The Tax Coin
Proper 24; Matt 22: 15-22
The Roman denarius has made a few appearances in recent weeks (including one case where the NRSV translators seem not to have wanted that), in the parables of the ungrateful servant (chapter 18) and the laborers in the vineyard (ch.20), and now here. We have earlier considered the coin itself as a unit of currency, sometimes seen as a good day’s pay by a day laborer, or more secure wage for a soldier. Now it appears as the unit in which a Roman poll tax would be paid.
Interpreters have treated Jesus’ answer to a question about the Roman taxation system in Judea as laying down some broader principle for allocating forms or degrees of authority to religious and secular leaders, respectively. Roman Catholic interpretation for centuries suggested a sort of distinction between temporal and spiritual authority, with the emphasis being placed on the autonomy and power of the Church, and hence on a guaranteed sphere of influence for the Church that included material and political force as well. Classical Protestant understandings were a little different, while beginning with the same idea of two realms or authorities, but then tending to emphasize the importance of the civil powers, reflecting an understanding of religion more as a private and domestic matter, protected by a benign state that should be given its due.
The passage before us however is focussed on quite different issues, and thus serves us poorly as a prescription for Church-state relations in general. As always we should start by placing this encounter in the narrative of Matthew’s story, rather than taking it out of context as an answer to some such general question.
We are, again, in the tense atmosphere of Jesus’ final visit to Jerusalem. A question is posed by a set of local teachers trying to set Jesus up by fishing for some “sound bite” that would constitute disloyalty to the Romans. This incident should not be taken too quickly out of this volatile context, nor should we forget that Jesus will be executed as a political threat by the Roman authorities in a matter of days.
“Caesar” here is not a personal figure but a personification of Roman power, hence not a generic representation of all civil authority but a player in this specific drama. “Caesar” is the occupation force, the foreign overlord, whose presence in Judea constitutes an aberration, and whose rule is at best in an uneasy tension—at worst, open conflict— with the truth that Israel’s true God, whose reign Jesus proclaims, is the Lord. Further, the expectation of an anointed king, a Messiah—who has already been recognized in Jesus (Matt 16:16)— was necessarily a challenge to the authority of a pagan overlord.
If the coinage of Tiberius, who was then the emperor, is imagined as the prop used for this exercise, then in this setting the denarius combined imperialism and idolatry, since Tiberius’ denarii depicted his mother Livia as a goddess. The question put to Jesus is not then about his theory of Church-state relations, but about the relationship of the kingdom he has proclaimed to this other imperial rule. If he is the Messiah, then the coinage of another king—let along the idolatrous coins of the Romans—is surely an affront.
There is another tax question in Matthew’s Gospel which does not make it into the lectionary at all, but which might shed light here; in that other case (Matt 17:24-27) Peter here asks Jesus about the payment of “the didrachma” which is just the name of a Greek coin, but which most scholars take to be a temple tax (the NRSV just translates it as that, attempting to be helpful). Jesus answers by asking (as so often!) whether the kings of the earth collect tolls or poll taxes from their children, or from others. The answer is that no, “the children are free,” implying that he (as son of the Temple’s king) is exempt from his father’s own tax—but he then gives instructions for the tax to be paid (by a very curious method) just to avoid difficulty.
Jesus is in both stories is a bit less than straightforward about paying taxes to the relevant authorities, precisely because his status does not fit with the existing order of the world. We are not quite in the realm of Jesus saying, in John’s Gospel, “my kingdom is not of this world,” but there is a hint of that here. It is not that his concerns are other-worldly, but Jesus represents a completely different set of understandings about power and wealth. The answer to give Caesar what is Caesar’s is dismissive, not deferential, because it is the wrong question. Nor, for that matter, is Jesus presented as someone who has either denarius or didrachma lying around to pay these imposts. His way of life, itinerant and dependent on hospitality, is of a different kind, and those who ask him questions about taxes are asking about things that at least in his case are beside the point.
The second half of the response, about giving God what is God’s, should clarify this. The world of the Gospels is not that medieval or early modern world wherein entities called “Church” and “state” wrangle over power; neither of these existed, in our terms at least, for this conversation. In any ancient conception—and any Christian one, I suggest—”God” does not constitute a defined realm of spiritual or religious authority, but the truth underlying all things, religious and secular alike. “What is God’s” is everything. Jesus has been proclaiming the “kingdom”—we could, as some commentators do, substitute “imperial rule” to make the point —of heaven through his Gospel.
So when Jesus puts these two ideas, of what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God, side by side, the comparison is ironic: not a prescription for civil society in general, but a diagnosis of the Romans’ (il)legitimacy as occupiers against the promises of God.
Jesus is asking not just to whom the coin belongs, but to whom the questioners (and the readers) belong. While at one level he avoids the trap (and demonstrates his acumen), more importantly perhaps he shows the reader that while they may pay one tax or another (cf. Matt 17), the question of true loyalty will remain and may be tested at any time. The least convincing interpretation of this passage defends two parallel realms or allegiances in stable collusion. Instead this answer is one of high drama and even crisis: the king of the Jews has arrived in his capital, is asserting his and God’s power, and his final battle is about to commence.