Park United Methodist Church

Matthew 22:15-22

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Have you ever wondered about the faces on money? Why do we have them? How does someone get their face on money? When did it start?

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It was one of the earliest forms of political propaganda. Places made their own coins to establish themselves as independent nations. Rulers, or would-be rulers, began putting their own faces on coins around 305 BCE to project political power and to remind soldiers who was in charge and who funded them.

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In America, we kept real people's faces off our coins at first, because we had just left a king. Lincoln's face appeared on the $10 note in 1861, to help fund the Civil War.

After the war, Congress barred living people from our currency, so that we would not follow the example of kings who put themselves on their own money. It was 1909 before a real person appeared on a circulating coin: Lincoln on the penny. And even today we argue about who is on our money and why.

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All that to say, Jesus is being given an impossible question, and he knows it.

Some of the Pharisees don't believe they should have to pay Caesar, because they are members of YHWH's kingdom. If Jesus is truly the Christ, he will bring about the political kingdom, and they should not support a broken, corrupt one.

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The Herodians are also Jews. They support Herod, and they believe it is right to pay the taxes because it is the law. If they don't, they can be killed, and if they encourage others not to, they will be killed. They believe that if they live under Rome's laws, they can at least exist and worship God.

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So when Jesus meets them together, two groups who are both Jews and diametrically opposed to each other, approaching him with a trick question he knows where it is going. It is a way for both of them to get rid of him. They hate nothing more than each other except Jesus.

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Why? Because Jesus teaches love, grace, and about being part of a new way of life that diametrically opposes everything that the Empire supports. He teaches that we are all children of God, and the divisions the Empire depends on (class, status, gender, wealth) have no place in God's kingdom. Rome holds tightly to power and to systems of oppression and manipulation. Jesus rejects all of that.

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So how does he answer when either answer costs him? He gives them what looks like a non-answer. It is really a double answer. He claims his own power, and the power of others, to make their own choices and to live outside a system of oppression while still surviving inside it.

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He asks to see a coin. He doesn't have one. They do, and they produce it, in the temple.

"Whose face is on it?"

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It is Tiberius Caesar, on a denarius: the constant reminder of who holds the power, who is in charge, and who they are to worship. The inscription calls him son of the divine Augustus, and on the back he is named high priest. That is a claim of divine descent, held up in the one place where only YHWH is to be worshipped.

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Jesus tells them to give to Caesar what is Caesar's, because it literally was. The word is apodote: give back, repay what is owed. Caesar minted the coin and stamped his claim on it. To use it was to live under his rule.

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Then Jesus pivots, and give to God what belongs to God. Each and every one of them knows that they belong to God; their everything belongs to God….even their earnings.

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Jesus is not telling them to give all their money to the temple, or to Caesar. He is telling them to pay the taxes that are owed, no more, as they live with one foot in God's kingdom and one in Caesar's. Yet they do not belong to Caesar. They belong to God.

We are reminded of this in Genesis 1:27, when humanity is made in God's image. Caesar's image is stamped on a coin. God's image is stamped on us.

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Wesley, in his sermon "The New Birth," describes that image in three parts: the natural image, a spiritual being with understanding, will, and affections; the political image, made to care for creation and have dominion over it; and above all the moral image, "righteousness and true holiness." Caesar's coin carries a claim to power. God's image in us carries a call to holiness.

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If we belong to God, then what is in our hands is not ours to use as we please. Wesley preached on this in "The Good Steward." A debtor, he said, is free to use what he has until the bill comes due. A steward is not. A steward has been trusted with what belongs to someone else.

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"We are not at liberty to use what he has lodged in our hands as we please, but as he pleases."

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So what do we do with our gifts from God? How do we “spend” them? Do we squander our time? How do we use our money? Our intellect? Our voices?

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Wesley names these very things as what we have been trusted with: our minds, with understanding, memory, and will; our tongue, given to praise God; our time, every moment of it; and our money, which he called a comprehensive talent.

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We are not owners. We are stewards. We do not belong to Caesar. We belong to God. So how are you being a good steward? Your homework this week: what does your stewardship look like?