A Graven Image

Grace to you and peace from our loving God, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

The Pharisees went and plotted to entrap Jesus in what he said., So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, "Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality. Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?" But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, "Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the coin used for the tax." And they brought him a denarius. Then he said to them, "Whose head is this, and whose title?" They answered, "The emperor's." Then he said to them, "Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's." When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.

Well they might be amazed. First the Pharisees butter Jesus up. Then they fire a very difficult question at him. And he handles it with incredible dexterity.

The apparently innocent question is not innocent at all, and the interrogators know it. If Jesus says, "Yes, it is lawful to pay taxes to Caesar," they will have him entangled in an intricate web of church-state relationships from which he can hardly hope to escape, and his answer will be co-opted by the Jerusalem chapter of the Moral Majority and all the other flag-wavers, as well as costing him the support of the crowd, who aren't particularly fond of taxes. But if Jesus says, "No, it is not lawful to pay taxes to Caesar," he will be guilty of "aiding, counseling, and abetting" civil disobedience and the breaking of Caesar's law: and Caesar, like the United States Department of Justice, has efficient ways of dealing with such subversion-as Jesus himself discovers approximately forty-eight hours later when they issue him a one-way ticket to Golgotha. (Robert McAffee Brown Saying Yes and Saying No: On Rendering to God and Caesar, 37)

For the Jews, Jesus' question is profoundly revealing, simply by the nature of the way he phrases it. When he asks of the Roman coin,

"Whose head is this, and whose title?"

The word used for "head" can also be translated "image". In Greek, it is "ikon" (icon). An icon, of course, is not entirely unlike an idol, as is witnessed by the phrase from Exodus when the people of Israel were making a god for themselves in the wilderness (as we heard last Sunday)—"a graven image" (Exodus 20:4).

It's safe to assume that Jesus is implying that the coin is a symbol of idolatry. Indeed it was. In addition to the image of Caesar—the emperor of Rome, coinage included words referring to Caesar as the son of the emperor, tantamount to saying "son of god".

This serves to heighten the conflict between the Pharisees and Jesus. They pit, symbolically, one god against another, one son of God against another. And the instruction presented by Jesus at the end of the story puts the matter quite simply, as Jesus does earlier in this gospel.

"Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's."

Listen to the same idea as expressed in the "Sermon on the Mount":

"No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth." (6:24)

Both church and state seek our allegiance. As citizens, we "pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands." The church expects a similar commitment when we declare our faith, "I believe in the holy catholic church" in the Apostles' Creed.

The words "under God" have been inserted into our pledge of allegiance. Perhaps it was intended to indicate where our primary allegiance rests. But when church and state intertwine, as they have on occasion in history, the political has almost always subsumed the spiritual. That was not only the case in Constantinian Rome, but is the case in democratic America, where Presidents continue to practice a "civil religion," coopting faith and the transcendent for the sake of their temporal political objectives. The result is confusion. In 1952, President-elect Dwight Eisenhower declared: "Our form of government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don't care what it is."

Unfortunately, Eisenhower isn't the only American President to use "God's words" to bolster the legitimacy of both his administration and the nation-state. And in "Civil Religion and the Presidency", Richard Pierard and Robert Linder document this disturbing misuse of religion, studying in detail how nine U.S. Presidents, who ranged from irreligious to devout, used God in their approach to public life.

Pious Presidents are just as capable of abusing the gospel by linking it to temporal national goals. For example, William McKinley was a devoted Christian, yet he confused an unprovoked war against Spain and the unjustified annexation of the Philippines with the "startling providence of God." Even worse, many religious leaders supported McKinley, viewing his conquests as a divine opportunity to expand their missionary work.

Civil religion comes dangerously close to blasphemy when it identifies God with the national destiny and reduces the universal God of the bible to the tribal god of America. (Richard Pierard and Robert Linder, Zondervan, Christianity Today)

I consider it safest to make this point with reference to presidents in earlier years, but of course the situation continues. And the confusion of how the church and state ought to relate persists among many clergy as well. How appalling to see pastors praying publically that God may see to the election of one presidential candidate or another. Our Lutheran social statements make it clear that the Church and the State ought not be confused. The institutions must be kept separate; and interaction needs to be a function of their appropriate roles—the State preserving religious freedom and the Church calling political leaders and institutions to accountability when they act unjustly.

But regardless of how much competing allegiances vie for the American heart, the place of primary Christian allegiance is clear. In Acts 5, Peter and the apostles are brought before the government. The high priest says to them, "We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and you are determined to bring this man's blood on us." Peter and the apostles respond, "We must obey God rather than any human authority." (Acts 5:27-29)

Today Jesus makes a similar proclaimation:

"Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's."

Many people read this summary of today's story and imagine it to be some kind of legalistic pronouncement. But how could Christians think that the embodiment of grace could be making a legalistic point here?!

Jesus does not, I am convinced, expect that his statement will be taken as a definitive statement of law. He is simply speaking the truth, and calling us to faith. One must make a choice about which god one will serve.

Jesus doesn't leave us an ethical handbook. Instead, he provides resources that help us make our own decisions. So when Jesus says:

"Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are Gods."

he demands that we ask yet another question and answer it ourselves:

"Just which things are Caesar's and appropriately to be rendered to Caesar, and which things are God's and appropriately to be rendered to God?"

When the Pharisees confront our Lord in today's text, they're convinced that they can trick him into making a statement that isn't "politically correct"—that is, denying the emperor's right to levy taxes. Their question betrays their ignorance, because their political question assumes that Jesus has a political agenda. Since they're always trying to find ways to maneuver within and around Roman authority to their best advantage, the Pharisees naturally assume that Jesus must have a similar agenda for his ministry. How wrong they are!

Jesus isn't concerned with politics per se; he is concerned with justice and with faith. It's a point I have spent two days this week making with a group of pastors and lay people from our synod at a conference on congregation-based community organizing. Our faith is intended to reach out into the world in love to work for justice.

Jesus intends not merely to bring the kingdom of God into Roman-ruled Palestine. He wants Roman-ruled Palestine (and democratically-ruled America) to help bring in the kingdom of God. Jesus' vision is not just another version of political and cultural organization—supplanting the Roman state with a Jewish state, or even a couple of millennia later, a United States.

Jesus weans people away from the spirit of secular power and awakens them to the power of the Spirit. Jesus wants to wake people up to the possibility that there is so much more available to them—more love, more joy, more justice, more power than they could ever imagine or otherwise experience—through salvation and a right relationship with God.

"Give to God what is God's"—Jesus' apparently elementary principle of human responsibility, doesn't focus on a legal approach to church-state interaction. It is, rather, a radical mandate for a re-evaluated life and a renewed creation.

Jesus never sidesteps the importance of personal decision. Even with this seemingly legalistic word, he is calling the Pharisees and us to repentance, to a clear decision for him, and to a life of yielding all of who we are and what we have been given to God—in gratitude for God's grace and the gift of faith. Amen.

May the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep our hearts and minds through faith in Christ Jesus our Lord, unto eternal life. Amen.