Rendering to Caesar
Meditation from an Election Eve Prayer Service
Note: I shared the following with my congregation at a prayer service last evening we held in preparation for Election Day. I hope it speaks to you as you head to the polls today.
Texts: Deuteronomy 17:14-20; Romans 13:1-14; Psalm 146; Mark 12:13-17
On the Tuesday of Holy Week, the most pivotal week in all of human history, Jesus is confronted with a political question: Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not? Ah yes, even then, people were concerned about their taxes.
What’s interesting about this text, however, is who is asking the question. The Pharisees and Herodians are sent by the chief priests to confront Jesus with this thorny political dilemma, but what we often miss in reading this text is that these are members of two very different political parties who are opposed to one another.
The Pharisees were the nationalistic party, wanting to see Judea elevated again and believing that the only way to bring in God’s Kingdom God’s reign and rule, was by getting people to strictly obey the law of Moses. They are also somewhat philosophically aligned with the zealots, who claimed “no king but God” and who wanted to overthrow Roman rule by revolutionary force. If Jesus says that people should pay their taxes, it will destroy his popularity among an increasing crowd of people who seem to be looking for a revolution.
The Herodians, on the other hand, were the party of the establishment, tying their fortunes to the family of Herod the Great and the dynasty that benefitted from Roman rule. They’re not concerned so much with the Kingdom of God and they are with preserving their own kingdom and power. If Jesus tells people they shouldn’t pay their taxes, theHeoridans can claim he is an insurrectionist against Rome and have him arrested.
Both of these parties are opposed to each other, but united in their opposition to Jesus. Jesus recognizes the trap of being caught between competing political parties, both looking for a scapegoat, both looking for a way to justify themselves, and both looking for a way to get rid of the one who won’t play the game.
It’s a trap—the kind of trap that comes when people are so caught up in their ideologies that they miss the bigger picture. But it’s that bigger picture to which Jesus points and the truth that I want to call our attention this evening. In an election season when different parties are vying for us to make a choice, with their different visions of a kingdom, Jesus invites us to consider the ultimate politics of God’s Kingdom.
Jesus asks for a silver denarius—a Roman coin worth about a day’s wage, a coin with an image of the Emperor on it. At that time it would have been Tiberius, heir to Caesar Augustus. Roman coins were like political ads in the ancient world—where our coins have the images of dead Presidents on them, Roman coins were designed to project the power of the Emperor, his name, and his worship to the far corners of the Empire. The image of Caesar represented power, prosperity, and punishment for those who would attempt to push back against Rome.
But it was also a graven image, a violation of the second commandment, and right out of the gate Jesus is poking back at the Pharisees’ hypocrisy for carrying around such coins. Jewish money did not have such images, and one of the reasons for the moneychangers in the temple was to change the Roman coin to Jewish coin so that it could be used locally (that was the purpose of the moneychangers in the temple). By producing a denarius, the Pharisees in the group were already busted for not practicing what they preached.
But that’s a minor point here—the real point is that Jesus recognizes Caesar, and recognizes the trap. It’s the same trap that many find themselves in during a contentious political season; the trap of wanting a quick fix, an easy solution, a gotcha moment, or an all or nothing result. it’s the trap of believing that either elevating Caesar or opposing him will bring in the Kingdom of God.
For Jesus, Caesar represented earthly political power. But Caesars come and go. Jesus, like many of his Jewish contemporaries, was steeped in the prayer book of the Psalms. No doubt he knew the lines of Psalm 146: 3-5
Do not put your trust in princes, in human beings, who cannot save. When their spirit departs, they return to the ground; on that very day their plans come to nothing. Blessed are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God.
God had warned Israel about putting their trust and confidence in earthly rulers, warning them in Deuteronomy 17 what would happen if they chose a king other than God to rule over them. In I Samuel, Israel clamors for a King so that they might be like the other nations around them. But rather than get angry that they wanted to replace God with a king of their own, God’s way of punishing them was by giving them precisely what they wanted. They had gotten King Saul, a real psycho. And the Kings of Israel would exact the very kind of tribute that Deuteronomy warned them about—collecting horses for war chariots, accumulating wives , or exacting money in taxes. A king rich in Guns, Girls, and Gold was to be avoided.
And yet this is the kind of ruler the world produces—rulers who gain power for a time but then, as the psalmist says, “they return to the ground; on that very day their plans come to nothing.”
It’s not that they're unimportant. The Apostle Paul wrote the Epistle to the Romans near the beginning of the reign of the Emperor Nero, a Caesar who would eventually scapegoat Christians for many of his own failures. But even then, Paul says in Romans 13:1-2:
Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.
It’s not that government and rulers are unimportant—the point for Jesus, for Paul, for the writer of Deuteronomy, is that the Caesars of this world are not of ultimate importance.
“Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s” says Jesus. Give him back his coin, show him the proper respect, but remember that Caesar’s reach, Caesar’s resources, Caesar’s power, and Caesar’s term are all limited. Jesus’ answer to the question “Should we pay taxes?” is, sure, pay your taxes, but remember that ultimate worth is found in God’s Kingdom.
“Render to God what belongs to God.” And what, exactly, belongs to God? Everything, but especially ourselves. A few verses later in Mark 12, Jesus declares the greatest of the commandments: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. Love transcends taxes, votes, policies, and campaign promises. Give Caesar his due, but as Paul reminds the Romans, “Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law” (13:8).
Tomorrow we will vote for another Caesar. I don’t think that’s too much of a stretch, especially given the way that the Presidency has become more and more powerful in recent decades. In 1973, historian Arthur Schlesinger described the rise of the “imperial presidency,” the expansion of war powers, executive orders, and large unelected staffs and bureaucrats that now characterize an administration. Listen to the candidates talk about their campaign platforms and it seems that each seems more focused on running for emperor and ruling by decree, rather than defending Lincoln’s vision of government “of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
Nonetheless, someone will be elected tomorrow (or at least we hope it is settled in a reasonable time frame). Some will decry the choice, others will celebrate. Ultimately, however, it’s just another Caesar whose plans and schemes will one day be another page in history while they return to the earth. IN the meantime, we will render to Caesar his or her due by being good citizens, and by exercising the rights and responsibilities of people in a free nation. Yes, we’ll pay our taxes (and we won’t be happy about it, regardless of who is managing them), and yes we’ll have differences of opinion. That’s part of living in a Republic. And in four years we’ll do it all again, if the Lord tarries.
But Caesar can never get the Christian’s ultimate allegiance. That’s reserved for God—the God who calls us to obey his command to love him with our whole selves and to love our neighbor (and our enemies, too) as we love ourselves. In the end, we are part of a larger human family, and part of one nation under God.
The Pharisees and Herodians went away from Jesus perplexed and frustrated because he didn’t take the bait of their political agendas. You might be frustrated walking away tonight that your pastor didn’t tell you how to vote or who to vote for. Well, you need to know that if Jesus was ok with that ambiguity, so am I.
What I do want us to walk away with tonight, however, is a commitment to render to God what is God’s—to believe that no matter what happens in the days ahead our call to love God and neighbor will not change. That we will render to God the honor and glory he is due as the world’s true King, to put our trust in him rather than in princes or Presidents, to engage in the hard work of doing what the prophet Micah said that God requires of us: doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with our God.
Caesars change—our mission does not.
Go and exercise your right to vote. Pray over your vote and prayer for each candidate and issue you vote over. But once that ballot has been submitted, once you’ve rendered to Caesar, render your heart to God and his future.
The sun will come up on Wednesday, and while the world stews over a new Caesar, may we be a people who can rest knowing that the true King is still on the throne. Let us render our lives to him. Amen.