A Homily for the Twenty-third Sunday after Trinity

 

Render unto . . . God the things that are God’s. —Saint Matthew 22:21

 

 

            Between his triumphal entry into Jerusalem on the morning of Palm Sunday and his last supper with his disciples on the evening of Maundy Thursday, Jesus went each day to the Temple in Jerusalem to teach.  On one of those days, the Pharisees and the partisans of King Herod got together to try to trick Jesus into saying something that would get him in trouble.  This is unusual in itself, because ordinarily the Pharisees and the Herodians would have very little in common. 

 

            They came up with a trick question:  does Torah—God’s law—permit the payment of taxes to the gentile, pagan occupation authority? 

 

            “Show me the coin that pays the tax,” he said.  Then they handed him a Roman coin.  He asked them, “Whose image is this and whose inscription?”  They replied, “Caesar’s.”

 

            Everyone knows what Jesus said next:  “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.”

 

            Most often nowadays we hear that saying interpreted one of two ways.  First, there are those who interpret Jesus’s answer to be an unequivocal yes.  Yes, it is lawful to pay taxes to Caesar:  the fact that even those who ask the question carry Roman coins in their purses shows that Judea has accepted the benefits of Roman rule, such as free trade throughout the empire, good roads, law and order, decent civil administration, and the like.  It is only just, therefore, that the Jewish people should pay the reasonable cost of such benefits.

 

            Alternatively, there are those who interpret Jesus’s answer as dividing human affairs into two realms, the secular and the sacred, and as acknowledging the autonomy of the secular.  Divine law is neutral in secular matters, which are committed to the princes of this world.  Taxes and obedience to the statutory law are owed to Caesar; worship, prayer, and thanksgiving (and maybe a tithe of one’s income) are owed to God.  Thus, Jesus’s words become a sort of scriptural endorsement of the so-called “wall of separation” between church and state. 

 

            These are both plausible interpretations, but they are both wrong. 

 

            The men who put the question to Jesus did not understand him to be saying either of those things, and we should not do so either.  The men who put the question understood him to be saying something much more radical, much more incisive; they understood him to have taken their question to a level where they dared not follow.  They understood themselves to have been utterly vanquished and put to shame.

 

            The Gospel according to Saint Luke tells us that “they marvelled at his answer and held their peace”; and the Gospel according to Saint Matthew tells us that “when they had heard these words, they marveled, and left him, and went their way.”  These troublemakers were stunned into silence; they could no longer bear to be in his presence, so completely had they been outsmarted.  They gave up the attempt to trick him, and they ran away.

 

            What is so marvelous, then?  What is so stunning?

 

            Jesus has just made them say that the coin is made with the image of Caesar and is stamped with Caesar’s inscription.  “Render then unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.”  What if he had asked them:  “What is made in the image of God?  What is stamped with God’s name?”  Because, to complete the analogy, whatever that thing is must be rendered unto God. 

 

            What is written in Scripture?  What does Torah say about that?

 

God said: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” . . . And God created man in his image; in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

 

Man is made in God’s image; every human being is made in God’s image.  And the Jewish people in particular (of whom we are the spiritual heirs) are stamped with God’s name, just as surely as the silver denarius was stamped with the name of Caesar.  What, then, are the things that are God’s?  We are the things that are God’s:  the Herodians, and the Pharisees, and the disciples, and us here today.

 

            And this is why the Pharisees and the Herodians were stunned into silence.  They asked Jesus what Torah had to say about what was due to Caesar; but Jesus turned their question around and told them, in a way that every Jew hearing him would have understood, what Torah had to say about what was due to God.

 

            What does it mean to render unto God the things that are God’s?

 

            It means that we must offer and present unto God ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto him.  It means that we must show forth his praise not only with our lips, but in our lives, by giving up ourselves to his service, and by walking before him in holiness and righteousness all our days. 

 

            In the twenty-first century and in North America, we are no longer troubled by the question whether it is lawful under Torah to pay taxes to the Roman empire.  We do pay taxes, of course, and they are a great deal higher than the taxes that Rome imposed in the first century.  We may not render unto Caesar, but we render unto Washington and Sacramento.  A lot of people have come up with a lot of reasons why they should not have to pay their taxes, but nobody in our time and place claims exemption based on an Old Testament rule.

 

            So we are no longer concerned with the question posed by the Pharisees to Jesus; and yet we are vitally concerned with Jesus’s answer to the question—or, rather, with the commandment he gave in lieu of an answer:  render unto God the things that are God’s.

 

            Ultimately, this commandment must be classified among the “hard” sayings of Jesus, along with the commandment, “be thou perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.”  We hear the saying, we know that it is right and just, we want to do it—but we cannot:  or, at least, we cannot except by God’s grace.  What we would do, that do we not; but what we hate, that do we.

 

            We readily sing the words of the hymn, written by Frances Havergal in the nineteenth century:

Take my life, and let it be consecrated, Lord, to Thee.
Take my moments and my days; let them flow in ceaseless praise.
Take my hands, and let them move at the impulse of Thy love.
Take my feet, and let them be swift and beautiful for Thee.

Take my will, and make it Thine; it shall be no longer mine.
Take my heart, it is Thine own; it shall be Thy royal throne.
Take my love, my Lord, I pour at Thy feet its treasure store.
Take myself, and I will be ever, only, all for Thee.

But in the end, we usually snatch the offering back.  We do not really want to surrender our wills, or our hearts, or our time; when it comes down to it, we are reluctant even to surrender a tithe of our treasure.

 

            There is one who rendered unto God that which is God’s.  Jesus Christ, on the cross, in his one oblation of himself, once offered, made a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction.  And he allows us to join his offering and to receive the benefits of his offering.  We, who are loath to surrender even a little, are privileged to share in his surrender of all to God the Father.

 

            The image on the Roman denarius was the image of the all too visible Tiberius Caesar.  Caesar’s image?  Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.  Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God.  God’s image?  Render to God the things that are God’s.  

 

            In the body of his flesh, through his death on the cross, Jesus presents us also to God:  holy and unblameable and unreproveable in God’s sight, because he, Jesus, is the head of his body, the Church, and we and all baptized people are the limbs and organs of that body.

 

            In the Eucharist this morning, and in every Eucharist celebrated from the Apostles’ time until now and from now until Christ returns in glory, we present to God the sacrifice of his Son, and God the Son, Jesus Christ, present us to the Father.  However imperfectly we, in our daily lives, render unto God the things that are God’s, here, in the Eucharist, our offering is made perfect.

 

            Let us now, therefore, because it is meet, right, and our bounden duty, at all times and in all places, so to do, render unto God the things that are God’s.

 

 

Church of Saint Mary Magdalene

Orange, California

14 November 2004