JESUS AT IT AGAIN, UPSETTING PEOPLE

Sunday - 15th October 2005

Trinity 21 | Year A | Proper 24 Track 1 | Ordinary Time Week 29

Exodus 33.12-23  |  1 Thessalonians 1.1-1  |  Matthew 22.15-22 : To see the current week's readings, click here

Over the last few Sundays the readings we’ve had set have been Jesus telling parables against the religious establishment of the day ...

• in the parable of the two sons who were asked to work in the vineyard we saw how Jesus was telling people to practice what they preached, to be consistent in their lifestyles;

• in the parable about the tenants in the vineyard Jesus was warning about recognising God’s work in the world, about recognising God’s messengers and God’s demands, about a right perspective

• ... and this week the religious establishment wake up to the fact that Jesus is effectively undermining them with the truth, so they try and get their own back. They decide that they will try and trap Jesus with one of those religious questions that seemingly doesn't have a good possible outcome.

Bit like the question “When did you stop beating your wife?”

BEWARE THE QUESTION....

When a previous Archbishop of Canterbury was visiting America for the first time in the 1920s, as he stepped off the plane, one of the journalists asked him “Archbishop, will you be visiting the nightclubs while you’re here in New York?” To which, thinking he was being very clever, the Archbishop acidly replied “Are there any nightclubs in New York?”. So the headline in the newspaper the next day was “Archbishop’s first question on landing: Are there any nightclubs in New York?”

So the question facing Jesus: what about taxes? Should we pay them or not?

A TAXING ISSUE

It might not sound like too much of a problem to us. Famously of course Benjamin Franklin summed it up like this: the only two certainties in life are death & taxes. There are those today who, whilst they might not object to the principle of paying tax, are very unhappy with the use that is made of some of their taxes, and some people deduct what they calculate are the percentages going to causes of which they disapprove...

Other people object to what they consider to be unfair or unreasonable taxation. Over the last few weeks there have been some high profile cases of people refusing to pay what they think are unreasonable rises in their Council Tax - a retired vicar and an old lady were both jailed... so the issue of taxation, what’s fair and what’s not is still a live issue today.

Things were even more sharply felt in Jesus day: the Jewish people had been promised their own land by God, but - having been in Exile from their land in Babylon, then ruled by the Greeks - they were currently occupied by the Romans. And the Romans were exacting taxes from them. So not only were they not free to rule themselves but they were paying taxes to a pagan power to live in the land that God had promised to them... so the whole issue of paying taxes was quite a hot one.

HOT POTATO

And it’s this religious-political hot potato that the Chief Priests and the Pharisees throw to Jesus, hoping to nobble him one way or the other.

Notice how much Jesus has rocked the establishment boat: the Chief Priests and Pharisees had teamed up with the Herodians... They were in effect the collaborators who whilst in theory may have wanted Israel to be a free nation, in practice they could get along with Rome provided they were allowed to practice their religion and be respected (which on the whole they were). So some strange bedfellows - united in their attack on Jesus and both determined to get rid of him.

It was a no-win situation for Jesus, and the Pharisees had thought carefully about this question... If he had said Yes, pay taxes to Caesar - that would have made him very unpopular with the crowds, and hopefully they would have lynched him; if he said No, don’t pay taxes to Caesar, that would have made him a dangerous subversive and the Romans would have lynched him. Either way the Pharisees couldn’t lose and Jesus couldn’t win...

GOOD QUESTION: BAD MOTIVES!

The question wasn’t really designed to elicit a deep or spiritual answer, but to get Jesus into hot water. You may recall when they brought him a woman caught in adultery for much the same reason - not to settle a religious dispute, or to seek for truth, or to seek the best for the woman, but to trap him into shooting himself in the foot. Instead of which, of course, Jesus turns an attempt to scupper him into another invaluable lesson about how to live as a citizen of heaven and a citizen of the world God’s placed us in.

The difference between our duty to Caesar and God is not always clear cut. For the most part the New Testament suggests that we should support our rulers and those in authority over us - Paul in particular suggests that we should pray for those in authority and says that their authority comes from God.

WHAT DO THE SCRIPTURES SAY?

There were two reasons for this - one was that the New Testament writers believed that Jesus would return at any minute, and so spiritual reform was much more important that political reform - the Christian’s duty was to concentrate on sorting him or her self out before God and helping others to do so too.

The other reason was that for the most part the writers of the New Testament were living when the state was largely indifferent to those who followed Jesus - most of the opposition came from the Jewish community to start with (Paul as you remember was a zealous Jew who persecuted the Church). So if the authorities had no quarrel with the Christians, then Paul could write that they were God-given institutions whose rule was to be regarded like that of God’s: to obey the state authorities was to do what God wanted. No problem.

The clash came later when the Christians refused to burn incense to the Emperor and refused to take the oath of allegiance to the state and say “Caesar is Lord” - because for Christians then, as now: Jesus is Lord. So began the persecution of Christians as subversive citizens of the Empire - ones who refused to take the oath of allegiance, therefore people to be got rid of, or made an example of in case other citizens started getting revolutionary ideas.

So by the time St John the Divine is writing his Revelation - one of the latest of the New Testament writings to be completed - the state is seen as the evil beast who is devouring the Christians (Revelations 13) - a beast to be challenged and not obeyed - because to obey the state would be to suggest that there was a higher authority than Jesus the Lord - and it was better to die than to deny Christ: if Jesus was not Lord of all, Jesus was not Lord at all...

BUT... HOW DO WE DECIDE?

So we do see that there are times in the Bible when the state acts under the will of God, and other times when the state doesn’t. But - and this is the $64million question - how do you tell? And what do you do about it?

A Christian must live in the tension of having a foot in two camps - we are citizens of heaven, and citizens of this country - we owe allegiances to both our rulers, and there may come a time when these two allegiances clash. It will be different for each of us, and that’s where our God given conscience will guide our decisions...

Render to Caesar’s the things that are his: the coin bore the image of Caesar and so belonged to him - and human beings bear the image of God - and so our lives have a loyalty to the God who made us, loves us and owns us... And yes spiritual reform is important, but if we’re working for the coming of God’s kingdom then we must be interested in social and political reform too.

Our faith has to impact all of our lives, and like the early Christians who faced persecution for refusing to bow the knee to authority which tried to usurp the place of God, maybe we too need to give thought to thinking about the times when our loyalties as citizens of two places come into conflict.

And then what we chose to do about it when that happens. The scriptures make it clear that once we’ve been able to discern the occasion on which our loyalty appears to be divided, there’s actually no debate about what we should do: If Jesus is not Lord of all, Jesus is not Lord at all... Our difficulty is always going to be in earthing our Christian living in the world we live in: how are we to be distinctive and different and not collude with a system which is demanding more from Christians than Christ...
 

Fr Andrew J Perry
Rector, St John the Evangelist, Pevensey Rd, St Leonards on Sea

Picture Credits on this page

The Bible Revival