The gospel reading for Sunday, October 22nd is Matthew 22:15-22. That’s three twenty-twos. What does it mean to pay Caesar Caesar-things, and God God-things?
It helps to know
The Pharisees are back. The three-story cycle we just finished (Matt. 21:28-32; 21:33-46; 22:1-14) had been prompted by the chief priests and elders, who had tried to trap him with a trick question (21:23-27). After today's episode, the Saducees will take a swing (22:23-33), go silent, and then let the Pharisees try again (22:34-40), before Jesus asks them a trick question (22:41-46).
They know that the last three stories were about them. They're not now asking questions in order to understand, but because they understand all too well what Jesus has to say. Out of respect to questions (my friend just wrote a book about questions - buy it!), I want to point out that they literally come to trap him in/with a word (en logo), not with a proper question.
Jesus respects questions. Not word traps.
The image and inscription Easter egg. It's not so much in the words (image = eikon; inscription = epigraphe) as it is in the concept. Adam and Eve are created in the image (eikon) and likeness (homoiosin) of God. The line, "Give to God what is God's," implies that humans ought to give themselves to God.
"You do not care." The verb is a negative particle (ou) plus a positive verb (melei), just like the English. The last people Matthew describes as not caring (amelei) are the people last week who had been invited to the wedding feast (Matt. 22:1-14, "But they, having paid no attention (ameleisantes) went away"). This is a point of contrast. As the invitees didn't care what the king of the parable thought, neither did Jesus care what this other king, Caesar, thought.
The denarius is back. Several weeks ago, the laborers in the vineyard were each paid a denarius. What's the significance of "one denarius" coming back in this passage? I'm not sure.
What marveling means in Matthew. It's a value-neutral verb (thaumazo). Jesus does it, the disciples do it, the crowds do it. In most cases, the verb is deployed when someone sees something they haven't seen before (e.g., "I have not found such great faith with anyone in Israel," 8:10; "What kind of a man is this?" 8:27; Nothing like this has been seen in Israel," 9:33).
They tested him (peirazete)... They left him (aphentes). These two action verbs are the same two action verbs that frame the narrative of Satan's tests (Matt. 4:1, 11). The last time the Pharisees "test" Jesus (peirazo) is in 16:1, but that story ends with Jesus leaving them and going away (16:4). This is their departure.
What the question and answer mean. I can't explain it any better than Lynn Cohick already has. Here is the paragraph of her essay where she does this. Then just go ahead and finish her essay instead of reading the rest of mine:
Rather than giving a simple answer, Jesus reframes the assumptions underpinning their question. He does so by highlighting the purposes of civil government under the wider purposes of God. He proves his point by asking to see a coin. Someone produces a silver imperial denarius that displays on one side the image of Emperor Tiberius (son of the divine Augustus) and on the other perhaps the image of the Empress Livia, representing deified Roma. The poll tax levied by Rome on its provinces, Jesus answers, could be paid by returning to Rome that which bears its mark. Even more, those who sought to ensnare Jesus are caught themselves: Jews would lay down their lives rather than have a Roman standard bearing the Emperor’s image paraded through Jerusalem, but these leaders hold an image of the Emperor in their hands. Again, the Jewish leaders also pay the poll tax—and thus Jesus’s views on this matter align with their own. Both reject the growing nationalistic fervour that would ultimately incite armed rebellion against Rome in 66 A.D.
In supporting the payment of taxes, Jesus is not giving his stamp of approval on the social or political status quo. The second half of Jesus’s statement about giving to God what is rightfully God’s undercuts the Jewish leadership’s collusion with Rome and their satisfaction with the status quo which has enriched their own pockets. Jesus’s prophetic call on behalf of the poor rings true down to our own situation, and is especially disconcerting to Western Christians who have much to gain (humanly speaking) by retaining the existing state of affairs in the global economy.
Matthew 22:15-22
Then the Pharisees went and plotted how to entangle him in his words. And they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, "Teacher, we know that you are true and teach the way of God truthfully, and you do not care about anyone's opinion, for you are not swayed by appearances. Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?"
But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, "Why put me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the coin for the tax." And they brought him a denarius. And Jesus said to them, "Whose likeness and inscription is this?" They said, "Caesar's." Then he said to them, "Therefore, render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.
When they heard it, they marveled. And they left him and went away.
Notes
We know what is God's. We are: we are in his image and likeness. But, then again, the whole cosmos is fashioned by, through, and for the Son. "All things are yours," we say in the Eucharistic rite.
What is less clear is what is Caesar's.
The Greek reads this way: apodote (pay? give? reward?) oun (then) ta Kaisaros (that which is of/from Caesar) Kaisari (to Caesar).
Jesus does not say to give Caesar money, although he fairly well implies it. Other scholars have noted the ambiguity in the verb choice:
Submissively give Caesar the money that looks like him?
Give him his just deserts - i.e. what he has coming to him?
This text alone doesn't contain an entire political theology. For that, you'll have to keep reading the (slightly) plainer texts in Scripture.
But I'm interested in what concerns Matthew, and I have a hunch that the denarius of 22:19 has something to do with the denarius of 20:9. In that story, the owner of the vineyard had also said, "pay (apodos) them their wages." I may be wiggling around like an ESPN commentator here to delimit the uses of apodidomi in Matthew, but I can say this: These are the only two places in Matthew where someone commands someone to pay a person something and, in both cases, a denarius is the amount that they're told to pay that person.
What would be the literary significance of this?
Caesar's just a guy who's owed a denarius for doing his day job. Give him his denarius, but give a denarius to everyone under your power, too. That'd be the tagline: Give your fellow man a denarius, and Give God everything.
I’m also thinking about all the things you can give God besides money.
In Malachi, it’s food-art: bread, wine, and barbecue.
In Psalm 96, it’s beauty: “Splendor and majesty are before him; strength and beauty are in his sanctuary” (v. 6).
Give Caesar money, that self-stamped, idolatrous, Mammon-currency that renders a day’s work an abstract, numerical value.
Give God the good stuff. Your culinary and visual arts applied to the created stuff: the grain, grapes, cattle, sheep, silk, linen, flower-dyes. The creativity, conversation, collaboration, dedication, patience. That stuff. God doesn’t say he will give his people more money (Mal. 3), but he does say he will give them fruitful families, farm animals, and fields.
Pretty sure there’s something to this.
Lectionary resonances
Malachi 3:6-12. We pay both tithes (Mal. 3) and taxes (Matt. 22). Caesar doesn't make quite the promises that Yahweh does. Yahweh says to pay the "full tithe," and "put [him] to the test" in that way, to see "if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need" (3:10). So give God what is God's.
Psalm 96. With more generalities, the psalmist says to bring God "an offering" (96:8). That's no replacement for the "full tithe," but a mode of bringing it, as well as an extension of it. God can make promises like the ones in Mal. 3 because he "made the heavens" from which he pours down the rain, and "the gods of the peoples are worthless idols" (v. 5). Idols (incl. the fed., state, and loc. gov'ts) ask for your money because they say they can make it rain.
1 Thessalonians 1. The Thessalonians are mostly great (1:2-5), and their reputation spread far, and quickly (v. 8). The main thing they have done, their main action verb clause in the chapter, is having "turned to God from idols... and to wait for his Son from heaven" (vv. 9-10). For the sake of this week's sermon, it's worth mentioning how peripheral a "theology of Caesar" is, and how central a theology of the "full tithe" and God's blessing are.