“Death and Taxes”

Matthew 22:15-22
Then the Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap him in his words. They sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians. “Teacher,” they said, “we know that you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You aren’t swayed by others, because you pay no attention to who they are. Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not?”
But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, “You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me? Show me the coin used for paying the tax.” They brought him a denarius, and he asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?”
“Caesar’s,” they replied.
Then he said to them, “So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”
When they heard this, they were amazed. So they left him and went away.

The famous quote often attributed to Benjamin Franklin says, “in this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” We laugh but some days, I think he might be right about that. The world can feel so uncertain, and yet I know that someday my time on this world will end and April 15th will come around again and taxes will be due.

Today, we’re in the gospel passage of Matthew 22, which takes place during Holy Week– in between Palm Sunday and Easter. Jesus is in the temple courts and he is teaching people there. It is causing quite a stir and in only a few chapters, he is interrupted by chief priests, elders, Saddduces, Pharisees, and Herodians. All sorts of Jewish leaders are disturbed and threatened by his teachings and the attention he is getting from the crowds.

The biblical narrators don't always give us a peek behind the curtain of characters’ motivations or feelings, so when they do, we’d best pay attention. Here, Matthew tells us that the Pharisees and the Herodians were trying to trap Jesus. So they ask him a trick question. This is not a good faith discussion between two people who just want to learn from one another. This is like if someone asks you "have you stopped cheating on your taxes yet, or are you still dishonest like you used to be?" I think most of us who have tried to engage with others, especially online, lately about thorny social issues have run into quite a few bad faith arguments. Everything from vaccine efficacy to the 2020 election results to women’s reproductive healthcare have been subject to bad faith arguments and questions. People who say they are “just asking questions” when they really intend to sow doubt in their listeners. Their tactics clearly are not new and while I have learned not to give into these bad faith arguments as often as I once did, oh how I wish I could respond like Jesus did!

Jesus does not take the bait. Jesus knows they aren’t really curious about the ethics of paying taxes to an occupying oppressive government. They aren’t genuinely curious about what it means to live ethically and morally under an unethical system of government and oppression. They are trying to ask a question he can’t get out of. They know that if Jesus says, “yes, you should pay your taxes” then the crowds that are so enamored with his teaching will turn their back on him. But, if he says that they should not pay their taxes, the Jewish leaders can turn him over to the Romans for sedition. Now, to clarify, they are not talking about the kind of taxes you and I pay to the US government. This is as if a foreign country conquered our country, oppressed us and stripped us of our regular way of life, and then charged us taxes to keep their soldiers paid and fed as they oppress us. Understandably, the Jews absolutely hated paying Roman taxes. They want to put him in an impossible situation, but Jesus doesn’t fall for the trap. 

Instead, he calls them hypocrites and asks him to show him a coin. Now, this is important because it’s not a coin that Jesus had, it’s a coin of theirs and it has Caesar's face on it. If you remember from the beginning of the sermon, I said they are in the Temple courts here and one of the primary rules of the temple was there shall be “no graven images.” This comes from the 3rd commandment, not to make an image of anything in heaven or on earth or in the waters below. The commandment has been interpreted in lots of different ways but one of them was that money with images of people on them could not be used as offerings to God. 

This rule is why there were money changers at the temple, the ones whose tables Jesus overturned only a chapter earlier. These money changers, like the ones you see at foreign airports today, charged outrageous fees to exchange peoples’ money from Roman Denarii to Hebrew Shekels so that they could pay their tithes and offerings to God without breaking one of the 10 commandments. And yet, here are the Pharisees in the temple and the coin they hand over to Jesus is not a shekel but a denarius. In their haste to put Jesus in a trap, they have not even bothered to keep one of the ten commandments. They have brought graven images into the temple. No wonder Jesus calls them hypocrites.

He does give them an answer though– “So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” It’s both a bit vague and a bit weird. What, precisely, belongs to Caesar but not to God? I can’t think of anything. However, I can think of plenty that belongs to God and not Caesar. The Roman Emperors thought of themselves as gods– certainly equal to that of the Hebrew God. They demanded not just taxes but loyalty and worship from their people. But in his response, Jesus says, “Give Caesar his tax money. But give God everything else. Your heart, soul, mind, and strength? Those you give to God. In comparison, what you give to Caesar is nothing of consequence.”

Our world is not quite the same as occupied Palestine was in the first century. Few of us like paying our taxes, but we can tell ourselves that our money is going to things that we value– teachers, roads, bridges, and public safety nets. For some of us, there are things our tax dollars go to that we find morally reprehensible. I have lived in two states with the death penalty where the State killed people while I was a taxpayer there and I was deeply grieved that my taxes helped fund their deaths. Just like in Jesus’ day, we do not have a choice in the world we live in. We do not have control over the systemic injustices or moral failings of our nation. We can work for justice and equality for all but none of us will truly see it in our lifetimes. In the meantime, April 15th will come around again and again and we will pay our taxes, whether we like it or not. 

I think, though, we can choose to see it through the lens Jesus gives us. We give to “Caesar” what is Caesar’s. We live within the confines of the imperfect and often unjust world we live in but our heart, mind, and strength belong to God alone. We give what we must to the systems of this world, but we give all of our best to God. 

I wish I could wrap this up by saying “May you defeat your verbal adversaries as smoothly as Jesus did” but I know that’s not the point of this passage. I think the passage from Isaiah said it best who God is, “I am the LORD, and there is no other. I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the LORD, do all these things.” God does all these things and at the end of the day, Caesar is just… Caesar. He was born and he died as all men die. But God lives forever. So do not be concerned with bad faith arguments that make you feel as though you have to choose between a false binary. This world belongs to God and as free people, we get to give our very best back to God. And that is something to celebrate.