This Week’s Gospel Reflection
Scripture
Matthew 22:15-22
Then the Pharisees went and plotted how to entangle him in his words. And they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are true and teach the way of God truthfully, and you do not care about anyone's opinion, for you are not swayed by appearances. Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?” But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why put me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the coin for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius. And Jesus said to them, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?” They said, “Caesar's.” Then he said to them, “Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.” When they heard it, they marveled. And they left him and went away.
Reflection
When this passage about paying taxes begins, Jesus has just finished telling several parables meant, in part, to make one group of people uncomfortable. The parables all show disobedience or rejection and, Matthew writes, the Pharisees heard all of this and “knew that he was talking about them” (21:45). What is one to do, when Jesus’s teaching strikes a nerve?
The Pharisees retaliate. They team up with unlikely allies — the “Herodians” who, Pharisees normally thought, had compromised God’s demands by currying political favor with the Roman-appointed government — and they set out to catch Jesus on the horns of a dilemma. They ask: should people pay the hated poll tax? The tax paid for with a coin depicting the Roman Emperor, who, to fund the high costs of dominating conquered colonies (like Judea), extracts wealth from those same colonies? In affirming the tax, Jesus would become complicit in this cruel arrangement and alienate the people. Object to it, and the politically connected Herodians could prosecute him for sedition.
Jesus, of course, transcends the dilemma, neither alienating the people nor crossing the authorities: whatever has the “likeness” of Caesar belongs Caesar, he says. This doesn’t undermine the Empire, at least directly. But with this response, Jesus hints at its ultimate hollowness. How much power really resides in a piece of metal with a lifeless likeness on it?
“Likenesses” can matter, of course, as Jesus’s next statement suggests. Careful readers will catch the allusion to Genesis 1 and to the making of humans in the divine “likeness” ahead of Jesus’ commands to “Give to God what belongs to God.” As Augustine of Hippo interpreted Jesus’ point: “To Caesar his coins, to God your very selves.” Let the lifeless likeness of Caesar return to him, and the likenesses made by God be given to him. Implied is a counter-question to the Pharisees and Herodians: do you offer your lives to God? Do the patterns of your lives, and the allegiances embedded in them, treat others as bearers of God’s image?
The Pharisees and Herodians, it says, were “amazed.”
Where can we find ourselves in this Gospel story? Offended by Jesus, like the Pharisees, and trying to push away the focus of his pointed teachings? Like Jesus, confronted with quandaries rooted in worldly political or social life, and needing to reframe the question by the reminder that God alone reigns? One of the crowd, watching and marveling at Jesus at work? The passage invites us to wonder.
Prayer
Lord, you have made all things, and we humans you have crowned with glory and honor, as the Psalmist says. By your Spirit, may we hear rightly your teachings and respond to them well, acknowledging with our lips and the patterns of our lives that you reign.
