem was huge. It was kind of like a mega mall. It was relatively new, having been rebuilt by Herod the Great beginning around 20 BCE. My study Bible says it was an enormous structure, and that it contained many precincts, including places to buy and sell animals for sacrifice, places for foreign visitors to exchange their money into the currency of the Temple, and offices for local and imperial authorities. Now, this will matter in a few minutes, so don’t forget that. And Jesus condemns those in the temple, calling them robbers. And of course he was making the chief priests and scribes angry with his behavior, both condemning and driving out all their business, and also healing the sick and the lame, doing what he did wherever he went. So they challenge him directly, and after he replies to them, he leaves and goes to Bethlehem to spend the night. He comes back to the city and enters the temple again the next day. This is verses 18-23. And the chief priests and elders begin again to try to challenge his authority. And for the rest of chapter 21 and into chapter 22 are the stories we have been talking about in worship these past few weeks. These stories are all part of the back and forth between Jesus and the leadership of the Temple.  In each of these stories he is challenging them directly.

So by the time we get to this story in the middle of chapter 22, the Pharisees, these leaders, are desperate to entrap Jesus, to snare him somehow. And all they think they have at this point are words in order to do so. So, they join forces, so to speak, with the Herodians, followers of Herod, men who are not of the Temple but of the government. For these two groups to come together is kind of crazy, but they join forces against a common opponent, this Jesus of Nazareth.

So now hopefully you have some broader context for where Jesus is and what time we are talking about in his life – this is the last week of his life, the days between Palm Sunday and Maundy Thursday, when all this is going on. We talk about this during the time of the church calendar called “ordinary time”, because these stories are important to understand who Jesus is and who he calls us to be – important enough to be addressed over the course of many weeks rather than being compressed into the time of Lent and Holy Week, when there is so much more to be focusing on.

OK, so these two groups come together to Jesus and try to entrap him by asking him a trick question, essentially. And this is the first of three trick questions they attempt to “get him” with.  But Jesus is not easily fooled, as we’ve learned before. And this story does not leave us or this group of temple and government leaders with any easy answer. As he often does, Jesus leaves us with as much a set of new questions as he does with any clear answers. Still, there is much for us to learn in his words today, as always.

The trick question for today is – “is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor or not?” They preface this question by buttering him up, so to speak – “we know you are genuine, and that you teach God’s way as it truly is. We know you don’t play favorites….”

And Jesus, after calling out their hypocrisy right at the get-go, tells them to bring him “the coin used for the tax”.   

So, at this point, I would like you to find a coin, in your pocket or your purse, and pull it out.  If you don’t have one, scooch over and look on with someone near you who does. It can be any coin, a penny, nickel, dime, or quarter.

Now, it may be that the light here isn’t good enough for you to see, or you may need a magnifying glass like I did when I looked at these coins yesterday, but take a look at the coins, and tell me what you see. Call it out. What’s on them?

So each of our usual coins look somewhat different – penny, nickel, dime, quarter – but each of them has a few things in common.

They each say United States of America.

They each have E Pluribus Unum on them. Who knows what that means? (from many, one)

They each say In God We Trust.

They each have the word Liberty imprinted on them.

And they each have the profile of a president on the front.

The coin that was brought to Jesus was not all that different from these. It was called a denarius, and it was a coin that was used to pay taxes to the Romans. It was not the kind of coin used in the temple. And so it was a violation of Jewish law to even have that penny in the temple. Those money changers we heard about earlier? Their role was to allow visitors to exchange their pennies for drachma, which was the temple currency.

When Jesus asked them whose picture was on the coin – his exact words were “whose head, and whose title”, “whose image and inscription” – he was pointing out two things to them with that question. First, they had an idol in the temple by way of that coin. The picture of the emperor, Caesar, was an idol, and the inscription on the penny would have said “son of God”.  Caesar considered himself to be a divine emperor, a son of God. What an irony that they were saying this to Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Word made flesh.

The question they asked Jesus would have set him up if he had responded with the sort of yes or no, either one or the other reply they were expecting.   The tax in question was an imperial tax, which was used to support the Roman occupation of Israel. If he approved of the tax, it would have been offensive to Jews, and if he disapproved of it, that would have been treasonous.  That was the way this was a trick question, a setup for him.

So he replies, as he so often does, with a statement that leaves them amazed, wondering, pondering, but in no way settled. And that is what this statement does for us, as well.

“Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God.”

Well, OK. But what belongs to Caesar? And what belongs to God?

When we look down at our own currency, our coins, and we see the words “In God We Trust”, what does that say about our coins, our financial holdings? Do they belong to the government, or do they belong to God? Or do they belong to us? Which is it? How much belongs to each? How shall we separate this out?

As people of faith, we say in one way or another every week in worship that we belong to God. So what does that mean with respect to this statement? Certainly we belong to God. We are imprinted with the image of God on us, just like the coins. All that we are, all that we have, all that we ever hope to be, belongs to God. So what about our coins and our currency? What does this mean about where our money goes, including the taxes we pay? Well, Jesus leaves that up to us to pray about and to consider as we go about our daily business as God’s people, understanding how he expects us to go about that business.

A pastor whose blog I follow told a story about going to a conference on sacrificial giving, and they had placed permanent markers at every row, every pew, where they were sitting. And at some point in the conference they were asked to take out a credit card that they frequently used, and to pass the marker down the row, so everyone could draw a cross on the front or back of the credit card. And he said that for months afterward, as long as that cross made with a Sharpie marker was visible, whenever he took out that credit card to make a payment, it changed him, little by little. It made him think differently about every purchase he was making, about whether it glorified God, whether it helped him to do God’s will.

What if we could take on the same habit, whenever we pulled out our cash or our credit card we could hear the words on the currency being spoken to us: “In God We Trust”. How would that change us? How can we see the imprint of God on us, and know that we belong to God, as well as everything we have? How can we become better stewards of all that we have? How can we see that imprint of God on everyone we meet as well, and recognize and treat one another as beloved children of God?

I was assigned a book to read for a retreat I attended recently. It is called “What it Means to Be Human”, by Michelle Bartel. She writes a great deal about being in the image of God. One section really grabbed hold of me. She says:

“No matter who you are reading this book right now, you are created in the image of God. Right Now. That person that you are right now reflects the image of God. You may be a geek in high school. You are created in the image of God. You may be mentally ill. You are created in the image of God. You may be the most popular boy or girl in your class. You are created in the image of God. You may have just sinned or been sinned against. You are created in the image of God. You may be physically disabled. You are created in the image of God. You may be a convict just let out of prison. You are created in the image of God. You may have just had an affair and cheated on your husband or wife. You are created in the image of God.

All of us bear the stamp, the fingerprints, the imprint of God. All of us are God’s beloved children. All of us. All that we are, all that we have, is of God.

Let us pray that we can live our lives in that certainty, trusting in God for everything and with everything we have.

Gracious God, it is a humbling thing to think that we carry your stamp, your imprint, your fingerprints upon us, that we are truly and completely yours. We ask for your help in knowing what you would have us do, in all that we do, with everyone we meet, with every step we take and decision we make, so that everything can be done to your glory, throughout our lives and throughout your world. All this we ask in the name of Christ, who has shown us what it means to live fully in and for you. Amen.