Sermon: Whose Image?
Texts: 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10; Matthew 22:15-22
Date: October 19, 2008
Rev. Dee Eisenhauer, Eagle Harbor Congregational Church
“You may not agree with every department of the government, but you really have to hand it to the IRS.”
Do you think you might have heard enough about taxes yet during this election season? Have you noticed that many politicians have mentioned taxes just a few times in their advertisements, rallies and debates? I guess you’d pretty much have to be in a coma not to have noticed it. The airwaves are full of who will raise your taxes and who won’t, who already voted for more taxes and who didn’t—as if there is no issue that could possibly be as interesting to the public as taxes, taxes, taxes. Even Joe the Plumber, he of the unexpected 15 minutes of fame, was captured on film talking to Senator Obama about—what else?—taxes.
So you turned off your possibly overheated television sets and came to the sanctuary this morning, hoping for sanctuary, and what should come up in the gospel lesson but…taxes. Oy vey.
We know that in our elections the issue of taxes stands for much more than the financial transaction between the public and the government. Behind the tax talk stand whole philosophies about the role of government, the size of government, government priorities, social classes, the creative tension between individual liberty and the common good, and so forth. Tax talk is usually about a great deal more than the checks we write on April 15.
That was also true in Jesus’ day. The question posed to Jesus about the payment of taxes was about much more than the financial transaction. It was a theological question, and a political question, and a wily question designed to bushwack Jesus. It sounded simple on the surface: “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” But it was not so much a question as a booby trap.
Most biblical scholars agree that the tax in question was a census tax, a fee that was charged to each man, woman, and slave between the ages of twelve and sixty-five for the privilege of living in the Roman empire. When Judea became a Roman province in 6 CE this head-tax was instituted. There were also other taxes, property taxes, temple taxes, a percentage of the harvest, and so forth—the tax bill for the impoverished population was quite burdensome. In addition to the financial strain, you can imagine the emotional strain of living under occupation and having to pay for the great honor of being under the heel of the Empire. It’s no wonder that the institution of the census tax triggered a nationalist movement that eventually became the Zealot revolt.
There was an additional problem with the tax from the point of view of faithful Jews. The tax had to be paid with Roman coinage, which was not just legal tender but also pieces of propaganda. Most of the coins were stamped with an image of the Caesar with inscriptions proclaiming him to be divine or the son of a god. Biblical scholar Brian Stoffregen says that one of the common phrases on coins during the time of Jesus was “Tiberius Caesar, august son of the divine Augustus, high priest.” Graven images and polytheism were blasphemous to both Jews and Christians.
We might wonder why this was such a big deal. Stoffregen helped me understand by asking in his commentary, “What if our coins said something like ‘George Walker Bush, august son of the divine George Herbert Walker Bush, President of the United States of America, the most powerful man on the planet’?” [1] We might find that a bit off-putting, depending on our political leanings. Or what if all the money during the previous administration had pictures of William Jefferson Clinton on them and sayings about his virtues? Probably many persons of a Republican persuasion would refuse to carry or use such money; every time they looked at it they would be reminded that the enemy was in power. That is just a taste of what the faithful experienced at having to use the Roman money; they were reminded that they were an occupied people and that the emperor was making himself out to be a god, which would have deeply troubled those committed monotheists. Of course, if they didn’t pay the taxes, they were in a world of hurt in a brutal regime that thought nothing of jailing, torturing, or killing the locals. So they were between a theological rock and a political hard place. You can imagine that it was the topic of a lot of heated coffee shop and dinner table conversation.
No wonder they wanted to ask Jesus what he thought. But of course, they didn’t really want to know his learned opinion, even though they sidled up to him oozing with flattery. They really wanted to trap him. You can tell partly because the Pharisees and the Herodians who were in league asking the question would have disagreed with each other about how to handle this issue. The Pharisees went to great lengths to avoid handling the Roman money, which they equated to idolatry, and they tried to keep their cooperation with the occupiers at the barest minimum—just enough to stay alive another day. The Herodians took a more pragmatic approach; they were willing to cozy up to the occupiers and collaborate with them in order to protect and promote their own interests. The fact that the Herodians and the Pharisees had teamed up on this indicated that they had agreed that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”—they both wanted to be rid of the rabble rousing Jesus. They figured they would have him in a corner with question about whether it was lawful (according to Jewish law) to pay the tax to the emperor. If he answered yes, he’d alienate the nationalists, many of the common people in the crowd. If he said no, he’d be subject to arrest by the Romans.
Jesus cleverly out-smarted them, managing to both shut them up and open up a much wider theological vista. He asked them to show him a coin. The minute they reach into their pockets to pull one out, there’s a big “gotcha” that we might overlook. If they were really representing themselves as theologically pure they shouldn’t have been carrying that blasphemous money around, especially not into the temple precincts, which is where this whole scene unfolded. So Jesus would have let their air out of their pompous puffed-up image right away, and everyone who witnessed it would know it. He asks, “Whose image is on this coin, and whose title?” They answer, “The emperor’s.” You know Jesus’ reply: “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s and to God the things that are God’s.” And it’s quite possible that he merrily pocketed the coin, which the person that had produced it would have been too embarrassed to ask him to return.
A trick answer to go with a trick question. Stoffregen points out that the word “give” in Jesus’ answer can mean “give back.” The word was used in other contexts in the sense of paying back a debt or giving the harvest back to the landowner at the proper time. The word carries a sense of giving back that which already belongs to the other person. Jesus is telling the listeners to give back the things of Caesar’s, and the give back the things of God. How do we know what things belong to Caesar? They have his image on them. How do we know what things belong to God? They have God’s image on them. And what, pray tell, is that? What has God’s image on it?
For the answer to that we have to go back to the beginning, chapter 1 of Genesis. God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness…so God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them.” What are we to give back to God? The things stamped with God’s image—us! We are to give God ourselves—our whole selves—not just some part. [2] That’s the big picture, the wider vista Jesus opened up in his brilliant answer.
Jesus wisely, and frustratingly, left the listeners to work out all the messy details of figuring out how to render to the government what belongs to the government and how to render to God that which is God’s. I’m reverting to that King James Bible term “render” because it’s such a rich, rounded word. In dictionary.com the meanings of render include melting down, delivering, yielding, giving back, restoring, reflecting, echoing, producing a copy or version, executing the motions of, translating, and administering. There’s a treasure trove of ways we might conceive of rendering ourselves to God.
Let’s play around for a bit with the idea of rendering as melting down. One writer commenting on the gospel story suggested that if the Pharisees and the Herodians were carrying the Roman money on the temple grounds, it was a sign that they already belonged to Caesar--as if the image on the money had superseded the image of God stamped on their souls. As if the image was figuratively contagious. Stoffregen’s observation that the coin of that realm was propaganda as well as legal tender caused me to study the coin of our realm for a while. I’ve spent a lot of it, but I haven’t looked at it very closely recently. If you have some coins, take them out and have a look at what they are promoting. One side has images of what we might call our secular saints—Lincoln, Jefferson, Roosevelt, Washington, Kennedy, along with some key words: “Liberty” and “In God We Trust.” The other sides of the coins have a variety of imagery: presidential memorials, the presidential seal, eagles, olive branches, oak leaves, torches, the slogan “E Pluribus Unum.” Is this propaganda?
Of course it is—it’s all designed to celebrate our heritage and remind us of what we value as a nation. And they’re not bad values, either, especially the words about trusting God and our hope that out of many there will be one. It wouldn’t be a bad thing to be “stamped” with such sentiments; they don’t conflict with the image of God that is impressed upon the core of our being. There were a couple of things, though, that seemed worth a raised eyebrow. The oak branch on the dime sybolizes victory. The presidential seal on the half-dollar has the eagle clutching both an olive branch and a bundle of arrows. Here’s a bit of presidential seal trivia: During the Truman administration the president had it re-designed so the eagle was looking to the right instead of the left. In explanation, he said the eagle was now looking toward peace since the olive branch was in the right talon. In response, Winston Churchill cracked, “Mr. President, with the greatest respect, I would prefer the American eagle's neck to be on a swivel so that it could face the olive branches or the arrows, as the occasion might demand". That is uncomfortably close to the truth of our history—we have been involved in at least 25 armed separate major armed conflicts in the last 300 years. [3] In fact, if you take a close look, you see that the eagle on the quarters that are not in the “50 state” series has dropped the olive branch and is clutching only a big bundle of arrows. Our nation, like the Roman Empire, is committed to victory through military strength. Our money reminds us of that. That is in conflict with our faith’s wisdom about turning weapons into farming implements and studying war no more.
Whose image is on the core of our selves? It seems to me that we need to keep asking ourselves if an image like the victorious eagle with strong talons chock-full of weapons has insinuated itself onto our souls, has been impressed onto our identity. If we examine ourselves and find that it has, then we may need to render ourselves back to God in the sense of melting that identity down and offering ourselves up again for the stamp that matters, the image of God. Same goes for any other value that we judge to be in conflict with our core identity as God’s own. All lesser values and loyalties must yield to that elemental stamp of the image of God.
As we render to God what is God’s—ourselves—we attempt to echo, reflect, depict, impart the image of God in the world. Paul used the language of “imitation” in his letter to the Thessalonians, saying that the faithful in that church had become imitators of the Lord. He seemed pretty realistic about the effort this takes, speaking about the work of faith, the labor of love. Imitating God, doing the work of faith is complicated business when we are required to be involved with governments and financial transactions and politics and legal systems and all kinds of tricky real-life stuff. Jesus’ words imply that we are not excused from our civil obligations. A few people are called to withdraw from the world to a monastic community to pray; most of us are not. We just have to hang around and try to figure out how to render to Caesar the things that belong to all the secular authorities at the same time as we are rendering ourselves to God.
It’s clear that we’re not all going to draw the same conclusions about how to go about this convoluted rendering business. For instance, back on the topic of taxes, some of the faithful will cheerfully pay taxes, trusting the government to do the right thing. Some will refuse to pay based on their objections to how it is collected or how it is spent. Some will pay and advocate for tax reform because they believe they are called to help create a system that lightens the load on the poor. We need to stay in dialogue about such matters, helping each other figure it out.
And, I believe, we need to call each other to accountability about keeping our intention to give ourselves to God our first priority whether we’re talking ballots, checkbooks, day planners, budgets, grocery lists, or career choices. We need to help each other stay in the struggle, as my friend Jaco ten Hove over at Cedars UU would say. Rendering to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s is really the easy part. It’s easy to fall in and simply do what is expected of us to be socially acceptable citizens—follow the rules, shop, dress stylishly, pay the bills, mow the lawn, shop, root for your team, be polite, shop. What’s much more demanding is giving ourselves, rendering ourselves to God in the midst of all that. I appreciate William Willemon’s comment: “Perhaps when it comes to what we should give to the State and what we should give to God…the best we can do is to be permanently uneasy.” We can help each other to do that, to be permanently uneasy, to stay in the struggle and not settle for less than we are called to be and do.
One children’s sermon proposal I read this week instructed me to bring two boxes. Into one box we give what we owe to the state, the secular order. I’ll put some money in there as a symbol of paying taxes, although there is more to “rendering unto Caesar” than that. Into the other box I’ll also put some money as a symbol of giving to and through the church, although there is more to “rendering unto God” than that. (Stoffregen said in his commentary that he remembered hearing a stewardship speaker once say that he always made it a point to give more to his church than he paid in taxes as a way of indicating the place of his greater allegiance and who has greater authority over him.)
These are two separate boxes. But the point Jesus was trying to make was not that these are entirely separate realms, but that the “Caesar” box fits within the “God” box. It should never be the other way around, that we squeeze a little vessel of holiness into our secular lives. We owe everything to God, in whose image we are made. There is space leftover around the Caesar box. That is the space for grace. Imagine that the air between these boxes through which we render our lives is fragrant with some aroma you love—cinnamon, roses, fresh bread. In this fragrant space God offers forgiveness for our errors, encouragement for our growth, vision for who we yet may be. There is space here for renewed discipline, expanding compassion, sharper perspective, increasing energy for action. Render unto God that which is God’s, and God will help us make it a beautiful offering.
[1] Stoffregen, Brian http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/matt22x15.htm
[2] Ibid, Stoffregen
[3] “American History Timeline: American Involvement in Wars from Colonial Times to the Present” http://americanhistory.about.com/library/timelines/bltimelineuswars.htm