Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church, 15/3/20
Mark 12.1-17
I have long thought that numismatics, the study of coins,
ought to be
a lot more interesting that it actually is.
In theory, we can learn so much from these artefacts of
money
that
previous civilisation have left behind,
from their
politics to their sociology to their religious beliefs.
But in reality, whenever I’ve got lost on the second floor
of the British Museum
and
accidentally wandered into their (otherwise perpetually deserted) coins
gallery,
all
I can see are row after row of small and virtually indistinguishable coins.
Perhaps it’s a bit like stamp collecting, you either ‘get
it’ or you don’t!
Anyway, work with me,
because
this morning I’m going to try and make one ancient coin, at least,
This is a tribute penny from the reign of Tiberius Caesar,
who was
emperor of Rome from 14-37AD,
which
covers the whole of Jesus’ adult life.
The story we just heard read from Mark’s gospel
is on the
surface a controversy about taxation policy,
but there’s
more going on here than meets the eye.
There were a variety of taxes that the Jews of the first
century had to pay:
There was
the temple tax, a tithe, or tenth, of a person’s income,
that
went to support the temple, the priests, and the sacrificial system;
There was
the tax payable to Herod,
which
was a kind of local tax to the local ruler;
And then
there was the Roman Tax,
which
was basically a poll tax
payable
by everyone who was subject to Roman rule,
and
those of us who are old enough to remember the 1980s
will
know how popular poll taxes are with the general public.
The Roman version was a powerful reminder
that those
living in Roman-occupied lands were not free,
which from
a Jewish perspective was a very sore point.
From the time of the Babylonian invasion nearly 600 years
earlier
the Jews
had been ruled over by a succession of foreign powers,
all
of them reminding the people of Israel at every turn
that
their promised land was not truly theirs.
And, of course, where Rome ruled, Rome taxed.
Since the time of Herod the Great,
Rome has
been taxing the population of Palestine,
and in addition to this,
the Herods,
the Jewish puppet-kings, had added their own levies
which they
used to maintain their court, their military troops,
and
of course their luxurious building programs.
Taxation had been a central issue in the brief Jewish
rebellion
which had
happened at the time Judea
first came
under direct Roman administration,
when
Jesus was about ten years old.
Throughout the decades, the burden of the tribute tax, as it
was known,
had been
borne disproportionately by the peasants,
who
of course could least afford it,
and it was
a major course of the rise in bandits in the countryside,
as
those who didn’t, or couldn’t, pay
were
forced from their land or smallholding,
making
them homeless and penniless.
But it wasn’t just the financial burden and the symbolism of
foreign oppression,
that caused
the Jews to have such a problem with these coins,
that were
used to pay the Tribute tax.
The ‘obverse’ or ‘heads’ side of the coin
has on it
the profile of Tiberius Caesar, the emperor,
and the inscription round it, in slightly abbreviated Latin,
says,
‘Augustus Tiberius, son of the Divine Augustus.’
Then on the other side, the ‘reverse’ as I think it’s
technically known,
you can see
Pax, the embodiment of the empire,
and the inscription
there calls him the ‘High Priest’.
As Tom Wright puts it,
‘If the
Romans had gone out of their way to be offensive to first century Jews,
they could
hardly have done it better.’
Interestingly, the only other place in the gospel
where the
word ‘inscription’ appears, is at the crucifixion,
where the notice of Jesus’ conviction is posted over his
head,
declaring
him to be ‘The king of the Jews’ (15.26)
As with the reference we saw last week
to those
getting the places of honour at Jesus’ left and right hands,
this is another example of Mark asking his alert readers
to see the
shadow of the cross
in the
stories he tells of the way to the cross.
So here we have Jesus, who Mark’s gospel is trying to
convince us is the son of God,
standing in
the temple ruled by the high priest,
asking for
a coin with the son of a god and the high priest on it.
The message is clear:
this is a
religious question, not merely a social or political one.
Many first century Jews would try to avoid
using,
owning, or even touching these Roman tribute coins.
It’s interesting the Jesus doesn’t seem to be carrying one,
and he has
to ask his opponents to produce one for him to look at.
You can just imagine the person who had to reach into their
pocket,
and admit
to carrying one of these blasphemous, traitorous coins.
Jesus’ demand to see one was carefully targeted
to cause
maximum embarrassment to the person who produces it.
And of course, someone does have one,
because
Jesus’ opponents were trying to both have their cake and eat it.
They were chasing both religious purity and Roman money,
and this
coin in the hands of Pharisee or a Herodian
represented
collaborative politics at its most blatant.
This is what Jesus is highlighting
as he sets
about evading their trap.
They were hoping that he would either support paying taxes
to Rome,
and so lose
the popular support of the crowd,
or denounce the tax and face a charge of treason from the
Romans.
But Jesus is several steps ahead of them,
and to
understand what he does next, we need a bit of context.
About two hundred years earlier,
there had
been a Jewish revolt against the Syrians,
who
were ruling them at that time.
It was known as the Maccabean revolt,
and the
slogan of the revolutionaries was:
‘Pay back
the Gentiles what they deserve,
and obey
the commands of the law’ (1 Maccabees 2.68)
This slogan captured nicely the Jewish duty to both the
Gentiles, and to God,
and it
suggested that as far as the Gentiles were concerned,
the policy
was to give back as good as you got.
In other words, vengeance,
prepayment
in kind for violence received.
So, fast forward to the time of Jesus,
and we’ve
got him skirting the edges of revolution and revolt.
As we’ve seen, the disciples keep waiting for him to call
them to arms,
to march on
Jerusalem and re-take the city.
But Jesus keeps telling them that his revolution is
non-violent,
and that he
is attacking a deeper evil than simply Pagan domination of Israel.
So he’s not going to fall for the trap about the coin and
the taxes,
and he
refuses to engage in the should-we / shouldn’t-we argument
that they
are trying to lure him into.
There is wisdom here that many people in our world could
learn,
about not
getting sucked into superficial and binary arguments,
especially
on social media!
It’s also worth noting that Jesus doesn’t lay down some
timeless ethical ruling,
on the
relationship between the church and the state;
although many have mistakenly tried to build such a theory
on the
basis of this passage.
Rather, Jesus hits the ball back over the net
at twice
the speed it arrived.
Firstly, he says, ‘Give to the emperor the things that are
the emperor's’
which a
superficial reading could simply interpret as, ‘yes, pay the tax’.
But to take it in this way is to take it in isolation from
what follows,
where Jesus
says, ‘and give to God the things that are God's.’
This is not a simple analogy,
between
paying Caesar and paying God.
Rather, Jesus is setting the competing demands of Caesar and
God against each other,
rather than
harmonising them.
The fact that Jesus has just drawn everyone’s attention
to the
blasphemous image of the emperor on the coin
gives his response a sense of
‘send this
filthy stuff back where it came from!’
He’s being contemptuous of the Romans,
but not
directly enough to get him into trouble.
What Jesus says nicely echoes the Maccabean slogan,
of ‘Give
the pagans what they deserve’,
or ‘pay the
Gentiles back in their own coin’
And it could easily be heard as a coded revolutionary
slogan.
The kingdom Jesus was proclaiming
was one
where the one true God becomes king of the world,
and where
all other pretenders to power,
whether
they be petty Herods, High priests, or even emperors,
are demoted
to being the last and the least.
Jesus’ opponents had framed their trap
as a
conflict between the competing demands of ‘God’ and ‘Caesar’ (v.14)
and Jesus escapes it by considering these to claims:
Give to
Casesar what is Caesar’s,
and to God
what is God’s
But what if Jesus is here presenting not two compatible
statements,
- give to
Caesar and give to God -
but two incompatible demands,
inviting
the Pharisees and the Herodians
to act
according to their allegiances.
The Pharisees would have known that, according to their
scriptures,
all humans
bear the image of God,
and so God’s claim over a person was total,
inseparable
from the money they held in their wallets.
The conclusion they should have drawn from his reply
was that
the debt they owed to God was their whole selves,
to be
handed over to God, just as one might give a coin to the emperor.
And the setting of the conflict, the temple courtyard,
sets it
firmly in the context of the Jewish sacrificial system,
which was
the mechanism for making offerings to God.
Jesus’ inference that God’s demand is total over humans,
might have
been heard as a critique of the sacrificial system,
inferring
that it should be superseded by a more complete offering of worship.
This is Jesus turning the challenge back on his opponents in
no uncertain terms,
calling
their hypocrisy into account,
challenging
their status quo of religious and
political compromise,
and asking
them what position they are going to
take on this issue,
not in some theoretical question,
but
in the very real reality of their wallets:
what will they choose?
And of course this is why we get such a strong reaction from
them.
They thought they were putting Jesus on the spot in a no-win
scenario,
but they
discover that this is rather exactly what he has done to them;
and, their answer is already clear:
they had
the tribute coin already in their pockets, ready to pay the tax.
In this seemingly innocuous response,
Jesus is
radically opposing the divine reign of God,
to the
human reign of the emperor.
He’s not harmonising them,
this is no
neat doctrine of obedient citizenship,
it is an
invitation to choose where your ultimate allegiance lies:
with
God or with the emperor,
with the
nonviolent demands of the peaceful kingdom of God,
or
with the empire sustained by the imperial armies,
paid
for by the tribute tax.
The vineyard parable that preceded this conflict with the
Pharisees and the Herodians
makes it
clear where Mark wants his readers’ loyalties to fall.
His answer to the question of ‘What belongs to God?’ is
found in this story,
where it
becomes clear that all leaders are only tenants,
and
that God owns the land of Israel, not Caesar.
The parable makes it clear that the gospel rejects the
option
of
political co-operation with Rome,
and that the authority of Caesar and his tribute penny is
invalid
in the
light of God’s universal kingdom.
So, what can we take from this story,
which is so
often used to justify Christian complicity with corrupt powers,
and a separation of the life of faith into two halves,
where one
half pays its taxes
and the
other half says its prayers.
Too many sermons on this text
have
concluded with a justification of a church/state partnership,
and an
exhortation on the responsibilities of the ‘Christian citizen’.
Is this really a call for Christians to do deals with power,
to get
Bishops or other representatives inside the corridors of power,
to
influence Government from the inside?
Is this really a call for Christians to run charity programs
and food banks
to
compensate for the diminishing of the welfare state,?
Is this really a justification for Christians to ensure that
we take advantage
of our full
range charity tax breaks from Chancellor?
I don’t think so.
In the preceding chapter in Mark’s gospel (11.27-33)
Jesus has
just been arguing with the religious leaders
about
the authority behind John’s baptismal practice,
which
concluded with Jesus utterly rejecting
their
right to judge his actions.
Similarly, in the parable about the vineyard which we heard
earlier,
we saw
Jesus undermining any claim
the Jewish
leaders may make to authority.
So, by the time we get to the dispute over the coin,
the
Pharisees and the Herodians know full well
that Jesus
is entirely rejecting their legitimacy.
So the trap they set him is one laded with danger,
and their
rage when he escapes it is no less perilous.
What Jesus finds himself in the middle of here,
is a crisis
of allegiance provoked by the Jewish liberation struggle.
In many ways, the dilemma facing Jesus in this story
is
analogous to that which faced Mark’s community
a few
decades later.
The issue facing the original readers of the gospel
was a
rising tension between Israel and the Empire
that would
shortly lead to the Roman destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70AD.
Historical sources tell us that the issue of taxation
was still a
flashpoint at the time Mark’s gospel was written,
and his original readers would have had to negotiate their
own path
through the
tensions around religious conviction,
political
rebellion, and economic choices.
Mark’s gospel, far from encouraging its readers
to pay
their taxes and be good Christian Citizens,
instead strongly asserts an ideology
which
rejects both the Roman colonial presence,
and the Jewish violent revolt.
Just as Jesus resisted both these in his answer,
so his followers
are to do the same.
Bowing down to the emperor is not the way,
but neither
is taking up arms against him.
The third way of Jesus
was to turn
the political challenge back
on those
who are trying to force the issue.
It is the path of nonviolent resistance,
of refusing
to accept the legitimacy of the empire,
but also of
refusing to do violence to overthrow it.
In our context the issue is rarely the paying of taxes,
although we
are not immune to the imposition
of unfair
and unjust taxation.
But I find myself wondering whether the issue in our world
is that
many of us are simply not taxed enough.
In Sweden, often given as an example of one of the best
places in Europe to live,
taxation
rates are higher than most other countries.
It seems to me that a progressive taxation system which
benefits everyone
is far more
just than tax cuts for the wealthy
and the
scaling back of public services.
This week’s budget has been rather obscured by the
coronavirus crisis,
but in the
midst of the politically loaded language about ‘levelling up’,
which
rather sounds to me like it’ll be fault of the poorer regions
if
they don’t rise to the challenge,
there were
significant tax breaks for wealthy business owners.
So as we try to work out how to apply
Jesus’
response to the Pharisees and the Herodians
to a contemporary context which is in some ways very
different,
but in
other ways very similar
to that
which Jesus would have known,
I wonder if our
nonviolent resistance to dominating oppression
might look
something like generosity.
What if our response were to be the giving of time, energy,
and resources,
to projects
that benefit the common good?
What if our way out of the trap that lies before us,
is neither
quiescent complicity to the state,
nor
extremist politics of social revolution,
but developing - actively working at - a culture of
generous, loving care,
for those
who are disadvantaged in our world and society;
coupled with a commitment to speak out,
to
challenge those political and economic systems
that
impoverish the poor and enrich the rich.
Maybe the role of the church is to play its part
in shaming
the powers that be
by holding them to account for their empty promises,
and
hypocritical posturing.
What if, through our involvement in organisations like
London Citizens,
and through
our partnerships with organisations like the Simon Community,
we can be part of shaping a new world,
where the
kingdom values of justice and compassion are foregrounded,
and where futile
arguments about legalistic religion are set aside.
What if we can learn to be those who see our money as a
mechanism for liberation,
rather than
a trap that ensnares us.
What if we can learn the truth of our citizenship,
which is
that it is not with any earthly empire,
but with the kingdom of God,
which comes
to us on earth,
as it is in
heaven;
Can we answer in our lives the call of the kingdom of God,
which draws
us to acts of courageous resistance,
and
generous love?
