Context is crucial when trying to understand the Scriptures. The episode that is reported in Matthew’s Gospel for the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time is a classic example of that principal. When Americans read the story of the challenge to Jesus about the temple tax, we hear Jesus’ words as an approbation of our constitutional principle concerning the separation of Church and State. However, Israel’s form of government was a theocracy, not a democracy. So it is highly unlikely that Jesus is commenting on the Founding Fathers’ concern about religion and politics.
St. Matthew offers us several clues to help us understand the context of today’s reading. First of all, he tells us that the challenge was initiated by the Pharisees and the Herodians in concert. That should raise a red flag for us. These two groups were mortal enemies. The Pharisees’ main concern was the observance off the Law of the Sinai Covenant. The Herodians had pledged their allegiance to Herod, a king imposed upon the Israelites by Caesar and were not at all concerned with Israel’s covenant with God. Both groups felt threatened by Jesus and temporarily set aside their differences to catch Jesus in their plot.
The first words out of their mouths seem to flatter Jesus. They claim that he is capable of interpreting the Law, that he is honest, and that he has no concern for whether people think well of him. However, this society was driven by the twin notions of public honor and the avoidance of shame. Verbal sparring such as they engage in with Jesus is a matter of appearing honorable in the eyes of the surrounding crowd. Jesus has just shamed the chief priests and elders by relating three parables which brought public dishonor upon themselves. The Pharisees and Herodians are now trying to turn the tables on Jesus.
They use the issue of paying the Temple tax in their attempt to make Jesus look bad. If he agrees that it is wrong to pay the Temple tax, he will incur the wrath of the Roman procurator. If he agrees with the Romans about the tax, he will lose face with the crowd. So Jesus asks innocently enough to see the coin which is used to pay the tax. Instantly, a coin is produced, and Jesus has caught the plotters in their own trap. The coin bears the image and an inscription which proclaims “The Divine Augustus Caesar.”
If the Pharisees produced the coin, they would be instantly shamed by the fact that they have on their persons a coin that is in violation of the first commandment which prohibits graven images and which proclaims that they shall have no false gods before their God. If the Herodians produced the crime, the Pharisees are still shamed by the fact that they are in the company of blasphemers.
Jesus then takes their shame a little further by saying that they should render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s. The implication embedded in this pronouncement is that they are NOT rendering to God the things that are God’s; in other words, they are not following God’s Law. They have, in fact, abandoned the theocracy they hold so dear and aligned themselves with their hated enemies of the Roman occupation. Nothing could have been more shameful. Once again, Jesus has caught them at their own game.
For us today the episode isn’t about taxes or about the separation of Church and State. Rather the lesson is the same for us as it is for the Pharisees. Are we giving God what we have promised at our baptism? Are we clinging to God or are we have we relegated God to an hour each week and forgotten God during the rest of the week?
Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator