Render Yourself (Matthew 22:15-22)

Then the Pharisees went and plotted how to entangle Jesus in his words.

And they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, Teacher, we know that you are true, and teach the way of God truthfully, and you do not care about anyone's opinions, for you are not swayed by appearances.

Tell us then what you think.

Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?

But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, Why put me to the test, you hypocrites?

Show me the coin for the tax.

And they brought him a denarius.

And Jesus said to them, Whose likeness and inscription is this?

They said, Caesar's.

Then he said to them, Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.

When they heard it, they marveled, and they left him and went away.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

Let's confess our faith in the ancient words of the Apostles' Creed.

We believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.

He was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.

He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.

He descended to the dead.

On the third day he rose again.

He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

He will come again to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.

Amen.

And let us pray.

Set us free, loving Father, from the bondage of our sins, and in your goodness and mercy give us the liberty of that abundant life which you have made known to us in our Savior, Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.

Amen.

Amen.

May the words of my mouth, the meditation of all our hearts, be always acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer.

Amen.

Question twenty-eight.

Do you swear your allegiance to the United States of America and forswear your allegiance to the Emperor of Japan?

Let me explain.

December 1941, you're probably aware that the U.S.

fleet was bombed at the port of Pearl Harbor, and this marked the United States' entrance into the war in the Pacific, entered into World War II.

America had a new enemy.

The enemy was Imperial Japan across the Pacific.

But as the war heated up in America, so too did wartime hysteria.

Suddenly it wasn't just the Emperor of Japan who was the enemy, it was any American citizen with Japanese heritage.

And so within a few short months of America entering into the war, President Roosevelt signed a bill that labeled all American citizens of Japanese descent as enemy aliens and sent them into internment camps.

Assets were seized, livelihoods were destroyed, even orphans were grabbed from orphanages.

Parentless Japanese-American children were taken into internment camps.

And just in case we think this is a uniquely American problem, we here in Canada have had much the same response to our shame.

So here we have wartime internment camps set up, and uh and and uh Star Trek uh actor um George Takei recalled in a recent interview what it was like to spend some of the earliest years of his childhood in these camps.

See, at a certain point, as the war was raging on, the question of the draft came up, and the United States government realized we have a lot of eligible soldiers sitting here in internment camps, but uh they are among a group that we just generally distrust.

How do we sort the ones who are eligible for the draft from the ones who really belong to be imprisoned?

And the answer was the Japanese loyalty questionnaire.

George Takei's father, Norman, received one of these because he was eligible for military service, and most of the questions were fairly innocuous.

They had to do with your training, with your work experience, they had to do with your education.

But some of these questions expose the fact that there was more going on than simple information gathering.

This was really rather malicious.

It was something of entrapment.

Question 28 stood out among these questions, and that question went: Do you swear your allegiance to the United States of America and forswear your allegiance to the Emperor of Japan?

Well, from Norman Takei, he grew up in San Francisco among his family.

He doesn't have an ounce or inclination towards imperial loyalty.

And yet, here, if he responds that, yes, I do pledge my allegiance to the United States of America, it means that I also say that I had allegiance to the Emperor of Japan and I'm forswearing that, I'm renouncing that allegiance.

At the same time, do I pledge allegiance to a country that has ruined my livelihood and imprisoned my wife and my children?

This is an impossible question to answer, isn't it?

Sometimes questions are more than questions.

Sometimes questions are more like more like staking a claim.

There are questions behind questions, and this one is, who do you belong to?

Do you belong to us or do you belong to them?

Have you ever felt cornered by a question you couldn't answer?

Pardon my language, but you feel damned if you do, and you're damned if you don't.

This is the kind of question that Jesus is encountering in our gospel reading today.

Taxes to Caesar, yes or no, Jesus.

That's the question on the surface.

The real question being asked of Jesus is who do you belong to?

Do you belong to us or do you belong to them?

Because there's going to be consequences either way.

In our gospel reading, Jesus turns the question around and exposes the malicious intent of the questioners.

This isn't a question about who Jesus belongs to.

This is a question of who you belong to.

And for us, it's a question of who we belong to.

Where does our primary allegiance lie?

Where's our primary loyalty?

That's the question we have to wrestle with in our gospel reading this morning.

And I suspect it's going to lead us into some thorny, weedy areas of the relationship between church and state because this is an important reading, biblical text that speaks to a Christian's relationship with the state.

No, I don't think this sermon is going to solve all the issues here, but I do think Jesus wants us to see something very important about the order and priority of our loyalties.

Jesus wants us above all else to render ourselves to God.

Render yourself to God.

And there's good news in this text, friends.

The good news is that we encounter the one to whom the kingdom, the power, and the glory truly belong.

Beyond the power of the state, we see the one who reigns and rules above all things.

And that person is Jesus.

So let's dive into our text this morning.

Let's wrestle around with it a little bit.

Matthew's gospel so far has been a biography of Jesus.

It's been showing its readers how Jesus fulfills all of the promises, all of the commitments.

Everything that the people of God in the Old Testament anticipated to happen has come to its fulfillment in Jesus.

In Matthew chapter 5, Jesus is preaching and he says, I've not come to abolish the law and the prophets.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

I've not come to throw the Old Testament in the trash.

I've come rather to fulfill it.

All of God's promises find their yes in Jesus.

So writes Paul.

Jesus has come to fulfill God's commands, God's word in the Old Testament.

At the same time, in Jesus, God is inaugurating something new.

He's inaugurating the kingdom of heaven.

He's inaugurating the kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.

And Jesus is now triumphantly entered into Jerusalem.

He's in his final week of earthly ministry before his crucifixion.

And now Jesus is encountering some enemies.

Some enemies who want to trap him, some enemies who want to ask an impossible question.

If we're familiar with the story of Jesus, we've probably encountered the Pharisees already.

These are the Pharisees' disciples, right?

Probably these young hotshots ready to prove themselves, ready for a good show.

The disciples and the Pharisees, or the disciples of the Pharisees and the Pharisees, are the religious elite.

They're legalists.

They believe in the rigorous application of the law in every sphere of life, and they are staunchly against their Roman occupiers.

Jerusalem is an occupied city.

Israel is an occupied state.

Rome is an impressive foreign, pagan, Gentile government.

And for the Pharisees, they would love to see Rome overthrown, and they would love to see the independence of God's people, Israel, re-established.

Those are the Pharisees.

And they have strange partners in this question, and those partners are the Herodians.

The Herodians supported King Herod and Herod's family and dynasty.

Herod was really nothing more than a puppet king for Rome.

They understood that paying taxes was just part of the deal.

They'd made peace with being an occupied state, and now paying taxes is what it costs to reap the benefits of Rome.

It's culture, it's peace, it's plenty.

If you're going to name the tune, you've got to pay the band.

Of course, the Pharisees don't want to see taxes paid.

That's rendering tribute, is participating in a pagan and idolatrous government over us.

We need to overthrow this.

I mean, this is a strange pairing, Pharisees and Herodians together, but they have a mutual enemy in Jesus.

This is a strange pairing.

It's stranger than do you remember when Snoop Dogg and Martha Stewart had that cooking show together?

Like this is weird.

Like these two people don't hang out often.

But they've got a mutual enemy in Jesus, and they want to see Jesus' threat neutralized.

So they pose this question.

Hey Jesus, Caesar has made a claim on our wealth and our loyalty taxes.

Is it right?

Is it just?

Does it accord with God's purposes for us to participate in that and pay those taxes or not?

This is an impossible question.

If Jesus says, yes, go ahead, pay those taxes, then he's exposed as a fraud.

He's exposed as a sellout.

He ruins his public integrity, as it were, and for the Pharisees, that neutralizes his influence and threat all the same.

But for the Rhodians, if Jesus says, no, don't pay those taxes, stick it to the man, then he can be executed.

He can be arrested and executed as an insurrectionist.

So either way, Jesus loses, in the minds of the Pharisees and Rodians, at least.

Either way, Jesus is going to lose here.

So they pose this impossible question, but what we know is what Jesus knows.

There's a question lying behind this question.

We know Jesus is going to answer, sure.

But can we just sit in this tension for a second?

Imagine we are standing in that crowd.

Maybe we're among Jesus' disciples.

Maybe we bring our own agendas to the table.

Maybe we're waiting for Jesus to say yes.

Go with Rome.

Maybe we're waiting for Jesus to say no.

Let's overthrow this thing.

What is it that we want to say?

What agenda do we bring to the table?

See, sometimes there are questions, I think, that we wrestle with.

When the government makes these regulations, do we go along with it, or in the name of personal freedom, do we push back?

Do we vote conservative?

Do we vote liberal?

Am I touching on a nerve here?

These are impossible questions.

Some questions have questions behind them.

It's more like staking a claim.

It's getting us in the corner, and it feels like we're going to lose either way.

Who do you really belong to, Jesus?

Where does your loyalty lie?

Does it belong with us, God's people, or does it belong with Rome?

Either way, Jesus isn't going to win.

But here Jesus flips the question around.

Verse 19.

There's a question behind this question.

Jesus is going to get at this isn't about a coin.

This isn't about tax.

So Jesus says, give me a coin and I'm going to show you.

So Jesus asks them for a denarius.

Now I want us to see a picture of denarius.

If we're on Zoom here, we're going to see a picture of a denarius here.

This is the kind of coin Jesus is holding up.

This is the kind of coin that he gets handed.

And in some ways it reminds us of, you know, like a Canadian quarter we may or may not have in our pockets.

There's some similarities here.

They would carry quarters, by the way.

I haven't carried a quarter in like two years.

Anyway, change is a thing of the past.

Anyway, here's a coin that they hand Jesus.

It's got a face on it, it's got the bust of Caesar, probably Caesar Tiberius, and of course it's got a pagan deity on the other side here, just to remind Rome who's uh you know who the gods are.

Now, the likeness is Caesar's.

That's what Jesus is pointing out, of course.

The inscription is his as well, and the inscription is important for us to know.

The inscription says that Caesar is the son of God, and on the flip side it says he's the high priest.

So thanks for bringing up that image.

We can go back.

This inscription says he's the son of God, it says he's the high priest.

So maybe we can see some of what the Pharisees are getting at here, right?

If we go ahead and willingly hand these coins over to Caesar, we are participating not just in taxation, we're participating in pagan worship because we're handing these coins over to Caesar like he deserves these titles when we know these belong to the Lord alone.

Pharisees, Herodians both want to trap Jesus in his words.

There's a question behind these quest these questions.

So when Jesus holds this coin and he says, Whose likeness is this?

Whose inscription is this?

Of course they respond with Caesar's.

It's Caesar's likeness, it's his icon in Greek.

It's his inscription, it's his epigraphae in Greek.

Icon and epigraphe.

Jesus is saying, Look, this pagan coin belongs to a pagan ruler.

Go ahead and give that back to him.

But Jesus goes one step further.

What's Jesus really saying here?

I think he's saying, when Jesus says, not does this coin just belong to Caesar, but we render to God what's God's, Jesus is recognizing who Caesar really belongs to.

Who's really in charge here?

If the question being posed to Jesus is, where does your loyalty lie?

Jesus wants us, one, to recognize that ultimately Caesar is not Lord of all things.

Caesar is still God's established Caesar.

Caesar has an authority, but his is a derivative authority.

He is not ultimately the Son of God.

He is not ultimately the high priest.

That belongs to God alone.

He is God's established authority.

And so when Jesus, we see this at play when Jesus is having that conversation with Pilate shortly before his crucifixion, and Pilate says to Jesus, don't you get it?

Don't you get what I can do to you?

And Jesus says to Pilate, You have no authority except from above.

All civil authority is something that derives its authority from God's sovereignty and God's establishment.

So Jesus wants to get real clear here.

Political power is established by God alone.

And that includes Caesar.

This coin belongs to Caesar, but let's remember Caesar belongs to God.

We see much the same reasoning in Romans chapter 13, where Paul talks about a Christian's obligation to participate and honor the government that God has established over them.

Romans 13 · chapter mention

This coin might belong to Caesar, but Caesar belongs to God.

Remember that, Jesus says.

But Jesus goes one step even further, flips the question on them, and now he wants to get clear about the real claim at stake.

They want to know who Jesus is loyal to, who claims Jesus' allegiance.

Well, Jesus wants to know who they're loyal to, who claims their allegiance.

He wants them to be clear.

You are claimed by God.

The words that Jesus used when he looks at these coins are likeness and inscription.

Likeness being icon, inscription being epigraphy.

And if Jesus' audience, of course, would have known, thoroughly read the Old Testament, the Pharisees were well versed in God's word in the Old Testament, they would have recognized this word icon.

They would have recognized it as the Greek translation of Genesis 1.28, when it says that human beings are created in the image, in the likeness, in the icon of God.

This coin is an icon of Caesar, it's an image of Caesar, but in whose likeness are you created?

Caesar might have a claim to this coin because his likeness is on it.

But you have the likeness of the Lord your God.

Whose claim is on you?

Further, Jesus talks about the inscription.

That word epigraphe might have triggered for some of the Pharisees, some of the crowd, Proverbs chapter 7, when it talks about writing the commandments of God, the word of God, as it were, epigraphying the word of God on our hearts.

Proverbs 7 · chapter mention

That's God's intention.

That's God's purpose for his people.

Inscribe my word upon your hearts.

And that's the role of the Holy Spirit in the coming of Pentecost.

The Holy Spirit is going to do a work to establish God's word upon our hearts and renew us from the inside out.

That's God's purpose.

This coin bears Caesar's likeness and his inscription, but whose likeness and inscription do you bear?

Render this coin to Caesar, but render to God what's God's.

In other words, Jesus is saying, You who bear God's likeness and inscription, you render yourselves to him.

You bear his likeness, you bear his inscription, you give yourself over to him.

See, Jesus exposes what is really at stake here.

He exposes image bearers in rebellion against the one whose image they are created in.

That's been true ever since Genesis chapter 3.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

God created human beings in his image to reflect his image into creation, to glorify him and enjoy him forever.

And yet, ever since sin has entered in the picture, our image bearing has been marred.

It's been broken, it's been tainted.

It's not been destroyed altogether, but it needs to be healed.

And so this is who Jesus is: God with us.

We just sang Emmanuel, God with us.

Jesus, God Himself, the Son of God, takes on human flesh so that in his flesh he can be the likeness, the icon of the invisible God.

That's how Paul describes Jesus in Colossians chapter 1.

Colossians 1 · chapter mention

He is the likeness of the invisible God as man.

And so Jesus comes and incarnates himself as a human to heal our broken image-bearing, to heal us, to bring us back, to draw us back to the one who created us in his image, as it were, so that we by faith can participate in this renewing work that God is doing in the world.

And on the cross, Jesus takes our very sin, our marred image upon himself, all our wrongdoing and all injustice and all evil to put it to death.

And over the cross has this inscription, this epigraphe, the King of the Jews.

It's a providential way of recognizing that Jesus really, truly, fully has completed, fulfilled all the messianic.

Promises, the promises of salvation that we find in the Old Testament.

This is the king, not just of the Jews, but of the whole world.

He's the one who's establishing his kingdom, not through political revolution, but through the cross.

And through his resurrection, he is renewing our humanity.

And he invites us to participate in that by faith through the Holy Spirit.

Friends, that's not just a claim on Herodians and Pharisees.

That's not a claim on those who lean towards personal freedom or those who lean towards the authority of the state.

That's a claim on all of us, all human beings, created in God's likeness, who he intends to have his word inscribed upon their hearts.

That's his claim on you.

That's his claim on me.

Render yourself to God.

He has made you in his image.

Okay, Creighton, that sounds great.

What does that mean?

I guess I want to draw just a few things we can chew on out of this passage, things that we can consider as we consider our image-bearing, ourselves as image-bearers in relationship to this state.

Jesus is, after all, speaking about the people of God and their relationship with the state here.

What does this mean for how we relate to a state, even a pagan state and authority?

What does this mean?

Well, first off, I think Jesus is saying is that our relationship with the state is never a one-way street.

It's not even a two-way street.

It's triangulated.

It's always triangulated.

The way we relate to the state is always to remember that our primary allegiance is to God.

We relate to the state as those who are claimed by the kingdom.

We might be citizens of Canada, but we are first and foremost citizens of the kingdom, the kingdom that Jesus has established.

And so any way we participate, any way that we uh, any, any, any role we might take up in public life is first and foremost as agents of the kingdom.

Our primary allegiance belongs to God.

And the remarkable benefit that we have as participants in a democracy, the benefit that this crowd did not have under Rome, we participate in a democracy.

That means we can be a part of establishing what Caesar requires of us.

We can be a part of that conversation.

We can vote, we can make our voice heard.

That's a remarkable benefit.

And when we do so, we should do so as Christians, as citizens of the kingdom, as kingdom-minded people who want to see justice and virtue and righteousness established even in our time.

That's number one.

Our relations with the state is always triangulated with our relationship to God and his kingdom.

But we might be thinking, well, Creighton, it sounds like you're saying whatever the state requires of us, it just sounds like that's what we go along and do.

Because if the state says this, then God's established that, and maybe God just wants us to go along with that.

Is there a line in the sand?

And I want to say yes.

There is a line in the sand where the authority of Caesar goes so far, but we say it goes no further.

The authority of the state, the authority of Caesar goes, has to stop at the authority of the word of God.

When the state makes a claim that is in clear contradiction of the word of God, of the authority of the Lord, then we have to say, that is not a claim you can make.

So in Acts chapter 5, Peter and some of the apostles are brought before a court, as it were, and they're told to stop proclaiming the gospel.

Acts 5 · chapter mention

When they had brought them, they set them before the council.

The high priest questioned them, saying, We strictly charge you not to teach in this name, that is Jesus, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching, and you intend to bring this man's blood upon us.

But Peter answered, and the apostles answered, We must obey God rather than man.

Friends, there comes a time where Caesar, where the state might make claims that go beyond their authority, their earthly authority.

And there are times where we have to stake our claim as citizens of the kingdom on the Word of God, and we say, We go thus far and no further.

But friends, we need to be careful about when that is.

Render to Caesars that which is Caesar's, render to God that which is God's.

Remember, our primary allegiance is to him.

So when the state says something like, we ask you to wear masks, I hear that as, okay, Jesus is asking me to render unto Caesar's what is Caesar's, I'll do that.

And in the name of loving my neighbor, I'll go along with that.

If the state asks our church to distance our chairs, we'll do that.

Out of rendering to Caesars that which is Caesar's, and out of loving our neighbor, but that does not mean that our primary allegiance is to the state.

It means our primary allegiance is to God, and we respect that authority which he has established.

Always mindful that if the state overextends its authority, we stand on the authority of the Word of God.

So, Norman Takei answered no to question 28, because one, he was never loyal to the Emperor of Japan, and two, he simply couldn't bring his conscience to pledge loyalty to a country that has imprisoned his family.

And for that reason, they spent the rest of the war under in a maximum security internment camp.

After the war finished, his family was given$25 and a one-way bus ticket to wherever they wanted to go in the United States.

Some questions, it's clear, are more than questions.

The questions that the Pharisees and Herodians had for Jesus is who do you belong to?

But friends, ultimately, that's a question Jesus asks us.

Who do you belong to?

Our primary author, our primary loyalty is to God.

The state comes under that.

Who do you belong to?

Friends, render yourself to God.

Father, I pray that you would give us wisdom in very thorny and weedy matters of how we relate to the state around us.

Give us a spirit of confidence in your kingdom.

You establish your kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.

And so we pray for that day.

And we pray, Lord, that you would give us a spirit of obedience, a spirit of mindfulness, that we would be quick to love our neighbor.

Father, give us hearts to render ourselves to you in Jesus' name.

Amen.