Sunday, October 18, 2026
The Scripture
Matthew 22:15-22
15 Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap [Jesus] in what he said. 16 So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one, for you do not regard people with partiality. 17 Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” 18 But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? 19 Show me the coin used for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius. 20 Then he said to them, “Whose head is this and whose title?” 21 They answered, “Caesar’s.” Then he said to them, “Give therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.” 22 When they heard this, they were amazed, and they left him and went away.
The Sermon
Every now and then I watch a YouTube video of someone being examined by a political committee about something important – if the subject is important enough for me to subject myself to such a challenge! As is true in any proceeding, court, senate, house or any other committee, examining someone always involves either naysayers or devil’s advocates. Especially when it comes to politics. The videos I watch usually involve a person of one persuasion being challenged by persons of an opposing persuasion, with the end goal of finding fault in the actions and views of the person being examined. A tactic used in this process involves asking questions that get the person being examined into trouble by catching them in a lie, or making them confess when they really don’t want to. The questioners try to goad and trick the person into saying something incriminating, even if the person isn’t really guilty of the nefarious activity that has caused them to be the subject of investigation.
News reporters do the same thing. They find delight in coming up with the perfect “gotcha question;” one which will make the subject look guilty even when they have little culpability for the alleged crime.
It’s like a sport. If a person can set aside his or her biases toward or against the subject of the examinations, it is almost comical to watch. Recently, I saw someone sabotage himself in the middle of a “gotcha question,” because the person asking the question used totally inaccurate information that was pointed out later in the hearing. So much for a person’s balloon being deflated. Time to swallow one’s pride and move along, pretending the mistake didn’t happen.
And so we find Jesus in a very similar situation. He is being examined not only by one representative of a group of people who are set against him, but representatives of TWO groups. Ironically, these two groups, the Pharisees and the Herodians, normally don’t agree with each other on much. But for the purposes of causing trouble for Jesus, they feel compelled to work together to trip Jesus up and ask the perfect gotcha question. A question that no matter what the answer is, it would get him into trouble with someone, and justify their anger with him, and give them an excuse to prosecute him with the approval and support of the group they represented.
The Pharisees represent the religious group. The Herodians represent the government. The question is whether or not Jesus deems it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar. If he answers “no,” offering a religious reason, he offends the Herodians whose role it is to serve Caesar. If he answers “yes,” the Pharisees would consider him an opponent of God and of them as arbiters of how to live a life of faith. It appears, even after their attempt to flatter him at the beginning of the questioning, that they have Jesus cornered. I can imagine them snickering to each other as they prepare their attack. I can feel their swelling sense of pride in their cleverness as they devise this plot against Jesus. Imagine disliking someone so much you are willing to collaborate with your own enemy in order to defeat someone you both perceived as a threat. It would be the ultimate takedown, and no doubt many are ready to watch Jesus go up in flames.
But as we have seen time and again, Jesus doesn’t rise to the bait. And unlike in the case of our foolish politician whose ignorance caused him to ask a question based on false premises in a senate hearing, the question itself isn’t based on untruth. I suppose the idea of paying taxes to the government was an item under discussion in many parts of Judaism in those days. But clearly, the Jews – the Pharisees themselves – enjoyed the benefits of citizenship in their land just as much as anyone else did, and they probably DID pay their taxes as expected. After all, they used the common coinage.
Jesus uses this to rope them in and lead them to his answer. “Show me a coin. Whose head is on this coin?” They all give the obvious answer. “Caesar’s.” And so, Jesus offers his reply. “Give therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.”
Gotcha. Instead of them “getting” Jesus, he “gets” them. They shake their heads and go away, swallowing their pride. In time they’d come up with something. We see in the larger story of Jesus that they never really find anything, but they are determined to get rid of a person whose very existence seems to be a threat and a bane to their own desires and ways.
Oh, if we all could be so clever. Oh, if we all had our proverbial “stuff” together in our hearts and minds to be able to answer difficult questions that could get us into trouble. And oh, if only our favorite public figures had such clever wisdom to be able to withstands the gotchas of their political enemies while under scrutiny. Some, I must say, come pretty close. But we humans always have a way to deflect and deny the things we don’t want to see – the errors or the goodness in the people we either hold up on a pedestal or wish to knock down from their place of power. We launch into our questions, either aloud or in our hearts, based on how we feel, rather than the truth of what we see and know. The people of Jesus’ day were no different.
And so, Jesus gives advice to the people who are wondering. One might ask if they actually cared that much about whether or not who paid taxes to whom; instead, they hope, over anything else, to cause Jesus to say something incriminating.
We are grateful for Jesus’ wisdom, which serves not only to address the questions of the people of his day, but to answer ours. That said, most of us do not ask ourselves or anyone else the question as to whether or not as Christians we should pay taxes to our government. I suppose there are some who may, out of some portion of their conscience, refuse to pay a certain amount of taxes that they believe would go for a cause with which they disagreed. Imagine what would happen if we all did that! Imagine if we refused to pay a certain portion of our taxes, or pay any taxes, because we didn’t like what the government was doing in a certain area. What a mess it would be! We know that a part of paying taxes means our dollars are going towards things we like and get benefit from and things we don’t, and it is simply a fact of life. We take what we get, and we do best by paying the tax that includes the value of our vote, if we choose to vote at all.
And here, we know what Jesus says about this. We may think in our minds about the separation of church and state; the separation of our religious beliefs and expressions and the ones that involve our commitment to our country. But that separation is not designed for us to avoid speaking on the issues that are addressed by our politicians while we are in church. In my understanding, this separation is designed to prevent the church from becoming more powerful than the government, dictating to the people how they should live according to one the religion’s preferences. It was for this reason that the United States became the free nation it was designed to become – to escape not only the rule of a king, but the expectation that religion be solely what the government said it should be. Religion is separate in that it is not wielded by the government in order to control people, though some seem to behave as though it does. Our government is designed to offer humans the freedom to choose and live out of our convictions and values. As soon as we start expecting our government to honor one faith over another, we live in the threat of Caesar becoming God, rather than God being at work among people of faith whose decisions and votes seek to influence the government for the best of all people, and not just some.
So we know that Jesus did not discourage the people to pay taxes to their government. The same is true with us. We receive many benefits from the money that is poured into our government, and the wheat among the chaff is what we have to deal with when it comes to choosing the things we like and don’t like about it. Fortunately, we are free to run for office, vote, march, protest, and contact our legislators if we want to see change.
And then, we are also allowed to serve our God. We are allowed to attend church, place our tithes and offerings in the plate, and to use our gifts and talents and valuable time to make sure our church is the house of worship and fellowship that we want it to be.
We can’t separate out which money we give to the church – that is, there are no special dollars bearing the face of Jesus on the front and a photo of a church on the back – from the money that bears the image of government and important leaders. We are citizens of a country that has given us the freedom to act, speak, and vote our hearts and minds as we choose, and at its best, our faith informs us as to how we act, speak and vote. It’s OK to talk about politics in church, as long as we are giving to the government the things that are the government’s, and to God the things that are God’s.
So what are the things that are God’s? The answer is both complicated AND easy. We give ourselves. We give our hearts, our minds, our lives, our commitment, to Christ. To God. To our church. To our spiritual growth. To our fellowship. And we use the minds and hearts we have as we live as citizens of this world. These things are not really separate, nor should they be. It isn’t about where we give of our time and treasure, but what we expect when we give it. If we expect our government to take control of our religion and become for it what it simply cannot and should not be: an arbiter of our prayers and a dictator of how citizens should express their faith in God, we are in trouble.
If we expect our religion to take control of our government and make of it what we think it should be, we are also in trouble. We all don’t agree on what that should look like. But we also know that out of our beliefs we hold certain political issues as dear to our hearts, because they are a part of our lives every day.
So we render to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and we render to God what is God’s, and what is God’s is US. Our lives, our hearts, our hands, our trust. God in us is the motivator for how we live, and how we take advantage of the many freedoms we have. Let us be careful not to expect one to solve our problems at the expense of another, for that is not the basis on which our country was founded, nor is it our calling in our faith.
At the same time, let us let what we believe about living the Christian life: of loving our neighbor as ourselves, and loving God, and welcoming and supporting the needy, and making this world a beautiful, livable place – inform our politics, our actions, and our work in this world. What a privilege it is that we can do this and no one can tell us how to do otherwise! Let us give ourselves, in every way, to God. Amen.
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