I am like everyone else I hate paying taxes for a number of reasons but I am realist that many of our services, that I expect, would be curtailed or non-existence. Taxes are a necessary part of living in the US. I do dislike the fact that taxes are unfair, especially on the poor and the middle class, when the very wealthy can pay at a lesser tax rate than many of us. The billionaire Warren Buffet has called attention to the fact his secretary pays a higher rate of taxes than he does as a billionaire because of the tax loopholes and deductions that are available to him but not to his secretary. I dislike how corporations shift monies overseas to pay reduced taxes and pay rates less than any of us.

Today’s gospel appears to be about taxes, but I want to suggest that the issue is more than taxes. The first clue is that the Pharisees joined the Herodians to entrap Jesus. You see the Pharisees and the Herodians are enemies, they are political parties frequently in conflict over their goals. In this case, they unite against Jesus. They become convenient friends to go after Jesus.
The Herodians developed their power from the Roman occupation. They were named after Herod the Great—the king who tried to kill Jesus in Bethlehem. His son Herod Antipater killed John the Baptist. Herod made life difficult for Jesus, and we can safely assume that Jesus was itinerant, constantly moving around Galilee and in and out Galilee, escaping the troops of Herod. They were the landed gentry who practiced their Jewish religion with explicit allegiance to Rome. They were Hellenized Jews who practiced the religious cult to the Emperor. The Roman Empire kept them in power as they oppressed Galilean peasants.
The Pharisees represented the purity party that supported the Temple and chief priests. They built a fence around the Torah regulations with a series of oral traditions to keep as pure as the Temple priests. Yet the Pharisees collected the Temple tithes and reinforced a boycott of those who did not pay there Temple dues. Out of necessity, they deferred to Roman authority because the Temple cooperated with the Romans.

The Herodians represented the interests of the Roman Empire and its system of control while the Pharisees represented the Temple interests. The Herodians felt Judaism’s future belonged to Rome and the Herods installed as rulers by Rome. They supported the Roman system of taxation that was burdensome and kept the Jewish peasants poorer. The Herodians became money launderers for the Roman tribute, and they profited from the money exchange of Jewish coinage into Roman coinage.

The Herodians stood by Herod Antipas in Galilee. Herod had killed John the Baptist, and here was another popular charismatic prophet causing trouble. In fact, people from the circle of Herod Antipas found their way to this charismatic prophet. Joanna, the wife of an administration official in Herod’s court, became a disciple of Jesus.

The Romans levied a grain tax, taxes on all produce, sales taxes, occupational taxes on certain trades and guilds, custom taxes, temple taxes, transit taxes. These revenues from conquered peoples supported Roma and its citizens. The Pharisees represented the alternative religious tax system that took 10% of all that the peasants produced plus the requirements for sacrifices for forgiveness, annual feasts and festivals in Jerusalem. 95% of the Jews who lived in Palestine suffered from the burdensome taxes.

These two groups come together in their opposition to Jesus. Jesus disturbs the religious and political powers with his message of God’s reign. We have seen where religious and political groups align themselves together against an opponent. In 2008, the Mormons, the Catholics, and the Evangelicals came to support Prop 8 because of their opposition to same-sex marriage while despising each other.

They intend to ensnare Jesus on the question of taxes. Will he deny the taxation system of the Roman Empire or the Temple? In the coinage collected by Roman officials and their proxies, they collected denarri with the image of the Emperor Tiberius, son of the divine Augustus Caesar. The Pharisees would objected to the denarii or foreign currency. For the Temple taxes and offering had to be exchanged for coins without the image of Caesar or acknowledging any national god outside of the Jewish God. The Jewish God was the only God. The Pharisees advanced the view that any payment to the emperor with denarii coins was idolatry. The Pharisees rejected foreign currency because it violated the first commandment against graven images. In Judea, the Temple authorities minted coins in Hebrew creating an alternative religious currency. Jewish coinage or coinage without any image of Caesar or god was acceptable.
Payment of Roman taxes meant paying tribute to Rome and its divine ruler and gods. The Pharisees did not want to accommodate with the Greco-Roman culture nor with paying tribute. But they were forced since ending the tribute would have brought dire consequences of the Roman military, further enslavements and punishments.

So the question posed to Jesus by the Herodians and Pharisees: “Teacher, we know 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 what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor or not?”

When Jesus asked for the coin, he realized his challengers asked him to make a choice between two taxation systems, fraught with political consequences. Did he publicly side with the Herodians or the Pharisees? Or, did Jesus side with the accommodating Herodians who saw relations with Rome as the future? If he agreed with the Pharisees, the Herodians could charge him with rebellion against Rome. If Jesus agreed with the Herodians, the Pharisees could charge him with idolatry. And this would end the week-long challenges of Jesus in Jerusalem and discredit him in the eyes of the people.

Jesus asked for a coin. When Jesus asked for the image and the title on the coin, he made the Pharisees and the Herodians face up to the choice they gave him. Rome or the Temple? Jesus cleverly sidetracked the political trap.

Jesus renders his verdict as they produce a coin. He says to them, “whose head is this and whose title is this?” They concede, “The emperor’s.” Then Jesus says, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” When two options are presented in Aramaic language, it is always the second that holds importance. In this case, he says pay the taxes to Caesar but recognize that ultimately the greater allegiance belongs to God. Jesus probably remembered the prayer in the Psalm:
The earth belongs to the Lord, and all that is in it,
The world and those who live in it.

Jesus prohibits unquestioning loyalty to Rome, and a few days later in his demonstration in the Temple, in his prophetic action of overturning the table of the money-changers, he pronounces his verdict, “My father’s house has become a den of thieves.”

Loyalty and allegiance to the Roman Empire or to the Jewish Temple are secondary to the reign of God. Unquestioning loyalty to the state or to the church are dangerous at any time. Jesus message about God’s reign takes precedence over all claims. The guards at the Nazi concentration camps considered themselves loyal Germans and good Christians. And look at the atrocities they did in crucifying Christ in the concentration camps

(Youtube Clip from Bonhoeffer: Agent of Grace, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtEzV9jTpvI

Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his writings are studied in many mainline seminaries and universities. In the early 1930s, he studied at Union Theological Seminary in New York City with the famous theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, a member of of one of the earlier churches that formed into the United Church of Christ in 1957, and Bonhoeffer participated in the Abyssinian American Baptist Church in Harlem and enjoyed African-American Spirituals. He was on collision course with the Nazi politics of his native Germany. He joined the resistance. Next week after service we watch the movie—Bonhoeffer: Agent of Grace. But today I want to show you a clip from the movie when the Gestapo come into church, informing Bonhoeffer that he can no longer teach, preach, or lead worship. The Gestapo intimate the congregation to profess the Nuremberg Confession:

The pastor/theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote,

Let’s not delude ourselves that if we take the loyalty oath to Hitler it means they’ll let us worship in peace. The Nuremberg laws are an attack on Christianity itself. Adolf Hitler demands nothing less than total commitment. He’s the elected chancellor, yes. But more than that, he considers himself de Fuhrer, and as “the leader,” he craves to be the conscience of every living German. But his claim upon us is a claim that a Christian can only accept from Christ Himself.

There are times that our conscience informed by the Gospel of Christ and our God may lead us to realize that there is a higher allegiance than Caesar or Hitler or corporate greed. I tried to think of one, and my thought is on the Tar Sands pipeline from Canada. Should it be approved, thousands, if not tens of thousands of people who love and care for the Earth, will stand and obstruct the construction of the pipeline which will cross the largest aquifer in the heartland of the US. A major spill could effect the water supplies of millions of Americans and American farming. It is folly to construct this for greed for fossil fuel. I will stand with Sierra Club and peoples of faith in civil disobedience to such a construction project. It will harm the Earth and life. Here is a more contemporary example of rendering to God.