Scripture Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap [Jesus] in what he said. So 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. Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the coin used for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius. Then he said to them, “Whose head is this and whose title?” They answered, “Caesar’s.” Then he said to them, “Give therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.” When they heard this, they were amazed, and they left him and went away.
Sermon
In the fall of my first year of seminary, a TV show debuted that my mother immediately told me about, so that my daughter and I could be sure to watch it. A show about mothers and daughters. And we did. “The Gilmore Girls” became an instant favorite across the three generations, grandmother, mother, and daughter. We watched it together every week when I returned home from the city.
Episode 6 of that first season is about teenage Rory’s 15th birthday. It begins with her mom, Lorelai, quietly entering Rory’s bedroom at about 4 in the morning.
“Happy Birthday, little girl!” she says, and Rory turns over and invites her mom to lay down and make herself comfortable. They talk about how quickly Rory is growing up, and then, Lorelai asks, “So, you know what I think?”
“What?”
“I think you’re a great, cool kid, and the best friend a girl could ever have.”
“Back atcha.”
“And it’s so hard to believe that exactly this time, many moons ago, I was lying in exactly this same position…”
“Oh boy,” Rory says. “Here we go.”
Lorelei continues: “…only I had a huge fat stomach and big fat ankles, and I was swearing like a sailor…”
“On leave,” Rory adds.
“On leave! Right!”
And so commences what we learn is an annual tradition: Lorelai telling Rory the story of her birth—in far more detail than the teenager would like.
Some stories are like that: so familiar, we can just about recite them word for word, filling in the blanks if necessary. I remembered that episode this week as I was pondering the very famous, very well-known story we’re reading together today. This is such a well-known story that I knew the “punch line” to it long before I’d ever heard it in the context of worship. “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's.” (KJV)
How do we hear a story like this anew? How do we slow ourselves down from inserting all the answers and interpretations we already know as if we’re Rory, just waiting for it to be over? It’s not easy. But I think we can do it.
Context is everything. We’re hearing this story in the Southern Tier of New York in late October, but Jesus is living it in Jerusalem, just before the Passover Festival. He has come, disciples in tow, resolute, to meet the fate that he knows awaits him. He’s in the Temple even now, in this conversation. He's just shared three parables, all poking at those who he feels are missing the point of his teaching, not listening, maybe filling in the blanks themselves. But none of this means he wants to make it easy for the people who have him in their crosshairs.
He is approached by members of two distinctly different factions. The Pharisees have gotten a bad rap in Christian teaching, and are often painted as Jesus’ enemies in the gospels. But Jesus has much in common with the Pharisees. Pharisees believed in one God, and that the scriptures were divinely inspired, and that God took an active interest and role in human affairs. They also believed in free will, and looked forward to a resurrection of the dead at the end of all things, a world to come. Because they believed scripture to be inspired by God, they took the commandments seriously—all 613 of the ones we find in the Hebrew Scriptures. Pharisees started calling those who were learned in the law “rabbis.” Pharisees found themselves in conflict with the Temple priests, because they thought that prayers and blessings were not just the province of priests, but that they belonged to all the people. Pharisees believed that God “was a loving father, who loved humanity so much that he gave us the Torah, the Law, so that everyone who followed the law would have eternal life (fellowship with God, now and forever).”[i] And maybe the most important for our reading of the gospels, the Pharisees believed that we arrive at the truth through debate—rigorous, no-holds-barred back-and-forth, which probably accounts for a lot of how we hear them in the New Testament.
The Herodians, on the other hand, had hitched their fortunes to the much-hated puppet kings who had been entirely in thrall to Rome. They had converted to Judaism for the purposes of being Rome’s right-hand-men in Palestine. The Pharisees sought to restore the kingdom of David; the Herodians sought to restore the descendants of Herod the Great to the throne.
And these two groups, somehow, found common ground in their unease about Jesus. And so they approached him, during the week we call Holy Week, to try to get him to slip up, to say the wrong thing, the thing that would result in his followers being divided, the thing that would weaken his authority with one group or the other.
They start by trying to butter him up.
“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.” All these things are true, of course. But that doesn’t mean these words aren’t being weaponized. They continue: “Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?”
This is a nakedly political ploy, and a nakedly political question, and Jesus sees it for what it is. “You hypocrites,” he responds. “You are testing me.” Then he says something significant, more significant than I realized until my reading this week. He says, “Show me the coin used for the tax.”
In other words, Jesus doesn’t have a denarius, himself. Jesus isn’t carrying the Roman coin. Why is that? Remember, there are money-changers in the Temple. Faithful Jews generally use the Roman coins in the marketplace but then must change them into Temple currency for making offerings. This is because the Roman coins are considered unclean. But it may also be because the Roman coins bear the image of Caesar—who, in the parlance of the day, was referred to as 'Divine,' 'Son of God,' 'God,' and 'God from God.' Caesar’s titles were 'Lord,' 'Redeemer,' 'Liberator,' and 'Savior of the World..’” Before Jesus was born, all those terms were assigned to Caesar Augustus.[ii] They were adopted by the emperors who succeeded him.
Did Jesus not have a denarius on him, because he considered that to be blasphemy? It’s a possibility we have to consider.
The coin he doesn’t carry is brought to Jesus, and he asks whose face and inscription are on it. “Caesar,” he is told. “So,” he responds, “give to Caesar those things that are Caesars, and give to God those things that are God’s.”
This isn’t a completely satisfactory answer—though it leaves the Pharisees and Herodians amazed that Jesus was able to slip through that test unscathed. What are we supposed to do? Make a list? Column A, things that belong to Caesar, or our government; Column B, things that belong to God? Isn’t there an unspoken implication that everything belongs to God? Isn’t even phrasing his answer—things that belong to Caesar, things that belong to God—bound to make us ask the question?
The truth is, Jesus leaves it to the Herodians and the Pharisees… and to you and to me… to work it out. Not necessarily with Column A and Column B, but certainly with our understanding of who we are and whose we are, as well as our consideration of the usefulness of things like fire trucks, good roads, and sensible people running the government.
What happens when we consider Jesus’ answer not on our own, as solo agents, but together, in community? Here we are. How does pondering this as part of a community of faith influence our understanding of how and where we give of ourselves? It’s Stewardship season, so, of course, I’m urging us to consider how we decide to give, whether here at UPC, or to things like Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, or to the Red Cross or Mom’s House, or any of the myriad important agencies and causes in our community alone. Personally, I like fire trucks and good roads and sensible people running our government. Is it possible that God also likes these things for us?
There’s no way to do this but to try. The Pharisees believed that God had given us free will, and scripture backs that up, though it also shows us a God who tips the scales from time to time, hardening people’s hearts, and whatnot. Our great, great spiritual grandpa John Calvin believed that sin had utterly defaced the image of God in us, and that free will was not really available to us anymore. And just yesterday I saw an article that agreed with my friend Kimberly, who says, our lizard brain makes decisions and then our conscious brain figures out a way to live with them. All fair considerations when we are trying to know how do decide what is right for us, for our community, and for our world.
But we believe in a God who loved us into being, and through baptism we have been marked as Christ’s own forever, and been given the gift of the presence of the Holy Spirit in us and with us and among us. We have also been given, and accepted, the gift of community, in which each of us is invited to participate in a holy story that continues to unfold in our day and in our lives together.
So we will strive to give to God what is God’s. We will hear the familiar stories again and again, and hope to hear them fresh every time, because God is still speaking to us, as individuals and as a community. And together, we will try. That is all we can do, and that is what we are called to do.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
[i] Bill Trench, “Jesus Was a Pharisee (Seriously. He Was),” Thinking Faith, http://thinkfaithfully.blogspot.com/2016/02/jesus-was-pharisee-seriously-he-was.html.
[ii] “Son of God,” Ne w World Encyclopedia, https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Son_of_God.