I Pledge Allegiance

Ruth 1:1-19a; I Thessalonians 1:1-10; Matthew 22:15-22

For the past three Sundays I have been concentrating on some of the parables of Jesus wherein Jesus came down very hard upon the self righteousness of the religious leaders of his day. In the parable of the two sons the religious leaders appeared under the guise of the unsatisfactory son who did not do his father's will. In the parable of the wicked tenants they are the wicked tenants. In the parable of the king's feast they are the condemned guests who refused the invitation. Now, in this morning's gospel lesson, we see the Jewish leaders launching their counter-attack against Jesus. And they do so by directing at Jesus carefully formulated questions. They ask these questions in public, while the crowd looks on and listens, and their aim is to make Jesus discredit Himself by His own words in the presence of the people. Here, then, we have the question of the Pharisees, a question which was indeed subtly and cleverly framed. Palestine, in those days, was an occupied country, and the Jews were subject to the Roman Empire; and the question was: "Is it, or is it not, lawful to pay taxes to Rome?"

There were, in fact, three regular taxes which the Roman government exacted. There was a ground tax, wherein which a landowner had to pay to the government one tenth of the grain, and one fifth of the oil and wine which was produced. Then there was the income tax, which was one percent of a person's income, not very much by today's standards. Then there was a poll tax, which had to be paid by every male person from the age of fourteen to the age of sixty-five, and by every female person from the age of twelve to sixty-five. This particular tax, the poll tax, amounted to one denarius -- And this is the coin Jesus held up for the people to inspect. It was known at that time as "the tribute coin" and amounted to about a day's wage. So, evidently, the tax which the Pharisees were asking Jesus about was the poll tax.

Now, the question which the Pharisees asked put Jesus into a very real dilemma. If he said that it was unlawful to pay the tax, they would quickly report him to the Roman government officials as an insurrectionist, and his arrest would certainly follow. If, on the other hand, he said that it was lawful to pay the tax, he would stand discredited in the eyes of many of the people who were following him. Not only did the people resent the tax as everyone resents taxation, but they resented it even more for religious reasons.

To a Jew God was the only king; their nation was a theocracy; to pay tax to an earthly king was to admit the validity of his kingship and thereby to insult God. Therefore the more fanatical of the religious leaders of Jesus' day insisted that any tax paid to any foreign king was absolutely wrong. Whichever way Jesus answered -- at least as far as the Pharisees were concerned -- would lay himself open to a lot of trouble. And, what's more, when they asked their question, the Pharisees made sure that representatives of Herod's court, known as the Herodeans, were there to hear Jesus' answer.

Normally, the Pharisees and the Herodeans fought against each other like cats and dogs. The Pharisees were the supremely orthodox ones, who resented the payment of the tax to a foreign king as an infringement of the divine right of God. The Herodians were the party of Herod, king of Galilee, who owed his power to the Romans, and who worked hand in glove with them. The Pharisees and the Herodians were strange bed-fellows, indeed. But, for the moment, their differences were forgotten in their common hatred of Jesus, and a common desire to eliminate him. And perhaps, if there is a lesson to this facet of scripture, it is this: Any person who insists on his or her own way, no matter what that way is, will hate Jesus.

I am reminded of an encounter I had, one day, with an engraver in a cemetery. The engraver had come to put the date on a tombstone following the burial of the person who's name appeared on the stone. The engraver had prepared the granite by placing a rubber stencil over the granite. The date which was to be engraved had been cut into the rubber in such a way that only the granite which had to be cut away was exposed.

Next, the engraver had a small sand blaster with which directed a sharp stream of sand at rubber stencil and the exposed granite. Amazingly, as I stood there, within just a few moments, the numbers were etched into the granite. And, after this, the rubber stencil was peeled away.

The engraver noticed that I was amazed at seeing this and explained that the reason that the hard granite was worn away while the rubber wasn't was that the granite wasn't resilient. Not being resilient, the bits of sand were able to wear it down. But, the rubber, on the other hand, being resilient, simply bounced the particles of sand away without any apparent wear.

Then the engraver suggested that life was much like this, as well. Persons who insist upon their own way, who refuse to change, who refuse to yield, will be worn away much faster than those who yield to change and accept it and then deal with it. And, indeed, very often, it is God who uses change in our lives to speak to us. It is God who expects us to change if we are ever going to grow in our relationship with him.

Jesus was resilient. Thus, in spite of the inflexibility of those who were testing him, he was able to deal very creatively with them. He asked to see a denaruis, which was stamped with the head of the Emperor. In the ancient days coinage was a sign of a king's authority. As soon as a king came to the throne an image of his head was put upon the nation's coins. And, indeed, those coins were considered to be the property of the king whose image it bore. So, Jesus asked whose image was on the coin. The answer was that it was Caesar's head which was on it. "Well then," said Jesus, "give it back to Caesar; it is his. Give to Caesar what belongs to him; and give to God what belongs to him."

With his unique wisdom Jesus never laid down laws and rules and regulations; that is why his teaching is timeless, and never goes out of date. Instead of laws, rules, and regulations, Jesus laid down principles. And here he laid down a very great and very important principle:

Every Christian has a double citizenship. The Christian is a citizen of the country of the world in which he or she happens to live. To that country the Christian owe many things. We owes our country's government the protection we get from criminals which only settled government can give. Certainly, we owe our government for the public services which are provided to us. In our own particular system we may even owe our government for such things as education, medical services, provision for unemployment and old age. And, certainly, this is a debt that we must pay. Because the Christian is an honorable person, the Christian must be a responsible citizen; and failure in good citizenship is also a failure in Christian duty. And heaven knows the untold troubles that can descend upon a country or an industry which Christians refuse to take their part in the administration of the country, and leave that administration to selfish, self-seeking, partisan, persons. The Christian has a duty to Caesar in return for the privileges which the rule of Caesar brings.

But the Christian is also a citizen of heaven. There are matters of conscience and of religion and of principle in which the responsibility of the Christian is to God. It may well be that the two citizenships will never clash; they do not need to. But when the Christian is convinced that it is God's will that something should be done, it must be done; or, if he or she is convinced that something is against the will of God, it must be resisted, and the Christian will take no part in it. Where the boundaries between the two duties lie Jesus didn't say. That is for our own conscience to test. But a real Christian -- and this is the permanent truth which Jesus here lays down -- is at one and the same time a good citizen of his country, and a good citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven. The good Christian will fail in his or her duty neither to God nor to humanity. The good Christian will, as Peter said, "Fear God, and honor the king." Amen.