A sermon by The Rev. Gene Tucker, given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, IL; Sunday, October 19th, 2008
Proper 24 -- Isaiah 45: 1–7; Psalm 96: 1–9; I Thessalonians 1: 1–10; Matthew 22: 15-22
“Whose likeness and inscription is this?”
Today’s Gospel text is all about likeness, all about the indelible marks (inscription) that we exhibit to those around us, and to the world at large.
Today’s Gospel is directed squarely at the Pharisees, that group of lay persons who were concerned to an extreme degree with the proper application of the Law of Moses to every detail, every aspect of daily life.
Today’s Gospel is the next-to-last battle between Jesus and His opponents….For the past three weeks, we have been reading and studying Jesus’ encounter with the chief priests and the elders of the people. These encounters took place within the Temple courts themselves, during the last week of Jesus’ earthly life, or – as we know it today – Holy Week.
Having dealt effectively with the first group of opponents, the chief priests and the elders, Jesus now deals with the Pharisees, silencing them, as we read in the final verse of today’s passage. Next week, the Sadducees, the priestly group, will come forward, testing Jesus as a means of finding some grounds upon which to condemn Him and to rid themselves of this troublemaker from Galilee.
So, we turn now to the Pharisees, and to the Herodians, who were a group of Jews who supported the puppet king, Herod Agrippa. (This group had arisen during the time of Herod the Great. It was composed of Jews who supported the monarchy and the power structure that Roman occupation made possible.)
And the issue these two groups have seized upon to catch Jesus in His words is the payment of a Roman tax. The tax in question was levied beginning in the year 6 AD. It consisted of the payment in Roman coinage (a denarius) of one denarius/year for every man and woman, slaves and free persons, 12 years of age to age 65. In essence, it is a “poll tax”[2] or a “head tax”.
As an institution of the Roman occupation, it was regarded in varying ways by the Jews who had to pay it….The Herodians would have supported payment of it, since King Herod would have benefitted from it, at least indirectly. The Pharisees would have resisted paying the tax, at least quietly. Meanwhile, other groups would have opposed paying it, and such opposition eventually came together to form the party of the Zealots, who advocated violent overthrow of the Roman occupation.
So the alliance of the Pharisees and the Herodians is a classic case of “strange bedfellows”, since their position on the tax was somewhat different.
However, as is common with alliances, the difference between these two groups was outweighed by the expediency of ridding the ruling structures of Judaism 2,000 years ago of this troubling prophet from Galilee, Jesus of Nazareth.
Likewise, the coin used to pay the tax figured prominently in the test that is presented to Jesus today: The denarius was a coin which bore the image of the Emperor, Tiberius, along with an inscription which read, “Tiberius Caesar, Son of the Divine Augustus”. Since the coin bore an image,[3] its use within the Temple itself was forbidden.[4] That allowed the moneychangers (whom Jesus had driven out of the Temple earlier in Holy Week) to ply their trade, exchanging Roman coinage for currency which was acceptable for use within the Temple.[5]
So, then, this is the “lay of the land” which forms the background of the encounter we read today.
But what about Jesus’ response?
Essentially, Jesus’ masterful handling of the matter poses this meaning to what He said…. In effect, Jesus is telling the Pharisees to “tend to the matters which pertain to Caesar”, and to “tend to the things that pertain to God”.
How did the Pharisees “tend to the things that pertain to God?”
The short answer is: Not very well.
The Gospels paint a bleak picture of this group….That portrait is uniformly one of outward observance of the rules and regulations that the Law of Moses prescribed, but one of inward spiritual deadness. At one point, in Matthew 23: 37, Jesus calls them (and the other leaders of His day) “whitewashed tombs”, which look good on the outside, but inside, are “full of dead men’s bones.” Speaking about their spiritual poverty, Jesus says, “They do everything to be seen by others.”[6] Jesus outlines their alienation from God in the seven woes that He pronounces upon them in Matthew chapter 23. The Pharisees and the “teachers of the law”[7] “do not practice what they preach.”[8]
“Tending to the things of God”, that was the way we paraphrased Jesus’ teaching when He said, “Render to God the things that are God’s.”
How might we “tend to the things of God?”
How might we avoid the pitfalls into which the Pharisees and their allies fell?
We might begin with an honest appraisal of our situation, recognizing that, as human beings, we are prone to the same mistakes that the Pharisees made.
We should admit that we are prone to put a great deal of reliance on outward appearances. We can “go through the motions” just as they did. We can “make our phylacteries[9] wide and the tassels of our prayer shawls”[10] long, just as Jesus accused the Pharisees and their allies of doing.
But we are called to an inner and an outer transformation, into a process in which God can unite the two.
For an insight into this process, we return to the image of the coin, the denarius.
The process of transformation that silver or other precious metal goes through in its journey from a block of metal into a coin is useful for understanding the process of spiritual refinement and recasting of the image of God we bear that makes us the valuable witness that we become. So, we compare the process of refinement and recasting, both of coins and of our spiritual selves:
Refinement: Before silver or another metal can be used, it must be refined, going through the fires of purification to remove the impurities that are found in it. Similarly, we Christian believers must undergo a process of spiritual refinement. The fires we endure are those difficulties and mistakes which God uses to bring us to the point of recognizing that His purity is preferable to our sinful, impure thoughts, motives and desires.So, we end with these questions:
Image-making: The design of the image the die maker creates is then stamped into the metal. But the metal must be soft enough to receive the image, yet hard enough to retain it through the journey it will make as it changes hands over and over again. Likewise, we Christians must be flexible enough to receive God’s divine image, yet firm enough to retain that image as we make our way through this life, encountering the forces of culture and temptation that would seek to deform the image of Jesus Christ we are called to bear.
- Has the process of spiritual refinement made us ready to receive God’s image? Are we in need of some recasting, spiritually?
- Are we flexible enough to receive the image of God, that we may show that image to the world? Yet, are we firm enough to retain that image as the difficulties of this life’s journey might seek to erode it?
May God’s Holy Spirit enable us to undergo periodic refinement and reforming, that we might receive and retain the image of God we are called to bear.
AMEN.
[1] Normally, we would read Matthew 23: 1 – 12 for Proper 26 (this year on November 2nd). But since All Saints Sunday falls on November 2nd, we do not read this part of Jesus’ summation of the condition of His adversaries. The entire chapter (23: 1 – 36) is well worth reading, for it is the culmination of the entire struggle Jesus has had with His opponents since His Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem at the beginning of Holy Week.
[2] The name of this tax in Greek is kensus, from which we derive the term, “census”.
[3] The coin’s motto was also offensive to Jews, since it referred to Augustus as a divine personage.
[4] Because of the third of the Ten Commandments, which forbade “graven images.”
[5] It is interesting to note that the families of the High Priests, Caiaphas and Annanias, profited from this exchange of money, and from the sale of animals which were used in the Temple sacrifices.
[6] Matthew 23: 5
[7] Jesus apparently lumps together all of his adversaries, the chief priests, the elders and the Sadducees by His use of this phrase.
[8] Matthew 23: 3
[9] Phylacteries are small boxes which contain verses of Scripture, and which are worn on the forehead. One can see them still in use today among Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem, for example.
[10] Matthew 23: 5
