Sermon — October 22, 2023
The Rev. Greg Johnston
“Jesus said to them, ‘Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s,
and to God the things that are God’s.’” (Matthew 22:21)
You’ll sometimes hear this verse quoted as an argument for the separation of church and state, often in its traditional translation “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s.” I’ve heard it used to say that you should “keep politics out of the pulpit,” to avoid taking stances on divisive issues in the context of prayer: leave to the politicians the things that politicians say, and keep the content in church focused on the things of God. And I’ve heard it used to say, in the other direction, that you should keep religion and religious values out of schools and courts and legislatures, along much the same lines.
And for what it’s worth, I agree. We’ve seen what can occur when religious fundamentalism tries to drive public policy, around the world. A pretty good rule of thumb comes from the IRS, believe it or not. While churches can and should take stands on any number of social and political issues, from poverty to climate change to racial justice, they can’t engage in partisan politics; if a pastor stands in the pulpit and endorses a candidate for office, then at least in theory, the church risks its tax-exempt status. Fair enough. The separation of church and state is an important principle in modern society.
But it’s not what Jesus is talking about in the Gospel reading today.
When Jesus says, “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s,” he isn’t drawing a distinction between mundane political concerns and his own more elevated religious teaching. He’s taking a particular stand on the most important political question of his day. Jesus and his disciples and his audience are the Jewish subjects of an unpopular Roman emperor who rules from far away. The trap the Pharisees set is a good one. They ask him whether it’s in accordance with the law to pay taxes to the emperor. They’re asking about Jewish law; of course it’s lawful under Roman law to pay Roman taxes. But the Roman occupation, like any foreign occupation, was wildly unpopular. So the trap is set: if Jesus answers, “no,” well, that’s sedition. He’d be encouraging people to defy the Roman state, and he could be condemned and arrested, and likely crucified. If he answers, “yes,” well, that’s the kind of collaboration that would discredit him in the eyes of his fellow Jews, at least the patriotic ones. “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s” doesn’t mean, “leave me alone and keep your politics away from my religion”; it’s one of the two possible political answers to a political question!
But, as he often does, Jesus frames his response in a way that evades the trap. He asks them to take out a coin, and asks, “Whose face is that?” They don’t want to look ridiculous, so of course they say, “Well, that’s the emperor.” The emperor made that money. It’s the emperor’s mints who stamped it with his face. It’s the emperor who uses it to spread his image throughout the empire, so everyone who buys or sells knows whose subject they are. “So,” Jesus says, “give back to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” These coins bear the emperor’s image; he can have them back. But in the same way, you should give to God the things that are made in the image of God. And what’s made in the image of God?
…Well it’s you! And me! All of us. All human beings are “made in the image of God.” And this isn’t just a nice, poetic way to express the dignity of every human being. It’s quite literally the word of God. It’s what God says, in the very first chapter of the Book of Genesis, in the first story of the creation of human beings: “Let us make humankind,” God says, “in our image, according to our likeness.” (Genesis 1:26) The Pharisees are the best and the most devoted and the most pious among the people of God, and Jesus’ response leaves them speechless, because they know what he is saying: Give your taxes, sure, to the emperor; but give your whole self to God. And so Jesus escapes the trap; he refuses to countenance defiance of the Roman Empire, but nevertheless subsumes its importance under the much greater kingdom of God.
In a few moments, I’ll baptize two children in the name of that same God, and we’ll welcome them as new members of the Body of Christ, the Church. The ancient teachers of the Church often wrote that in baptism, the image of God in us is restored; that the smudges and smears we’ve inherited from our ancestors are wiped away, and the image is made clear. They noticed that in Genesis, God said that we were made in the image and likeness of God, and they taught that in baptism the fullness of the image of God is restored, so that over the course of our lives we might grow into that likeness.
Baptism marks an entrance into the life of the Church—not this church in the narrow sense, not St. John’s Charlestown, but the Church with a capital C, the universal body made up of all the baptized. Baptism marks us as God’s own, as human beings formed in the image of God, just as clearly as the coins Jesus held in his hand were formed in the image of the emperor, and marked as his own.
And we carry that mark with us through our whole lives, whether we know it or not. That’s true in a chronological sense, of course: we carry the mark of baptism over the course of our whole lives. Like any of us, the children we baptize today may not always be active members of this or any other local church. But they will be members nevertheless of the Church with a capital C into which they are inducted today, the Body of Christ living in this world. And wherever they go in all the years of their lives, they will always find a home in the family of God.
But we carry the mark with us through our whole lives in a second sense, as well. We are like coins, and we do not change our faces from Lincoln at the supermarket to Washington at CVS. We are stamped with the image of God, everywhere we go. When Jesus reminds us that we carry the image of God, and tells us to “give to God the things that are God’s,” it really is an invitation to offer our whole lives to God. This doesn’t mean that we should give up everything we have and join a convent, although some people do; it doesn’t mean we should dedicate every second of our lives to the church. It means that we should see each little slice of our lives as part of your lives with God, so that we no longer have A work life, and a family, and friendships, and kids’ sports, and hobbies, and spiritual life, each in its own separate compartment; but our spiritual lives, as lives as people of faith, permeate all the rest.
So I want to offer you a challenge, all you beloved, image-bearing people of God: Without changing anything about your weekly schedule or your daily commitments, can you start offering more of the parts of your life to God? Without increasing the amount of time you spend in church or in prayer, can you allow your spirituality to spread through every day? Without talking any more about God, can you come to understand more of your life as belonging to God? And what would that mean? What would it mean to remember that you are marked with the image of God? What would it mean to let God into your life at the most mundane moments in your day? What would it mean, in other words, to “give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s”? Namely, your whole self.