This Sunday’s gospel story is about Paying Taxes to the Emperor and you can read it in Matt. 22: 15-21. This is quite an intriguing story as it gives us an insight of how our Lord Jesus Christ would respond to a question about policies of the government. Let’s read on.
“15 Then the Pharisees went off and plotted how they might entrap [Jesus] in speech. 16 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. 17 Tell us then, what is you opinion; is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?”
18 Knowing their malice, Jesus said, “Why are you testing me, you hypocrites? 19 Show me the coin that pays the census tax.” Then they handed him the Roman coin. 20 He said to them, “Whose image is this and whose inscription?” 21 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.”
When the Lord told the Jews and the Herodians, “Why are you testing me, you hypocrites?”, it was because he knew that they were trying to catch him off guard and testing him. Thus this question was like a double-edged sword… Agreeing to pay the Roman tax levied against the Jews would be a betrayal to their nation’s interest and he would be marked as an anti-Semite. If he openly declared that the Roman tax shouldn’t be paid, he would definitely ran afoul of the cruel Romans who occupied Palestine… after all it would be the Herodians who would report him to the Roman authorities.
So even before Jesus answered the Pharisees, he already accused them of hypocrisy. Jesus called them hypocrites because in those days, no self-respecting Jew would want to publicly show that they brought with them a Roman coin … as it was a symbol of their accepting Roman rule. Besides it was against Jewish law to carry graven images imprinted in the coin.
Yet as we all know, Jesus never carried any money. So when they threw the question to our Lord, whether or not it is lawful to pay the Romans or the census tax forced upon the people of Palestine, Jesus asked them to show him a coin … and they all fell for it because they had a Roman coin with them, in full violation of their own laws! They proved to the Lord that they were indeed hypocrites! During World War II, Filipinos who embraced Japanese rule were called collaborators and you can very well say that the Pharisees and the Herodians too collaborated with their Roman occupiers.
The reply of our Lord Jesus was brilliant, he showed them the coin bearing the name and the image of Tiberius Caesar and he told them, “Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.” This remark by our Lord isn’t very easy to interpret. But if you read the Old Testament in the Bible, you will note that from the beginning of time, there really were no lines drawn between God and man. In fact, in the beginning there were no governments, but only the family and an extended family because people lived amongst nomadic tribes.
It was only later that a sort of government was created from the leader of a tribe, thus you could very well say that in the early days, it was a kind of theocracy. As Israel grew, the lines of governance became more clearer, but the temple, the Pharisees and the priests, were almost co-equal with the rulers in their time … it was very close to a full-blown theocracy.
When the Romans conquered Palestine, part of Pax Romana was to allow the conquered states to keep their respective religions, for as long as they pay tribute to Rome. But the Jews thought that paying tribute to Rome meant denying the sovereignty of God in the Jewish nation. As we said, most of the Jews looked the Pharisees and Herodians as collaborating with Rome, but many of them became Zealots like Barrabas who rebelled against their Roman masters in a rebellion that ended with the destruction of the Holy Temple in AD 70. Now only the Wailing Wall is left to the Jewish people.
No doubt this story is about politics and religion, a story that we can very well relate in today’s times. Take the case of the Reproductive Health bill that is being proposed in Congress. Our religious or spiritual side teaches us about morality and the proper upbringing of our children in our Judeo-Christian environment. But our congressmen and women want to pass this bill in order to spread artificial contraceptives so these corrupt legislators can tinker with the budget for this bill. Why are they pushing for such a bill when it is not illegal to sell contraceptives in this country? While we can separate the functions of Church vs. State, we cannot deny that God is always present in our midst and watches what we do to ourselves. So we should give to God … what belongs to God, which is our souls!
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