Render to Caesar (The worthship of money.)
Rev Angus Kelly
19 Show me the coin used for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius. 20 Then he said to them, “Whose head is this, and whose title?” 21 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 22:19-21
The cost of living moves up and down from time to time and its quite something to see what some people count as the ‘cost of living’. From the cost of paying for luxury vehicles and palatial villas to the cost of keeping children fed on a diet of daily pap and gravy (on good days). Covid-19 prompted a spectacular reaction – a sudden awareness of the price of a human life. Or human lives. I’ve never liked being called a ‘human resource’ it sounds too much like an oil reserve – and I wonder what I’d be worth if I was no longer a ‘resource’ for someone else’s benefit.
Pharisees plot to entrap Jesus (Matthew 22:15) and so they send their disciples “along with the Herodians” (16) to ask a tricky question. Judea was under the rule of Pilate, a Roman prefect. The Herodians preferred Herodian rule to the Roman prefecture.
The delegation represents diverse political desires and experiences: Pharisees who for the most part believed that proper worship and observance of the Jewish law would restore the Kingdom of Judea to a rightful heir. Herodians, a political movement who wanted the Herodian line back on the throne of Israel. Jesus and his disciples who represented a religious movement essentially from the countryside – in some ways removed from the political intrigue of Jerusalem where all of this took place but who saw Jesus as the rightful “King of the Jews” as a rightful heir to the Davidic throne. It is no secret that the Pharisees had worked out how to live with their Roman rulers and existed as an important class of people who controlled the temple and religious life of Jerusalem and thus influenced control of Jews in Judea. Herodians probably longed for the patronage of the Herodian royal family as massive infrastructure projects funded by taxes leveraged from the citizens of Judea had created patronage networks that simply didn’t flow under the Roman prefecture.
The question: “17 Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” (Matthew 22:17)
Jesus clever answer: “Show me the coin used for the tax” (Verse 19).
The coin for paying taxes bore the image of the emperor – in the example above the emperor Tiberius Claudius. On the reverse of the coin a picture of the mother of Tiberius depicted as a goddess of peace with an inscription reading PONTIF MAXIM (high priest).
When Jesus asks: “Whose head is this, and whose title?” (Verse 20) they have to say “The emperor’s.”
“Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” (Verse 21)
I don’t think Jesus is just saying that people should pay their portion to Caesar. I think he might be suggesting that they take every coin that bears his image and send it back to him. This would fit with Jesus usual advice about what to do with wealth. “…go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me” (Mark 10:21). Jesus measures worth differently. Jesus asks questions like: “For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?” (Mark 8:36).
Money is only valuable when it is useful. If Jesus decrees that all of Caesar’s money be loaded up in ships and taken back to Rome it will spell the end of Judean occupation. Rome knew that you couldn’t rule a country by oppression and violence alone. They were clever enough to insist that a region like Palestine planted Barley and only Barley, meaning that they’d need to trade with other regions to get the goods they needed and thus pay taxes on (for example) Barley sales and olive imports. Roman globalization meant that economies were enslaved by greed for Roman coins – the book of Revelation paints a picture of the destruction of Rome: “Alas, alas, the great city,
where all who had ships at sea
grew rich by her wealth!
For in one hour she has been laid waste.” (Revelation 18:19)
The next part of Jesus answer about giving is the demand that we give “to God the things that are God’s.” (Matthew 22:21). Speaking of image bearing items scripture teaches that humans are made in the image of God. Not just emperors but all humans. As bearers of the image of God the Judeo-Christian religion teaches the importance of care for all people. Rich, poor, sick, in prison, widowed, orphaned, foreigner, sinner, tax collecter and the list goes on and on. All of these people to be ‘given to God.’ All of these treasures to be recognized because they bear the image of God as ‘belonging to God’.
Covid-19 has shown the world that there is a value that is not measured on the spreadsheets and in the algorithms of stock markets. The value of life. Oil prices that drive war and conflict shrunk into negative territory because staying at home to save lives was more important than leaving home to spend money. Billions of Denarius’ worth of life has been given to the world in terms of life and health and even the lowering of carbon emissions. But these figures will all be measured as loss of productivity to global stock markets who are not able to factor in the mysterious value of humans created in the image of God.
The problem is that global currency values are derived from resource and productivity indexes rather than real life values. Happiness, health, virtue and right relationships. It seems that sometimes all of these things are contingent on devaluing currencies by ‘opting out’ of the secular trade and opting in to an economy that measures value in ways that somehow incorporate ‘life’ on the balance sheet.
When Jesus counsels the rich young man to sell all of his possessions and give the money to the poor he does not paint a picture of this young man entering into a life of poverty – instead he paints a picture of wealth beyond all measure:
Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news,f 30 who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields. (Mark 10:29-30)
