The Coin of Our Faith

"The Coin of Our Faith"
Matthew 22:15-22


I think Jesus must have been so tired at the end of the day.  Could someone get weary being the Savior?  I would imagine so.  Imagine dealing with people who don’t get it.  Who avoid getting it.  Who refuse to get it.  Who only want to come for the free side show, and avoid the message.  Can’t you just imagine Jesus breathing a deep sigh at the end of the day, and shaking his head in wonder?  Do you think there were days when he went off by himself and wept?

It must have been immensely hard to be the Savior.  Sure there was the whipping and the Cross at the end.  Unquestionably and unimaginably torturous to have to go through.  But even before then, there were lots of days and people that were just plain frustrating.

This day was going to be one of those days.

It started with a delegation of Pharisees.  This wasn’t a group of friends who decided to go see what Jesus was up to.  These men were commissioned.  They had a plan.  They weren’t going to just watch.  They were going to engage Jesus in a well thought out trap.  They were excited.  This time they would trip Jesus up.  This time they would gain enough leverage to shut him up.  You can see it in the way they walk, light of step, almost a swagger.  Smiles on their faces.  Anticipation noticeable by the way they stroked their beards.  This was going to be the day they would get Jesus.

Mixed in with this band of cunning men were some Herodians.  They, like the Pharisees, were Jews.  But they were supporters of the Herod dynasty established by the Roman emperor.  It’s been said that war makes strange bedfellows, and so it was this time in the war against Jesus.  Pharisees and Herodians

Herod was the ruler of Galilee and Perea.  His authority was set by the Emperor himself.  Herod Antipas was his name.  He was ruthless in his quest for power, having a wife, brothers and a son killed in order to keep his throne.  Some say he was paranoid.  That an irrational fear drove his ruthlessness.  It was Herod Antipas who had John the Baptist beheaded and the head delivered on a silver platter.  Antipas did this at his wife’s request.  She was tired of listening to John the Baptist railing against the fact that she was still married to Herod’s brother when she married Herod.  “Off with his head,” said the queen of spades, and Herod complied.  It was Herod Antipas who sat in authority over Jesus in the end, condemning Jesus to be beaten, and then crucified.

So, why?  Why this group of Jewish supporters of Herod mixed in with the Pharisees?  Why these Herodians who favored Roman rule in Palestine over against the Pharisees who favored nationalism, and the end to Roman domination in their land?  Why these two together?  Odd, wouldn’t you say?

When they reach Jesus, first came the platitudes.  “Teacher,” they said.  “We know that you are truthful, and teach the way of God in accordance with the truth.”  Blah, blah, blah.  Isn’t it amazing how people can lie when they are talking about the truth.  This buttery statement by the Pharisees is one of the more bold-faced lies spoken to Jesus.  There wasn’t a Pharisee alive, except for maybe Nicodemus, who believed that statement.  There wasn’t a one of them who believed that Jesus taught the way of God in accordance to the truth.  They all thought Jesus was a dangerous charlatan, delusional at best, a blasphemer and liar at worst.

I try to imagine what Jesus was thinking when he heard all this effusive, manipulative set up, rolling off the Pharisee’s tongues.  I try to imagine Jesus’ face.  Did he roll his eyes and mutter, “Yeah, whatever!”  He knew he’d be shaking his head at the end of the day over this one.  Did he give a little preemptive shake of the head now?  Did he wonder to himself, These people come to me speaking of honesty.  Why can’t they just be honest and up front with me about why they’re here?  Do they not see the irony of their tactics?  Poor Jesus having to put up with people like us.

Then comes their question.  Now Jesus (and we) find out why there’s the strange mix of Pharisees with Herodians.  It’s in their question.  Their well-oiled trap.  They can’t wait to set it and watch Jesus get caught in it.  SNAP!  “Tell us then,” they ask, “what do you think?  Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?”

Taxes.  It’s either about death or taxes.  (What we don’t see is what comes next after this story.  The day continues for Jesus when the Sadducees showed up and asked him a question about death and the after life.)  So in one day Jesus is being forced to answer questions about taxes and death.

Taxes.  One of the inevitabilities of life.  Isn’t it nice to know, in an odd sort of way, that people had tax issues way back when?  Didn’t know you could take your tax problems to Jesus did you?  Neither did Jesus.  Just think if, instead of your CPA, you could take Jesus to your next audit.  Mark Twain once said, “Income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has.”  Kind of hard to lie, if Jesus is right there helping you figure out the tax form.

And have you ever wondered why, in our day, you can get an extension on filing your taxes, but you don’t get a similar extension on dying?  Maybe we can ask Jesus about that too.

But on this day, the Pharisees and the Herodians asked Jesus if it was right to pay taxes to Caesar.  Caesar extracted a heavy toll on people through the head tax.  Just for being alive you were taxed.  It’s hard to avoid the red flags of the IRS.  When filling out your form you don’t want to put down anything that would catch the IRS’s attention.  Like when you write down you have some money left in your bank account after paying your taxes.  That’s a red flag.  That’s what the Pharisees and Herodians want to know about taxes:  When is enough, enough?

Now here’s the trick in their trick question.  If Jesus said, “Yes,” they should pay the Roman head tax, he would have angered and alienated the growing number of people who wanted to split with the Roman Empire and declare independence.  In other words, the Pharisees, and most of the residents.  If Jesus said yes, it would be like someone today saying, “I think our government and economic systems are just wonderful.  We should just keep on the same old track.”  Imagine saying that to all the people sitting outside the New York Stock Exchange.

But, if Jesus said, “No,” we shouldn’t pay any kind of head tax to Caesar or to the Roman Empire, he’d be sounding like a revolutionary, and he would have alienated the Roman loyalists.  For example, the Herodians.  Now you’re seeing why there were representatives there asking Jesus the question from both groups.  Either way he answered would have put him at odds with someone.  If Jesus said no to paying taxes, he also would have set himself up to be arrested by the local Roman authorities for insurrection and rebellion.  If that happened, Jesus would be out of the way.  The Pharisees and Herodians could shake hands, pat themselves on the back and go their separate ways, thinking, Job well done.

Either way, Jesus looks doomed.  Either answer will be wrong.  Until Jesus opens his mouth.

The Pharisees and the Herodians came at Jesus first with a bunch of slippery compliments.  Jesus doesn’t return the favor.  It’s only the start of the day, and already he’s had enough.  “You hypocrites!” he says.  Jesus calls them hypocrites.  I wonder how Jesus said it.  Kind of under his breath?  “Hypocrites.”  Like a shot gun blast?  “Hypocrites!”  I wonder.

You all know what a hypocrite is, don’t you.  Early on, in the Greek language and culture, to be a hypocrite was to be someone who explains something.  But it wasn’t like just reading an encyclopedia.  It was explaining by playing a role.  Thus, an actor.  It was someone who was trying to explain some truth, some information by acting it out.

Later, the philosophers talked about how human life is like a stage, upon which we are only actors.  That is hypocrites.  But we aren’t being our true selves on that stage, are we?  We are playing a role.  We are trying to portray someone or some thing we aren’t.  So the stage, and what it stood for--life--becomes a sham world where people are mostly deceivers.

By Jesus’ time, hypocrites weren’t mere actors.  They were people who lived in self-contradiction.  There was this jarring contradiction between what people believed and how they put those beliefs into practice.  So Jesus made a call.  He called this group of questioners what they were:  hypocrites.

Before we slap Jesus on the back, saying, “You tell ‘em, Lord!” we need to do a quick and honest evaluation.  Thinking of the evolution of this word hypocrite, we need to take a look at how we may have similarly evolved.  How do we treat human life as a stage?  How are we simply actors, playing out a role that has nothing to do with who we really are?  How are we creating a disconnect with what’s going on up there on the stage, with the world we walk out into after the show is over?

If we let the boundaries between the stage and reality get blurry, then our place becomes fuzzy.  Not only that, and most importantly, who we are as persons gets messed up.  There’s a loss of grounding in reality.  We lose who we are.  We just play whatever role we think is necessary, depending on whatever production we happen to be in at the time.  No continuity.  No consistency.  No integrity of character.  Just playing role after role.  That’s a hypocrite.

“Show me the coin,” Jesus then says.  Show me the money.  In that case it was the denarius.  It was a rough stamped silver coin.  It was what a normal working person would earn in one day.  One coin.  The denarius.

On each denarius was the picture of Tiberius Caesar.  Around the profile head shot of Tiberius there was an inscription.  It read, “Tiberius Caesar, divine son of Augustus, High Priest.”  So Caesar was a god.  It’s true.  It says so on every denarius.  It has to be true if it’s stamped on money.  Just like it says on our coins:  In God We Trust.

Didn’t know you were making a religious statement by carrying around money, did you.  By jingling your pocket full of change, you’re making a statement of faith.  Just like the people who carried the denarius coins around.  They were saying with their money that Tiberius is divine.  Every time they gained a coin by the sweat of their brow, they were receiving a religious token.  Every time they spent a coin at the marketplace, they were making a faith statement.  Every time they paid the head tax with the denarius they were proclaiming, “Caesar is divine!”  Just like we are.  “In God We Trust.”  It must be true.  It’s on our money.  Even agnostics and atheists can’t avoid it.  Our money proclaims the truth about what we believe:  In God We Trust.

You may not wear a cross necklace, or boast any other kind of religious jewelry.  You don’t have to.  By carrying coins, you are making a statement about where your faith ultimately lies.  Usually most people ignore it.

“Show me the money,” says Jesus.  And then, after one of the Pharisees or Herodians gave him a coin, he asked, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?”  Whose image is this?

It’s important we notice those two words, image and likeness.  It’s important that Jesus used those words in particular.  The Herodians might not have caught it.  But the Pharisees, learned as they were in the scripture, would have caught it.  Jesus’ question was purposefully asked in order to take the Pharisees back to Genesis, where God said at creation, “Let us make humankind in our image, after our likeness...” (Genesis 1:26).  The same exact words Jesus used in his question.

And then comes the kicker:  “Then give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”  All of sudden Jesus gave them an answer to a different question.  A question the Pharisees and the Herodians should have been asking.  That question is not, “Should we be paying taxes to Caesar.”  The question should have been, “To whom do we belong?”

To whom do you belong?  Whose likeness are you?  Whose likeness is imprinted on your very being?  For Jesus the important question is a question of ownership, not taxation.  What is God’s?  What is Caesar’s?  Caesar can put his picture on little pieces of silver, and stamp his pedigree, his claim, all around himself like a halo.  But does that make it true?  All Caesar can lay claim to at the end of the day are the coins.  He can have them.  They’re his.  Who cares.  Give them to him.

But you are God’s.  The likeness and image of God is stamped on a different coin--the coin of our personhood.  The coin of our flesh and blood.  We are God’s coin, spent in faith throughout our lives.  What is given to God is whatever bears God’s image--us!  So it’s not a matter of giving up a few coins, says Jesus.  It’s a matter of giving up the whole self as God’s possession--as the coin bearing the mark of God’s image.

With a lot of things of the faith, we must make a choice: this way or that way; this choice or another.  But as God’s coin, stamped with God’s image, there is no choice.  That is what we are!  That is who we are.  Image bearers--the coin, if you will--of God.  That’s our core identity.  We can’t escape it.  We can’t deny it.  We can’t choose otherwise.  Instead of, “In God We Trust,” our coins should say, “In God I Am.”  Thomas Merton, the great Trappist monk once wrote in the book, Entering The Silence, “His one Image is in us all, and we discover Him by discovering the likeness of His Image in one another.”

That’s where it’s at.  That’s what’s most important, says Jesus.  When the Pharisees and Herodians heard what Jesus said, what does the story tells us about their reaction?  “...they were stunned, and they left him and went away.”  Stunned.  Knocked up the side of the head.  Bowled over.  Staggered and stupefied.  How about you?