Isaiah 45:1-7
Thus says the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have grasped to subdue nations before him and strip kings of their robes, to open doors before him--and the gates shall not be closed: I will go before you and level the mountains, I will break in pieces the doors of bronze
and cut through the bars of iron, I will give you the treasures of darkness and riches hidden in secret places, so that you may know that it is I, the Lord, the God of Israel, who calls you by your name. For the sake of my servant Jacob, and Israel my chosen, I call you by your name, I surname you, though you do not know me. I am the Lord, and there is no other; besides me there is no god. I arm you, though you do not know me, so that they may know, from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is no one besides me; I am the Lord, and there is no other. I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe; I the Lord do all these things.
Matthew 22:15-22
The Pharisees went and plotted to entrap Jesus in what he said. 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. Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the coin used for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius. Then he said to them, “Whose head is this, and whose title?” They answered, “The emperor’s.” Then he said to them, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.
I was curious about the history of the Lectionary’s pairing of Isaiah 45 and Matthew 22. According to Grok, which cites 72 sources, this pairing dates back to the Catholic Church’s Ordo Lectionum Missae introduced in 1969. It’s a relatively new liturgical wrinkle which causes us to look twice at this well-known Gospel story. Reading Matthew’s passage in light of Isaiah’s messianic Cyrus reveals challenging insights, which I’ll get to.
We often read this passage as Jesus’ clever exposé of his challengers’ malice and hypocrisy. They sought to divide Jesus’ support along political lines: if Jesus said taxation is legal, he might lose the support of those messianic populists who longed for an independent Israel and saw Jesus as the way there. On the other hand, if he said no, he was liable to sedition under the current regime: with the death of Herod the Great, the holy land was under direct Roman rule, at that time via the prefecture of Pontius Pilate, which had brought about the tax in question.
While the Herodians benefitted from the tax, they were nonetheless politically displaced. Was not theirs the Kingdom of God? Yet their kingdom had been broken up into a king-less tetrarchy, with David’s capital ripped out of their grip by Pilate. Jesus’ agreement with the Herodians might therefore have been a tacit acknowledgment of their royal dynasty’s claim over his own. The Pharisees, on the other hand, searched the scriptures for Israel’s true King, for the Herodian king, like his Hasmonean predecessors, had been sitting on Jerusalem’s throne in spite of not being David’s heir.
Jesus, of course, was. The Pharisees might have been thrilled by this — Nicodemus was — if not for Jesus’ strange relationship, as far as they were concerned, with the Law. They could not abide a Davidic King whose religiosity did not conform to their own traditions. So they tested him, finding him increasingly wanting. They were willing to let Jesus’ “no” to their question “please” them — for like many Jews they were no fans of the tax, though they had to keep up appearances before Rome — at the expense of Herodian outrage, which would certainly cause serious problems for Jesus. On the other hand, they were willing to see the people class Jesus among the Herodians if he answered “yes”, a blow to his messianic lustre.
Jesus’ answer evaded these outcomes by revealing higher truths. The Pharisees themselves lost their populist appeal, and much religious integrity, when Jesus proved that they themselves carried idolatrous mammon bearing the image of Tiberius, and their Pharisee vs. Herodian dichotomy was therefore false — all were complicit in the tax regime. They were caught in their own trap.
Then Jesus raises the higher teaching: if the denarius bears Caesar’s image, goes the logic of the Logos incarnate, then it belongs to him. But what bears God’s image belongs to God — that is, humanity itself.
We should be careful, however, lest we turn these two considerations into a false dichotomy. Does what belongs to Caesar not belong to God as well? Of course it does, and firstly so. In offering ourselves to God, we also therefore offer what is due to the authorities he has appointed. This teaching is summarized by Paul: “I urge you, brothers, on account of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God, which is your spiritual service of worship…This is also why you pay taxes. For the authorities are God’s servants, who devote themselves to their work. Pay everyone what you owe him: taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due.” (Ro. 12:1, 13:6-7).
Case in point, the Roman authority subjecting the people to taxation was manifestly placed there by God. The records are throughout scripture, which brings us back to Isaiah. Cyrus, the Persian King, was not merely a rogue conquistador who colonized the holy land: he was the Lord’s “anointed”. In Daniel, we read how God yet planned for Persia’s dominion over the children of Israel to be succeeded by Greece and Rome, and we read of these oracles’ fulfillments in 1 and 2 Maccabees. Certainly, these regimes were not vessels of mercy, as Christians are called to be — they were instruments of wrath, “agents of retribution” (Ro. 13:4). Nonetheless, they were God’s deacons (ibid). It was for this reason that Paul so earnestly sought to inform Caesar himself (Ac. 27:24), and all the empire’s lower magistrates along the way, that as an image-bearing appointee of God, a ruler is expected to bow the knee to his Maker, serving God in humility and God’s people with grace.
Before the Divine Word appeared in Matthew’s day to restore the Kingdom to Israel, he had declared through the prophets that the subjugated peoples of Israel should not rebel against the Gentile authorities he had placed over them, no matter how wrathful their rule. From the very beginning of that Exile whose days he was finally bringing to an end, the Word spoke through Jeremiah: “to all the exiles who were carried away from Jerusalem to Babylon:…Seek the prosperity of the city to which I have sent you as exiles. Pray to the LORD on its behalf, for if it prospers, you too will prosper…Do not be deceived by the prophets and diviners among you, and do not listen to the dreams you elicit from them.” For when they prophesy victory to rebels, “they are falsely prophesying to you in My name; I have not sent them, declares the LORD.” (Jer. 29:4-9).
Here, there is no dichotomy between the prosperity of the colonizers and the colonized, the taxman and the taxed. The Lord both forms light and creates darkness. He makes his rain to shine on the unjust (Mt. 5:45), and justifies the ungodly (Ro. 4:5). Cyrus case in point, and Caesar by association. Though “here we have no lasting city but seek the city that is to come” (Heb. 13:14), we nonetheless ought to seek this impermanent city’s prosperity as the exiles were taught to do. Hence, Peter taught “the exiles of the dispersion throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia” — that is, all those evanescent cities in whom the people of God find themselves presently exiled — to “show proper respect to everyone, love the family of believers, fear God, honor the emperor.” (1 Pt. 1:1, 2:17). We are to do this in imitation of Christ, “For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in His footsteps.” (1 Pt. 2:21).
To wit, Jesus did not turn the tables on the Pharisees’ trap in order to curry public favor and avoid the consequences to which the Pharisees were increasingly set on subjecting him. He knew full well his fate when his hour would finally come — the Cross. If Jesus’ response to the question of Mt. 22 was in any way placative, it certainly was not intended to be. For when his hour had finally come, he embraced it: “Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour.” (Jn. 12:27).
And so our mouths and especially our hearts best be likewise empty of any placative reasoning for fulfilling Ro. 13’s civic instructions. The goal of our seeking for this city’s prosperity is neither the city’s prosperity, nor our own as exiles. It is the glory of God, who is glorified in the Cross. The glorious telos of our self-offering does not hinge on whether we pay our taxes to an anointed Cyrus or to a godless Caesar any more than God’s glory waxes or wanes at the whim of our political choices — or lack thereof. We are foolish if we think that we may glorify God in any other way than taking up our Cross and following Jesus.
Let us therefore be mindful of what is Caesar’s, but all the more mindful that what is Caesar’s first belongs to the God revealed at Calvary — for a coin may bear Caesar’s image, but God’s image in whom we are made is the one crucified for sedition.
Amen.
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