There is no State

Then the Pharisees went off and plotted how they might entrap him in speech.

They sent their disciples to him, with the Herodians, saying, "Teacher, we know that you are a truthful man and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. And you are not concerned with anyone's opinion, for you do not regard a person's status.

Tell us, then, what is your opinion: Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?"

The scene must have been one of great anticipation; the Pharisees' "trick" not particularly clever. Jesus had been preaching and working miracles throughout Israel for three years. Many Israelites, longing to be free of Roman rule, had come to believe he might be the Messiah, the king from the line of David who, they believed, would overthrow their oppressors and restore the independent kingdom of Israel. Now Jesus had made his way to Jerusalem, on the eve of the Passover, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar, the celebration of God's deliverance of the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt. If ever Jesus would announce his kingship and begin the rebellion against Rome, this would be the time and the place.

Going to Jerusalem at this time was a nearly suicidal act on Jesus' part. Either he would begin the rebellion in a city that hosted a Roman garrison of overwhelming strength, or he would burst the hopes and expectations of the people, whose reaction to the disappointment might be severe. It would, in fact, be Jesus' final journey to Jerusalem; these were the last few days of his ministry before the Passion.

The Pharisees' "trick" was simply to force the issue. "Tell us now," they were saying, "which side you are on. Are we to pay homage to Rome or not?"

Jesus' answer to this question posed in Matthew 22:15ff is one of the most famous quotes of the Bible:

"Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God."

I remember when we covered this passage in Scripture class at Gonzaga. The Jesuit priest who taught the class (now I've forgotten his name) read the passage and said, "So you see how Jesus tricked them."

And I thought, "No." It seemed to me that he gave a straightforward, honest answer, though not the one the Jews wanted to hear. "My kingdom is not of this Earth," he seemed to be saying. "There's no conflict between Caesar's kingdom and mine. Pay your taxes, get along with the State so that your physical needs are met, so that you'll have peace sufficient to let you concentrate on what's really important, which is your relationship to God." Jesus seems to be arguing for a separation of Church and State.

This is in fact the message Jesus wanted his Roman listeners to hear, but this is the "trick" part of Jesus' answer. It's not the answer his Jewish listeners would have heard. It's ironic that many of us today who read this passage continue to hear, as I did when I was a college student, the "trick." We miss the real message Jesus intended for his Jewish listeners.

To understand the rest of Jesus' answer we have to pay attention to the seemingly innocuous verses that precede it:

Tell us, then, what is your opinion: Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?

Knowing their malice, Jesus said, "Why are you testing me, you hypocrites? Show me the coin that pays the census tax." Then they handed him the Roman coin.

He said to them, "Whose image is this and whose inscription?"

They replied, "Caesar's." At that he said to them, "Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God."

"Whose image is this?" To understand the affect these words would have had on Jesus' Jewish listeners we have to remember that the whole history of Israel was one long, life and death struggle with idolatry. The religion of the Jews was not, as we sometimes imagine, safely carried through the ages in the isolated little corner of the near east that they occupied. No, paganism was constantly infiltrating the land of Israel, brought in through intermarriage with the pagans who surrounded Israel, brought in through trade, through the cultural assimilation that was to be expected when a simple nomadic people settled down near far more advanced, cosmopolitan cultures. It was practiced by the people of Israel, it was practiced by the pagan wives of their kings, it was practiced by the kings themselves. We forget that on several occasions the religion of the Jews was in grave danger of being wiped from the face of the Earth, replaced entirely by paganism.

The struggle against paganism resulted in some of the bloodiest scenes of the Old Testament. Think of Jezebel, the pagan queen of Israel who promulgated the worship of her native god Ba'al Melkart throughout Israel. She was thrown out of a window, "and some of her blood spurted against the wall and against the horses," 2 Kings 9:33 prosaically reports. Then they ran over her with a horse, and left her to be eaten by dogs. In Israel, any lapse into idolatry was a serious thing, a matter of national survival. Nothing was more loathsome to a Jew than an idolatrous image.

"Whose image is this?" Jesus asked the Pharisees. The image of Caesar, the emperor of Rome. At the time Jesus asked the question it was only 70 years since Julius Caesar had become the first Roman emperor to declare his own divinity. It must have been particularly galling for the Jews, not only to be ruled by pagan kings, but to be ruled by someone who claimed to be a god himself. It was a wound that was still fresh.

What's most hilarious about this scene is that Jesus did not pull the coin out of his own pocket; he tricked the Pharisees into pulling it out of theirs. By pointing out the image on the coin Jesus is calling attention to the fact that in using Roman money the Pharisees are carrying little idolatrous images around with them every day.

"Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar." Having pointed out the idolatrous image on the coin the natural response of any Jew would be to throw it away from them, and Jesus completely agrees. "Give it back to him, give it all back to him," he seems to be saying. Don't just pay the tax, throw all his idolatrous money back in his face.

Should we refuse to pay the tax? Should we rebel against Roman rule? This is the "extreme" position the Pharisees hope to corner Jesus into taking, but Jesus shocks them into seeing that these are insignificant little half-measures, which betray the interior compromise the Israelites have already made with paganism, a compromise brought to light by the little pagan idols each of them carries about with them every day. Jesus demands more than rebellion, he demands that his listeners recognize the creeping idolatry that has developed with in their own hearts, and that they renounce it utterly. He demands that God and Caesar each be given his true and proper due in the hearts and in the lives of his listeners.

And what then, does belong to Caesar, and what belongs to God? How would Jesus' Jewish listeners have answered that question? Based on their training in the Scriptures, this is what they would have thought: "Did Caesar form the Earth or the waters? Does he make the rains fall and the crops grow?" As God says to Job:

Where were you when I founded the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its size; do you know? Who stretched out the measuring line for it?

....Who shut within doors the sea?....Have you ever in your lifetime commanded the morning and shown the dawn its place?

....Have you entered into the sources of the sea, or walked about in the depths of the abyss? Have the gates of death been shown to you, or have you seen the gates of darkness?

....Do you give the horse his strength?....Does the eagle fly up at your command?

What Caesar is due, Jesus is saying, is precisely nothing. He has no place in our priorities. God is everything. Separation of Church and State? No. Jesus is saying, like the little boy in The Matrix, "There is no State."