This passage arrives as we are in what is already one of the most polarized, election season with controversies about “taxes,” “law,” “religion,” governmental authority. To add on to this we have to deal with the after-effects of a polarized Methodist Conference, bad-faith questions, and a host of other issues resonant with this story. And so, we may ask: What light does this passage throw on the coming election, and on our public life together?
A denarius in those days likely featured the head of Tiberius Caesar, along with the inscription: “Tiberius Caesar, Son of the Divine Augustus, Augustus.” Notice that Jesus does not happen to have a denarius in his own pocket. But he’s pretty sure one of his challengers will have brought such a coin into the Temple. And he’s right; they hand him a denarius immediately, not even realizing they have exposed their own blasphemy, by bringing a Roman coin, bearing a Roman inscription that calls Caesar “divine,” into the Temple where God alone is to be worshipped as holy.
Jesus turns the coin over in his hand and asks a question, “Whose image is this, and whose inscription is on this coin?”
This wasn’t just any coin, but a coin required for paying a tax to the Romans. And it wasn’t just any tax. First century Jews had to pay their share of taxes, just as we do. But the tax that required payment with a denarius was the “census” tax that had been instituted about the time of Jesus’ birth. It was the tax Jews paid to support the Roman occupation of Israel. The Jews had to pay one denarius a year to finance their own oppression.
From a Jewish point of view, the coin was both a “graven image” (prohibited in the Ten Commandments; see Exodus 20:4) and a bite-sized bit of blasphemy. Jesus is the one who has just driven the money changers from the Temple, sending their blasphemous coins scattering across the Temple floor; and these religious and civic leaders, lo and behold, have one in their pocket.
Whose image is on that coin? “The emperor’s,” they respond. And then comes Jesus’ remarkable answer: “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22:21).
Over the years, some have interpreted this to mean that God’s interests have nothing to do with money or taxes or government, but rather are focused exclusively on the “spiritual” realm.
Jesus says, Give the emperor his due — and by the same token, do the same for God! Give the emperor the things that bear his image — and tell me, what bears God’s image? Human beings, of course! (Gen 1:27) Our whole lives should be “given” to God in the sense of participating in God’s mission, listening to God’s law, doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with the Giver, a way of life that can only involve opposing cruelty, injustice, and arrogance in their various forms. Jesus isn’t dividing the world up into “financial” vs. “spiritual,” or “political” vs. “religious”. He’s pointing out that “spiritual” is a much, much bigger category, encompassing finance, politics, and virtually everything else: our bodies, our actions, our lives, and our life together in community with each other.
Jesus turns the tables on his would-be entrappers. But there are bigger themes at work here, including Jesus’ declaration of a new era, in which the Temple’s holiness is newly accessible to all, freed of financial barriers and biases, prejudice.
On one hand, Jesus pointedly eschews politics in a narrow, partisan sense. He doesn’t side with those among his contemporaries who sought to overthrow the Roman occupation by armed insurrection. He goes on to say it’s lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, but in the same breath he sends the clear message that our highest loyalty is due to God and God’s love, justice, and mercy. Jesus’ opponents try to draw him into the partisan fray — but he will not go there. Instead, he casts a theological, spiritual vision that is political in a much broader, more fundamental sense. Loving our neighbours and caring for God’s creation is always already political, of course, just as any thinking about how our beloved community should be designed is always already political — but it need not be partisan. We bear God’s image. And so, we are called to a higher politics, above and beyond partisanship, that cares for each other as we care for ourselves. That strives to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God and neighbours in everything we do — including how we build up and repair and maintain our communities.
And here’s the challenge of the Gospel this week and over the months ahead: as we make our way through this polarized election season. That even though we disagree, think of others as a neighbour, as part of your community, as a child of God created in the image of God. For if there’s anything we need during this fragmented time of so many cracks and chasms, it’s kindness and connection. A hundred little bridges, a thousand little threads, a million tiny repairs in our communal fabric that must, one day soon, be made whole.
We live in an increasingly polarized society. Everything is ‘either/or’ and if you don’t land on the same side of an issue as your neighbour, that makes you an immediate enemy. The Pharisees and the Herodians lived in a similarly polarized world. You either paid allegiance to Caesar, or to God. But Jesus says that looking at this question from a polarized perspective gets it all wrong. If we insist on ‘either/or’ we miss the point.
Some have used this passage to defend the separation of church and state. That isn’t what Jesus is talking about. Some insist that this is another one of Christ’s lessons on the proper place of money in our lives. It isn’t. This lesson isn’t even really about money at all.
This is our primary identity: we are the beloved children of God. That identity is the filter through which we make all our decisions. It is the standard against which we must measure all our choices. Give to the emperor what belongs to the emperor. But give to God the things that are God’s.
Our identity as beloved children of God, bearing God’s own image, shapes our behaviour and our thinking.
The Algerian author Mohammed Moulessehoul, writing under the pen name Yasmina Khadra in his novel The Attack, tells the story of Dr Amin Jaafari, a surgeon at a hospital in Tel Aviv. An Israeli Arab of Muslim faith, he is dedicated to his work, respected and admired by his colleagues, the majority of whom are Jewish Israelis, and the wider community in which he has served for many years. He represents integration at its most successful. He has learned to live with the violence and chaos that plague his city – the city of his foremothers and forefathers, and on the night of a deadly bombing in a local restaurant, he works tirelessly to help the shocked and shattered patients brought to the emergency room.
But this awful night of turmoil and shocking death takes a more horrifyingly personal turn. His wife’s body is found among the dead with massive injuries typical, the police coldly announce to him, of those found on the bodies of suicide bombers. As evidence mounts that his wife, Sihem, was responsible for the catastrophic bombing, Dr Jaafari is torn between memories of their years together and the inescapable realization that the beautiful, intelligent, thoroughly modern woman whom he thought he knew and loved so intimately had a life far removed from their comfortable assimilated existence.
From the graphic, shocking description of the bombing that opens the novel to its equally haunting conclusion, this novel portrays the reality of the ongoing tragedy being played out in core parts of world, the complex reality of terrorism and its incalculable spiritual costs.
The book is a compelling read in its most human portrayal, without any overlay of political bias between the rights or wrongs so often associated with the ongoing complex tasks of holding together the needs of Israeli Jew and Palestinian Arab who both lay claims to land and destiny as theirs mandated by God.
Towards the very end of the book there is the most powerful and poignant conversation between Dr Jaafari and a character called Shlomi, known with a popular name by the Arabs of the area as ‘Zeev the Hermit.’ The conversation takes place as Dr Jaafari has returned to his home community – away from the chaos of Tel Aviv – to the area of land upon which his ancestors have dwelt for some generations. He has gone there to seek deep solace after much chaotic turbulence trying to establish meaning and understanding of his beloved wife’s actions and violent death.
Standing at the particular summit of his father’s land his solitude is broken by Shlomi.
“Forgive me for disturbing you…My name is Shlomi Hirsh but the Arabs call me ‘Zeev the Hermit’. I live in the hut up there, beyond the orange trees. Once upon a time, I worked as a wholesaler for your patriarch. Not too many people come up this way, not these days. Because of the Wall. It’s really hideous, the Wall, isn’t it? How can people build such monstrosities?
“A wall? What’s it supposed to mean? The Jew is born as free as the wind, as indomitable as the Judean desert. Why did he mark the boundaries of his homeland so carelessly that it was nearly taken from him? Because for a long time he believed that the Promised Land is, first and foremost, the land where there’s no wall to keep him from seeking further than his cries can carry.”
“And the cries of the others? What does he do about those?” asks Dr Jaafari.
The old man bows his head, picks up a bit of the earth, and crumbles it between his fingers. “What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?’ says the Lord. “I have had enough of burnt offerings…”
“Isaiah 1:11,” Dr Jaafari says.
The old fellow gives him an admiring look. “Bravo,” he says.
“How the old faithful city has become a harlot, she that was full of justice!” he recited. “O my people, your leaders mislead you, and confuse the course of your paths…the land is burned, and the people are like fuel for the fire; no man spares his brother. They snatch on the right, but are still hungry, and they devour on the left, but are not satisfied; each devious his neighbour’s flesh.”
“You astonish me,” Zeev the Hermit declares. “Where did you learn all these verses from Isaiah?”
Replies Dr Jaafari: “Every Jew in Palestine is a bit of an Arab, and no Arab in Israel can deny he’s a little Jewish.”
“I couldn’t agree more” says Zeev. “So why so much hate between relatives?”
“It’s because we haven’t learned much from the prophets and hardly anything about the elementary rules of life” says Dr Jaafari.
Zeev nodes his head sadly. “Then what’s to be done?” he asks.
Dr Jaafari in reply – “First of all give God back his freedom. He’s been hostage to our bigotries for too long.” [p.242-243]
“First of all, give God back his freedom. He’s been hostage to our bigotries for too long.”
Religion kills, or more accurately religion is used to justify killing precisely because issues of ultimate consequence and meaning are understood to be at stake.
On Peace Sunday we pause and focus ourselves on the defining mark of Christianity to seek and be makers of peace in all ways – individually, collectively here in the land we call ‘home’ and in this our global ‘home.’ Our humanity is inseparably connected with all humanity – my humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.
Jonathan Sacks – formerly Chief Rabbi for the Commonwealth – notes that, “one belief more than any other is responsible for the slaughter of individuals on the altars of great historical ideals. It is the belief that those who do not share my faith, or my race, or my ideology – do not share my humanity. At best they are second-class citizens. At worst they forfeit the sanctity of life itself. They are the unsaved, the unbelievers, the infidel, the unredeemed: they stand outside the circle of salvation.” [Sacks – The Dignity of Difference p45]
“If faith is what makes us human, then those who do not share my faith are less than fully human. From this equation flowed the Crusades, the Inquisition, the jihads, the pogroms, the blood of sacrifice thought the ages. From it ultimately came the holocaust, of which the Western world in so many ways continues to seek to work out its redemption.”
From it came the beginning of the Nuclear Age – beginning so profoundly and shockingly with the atomic bombs dropped on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The supreme religious challenge shared by the three main world religions – bound together in a common history – Islam, Judaism and Christianity – is to see God’s image in one who is not our image.
This is the very antithesis, the opposite of tribalism – which continues to tragically fuel so much of our global and local conflicts. To live by the vision of the prophet Micah and of Matthew’s Beatitudes is to live in a manner which takes difference seriously. It is to recognize the integrity of difference – in my neighbour near and far, in those of different cultures and ethnicities, of religious faith, of sexuality, of gender. It is to abide by the ethic of loving my neighbour as my self – why? – because this is the very manner of the God, of the Christ, we seek to shape our daily lives around.
Nothing has proved harder in the history of civilizations than to see God, or good, or human dignity in those whose language is not mine, whose skin is a different colour, whose faith is not my faith and whose truth is not my truth. [Sacks – 90]
On this Peace Sunday – we hear again the challenge and invitation – to “give God back his freedom, for God has been indeed hostage to our bigotries for too long.” Give the emperor his due — and by the same token, do the same for God!
There are no shortcuts to peace – we need to work to make it happen every day.
Acknowledgments
Yasmina Khadra, The Attack 2005. English translation by John Cullen, Penguin 2007.
Jonathan Sacks: The Dignity of Difference: How to Avoid the Clash of Civilizations. Bloomsbury 2002 and 2025.
Crossan, J. D. God and Empire. Jesus against Rome, Then and Now. New York. Harper SanFrancisco, 2007.
Reid, B. E. Parables for Preachers. The Gospel of Matthew. Year A. Minnesota. The Liturgical Press, 2001.