Sermon Archive
Render unto Caesar
Sermon preached by John McLuckie at Holy Communion on 20 September 2002
Anyone who knows me relatively well will be able to tell you that my more-jittery-than-usual mood as the end of September looms is entirely due to the approach of the deadline for my tax form. Like most citizens in a liberal western democracy, I have an ambiguous relationship with fiscal institutions but on the whole, I am delighted to pay tax for the social benefits it makes possible. I think I am still proud of living in a society with at least some degree of commitment to shared social values and mutual care. My anxious relationship with the tax form is more to do with an aversion for seeking out all those little bits of paper with the necessary bits of information on them, buried in the least formal corners of my informal filing system (the word I like to use is 'heuristic').
The relationship of people in Jesus' time to the various taxation systems was equally complex, but in some ways the stakes were higher. Living in an occupied territory, the subject peoples were deeply resentful of poll taxes levied from outside that served not the common good, but the lifestyle and power ambitions of the empire's ruling classes. Not only was the tax due to an occupying military state, it was payable in a form that any Jew would regard as blasphemous - a coin showing the Emperor's head, a graven image with an inscription claiming divinity for the emperor. So the Roman poll tax was a source of deep political contention at the time of Jesus - it was idolatrous, it was unjust, it went to support the expansion programme of an occupying power and it was often levied in highly questionable ways. The Romans often used a system of 'tax farming' where they used local wealthy publicans to pay the taxes then collect them back with a generous 'handling fee' and, it would seem, at times with menaces. No wonder that it was so detested. No wonder that the unlikely bedfellows of the deeply religious Pharisees and the collaborating Herodians saw it as an opportunity to catch out their mutual enemy, the trouble-maker Jesus. This Gallilean teacher was known as a lover of outcasts, including both the poor who suffered from the tax and the stooges who collected them. So he winds up the Herodians by breaking up the party for tax-collectors who discover they have a conscience when faced with the reality of what they're doing, and he winds up the Pharisees by fraternising with people whose religious scruples are frankly lacking. Hence the plot to get him to paint himself into a corner. If he says 'Don't pay the tax' they'll get him for sedition, if he says 'Pay the tax' he'll lose credibility with the people. Jesus sees the trap a mile off and responds with a masterly riposte. In effect, he says, 'You carry the coin, you take moral responsibility for what you do with it.' As for Jesus, he chooses not to participate in the whole rotten system -he doesn't even have a coin on him. He suggests they'd be better giving the coin back to Caesar, who seems terribly attached to it, and concentrating their efforts on the things of God whose Kingdom is based on love, not domination.
So, little Oscar, what has a lesson in the corruption of a first century imperial tax have to do with your baptism today? I think it has quite a lot to do with it, really, We've said earlier on that Baptism involves turning our backs on participating in systems of evil and turning towards our participation in a community that has other priorities. For sure, there will be times in you life when the moral choices to be made within a system will be complex, and I hope that the principles of God's kingdom of love will help at least a little in these decisions. There will also be times when the choice may, in fact, be to resist involvement in a corrupted system. For my Brethren grandfather, the implication of his baptism was that he should refuse to bear arms, which he did at some personal cost. For others, it may mean a decision to invest ethically, or seek a new career path, or stand against a gossiping culture at work. For some, it will mean siding with activists, artists, mystics and thinkers of any faith or none who believe that another world is possible. For all of us, it will mean continuing with some basic practices of Christian resistance to the ways of domination and control - practices like praying, like sharing this dangerously inclusive meal, like insisting on the worth of even the most repulsive human being. In these very simple ways we give back to the Caesars of this world their mechanisms of control - fear, selfishness and greed - and we give to God what is God's - our love, our commitment, our passion and our hope.
Oscar, may you, and we along with you, pray, work and sing as if we live in the early days of a better world. The baptism you have received today gives you all you need to do that - an assurance that God loves you, and the strength, courage and imagination to see that that love is meant for everyone.
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