Taxing Questions

From Wellington Cathedral of St Paul

Taxing Questions 16 October 2011:am The Revd Jenny Wilkens

• Psalm 99
• Exodus 33:12-23
• 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10
• Matthew 22:15-22

http://wellingtoncathedral.org.nz/index.php/Sermons

Nothing is certain in this world except death and taxes, well, that's how Benjamin Franklin saw it! Although I quite like the variation in 'Gone with the Wind': "Death, taxes and childbirth! There's never any convenient time for any of them." That's certainly what I find with getting my tax sorted out, there's never a convenient time to do it, so I put it off… then to keep me on the straight and narrow with the IRD, I got an accountant, and now I have to find time to get my finances sorted out ready to go to the accountant!

Well, Jesus certainly had a taxing time with his questioners in our Gospel reading today. We are already given the clues by Matthew that the Pharisees and Herodians are not just out for a polite tête à tête with Jesus, they are plotting to entrap him, they are full of flattery. They are not really interested in a genuine engagement with Jesus as to what he thinks at all, rather they want to bring him down with a trick question, which will get him into trouble whichever way he answers, and leave them unscathed.

"Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?" This is a hot topic, this one. Back when Jesus was a child, Judas the Galilean (Acts 5:37) had led the first messianic revolt which was a tax revolt against the Romans, and the Romans had brutally suppressed it, spreading crosses across the landscape of Galilee - I wonder if Jesus had seen them.

So if Jesus had said, Yes, you should pay taxes to the emperor, he would enrage all those Zealots and nationalists who followed in the footsteps of such as Judas, including those in the crowds who fancied Jesus as a great political Messiah who would oust the Romans.

On the other hand, If Jesus had said, No, you shouldn’t be paying taxes to the Emperor, he would be guilty of disloyalty and treason and give an excuse to the Roman authorities to arrest him, encouraged by the Herodians and those of the religious authorities who sided with the Romans.

Jesus has obviously had some media training with Brian Edwards, for he answers neither Yes nor No, but neatly asks another question and puts the heat back onto his interrogators. He does this very smoothly by first asking them, 'Show me the coin used for the tax'. And they bring him a denarius. Whoops, sprung - their speed in producing a coin shows that they themselves are quite ok with handling Caesar's coinage. Their hypocrisy is revealed, for some Jews would not even touch a coin with the emperor's head on.

And why not? Jesus goes straight to the core of the issue: "Whose head is this, and whose title? They answered, 'The emperor's.' The word that Jesus uses here is interesting. When he asks 'Whose head?' the word translated 'head' is in fact in Greek eikon, meaning image. So he asks Whose image is this? Whose eikon? The coin of course bears Caesar's image and belongs to Caesar.

This would ring immediate alarm bells for Jesus' Jewish hearers. Jews weren't allowed to put images of people, human faces, on their coins, just as such portrayal is forbidden in Islam today. Behind it loomed the spectre of idolatry, that which we heard the Thessalonians being commended for leaving behind: "you turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God" (1 Thess. 1:9) The image of Caesar on the coin was bad enough, but then to add insult to injury, around the rim of the coin Caesar had the words inscribed 'Son of God, high priest (Pontifex Maximus)'. The emperor Tiberius was the son of the Emperor Augustus who had been proclaimed divine. Here lurking in the wings was emperor worship, anathema to God's people called to worship the one true God alone.

So as Jesus fingers the coin, and asks 'Whose image is this?' there is another unspoken question going on underneath to which Jesus' Jewish hearers knew the answer. Jesus could have asked them, 'And you, whose image are you made in? who do you belong to?' Their answer and ours: we are made in the image of God, and we belong to God.

Human beings bear the image of God, we don't ultimately belong to any human ruler, but to God. And a consequence of this, is that when people are treated by a ruler or government as less than human, when their divine image is denied and demeaned by the authorities, then our being made in the image of a just and righteous God may compel us to act against those authorities, according to our higher allegiance to God. Such is the choice Christians have made over the centuries and to this day to stand up against those who demean God's image in humanity.

It's very easy to take Jesus' final statement to his hearers, "Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and give to God the things that are God's"(Mt 22:20) out of its overall context, and indeed it often has been lifted out as a little slogan, espousing all sorts of causes such as the separation of church from state, and the non-intervention of the church or Christians in politics.

But it's important to see that this is not some sort of polarising statement, it does not make God and the emperor to be equal and opposite forces, it is not a dualistic world with church and state, sacred and secular firmly separated.

While that may be the way the state sees it, or some would want to see it, rather from our faith perspective, we are made in the image of God, and wherever we live and operate, whether in the social, political, economic, cultural, religious realm, wherever we find ourselves, we belong to God, and that is where our highest allegiance lies, to which all other allegiances must take second place.

So our primary loyalty to God does not switch when we move out of church and into the polling booth - hopefully there too we will pray for wisdom from God as we vote. We remember that we are made in the image of God, and that all God's children bear the divine image and belong to God, and that we are called to model and reflect the character of our God in our dealings with others. The God whose nature is revealed to Moses in our Exodus (33) reading as goodness, graciousness and mercy, the God proclaimed in our Psalm (99) as a king who delights in justice and righteousness, a God of holiness and of forgiveness.

It's not easy living that out, is it, that higher allegiance to God, it's a challenge to us here living it out in the context of this city, this parliamentary precinct, these courts of justice. Our model of course is Jesus, the Divine Image, the Son of God and our great High Priest, who knows what it is like to live on this earth, who sympathises with our weaknesses (Heb 4:15) and who was prepared to express his higher allegiance to God, even when it led him to walk the way of the cross.

As Paul reminded the Philippians, "our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ…therefore…stand firm in the Lord." (Phil. 3:20, 4:1)

In the words of a hymn we know well, (I vow to thee my country, CP 355), and which we often sing on state occasions: "And there's another country I've heard of long ago, Most dear to them that love her, most great to them that know; We may not count her armies, we may not see her King; Her fortress is a faithful heart, her pride is suffering; And soul by soul and silently her shining bounds increase, And her ways are ways of gentleness and all her paths are peace."