Taxes Are Taxing

            October 18, 2026

Mathew 22:15-22

            Our second reading from Matthew’s gospel takes place in the time between Jesus entering Jerusalem on Palm Sunday and his arrest on the night of the Passover.  Jesus is teaching at the Temple when a group of Pharisees and Herodians come asking a question meant to trap and discredit him before the people.  Listen for the Word of God as it speaks to you this morning.

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            In last Sunday’s sermon, when we talked about the Golden Calf from the book of Exodus, I asked a question that I think is very relevant to Christianity today.  Asking in the voice of the ancient Israelites, “What could Moses possibly bring down from that mountain that will be better than the calf our gold has created?” 

            The trap question about taxes is not what this story from Matthew is about.  Neither the Herodians nor the Pharisees even believe in the question they are asking… it is only a trap so that if Jesus answers one way, the Herodians will jump on him and discredit him.  If Jesus answers the other way, then the Pharisees will jump on him and discredit him.  It’s meaningless political theater.  Being this close to an election day, I think… I hope… we can see it for what it is since that’s what so much of our own politics have devolved into. 

            Jesus’ substantive answer to their disingenuous question, however, still challenges us today to determine and to name what truly belongs to God and what truly belongs to Caesar.  We still get confused between the two.  The challenge we face is that Caesar’s coin is a part of our everyday life. 

            Let me put it this way… we can’t escape Caesar’s coin.  We need it to live… probably even more so than those who were listening to Jesus in the Temple.  As a church organization… as an institution devoted to God and discipleship… there is no way we can function without Caesar’s coin.  That is the reality of things.  Even though the money says, “In God We Trust,” Duke Power won’t accept our faith as currency to pay our electric bill.  They only broker in Caesar’s coin.  I can’t barter our prayers or our good works of faith for electricity.  The answer Jesus gives to us accepts this practicality of our real-world real-life situation.

            The lesson is more about our devotion to Caesar’s coin.  Its place in our hearts.  Like the calf crafted out of gold, we also craft our own idols out of Caesar’s coin and say they belong to God… when really those things still belong to Caesar. 

            Let’s think about this together by looking at a bigger picture historical analogy about the Temple itself.

            The Herodians owe everything they have to Caesar.  Rome is the reason they have what power they have.  Herod the Great… the Herod we know best because we hear about him when the Wise Men show up every year… Herod the Great was placed into power by Rome.  His sons, who rule at the time of this story… rule because of Rome.  There is nothing that they have that isn’t Caesar’s.  But there is something more about the Herodians that perhaps some of you don’t know.  When Herod the Great was king, one of his biggest work projects was expanding and remodeling the Temple in Jerusalem.  This whole scene takes place in the Temple that Herod built… the house of God that Herod built with Caesar’s coin because of the power given to him by Caesar.  

            And so I can’t help but ask… to whose glory was this Temple built?  Does the Temple belong to God or to Caesar?  Mixed in there is that original question, “What could Moses possibly bring down from that mountain that will be better than the calf our gold has created?”  What could God ever give that would be better than the Temple Caesar’s coin has created?   The Temple is a magnificent place of worship and learning.  It’s grand in its architecture and awe inspiring in its size.  The materials used are expensive and impressive.  It is a place that has all the bells and smells.  It stands as a great monument to God.  Still… I wouldn’t be surprised to learn someday that somewhere in the Temple there wasn’t some kind of acknowledgement also of the power of Caesar.  Who has power in this Temple… and who is at the bottom?  In this Temple where Jesus is teaching, Caesar and God are mixed together in ways that are hard to untangle. The Temple is where authentic faith can stand alongside a polished veneer of faith… where the Spirit of God moves in some hearts even as others cling tightly to the blessings of Caesar’s coin.  Jesus has already exposed the money changers and the sellers of sacrifice when he first entered into Jerusalem… how much deeper does this corrupt hypocrisy go in this magnificent den of thieves?  Yet at the same time, there are seekers aplenty who gather around Jesus at the Temple in the hopes of coming closer to God.  

            Give to the Emperor the things that are the emperor’s and to God the things that are God’s.  To whom does this Temple belong?  Is this God’s house or Caesar’s house?

            Let’s keep following this idea and ask some more questions… because in the year 70, this grand Temple refurbished and expanded by Herod, gets destroyed by the Romans.  What we know as the Wailing Wall is all that is left of this Temple in Jerusalem.  The Temple and the system of religion that surrounded it and supported it were brought to an end by the power of Caesar.  Had Herod’s Temple ever been a thing of God?  Could Caesar have destroyed… not just the building but the practices of the religion within… could Caesar have destroyed something that belonged to God?  Or does Caesar only have the power to destroy what is his own?  What thing belonging to God’s gets destroyed when the golden calf… in whatever form it takes… gets melted down?  

            Back in 2009, I was up in the Cincinnati Presbytery for a short time.  At one of the Presbytery meetings a church came forward to ask the Presbytery to override a decision of the Committee on Ministry.  The Committee had blocked the church from calling a certain pastor.  Now this church was once a large, grand downtown church.  A cathedral-like building.  Built when the money was good… when people lived in downtown areas before fleeing out to the suburbs… when the members could and would walk to worship.  But now this church only had a handful of elderly long-term members… and while there was still plenty of Caesar’s coins… at the moment… it was clear where this church was eventually headed.  They yearned for the glories of yesterday and believed there was a way to get back to a time that no longer existed.  Now… it’s important to note that in all the years of the church’s existence… as the neighborhoods surrounding the church changed… the congregation inside had purposefully not changed.  It stayed the same becoming an emptying monument to the days past and the people within.  To whom did this church belong?  Now feeling desperate… this congregation had come to believe that only this one particular minister could save them.  He told them they were right.  Only he could save them.  They were offering to pay him a hefty salary… a good deal higher… I mean a good deal higher… than any other minister’s salary in that Presbytery… a salary that he had negotiated and readily agreed to… because he was worth it.  Can you really put a price on the salvation of an entire congregation?  Caesar’s coin would make the way and provide a better tomorrow. At the end of their presentation… making the argument why the Presbytery must allow them to call this one particular minister… the church in no uncertain terms told the Presbytery, “You either let us call this minister or we will close our doors.”  To whom did this church belong?  To God or to Caesar?

                So how do you think the story ended?  When the Committee on Ministry shared this manipulative minister’s history of wrecked congregations who were all promised much but received little… the Presbytery voted overwhelmingly to uphold the decision and to stop the call from happening.  And true to its threat, the congregation dissolved itself soon afterwards.  If Caesar’s coins could not save them… nothing could.  And that’s not the saddest part to this story.  I don’t think the church closing mattered to anyone.  No ministry that made a difference to the lives of anyone was missed, because such a ministry did not exist in that church.

            What could Moses possibly bring down from that mountain that will be better than the calf our gold has created?  

            So… what belongs to God?  It’s not so easy to answer since we live in a Caesar run world… a world that is made to go round with the power of that coin with Caesar’s head imprinted upon it.  What is it that God gives that Caesar does not?  How does Jesus tell us this answer?  Maybe no surprise… but the answer is grace.  Grace belongs to God.  As God gives us grace, we are to give grace to God… and that is done through our giving grace to each other.  As Jesus will teach later in this gospel, what God will recognize as belonging to God is the one who gave food to the hungry… or drink to the thirsty… who gave welcome to the stranger… and clothes to the naked… who gave care to the sick and comfort to those in prison.  They might have used Caesar’s coins to a achieve those ends, but they used their hearts filled with God’s grace to love enough to care for their neighbor.  The Herodians used their power to give to themselves.  The Pharisees… well, to use other words of Jesus from Matthew’s gospel… “They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to remove them.  They do all their deeds to be seen by others, for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long.  They love to have the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces… they neglected the weightier matters of the law:  justice and mercy and faith.”  Doesn’t that sound like the same idolatry of many Christians today who devote themselves and measure themselves by Caesar’s coin?

             Justice.  Mercy.  Faith.  Those all sound of grace… the grace that belongs to God that we are to give to God.  The grace that Caesar cannot destroy.  The Pharisees could do performative faith, but they couldn’t simply love their neighbor.  Too many conditions were put in the way so that their neighbor could be denied.  A downtown church sometimes can’t open its heart nor its doors to the changing neighborhood… especially when those people aren’t like us or might not carry on our traditions.  The love isn’t there.  A Temple can be the largest and the grandest, but the reason God’s Temple exists has nothing to do with impressing the eye… a Temple is to provide a place for all to worship and grow in their faith… no matter how many of Caesar’s coins are in the purses and pockets of the worshipers.

            Give to God that which belongs to God.  What is it that God is asking us to give today?  It’s not too different than what Jesus was asking of those who gathered around him to hear him teach there in that magnificent den of thieves.  Amen.