Well, it’s good to be back. Last Sunday we were on vacation for Spring break and the Sunday before that Angela and I spoke at a Family Life Weekend to Remember and I’ll never say this enough, but we are both very grateful for OGC allowing us the freedom to do a few of those a year. We are thankful not only for the investment in the people who come, but also in our own marriage because we are far from perfect and you’d have to be a sociopath to teach on marriage without first repenting and renewing your own marriage and every one of these conferences is exactly that for us. So, thank you. 

Now to the passage for this morning. What a great little tax season passage? But, I would argue that it has more to say about a political cycle than it does even about tax season. You’ve heard me say this before, and it was generally true all over the country, that the last election season brought a massive fracturing on the American church and we were no exception. Looking back, some of that feels unavoidable because of the perfect storm of a pandemic, an election, and many race conversations that we, sadly, just weren’t prepared for. But, our desire as elders at OGC and our deep anticipation is that we will not just make it through this election without major problems, we believe that the church and OGC in particular can thrive through it and be a light for the gospel to both believers and unbelievers and this passage has so much to say to that end. 

Again, this passage takes place during the Passover which is a time of spiritual and political fury anyway in Jerusalem. Everyone coming to Jerusalem is coming with a heavy recognition that, under Roman occupation, things are not the way they should be and they are hopeful and even expectant that God will do something about it. But, none of the leaders there liked what Jesus was doing. He’s threatening their power and their tenuous peace with the Romans which allows them to continue to have religious authority in Jerusalem. Jesus has passed the point of no return after cleansing the Temple. All the religious leaders are threatened by him and they are trying to set traps to erode Jesus' following and to put him at odds with any of the leading groups of that day hoping it would lead to his arrest and execution. They actually don’t care how Jesus answers their questions, their hope is that however he answers it, he will make an enemy either with the people or the government. 

And that is what this whole passage is: a trap.They’re not really trying to gain clarity from Jesus on their relationship with Caesar’s taxation, they are trying to set a trap. They are essentially asking where Jesus was on a particular political issue. So we are going to look at this trap by looking at the challenging question and Jesus’ brilliant answer.

1. The Challenging Question

The question is simply this: Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not? But, the context behind the question is not nearly as simple. First, we see who is posing the question. It’s not the Pharisees themselves. They have decided to send in their disciples. We aren’t told why. It could be that they thought Jesus would be nicer to them. It could be that they were tired of being embarrassed publicly by Jesus and wanted to use a proxy. Either way, they send their disciples in, but there is more to who is asking the question. Their disciples are going in with the Herodians. 

The Pharisees and the Herodians were true political enemies. It would be like Ron Desantis and Gavin Newsom coming together on something. It’s just hard to imagine. The Herodians were the followers of Herod of Galilee. He was a ruler under the supervision and control of the Roman rulers of Palestine. Herod of Galilee hoped to one day be the ruler of all of Judea and these Herodians were Jewish supporters of his in hopes that if he got that control, they would benefit from it. So the Pharisees hated the Herodians for abandoning their religious authority for Herod’s.

That’s who is asking the question, but there is more context to the question itself. Most scholars agree that they aren’t asking about paying taxes in general, but a very specific tax called a poll tax. It was also called a head tax. Every person in the Empire had to pay an extra tax of one denarius per head annually. This is why Jesus asks for one denarius to be presented. This is why he says, “Show me ‘the coin’ for the tax.” This wasn’t a tax on their goods, but a tax on their head for the privilege of being a subject of Caesar. 

That tax had been around about 25 years and when it first came about there was a revolt led by Judas the Galilean who called on all the Jews to refuse to pay that tax. Judas, with an armed band, cleansed the Temple and got rid of all the foreigners. All the gentiles and Romans were forced out of the Temple and Judas publicly claimed that God will be their king, not Caesar. He claimed that he was bringing in the kingdom of God. Does that context sound familiar? On the surface, does this not sound exactly like what Jesus is doing? Jesus, this man from Galilee, has cleansed the Temple, kicked out the money changers, and claims to be bringing in the kingdom of God. And this is exactly what created the context for this question. 

They aren’t just asking if Jesus is on Ceasar’s side or the Jewish people’s side, they are asking if he is a revolutionary in the way Judas of Galilee was. So, if Jesus says don’t pay the tax, that’s all the Pharisees need to get the Romans to execute him just like Judas of Galilee was. That’s clear. But if Jesus says pay the tax, how does that work against him? Tim Keller made the argument once that our modern Western grid prevents us from appreciating why saying “pay the tax” would be so detrimental to his religious authority. We struggle to understand this because we struggle to understand all the implications of the coming of the kingdom of God. 

We think about the kingdom of God as a private thing. Something that changes the way we think and feel, but has no substantive impact on our expectations of the world around us. This line of thinking did not exist before the Enlightenment when leading scholars and theologians began to say that spirituality was a private thing, not a public thing. Most every society before that looked at their religious views as all consuming for every area of their lives. When Jesus talks about the kingdom of God, he quotes the Old Testament prophets who have no concept of a private, spiritual kingdom. They speak for God who will deal with injustice, poverty, famine, hurting, and suffering in society. 

So, imagine if Jesus in this moment says, “Yeah, pay your taxes, I’m no real revolutionary. Just obey Caesar and enjoy your private spiritual lives.” The people would have all walked away from him. They didn’t want to follow someone for their own private spirituality, they wanted to follow someone who would make things right in the world. So, if he says, don’t pay your taxes, the government will execute him. If he says pay your taxes, all the people walk away. That’s what makes this such a challenging question. Now, we get to see Jesus’ brilliant answer.

1. The Brilliant Answer

Jesus sees right through the test, calls them hypocrites, and asks them why they would put him to this test. And I so appreciate that unlike politicians today who evade hard questions, Jesus takes his head on. Just not in the way they anticipated. This is when he says, “Show me ‘the coin’ for the tax.” And Jesus asks whose likeness, literally whose face, is on that coin. And the answer is Caesar. Augustus Caesar printed these coins and he made them with his face on them. We still have some of these coins in museums today. 

In Jesus’ brilliant answer, he rejects political syncretism, he rejects political abdication, and he rejects political primacy. It’s fascinating. First we see him rejecting political syncretism. By this, I mean that he rejects aligning what he believes with one political side. They ask twice if they should pay the taxes. They want Jesus to come down 100% for paying or 100% against it. But, Jesus doesn’t do that. Jesus both accepts what’s on the coin and rejects it. What he accepts is that this coin already belongs to Caesar. Like it or not, Caesar made it. He paid for the roads they enjoyed, he paid for the armies that protected them, he paid for the civil benefits, he paid for the justice courts, and he paid for the peace they enjoyed. If they didn’t like that, they should have resisted earlier. And Jesus says not to ‘pay’ Caesar what is his, but to ‘give back’ to Caesar what is his. He uses a different word than those asking the question. He doesn’t say pay, he says give back. That’s what he’s accepting on the coin. But look at what he rejects. 

On the coin is a face of Caesar Augustus and on one side, it says Tiberius Caesar Augustus, which means Son of the divine Augustus and on the other side, it said, Pontifex Maximus, which means high priest. So this coin claims that Caesar is the true high priest and that he is the divine son of God. And you can see how using this coin to pay the head tax would fly all over the Pharisees who would never accept Caesar as either divine or high priest. When Jesus says give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, but give to God what is God’s, he’s rejecting any claims that Caesar is divine or deserves our worship. 

No one has ever talked like this before! Many commentators point out that this is the first ever recorded teaching about limited government. Before this the government was always seen as the truest representation of the divine and worthy not only of your obedience, but also your worship. It was seen that whoever was in charge was the manifestation of God’s character and will for the people. Jesus, though, is creating categories for obedience without worship. Even more, he’s creating a category for our obedience to a pagan government through our worship of the One True God. 

Think about this. The coin is Caesars because his face is on it. That coin represents the likeness of Caesar. But whose likeness does Caesar represent? God. All humans are made in the image of God including Caesar. The coin belongs to Caesar because his image is on it, but Caesar himself belongs to God. The coin itself, just by having a picture of a human on it, declares that Caesar is not the highest authority. So the picture on the coin actually negates the writing on the coin. And Jesus is refusing to accept both. We can trust that whether we like those in leadership over us, they are there because God has allowed it. It doesn’t mean that they are good people, it certainly doesn’t mean that they please God or have his favor, it just means that in God’s providence, he’s chosen for it to be that way for that season. 

It’s hard to understand. Much of what God does is hard to understand. But God is eternal and I’m 44. I shouldn’t expect to understand it, but I can trust it. So what does that mean for us? It means that we too should reject political syncretism. We should reject the thought that either party or any politician is God’s candidate or that either platform is 100% aligned with God’s desires. We just can’t say that Jesus is for a specific platform, party, or program. 

In 2020 I heard multiple Christian leaders say there is no way a Christian could vote for the ‘this guy.’ But, they were disagreeing about who it was that a Christian could not vote for. If this is the way we look at politics then it is no wonder that it divided the church so badly. But, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t pay taxes, have opinions, or vote passionately. 

While Jesus rejects political syncretism, he also rejects political abdication. He doesn’t allow us to abdicate our duties to pay back what is owed to our government. There was another group called the Essenes in that day who did abdicate completely. They refused to pay taxes and secluded themselves from society. This is the group we got the Dead Sea Scrolls from. They not only abdicated from paying taxes, they abdicated from the corruption, injustice, and social problems they saw in society. They refused to engage at all and set up a type of commune so they could seek happiness apart from the problems of the world. This was essentially another way of promoting a privatized spirituality that has no actual intersection with life in this world. We can’t read the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew and not be challenged with the radical nature of the kingdom and its intersection in all areas of our social system. Don’t retaliate, care for the poor, love your enemy. These are radically different values than the world we live in. 

So in one sense Jesus is not political, but in another sense Jesus is intensely political. He isn’t wholesale buying into one party, but he is promoting a kingdom ethic that can’t help but intersect with politics. It’s a fatal flaw of any Christian to say that we should just preach the gospel and not get political. While the gospel isn’t aligned with one political party, it is intensely political because it intersects with issues of poverty, life, economics, environmental stewardship, ethnicity, and much more. So to say we should preach the gospel and not get political at one level is absolutely impossible. 

I was reading an early copy of a new book by a friend of mine, Ed Uszynski, called Untangling Critical Race Theory. My friend has two master’s degrees in Christian theology and a PhD in Marxism. He isn’t a Marxist, but he’s studied it more than anyone I know. He’s a conservative Christian who embodies the nuance necessary for this conversation with enough education to know what he’s talking about. But, in his book, he points out that in 1947, Carl F.H. Henry in his book “The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism,” which is a book critiquing both Progressive Christianity and Fundamentalism, wrote about the fundamentalists that if they have no concept of social justice (and I know that’s a loaded term today, but that’s the term he used in 1947 to just mean kingdom social ethics), if they have to real social justice in their gospel, then their adherents would be more susceptible to socialism than even the progressives would be. Do you hear what he’s saying? Christian theology with no social implications is more susceptible to socialism than progressive theology. His argument was that, as flawed as socialism is, they at least have a visible heart for the poor and oppressed. If our kingdom ethics don’t reflect the kingdom Jesus taught, then our people will be more easily swayed by the flawed systems of the world that at least claim to care about the less fortunate and vulnerable. 

To say the gospel has no real intersection with politics and social justice would be the same as Jesus saying don’t pay the tax. Jesus didn’t abdicate politically by saying not to pay taxes, he didn’t abdicate caring for those in need, and I would argue that if we are given a vote in this world, and not many people in human history have been given one, that we should steward that responsibility wisely. We just have to realize that voting is the application of wisdom and Christians are allowed to disagree on issues of wisdom. Now, there is a lot I could say on that, but my point is that we need to be able to navigate politics with the same nuance Jesus is in this passage. But, that alone won’t heal the divisions that arise and that alone won’t solve the problems of this world. 

We have to also see the way Jesus rejects political primacy. Jesus knows that while political systems can be used for kingdom good, no political system is going to ever be able to usher in the promises of the kingdom. The kingdom of God is radically different from the kingdom of this world which is why no worldly vehicle will ever be truly able to usher it in. Let’s go back to the sermon on the mount. Just listen to what the kingdom of God is like: “Blessed are you who are poor, for byours is the kingdom of God. 21 c“Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied. d“Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh. 22 “Blessed are you when epeople hate you and when they fexclude you andrevile you and gspurn your name as evil, hon account of the Son of Man!23 iRejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven;for jso their fathers did to the prophets.

24 k“But woe to you who are rich, lfor you mhave received your consolation. 25 “Woe to you who are full now, for nyou shall be hungry. “Woe to oyou who laugh now, ofor you shall mourn and weep. 26 “Woe to you, pwhen all people speak well of you, for qso their fathers did torthe false prophets. - Luke 6:20b-26

No human ruler is ever going to be able to accomplish this. No political party will ever usher this in. And if we’re honest, when we vote, often we are voting with ourselves in mind. Which candidate is going to make our life easier? That’s not the way we are to engage this world. The scariest part of this passage to me is what comes at the end. 22 When they heard it, they marveled. And they rleft him and went away. Matt 22:22 They didn’t marvel and follow him. They didn’t marvel and worship him. They marveled and they left him and went away. Why do you think they did this? Because they couldn’t see Jesus for who he was. They couldn’t see past their own rights and comforts. They couldn’t see the way Jesus gave his rights and comforts for his kingdom. 

Only Jesus can usher this kingdom in and we see this in the way Jesus interacts with the coin. Here we have Jesus holding this coin and, in so doing, we have two men claiming to be the high priest and claiming to be the divine Son of God. But they couldn't be more different. One makes this claim with all the money in the world. He literally made these coins. He owns them and wants them back. The other doesn’t even have a coin. He has to ask for one for his illustration. And a denarius wasn’t like an expensive gold coin. It would be like having a silver dollar in your pocket. One man has palaces all over the empire and the other has no home or even a place to sleep.

Jesus isn’t saying vote for him instead of Caesar, he’s displaying an entirely different understanding of kingship. Jesus doesn’t take power, money, comfort, success, and recognition, he gives it away. Jesus gives all of it away including his very life. He not only died without any worldly power or success, he died even without affirmation of God the Father whose face was turned from him on the cross as Jesus received the wrath we deserve for our sin. He didn’t demand the palace; he accepted the cross. All the injustice in the world is a faint picture for us of the justice we deserve, but… that Jesus has taken for us. Jesus isn’t asking for our vote, he’s giving us his by choosing to not only die for us, but give us his righteousness in return. 

Jesus was a king without a coin for our sake. Caesar lived to gain power, Jesus lived to give it away. So, we now look at the world differently. We have the humility to see that we are a part of the problem. Only when we see this will our hearts break for the poor and the oppressed. Only then will we want to help them not because we get something out of it, not because that’s how we earn our righteousness, and not because we get to be seen as some sort of savior ourselves, but because we are the poor and oppressed Jesus came to save. Only then will we be able to engage politics passionately without worshiping it. Only then will we be able to endure losses, yet maintain hope. Only then will we be united as a church regardless of who is in office. 

We give Caesar his coin and we give Jesus our lives.