Rendering to God

“Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”  St. Matthew 22:21

It was quietly noted a few weeks ago that Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin has declined to endorse an Obama administration plan to put Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill.  His predecessor, Jacob Lew, saw honoring the great antislavery hero as the first step in redressing a historic imbalance in the way we have honored national heroes.  The $20 bill was a convenient place to start, as Andrew Jackson has come under fire in recent years for his slaveholding and for his decision to forcibly remove Indians to the West along the infamous Trail of Tears.   

But Andrew Jackson also happens to be one of President Trump’s personal heroes.  The President honors Jackson as a brave soldier, and a symbol of democracy, the first true man of the people to be elected to our nation’s highest office.  The president laid a wreath at Jackson’s tomb as part of the 250^th anniversary celebration of his birth and has hung a painting of him in the Oval Office.[1]  You can be sure that Old Hickory won’t be leaving the currency on his watch. 

The debate over the $20 bill has caused some impassioned repartee, at least among the sort of people who frequent the Facebook page of this former history major. 

The Treasury Secretary has either rolled back an important step towards righting ancient wrongs or he has put the lid on some juvenile political correctness.   Both sides agree on one thing: that our currency carries important symbolic weight.  It represents our nation’s values, and lifts up heroes worthy of emulation.  It bears the image of the kind of people we aim to be.

In that sense, not much has changed since Jesus invited the Pharisees and Herodians who had crowded around him to pull out a coin and show Him the image it bore.  Coinage was the most effective form of propaganda in the ancient world.  Invariably coins were stamped with the picture of the ruler.  In the absence of good written records, historians of antiquity use coins to date the reigns of kings.  The coins often bore an inscription, a message that the ruler really wanted everyone to understand.  And sometimes, as in the case of the denarius produced by someone in the temple crowd, those inscriptions could arouse just as much controversy as our $20 bill.

Jesus asked the crowd whose image and inscription were stamped on the coin.  They reply, “Caesar’s,” but that wasn’t really a full answer.  The coin did bear an image of the ruling emperor, Tiberias Caesar, but it also had an inscription, Tiberias Caesar, Augustus, son of the deified Augustus, pontifex maximus.”  The inscription was claiming the emperor was himself a god, and more than that, the son of a god.  He was also, it said, pontifex maximus, the chief bridge-builder, who in his person united earth and the heavens. 

That title goes back to the very beginning of the city of Rome, when Numa Pompilius, the second king, had made a pact with Jupiter, the greatest of Roman gods.  He would offer sacrifices to Jupiter, and Jupiter would ensure victory to his armies.  Rome’s great victories and its fabled peace were rooted in this pact, the religio, it was called.  That’s where our word religion comes from--the bond, it means, the connection between gods and men, secured by the divine emperor.[2]

Any Jew with an ounce of integrity in him classed this story as rank superstition, and would have probably resented the inevitable need to carry a bit of it with him in his pouch as he went about his daily business. But Jews differed among themselves about just how offensive the coinage really was, and Jesus’ questioners they were, in part, inviting Him into a squabble that had long ranged between them. 

The Herodians were the supporters of the puppet king that the Roman authorities had installed to rule the Jews.  They were always falling over themselves to make peace with their distant overlords and would have shrugged their shoulders about the coinage—the price of doing business, and all that. 

Pharisees resented Roman rule, and many would have been troubled about carrying around all those little idols in their pockets.  Remember the moneychangers Jesus drove out of the temple?  They were part of a work-around that the Pharisees had helped to broker.  Sacrificial animals for temple worship had to be purchased at the temple’s own stockyards, and you could only buy them in special temple currency, which was conspicuously free of the heads of Roman emperors and mentions of pontifexes maximi. 

On this occasion, the two sides had set aside their squabbles to trap Jesus into making a politically charged statement.  What about the tribute, they ask him, the annual head tax paid to the emperor by all his subjects?  Is it lawful or not?  Jesus, after all, had been hailed as a king.  He claimed that through His words and deeds the true God was coming to reign among His people.  But what did He really think about the man on the throne back in Rome, the one who claimed to be a god, who thought his sacrifices reconcile God and man.  Should we pay taxes to someone like that?  To say no was an act of insurrection.  But to say yes could suggest there might be something to those claims Caesar was making.  It might imply that the kingdom at the heart of Jesus’ own teaching was merely abstract, altogether tame, a kind of glowing ideal in the mind far removed from the gritty realities of life on the street.

Jesus gives a careful answer, one that means more than it seems to say at first glance.  On the one hand, “Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s.”  Pay the tribute he wants, be a good citizen, do your part.  Christians should pray for the leaders and pay what is owed for the civil benefits they enjoy.  Caesar’s coins, like all the things of this world are passing away—if he wants them, let him have them.

“But render to God what is God’s.” That means on the one hand, that Caesar is only Caesar, a sinner like all the rest of us.  There is only one bridge-builder, as Saint Paul would explain, “there is one mediator between God and man, the man Jesus Christ, who gave himself as a ransom for all.”[3]  There is only One who can establish a true religio, a holy bond that reconciles humanity to its loving Father.  And He stands before you here.

Insisting that Caesar is only Caesar remarkably restricts his power.  As St. John Chrysostom wrote, “When you hear the command to render to Caesar the things of Caesar, know that such things only are intended which in nothing are opposed to religion; if such there be, it is no longer Caesar’s but the Devil’s tribute.”[4]

Rendering to Caesar and to God, most Christians have been loyal and productive citizens, “living peaceably with all.”[5]  But on the basis of Christ’s claim, some have also challenged deeply rooted social injustices, fighting for the abolition of slavery, for example, and protesting against discrimination.  And for the sake of rendering to God what is God’s, some have laid down their own lives, confessing steadfastly the one Lord who brooks no rival. 

But Jesus also is pointing to a deeper truth about human life and the God who sustains it.  For if the coin bears Caesar’s image, we are the ones made in God’s image, we are His coinage.[6]  All that we have comes from Him, and He bids us to make a fair return for the benefits we have received. 

God breathed life into us.  Through His Son, He forgives us, renews us in grace, and promises us eternal joy in His Presence. Our talents and skills, the relationships that bring us joy and meaning, and our worldly possessions and the wisdom to use them rightly—all these come from His hands.

He bids us love Him with all our heart, mind and strength, offer ourselves as living sacrifices, doing His will, praising Him continually.  But we also offer back a portion in the coinage of this world, gifts pledged for His work in the church.   In a few moments, you will bring these forward for our common ministry in the coming year here at St. Francis.  These pledges demonstrate our loyalty and proclaim our faith.  They are signs that we have seen and know how good God has been to us.  They are a humble return for His abundant grace.

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[1] Appelbaum, Binyamin.  “Mnuchim Doesn’t Endorse Placing Harriet Tubman on the New $20 Bill.”  The New York Times, 31 Aug. 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/31/us/politics/mnuchin-harriet-tubman-jackson-money.html?_r=0

[2] Green, Michael.  The Message of Matthew.  Leicester: IVP, 200, 223.

[3] I Tim. 2:5-6.

[4] Qtd. in Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea, Gospel of Matthew 22:15-22.  http://www.lectionarycentral.com/trinity23/CatenaAurea.html

[5] Rom. 12:18.

[6] c.f. Augustine, Sermon XL.