Writer and educator Laurence Peter once noted, “America is a land of taxation that was founded to avoid taxation."
I think this observation describes our nation’s ambivalent relationship with taxes very well and shows us that looking at our history through the lens of taxation can teach a lot about our most formative experiences.
Take, for example, the American Revolution.
Feeling as though they were being taxed by a government in which their interests weren’t being represented, colonial Americans declared their independence from England two hundred fifty years ago. They even fought a war about it.
But when the new government raised taxes to pay the bills from that war, the colonists-turned-citizens rebelled again and tested the mettle of the Founding Fathers and the young nation.
That’s the story of the Whiskey Rebellion.
A few decades later, when Emancipation inspired white supremists to find new and creative ways to maintain their privileges, poll taxes became a popular way of denying black people the right to vote, even as those same taxes became a major source of government funding.
Imagine that! Paying for what should’ve been the common good with money raised through racist practices–there’s a lot of history to unpack there.
Then, in the early 20th century, as Prohibitionists worked to eliminate alcohol from the culture, along with the substantial tax revenue it generated, the 16th amendment to the Constitution established the federal income tax to cover the losses.
And to this day, as we’ve moved into the second quarter of the 21st century, questions about taxes, tariffs, spending, and debt still remain central to our elections and the body politic.
Learning who has the power to levy a tax, what they tax, and how the money collected from taxes is spent offers important insights into what we as a country have been, who we are, and what we hope to become.
It’s also useful knowledge for students of the New Testament.
This morning’s Gospel Lesson is about taxes. Specifically, Matthew 22 tells of a time in Jesus’ life, just a few days before he died, when two rival parties conspired to ask him a “gotcha question.”
The rival parties were Pharisees and Herodians and their question was whether or not a faithful Jew could pay taxes to the Roman Empire.
Not surprisingly, whenever the Empire raised taxes, people groaned and complained.
In Jesus’ homeland of Judea, however, a serious religious question added a unique wrinkle to the public debate.
The question in Judea was, “Could a devout Jew, in good conscience, pay a Roman tax with a Roman coin that bore an inscription praising the Emperor of Rome–or Caesar–as a god?”
Jews who welcomed and benefited from Roman rule were unlikely to have a problem with such a tax.
Among these were the Herodians.
Other Jews were less comfortable attributing divine qualities to a government and its leaders and took exception to what they saw as the Empire’s arrogance.
The Pharisees fell into this camp.
Despite these important differences, however, the Herodians and Pharisees were willing to work together to set a trap for Jesus.
It turns out he annoyed them more than taxes.
So these two rival groups came together to force Jesus into a corner.
One regarded not paying taxes to Rome as treason and the other thought paying taxes was idolatry, so they asked, “Jesus, which are you? A traitor or a blasphemer?”
“Tell us what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor or not?”
We pick up the story in Matthew 22, verse 18.
But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me a 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, “The emperor’s.” Then he said to them, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” (Matthew 22:18-21)So what can we say about this?
First, we can say that Jesus seems to concede that the tax should be paid. The emperor’s name was on the money so the emperor had a claim to it.
However, Jesus didn’t stop there.
The scripture says he continued and said, “Give also to God the things that are God’s.”
That phrase hits differently, doesn’t it?
It’s not difficult to imagine his opponents celebrating that he had taken the bait of their trick question, only to realize that he had deftly turned the tables on them.
Pharisees and Herodians thought they had stumped Jesus, but his response caused them to question themselves.
The Gospel even says, “When they heard this, they were amazed, and they left him and went away.” (Matthew 22:22)
Professor Christopher Bryan summarizes the predicament in which Jesus’ rivals found themselves.
What… bears God’s image, so that it should be owed to God? No Jew, Pharisee, or even Herodian could fail to know the answer to that. They themselves bore God’s image. They owed a mere head-tax to Caesar, because the coinage was Caesar’s. But they owed themselves to God, because they belonged to God...They have asked Jesus a question about their relationship to [the Empire] and he has answered it; but in doing so he has used the form of their question to challenge them with an altogether deeper and more dangerous question of his own, about their relationship to God. (Render to Caesar: Jesus, the Early Church, and the Roman, p. 46)Jesus asks the same deeper and dangerous question of the Church, and the Church hasn’t always been up for the challenge.
In some cases, we’ve answered Jesus’ question by offering a nearly unconditional endorsement of the political status quo.
Pay your taxes, do what your leader tells you to do, and don’t cause trouble—that’s what good Christians are supposed to do because disobedience is a sin and Jesus is only concerned about spiritual things anyway.
This has always been the answer preferred by tyrants and the privileged, but it seems unlikely that Jesus took a self-serving gotcha question about Roman taxes as the opportunity to jettison the entire witness of God’s justice seeking prophetic Spirit in the name of a go-along to get-along version of the Gospel.
No. That’s not what’s happening here.
Neither is this an invitation for disciples to seize the power of the government to achieve their own, self-appointed ends.
State favored religion, so-called holy wars, faith in “God, Gold, and Guns,” but not necessarily in that order—disciples may find things like these tempting, but, truly, the only worthwhile debate about them is whether they produce a worse version of politics or religion, because it’s undeniable that they yield toxic versions of both.
For example, it’s hard to believe that Jesus wanted his very public and brutal death to show his disciples that what they really needed to do was take control of the state so that they could hang the right kind of people on crosses, but sure enough, just this week, a popular social media influencer shared with his millions of followers his belief that God must support state sponsored executions because Jesus had one.
That’s a position one takes when they just want God to bless the policies that they’ve already decided to support, not someone who is striving to seek God’s kingdom and to make Jesus the Lord of their life, but such is the confusion that occurs when we give more to Caesar than he deserves.
Jesus said, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”
It’s easy to illustrate what it looks like when people get this wrong, but what does it look like when we get it right?
I think the only workable answer is that it looks like Jesus—the way he crossed barriers to show people that they mattered, the way he cut through the machinations of those who were set on malice and division, the way he embodied the Image of God and recognized that same image in others.
“Jesus is God’s politics incarnate,” note theologians Brent Laytham and Michelle Clifton-Soderstrom, and “God’s politics is a politics of forgiveness, compassion and mercy.” (Render Unto God)
The two writers conclude, “If we start with that as bedrock, then at least we’ll know who we, the church, are called to be as citizens of God’s kingdom.”
I like that perspective.
If we build our lives, our ministry, our witness on the bedrock foundation of Jesus, who is forgiveness, compassion, and mercy incarnate, “then at least we’ll know who we, the church, are called to be.”
There came a time in Jesus’ life, just a few days before he died, when two rival parties conspired to ask him a “gotcha question” about paying taxes. They wanted to box him into a corner–to turn him into a traitor or a blasphemer–but what he said left them amazed and confused.
We might not be as duplicitous as those who tried to entrap Jesus, but we still like to corner him and to try to make him say what we want to hear.
We want him to tell us that God will bless the positions we’ve taken and the policies we support.
We want him to say that the path of least resistance just happens to be the road God wants us to take.
We want to hear that we can keep the Emperor and God happy and satisfied and that it’s not going to cost us anything.
That might be what we want to hear, but no matter how clever the question, Jesus won’t be tricked into telling us that which isn’t true.
Nobody puts Jesus in a corner!
Instead, he sees through all our schemes, biases, and motivations and invites us to think about deeper and holy things–the things that make for justice, community, and love.
He avoids his rivals’ traps and our self-centereredness in order to share the Good News.
Caesar wants it all, but God already has it all.
Let us, then, build our lives, our ministry, and our witness on Jesus, so that at least we’ll know who we are called to be.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Image: Augustus as Jove, holding scepter and orb (first half of 1st century AD)
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