Talk about a setup. The Pharisees and the Herodians together, the leaders of the people and those loyal to the king. Both sides weren’t particularly fond of Jesus; on that they could certainly agree. But on most other things, you wouldn’t find a stranger alliance.
The Pharisees were not particularly keen on the rule which Rome exercised over the people of Judah. In fact, their whole reason for existence was to urge the average Jew to return to the law of the Lord, in order that the day of the Messiah would come and the Jews would be restored to holding their own kingdom, with the Son of David on the throne, a kingdom which would last forever. Theirs was an internal, self-searching religion based on the purity of the personal actions of the individual Jew.
The Herodians, on the other side, were all about the power and authority of Rome. Why, it was Rome which had put papa Herod on the throne of Palestine, that right to rule which had been divided among the next generation. Caesar was all right by them. His strong arm allowed them to continue to rule in relative peace and prosperity. Theirs was a religion of lip-service to God and fealty to Rome.
You couldn’t find two groups with more different aims than the Pharisees and the Herodians. Except when it came to Jesus. For Jesus had too much of a revolutionary spirit for the Herodians, and exposed the hypocrisy of the hearts of the Pharisees too many times for them to count. Their mutual desire to bring this popular teacher Jesus down, to win back some of their followers which He had won from them, united them in a common cause.
The set-up was so simple. Ask Jesus whether they should be paying taxes to Rome. What right did Caesar, over in Rome, have to claim taxes from the Jewish people who had no God but God? That way, Jesus was bound to show His hand one way or the other. If Jesus said that they shouldn’t, then the Herodians could report back to their superiors and have Jesus arrested for failure to obey the tax laws. If Jesus said that they should, then the Pharisees could label Jesus a Caesar-sympathizer, and he would lose all his small-town, commoner support. There wasn’t a lot of love lost on the Caesar and his tax-collectors among the common man, just as there’s not a lot of friendliness toward the Canada Revenue Agency today.
Finally. They had Jesus stopped. They could catch Him up and not have to deal with Him anymore. Sometimes we try to pose what we think are stumpers to Jesus as well, offer up seemingly contradictory situations to Him in our own hearts and lives so that we figure He has no choice but to let us get away with what it is that we really want. It’s kind of like that old question, “Can God make a rock so big that He can’t lift it?” The correct answer there is that it’s a silly question because it’s assuming the wrong things about God. Yet we do exactly this with our sinful choices and selfish desires. God calls us to love our neighbours, but He also calls us to tell the truth. So what if my telling the truth is done in such a way as to get back at a neighbour who’s hurt or offended me. I’m doing what God wants by telling the truth, so He can’t hold me guilty if my truth-telling is done in order to get back at an enemy. God wants us to support our families but He also wants us to put Him first. So it’s okay for me to give my family tons of my time, even if that means putting God and my church-life on low priority.
That’s the sort of thing we see in today’s Gospel. Doing what appears to be the right thing to the world but doing it in a way to try to justify yourself before Jesus, doing it in such a way as to bring Jesus down to your level. It doesn’t work. It can’t work. Jesus knows the sinful heart of humankind and He won’t be deceived by even our cleverest of attempts.
So the Pharisees and Herodians go off to catch Jesus up, and He knows what they’re up to. He knows the instant he sees both the Pharisees and the Herodians together to ask this question. And He answers the question in a marvellous way, a way which to this day applies to all those who would follow Him, including you and me.
"Teacher, we know that you are true and teach the way of God truthfully, and you do not care about anyone's opinion, for you are not swayed by appearances. Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?" But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, "Why put me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the coin for the tax." And they brought him a denarius. And Jesus said to them, "Whose likeness and inscription is this?" They said, "Caesar's." Then he said to them, "Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." When they heard it, they marveled. And they left him and went away.
Even today the face of our nation is on our currency. The likeness of the Queen appears on the coins and on the $20; faces of prominent prime ministers on the $5, $10, $50, and $100. The money belongs to Caesar. In times of economic shifts or troubles, such as that which has run through the international money and credit markets in the last few weeks, people don’t look to these markets to solve the problems, even if they are the ones who have caused it. No, the ultimate responsibility for our monetary system, the way things work in this day and age, falls back on the nation, on Caesar, on the Queen and the Privy Council, the Prime Minister and the Cabinet. So we hear, rightly or wrongly, of the US government spending billions upon billions in buyouts of bank stock and guaranteeing of failed mortgages, of the Canadian government buying billions of dollars of good mortgages, all with an eye to Caesar ensuring that the economy of our nations continue.
One of the ways in which our government operates and ensures it has the funds to carry out tasks on behalf of the individual is by levying taxes. You or I might disagree as to how much tax is levied, or to what ends it is used, but that the government has the right to tax is shown by whose likeness is on the money. Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, Jesus says. And it’s as true today as it has ever been.
The harder part is what Jesus says right after the part about giving to Caesar. That’s the part about giving to God that which belongs to God. Because God doesn’t care about money. People care about money. God’s people care about money too; it is good and right and proper to be lavish with your giving to God’s work because the work of the church, both locally and in the wider mission, requires money. In order to have me available to do pastoral work 24/7, it requires that I have a living wage. Our synod has prepared financial guidelines to help congregations in determining fair and appropriate values for such things. In order to help support our missions in areas where there are smaller congregations still needing pastors, or overseas missions, to support a missionary, to support the institutions of learning which train our pastors, missionaries, and church workers, or for any other of the work of our church body, we need to give money. This is essential in this world because our world is a world which, whether rightly or wrongly, operates on money. That’s how it works. Our churches are blessed with material gifts and we could always make better use of what the Lord has given us in order to further His kingdom. We think of the church as being merely our local congregation at our own peril! I would encourage you to periodically review how your giving to the church, locally and at large, reflects on what the Lord has given you. Even secular books on financial planning make note of how important it is to make scheduled and regular giving to churches and other charities part of your method of dealing with your money.
But God doesn’t care about that so much as He desires your entire existence to belong to Him and Him alone. Giving to God what belongs to God involves huge sacrifice. For what belongs to God is precisely whatever you have that He has given you. After all, in the beginning, God created us in His own image, just as our money bears the image of our nation. In the words of our Small Catechism, the explanation to the First Article, God has given me and you: “my body and soul, eyes, ears, and all my members, my reason and all my senses, and still takes care of them. He also gives me clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home, wife and children, land, animals, and all I have. He richly and daily provides me with all that I need to support this body and life.” The explanation to the Fourth Petition of the Lord’s Prayer goes on to add: “Daily bread includes everything that has to do with the support and needs of the body, such as food, drink, clothing, shoes, house, home, land, animals, money, goods, a devout husband or wife, devout children, devout workers, devout and faithful rulers, good government, good weather, peace, health, self- control, good reputation, good friends, faithful neighbours, and the like.”
That’s what God has given you. That’s what belongs to Him. How are you at giving those things back to God? Little wonder the Pharisees and Herodians marvelled, and went away, unable to accuse Jesus of anything. Rightly understood, even the most extortionary of tax regimes falls far short of God’s demand of your entire being.
Rightly understood, this really is not very comforting or consoling. It isn’t nice to hear how far short we come of living in this way. But it is something we need to hear, so that we repent—turn from our self-focus, and by God’s Holy Spirit, return to our God who has given us everything. For He has also given us the forgiveness of sins through Jesus’ precious death for us on the cross. He has given us faith, through the working of the Holy Spirit through the word of the Gospel spoken to us, received in Baptism, continued in the Lord’s Supper. He has given us eternal life through Jesus’ rising from the dead. He gives us all these things in order that we would be His own. We belong to Him. For Jesus Himself is the perfect image of God, and through Him we are restored to being the perfect image of God that we were meant to be in the first place.
And instead of leaving Him and going away, as did the Pharisees and Herodians, Jesus invites us to stay with Him and walk with Him throughout these earthly days, to be His salt and light in a world which is bland and darkened from sin. He calls us to be in His Word, to be ready to give an answer for the hope that is in us.
And all this He does simply because He loves us, and desires that all would be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s—for God has already given you all that you need to support this body and life, and eternity, too.
Praise be to Christ, whose death gives life and whose life is eternity itself. Amen.
Last updated October 2008 by the webmaster.