Year A

Matthew 22:15-22

The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn

God’s Coins

A group of chess enthusiasts had checked into a hotel and were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories. After about an hour, the manager came out of the office and asked them to disperse. “But why” they asked, as they moved off. “Because,” he said, “I can’t stand chess nuts boasting in an open foyer.” Chess is an excellent metaphor for so much that happens in the Gospels. Those opposed to Jesus try to play a move that gets Jesus in trouble. The thing about Jesus is that he is a really good chess player. And with some real skill, Jesus today does not simply play a move that gets him out of trouble, but also takes the opportunity to establish a vitally important theological truth. Ultimately everything belongs to God.

Jesus is in Jerusalem and this conversation with the authorities is part of a continuing discussion that began back in chapter 21 with their questions about his authority. Following the parable about the wicked tenants of the vineyard, Matthew tells us the religious authorities began to grasp the not-too-subtle point that the parable was directed against them. This made them so angry they began looking for a reason to arrest him. But, before they could make their plans, Jesus told them the parable about the wedding feast which ended with the unhappy conclusion, “For many are called, but few are chosen.”

We can understand with all that conversation in the background why our text today begins with an explicit statement of the plotting by the Pharisees to entangle Jesus in his own words. Rather than they approach him, they send their disciples the Herodians to Jesus who acknowledged him as Teacher, his sincerity, his truthfulness and impartiality. Then they popped the well-known question: “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” Talk about a loaded question! Of course it’s legal to pay taxes to the emperor—it’s illegal not to! The land was under Roman military occupation who extracted taxes from its citizens. If Jesus so much as hints that the taxes paid to Rome are out of order, he will be arrested and the full force of the law will be down upon him.

But, he can’t just say, “Of course, pay your taxes!” There are serious religious objections to paying taxes to the pagan Roman occupiers; why the very coin used to pay the tax bears a graven image of the emperor, strictly against Jewish law. And the inscription upon the coin identifies that emperor as a divinity, son of the divine Augustus Caesar. How can any self-respecting Jew pay tribute to someone who claims to be God? If Jesus gives an un-Jewish answer, lacking in either theological correctness or patriotism, he will be completely discredited as a teacher and rabbi of his people, and possibly lose most of his support. It seems no matter how he answers, he is in trouble which of course, is exactly what his questioners want.

Seeing right through their charade, Jesus called them “hypocrites,” and then asked to see the coin. Showing him a coin, he asked them to identify the image and the title of the person represented on the denarius. Of course, they replied, “The emperor’s.” This led Jesus to his famous remark, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s and to God the things that are God’s.” They tried to challenge Jesus but he gave a response that did more than merely foil their trick. He gave them a teaching that left them with a challenge that rings down through the centuries. The particular issues may be different for us, but the problem of thorny questions of allegiance is a familiar one.

We may prefer that Jesus provide us with a clear criterion for deciding what is rightfully due the government and what is rightly due God but he doesn’t. Yet, he was clear that that such a line is to be drawn. “Give to God the things that belong to God.” What belongs to God? The Roman coin that Jesus held bore the image of the emperor. Therefore it rightfully belonged to the emperor. What bears the image and is stamped with God’s likeness in this world? What, indeed, but our very selves. God said way back in Genesis “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness.” In God’s image God created us. We are the coins of God’s kingdom. 

Isaiah reminds us of this today when he writes what the Lord said to his anointed, to Cyrus, King of Persia, “I call you by your name; I surname you…so that they may know…that I am the Lord” and that you belong to me. The Lord is the only God, the one who owns the world on the basis of creating it. Therefore, “though you do not know me, I will continue to empower and provide you with treasures. I will aid you and through this saving action all the world will know that “I am the Lord, and there is no other.” Paul today, in his letter to the Thessalonians expresses his intimacy with the one creator Lord as he gives thanks for the faith of the Thessalonians as well as further instructions and obligations in Christian life. The Word comes to them as they turn from idols to the living God. Many blessings are being revealed in the life of the congregation through their works of faith, labors of love and endurance inspired by hope in Jesus Christ.

Many New Testament scholars believe that this is Paul’s earliest letter written during his second missionary journey. The people who lived in Thessalonica in the middle of the first-century AD had never heard of Jesus. Many of them had never heard of the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob or Isaiah. Then this man named Paul, along with some companions, appeared in town and began to proclaim a new and unfamiliar message. This message did not come “in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction.”

Paul and his fellow companion’s message and their lives combined to form something so compelling that many in Thessalonica came to faith in Christ. And now they were a fledgling church of new believers, to whom Paul was writing this letter of instruction and encouragement. In this passage, we see a pattern of believing and living. Those who have faith in Christ are known by how they live. To those young believers, he reminds them of the example that he and his companions set for them: therefore become he says “imitators of us and of the Lord.” You are stamped with the image of God’s likeness in this world and are to continue the work of salvation.

God’s likeness that is stamped on us declares that we belong wholly and entirely to God. All of our heart, soul, mind and strength are to be given to God because this is what belongs to God and when we give to God what belongs to God, not only does love of neighbor become as strong as our love of self, but we also will not fail to use our money in a God-honoring manner no matter whose picture is on it.

To live as Christians in a consumer society is no easier and no harder than to be faithful Jews in a Roman-ruled one. God knows we have to play by the rules of the occupier, and Jesus’ answer acknowledges that. His answer reminds us by his own life and death in full obedience to God, that we are, body and soul, the people of God, created in God’s likeness, living here as stewards of the earth and coins of God’s kingdom for whose purpose we are created. Then let us “give to God the things that belong to God.” There is a limit to what we owe Caesar but there is no limit to what we owe God.