Christchurch Parish News, December 2014
A short Bible study on Matthew 22:15-22, originally written for the Priory Bible Study Group.
In October, our lectionary readings from the gospel according to Matthew focussed on Jesus’ confrontations with the powers-that-be in Jerusalem. One of the most famous of these is when he is asked by the Pharisees’ disciples and the Herodians whether or not it is lawful to pay taxes to the emperor (Matt 22:15-22)?
As Matthew notes, this question was a trap. It was meant to work as follows. Many of Jesus’ followers had the expectation that God was up to something new and that somehow the occupying Roman forces were soon going to be ousted from Judea. For if the Kingdom of God was at hand, as Jesus had been announcing – after all, that was the good news! – then this would surely mean that the Romans were going to be sent packing at long last.
They would have wondered, of course, quite exactly how this was going to work out. Every previous attempt over the prior 30 or so years had been viciously put down by the occupying Roman military, with the insurrectionists being publicly executed by crucifixion (the punishment reserved for those who dared rebel against the might of the Empire).
The last thing Jesus’ followers would have been expecting him to say was, yes, that you should pay the poll tax to Rome, a tax levied on every adult in the land. If Jesus were to say that, the Pharisees and the Herodians reasoned, then his followers would abandon him (or worse) for betraying the cause for which he had up till then been the champion. But on the other hand, if Jesus kept his supporters on side by saying that no, you should not pay the tax, then he could be justifiably handed over to the Roman authorities, charged with sedition and the powerful in Jerusalem would finally be done with this troublemaker who was quite literally turning everything in the Temple upside down. The Romans would have every reason to execute him and that would finally be the end of this Jesus movement.
It looks then as if he is caught between two equally unappealing options. What does he do? Before answering Jesus first asks them to show him the coin that was used to pay the tax. Now this coin was a Roman coin called a denarius, which was worth about a day’s manual labour. They bring him one. And in the moment that they do, the trap which they had laid for Jesus, Jesus springs on them instead. Initially, it is quite hard for us to see that this is what has actually happened because of the cultural distance between our time and 1st century Judea. The key thing to be aware of, however, was what was depicted and written on the coin, something that everyone at the time would have known. More precisely, who was depicted on the coin and what was attributed to him. Our translation of the Bible has Jesus ask them, ‘whose head is this?’ but in the Greek the word is whose ‘eikon’, which literally means whose image is this? And the image in question was that of Caesar, Tiberius Caesar in fact, the Roman Emperor in other words.
So the coin that you have to pay the tax with bears the image of Caesar and as such, for devout Jews such as the Pharisees, it would have been tantamount to blasphemy to carry such an item on their person. Why? Because of the second commandment: “You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath”. By asking them to show him the coin and in their doing so, Jesus has smoked them out and put them on the back foot. It’s suddenly they who have to justify actually having the coin in their pocket as it implicates them in terms of their compromised relationship with the Roman authorities. Remember that this would have especially applied to the Pharisees as they were hoping to hasten God’s intervention and thereby the demise of the Romans in Judea by their devout observance of the Torah. By having such a coin on them, especially one which bore the inscription, ‘Tiberius Caesar, Son of God, High Priest’, they would have been breaking the Jewish Law.
What about the Herodians, you may ask? Well, we don’t know so much about them, other than that they were supporters of King Herod. It’s a name that you will remember pops up in our gospels in two different places but actually refers to two separate people from the same family (think of how in US politics, the same dynasties hold great power from one generation to the next: for example, George Bush, George W Bush, Jeb Bush etc.), namely Herod the Great, who features in the birth narrative of Jesus, and secondly his son Herod Antipas, who is King when Jesus comes to Jerusalem for the final showdown. The Herodians are simply the supporters of whoever was the King Herod of the day. The key thing to remember with regards to King Herod is that he was only king on account of having been appointed so by the Romans. In other words, by supporting King Herod, the Herodians were also in collusion with the Romans.
Having lured both these groups into showing that it is they who are compromised for having already put in their lot with the Romans, it is only at that point that Jesus proceeds to answer their question by saying, “Give therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God, the things that are God’s.” Their heads spinning, they leave him and go away.
But what are we to make of Jesus’ answer? What does it actually mean? The fact that we find it difficult to pin down the precise meaning is partly the point. With the answer he gives, the Pharisees’ disciples and the Herodians cannot accuse him of saying no, you should not pay the tax. But at the same time, the second half of his answer seems to reframe the meaning of the first half for those with ears to hear. To understand how it does, we need to consider again the topic of image. In addition to, if not prior to recalling the second commandment, on hearing Jesus focus everyone’s attention on the issue of image, any devout 1st century Jew would have also been likely to hear echoes from the very opening chapters of the first book of their Bible, the book of Genesis, chapter 1, verse 27: “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them”.
This verse is so theologically important both then and now for our understanding of what it is to be a human being in relationship with God. There is a whole doctrine based on it called, in Latin, the imago dei, literally ‘the image of God’. So when you ask yourself what belongs to God when Jesus says, ‘give to God’s what belongs to God’, top of the list for those listening to him in the crowd would be the answer us, the very ones made in God’s image and likeness! Before belonging to anyone else, let alone Caesar Tiberius, those straining forward to hear what Jesus would say when posed this question would have understood themselves as belonging to God (at least, that’s who they knew they were meant to belong to).
So give what belongs to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, yes (and, the implication being but cannily not actually stated, in the process get rid of all those blasted coins that you shouldn’t even be carrying, here in the Temple of all places!), and give to God what belongs to God (again, the implication being but not actually stated – and don’t you forget that that’s all of who you are, your very being which is created in the image and likeness of God and no other, least of all Caesar!).
No wonder Matthew doesn’t tell of any response by the Pharisees’ disciples and the Herodians, other than that they were amazed at his answer and that, their trap foiled, they skulked away. But when I close my eyes and imagine the scene in the Temple, I see those left standing around Jesus smiling wryly to themselves, as they nod in knowing appreciation at the truth of his wily, yet provocative answer; all the while wondering nervously to themselves, just where is this all going to end?