Throughout the Gospel of Matthew, the Pharisees in particular are depicted as a scheming bunch, attempting to trap Jesus in his own words as if he were some kind of amateur politician.  Jesus, however, constantly turns the tables on his attackers, often leaving them speechless and the bystanders amazed.  In Matthew 22, Jesus’ opponents finally raise the subject of taxes.  Of course, taxes have never been very popular in human history, and life in the Holy Land under Roman military rule was no exception.  The Romans heavily taxed their occupied territories, and typically the local ruling aristocracy used any method possible to extort money from the lower classes.  This is why tax collectors are especially hated characters (see, for example, Matthew 9:9-13, Luke 19:1-10).  In our passage, it is the dynamics of Roman occupation that create the opportunity for this line of questioning: if Jesus responds that it is lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, he will be deemed to be sympathetic to the ruling class – and thus “offensive to Jewish nationalists,” and yet to assert that such taxes are unlawful would be “treasonous” (New Oxford Annotated Bible).  

 How does Jesus respond?  He demands to see a coin, he asks whose image it contains, and then he famously says “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (22:21).  Because the coin bore the image and name of the emperor, Jesus reasoned that it really belonged to him.  In addition, “because of the offensiveness of a human image on a coin, it would be most appropriate for Jews to be rid of such a coin” (Donald Hagner, Word Biblical Commentary, p. 636).  Here, Jesus essentially concedes the ability to collect taxes to Roman authority, but he does not stop there.  Rather, Jesus logically transposes the debate beyond what any of his hearers were expecting.  The logic behind Jesus’ argument is highly suggestive: Whose image do people bear?  Within a Jewish worldview (both ancient and contemporary), all people in fact bear the image of God (see Genesis 1:26-27). 

The image of God has been indelibly stamped within all of us, much in the same way that pieces of metal are shaped into the image of a ruler or king.  Thus, “if one rendered to the state its restricted due, all the more was one to render

to God [God’s] unrestricted due – the totality of one’s being and substance, one’s existence, was to be rendered to God and nothing less.  Loyalty to Caesar must always be set in the larger context and thus be relativized by the full submis-

sion of the self to God” (Hagner, 637).

 When we open our Bibles today with the hopes of finding guidance for specific tax policies in the modern world, we may find ourselves frustrated.  But when we listen attentively to the words of Jesus, we hear anew the prophetic calling to care for the poor, to seek justice for the oppressed, and to render that which bears the image of God – our whole lives – back to God.

BY CHRIS LIU BEERS, PROGRAM ASSOCIATE,

NC COUNCIL OF CHURCHES