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Render Unto Caesar What Is Caesar’s – But Also God’s

First United Methodist Church, Shelbyville
Laity Sunday – October 19, 2008

Matthew 22:15-22 (TNIV)
15 Then the Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap him in his words. 16 They sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians. “Teacher,” they said, “we know that you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You aren’t swayed by others, because you pay no attention to who they are. 17 Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not?”
18 But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, “You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me? 19 Show me the coin used for paying the tax.” They brought him a denarius, 20 and he asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?”
21 “Caesar’s,” they replied. Then he said to them, “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”
22 When they heard this, they were amazed. So they left him and went away.

In this morning’s lectionary reading, Matthew’s account clearly explains to us that the Pharisees are trying to use this question – a question about taxes – to try to trick Jesus. If Jesus were to say that it was legal to pay taxes to the hated Roman government, it might cost him popularity with the people. If he said it was a violation of Jewish law to pay the tax, that could be used against him with the Roman government.

Jesus’ answer to this tricky question was to ask someone to show him the denomination of coin that one needed to pay the tax. Some of you may remember a year or two ago when we went to the Nashville Convention Center to see the “Abraham to Jesus” exhibit. If I am remembering correctly, the actually had one of those coins on display. It was very small, about the size of a dime, and it had Caesar’s face on it, just as Jesus got one of his questioners to admit.

And since the coin used to pay the tax had Caesar’s face on it, that seems to indicate that it was part of Caesar’s world, and not the world of Jewish law.

Even so, Jesus’ answer – as clever as it was in dealing with a rhetorical trap – raises some questions for us. Jesus said we should give Caesar, or “render unto Caesar,” from the traditional translations, what belongs to him, and give God what belongs to God. But doesn’t everything belong to God? Even gold, and the human face, and systems of government and economics? I’ve heard many sermons and read many lessons that caution us against being “Sunday morning Christians” and separating the outward trappings of our religion from the rest of our life. Is Jesus really saying that some things belong to God and others don’t?

Well, no, I don’t really think so. I think it’s clear from many other Bible passages that we are to consider every aspect of our lives, every penny in our bank account, every moment of the day as if it belongs to God.

In that case, what does it mean to “render unto Caesar”? If everything is God’s, what is left for us to give Caesar? How, exactly, are we supposed to “render unto Caesar” and react to the society around us?

God calls us to be in the world, but not of the world. That’s a hard balance to strike for any Christian. Some Christians, like the Amish or monks or nuns from certain religious orders, separate themselves from the world. Others have conformed to the culture to such a degree that there no longer seems to be anything distinctive or Christian about them – they are those “Sunday morning Christians” I mentioned earlier, for whom their faith means nothing more than spending an hour in the pews once a week.

I’ve just finished reading a terrific book – one of the best I’ve read in some time – called “Culture Making,” by Andy Crouch. Crouch talks about popular culture and the different ways that we in the church respond to it – by critiquing it, by consuming it, and by copying it. Crouch maintains that any of those three approaches is appropriate as a “gesture” — an individual response to an individual situation. But some Christians or churches fall into adopting one or the other as a full-time “posture.”

For example, there are some Christians who spend so much time criticizing the world that they don’t have any chance to talk about the positive message of the gospel. The Christians who circulate petitions or threaten a boycott every time some movie or TV show or CD offends them aren’t offering anything in its place – all they’re doing is offending the people who like those particular movies or TV shows – and somebody must like them, or else Hollywood wouldn’t be able to make any money off them.

In fact, sometimes our protests bring additional publicity to what we’re protesting. Would “The Da Vinci Code” have done as well as it did at the box office without all of the negative publicity of churches and Christians complaining about it? Probably not!

There are other Christians whose full-time posture is to consume popular culture. They watch all the same movies and TV shows, and listen to all the same music as non-Christians, and don’t really put much thought into what messages are being included or how this media diet is affecting them.

There are some elements of the Christian community who try to copy anything in popular culture and put a Christian spin on it. Those people think we always need a Christian heavy metal band, or a Christian rap artist, who sounds just like the latest secular artist, but who throws Jesus or “hallelujah” into the lyrics there somewhere. But that kind of shallow imitation frequently fails to impress. Today’s music is constantly changing, and by the time you’ve copied a style of music, something else is on the way and your copy sounds a day late and a dollar short.

Crouch says that there is a time for critique, a time for consumption, and a time for copying. But none of them should be our full-time approach to popular culture. Instead, Crouch says that two other “C” words – cultivating and creating – should be our full-time approach, our “posture,” as Christians.

We need to be the ones creating true art – all kinds of art, without the artificial boundaries of “religious” or “secular.” We need to be the ones helping to encourage and support worthy creative endeavors by our fellow Christians, to make true creativity and high artistic standards a cornerstone of what we teach at church-related schools and what we insist on in our own family’s education. We don’t need to insist that every artistically talented young Christian write about Jesus; it’s just as important that Christians write songs or screenplays about love, or life, or loss.

So we can “render unto Caesar” by creating and cultivating a culture that promotes artistic excellence.

We can “render unto Caesar” by working to make our community a better place. The current talk about the economy is going to have an impact on charitable giving. We as Christians and as United Methodists need to support worthy church-related efforts, as has already been discussed this morning.

But Christians also need to give our time and attention to libraries and the cancer society and the United Way and the community theater and historic preservation and anything else that is going to make our community a better place in which to live. Those efforts also have the benefit of bringing us into contact with others and showing them the kind of life that we as Christians live and how our faith affects it.

Of course, the phrase “render unto Caesar” also has a sense of politics about it.

Those who were trying to question Jesus were hoping to use politics and religion as a way of dividing Jesus from his followers. I think that each of us, as a citizen, has a duty to participate in public life, and to vote when we are given that opportunity. No doubt, our beliefs as Christians will shape our attitudes towards particular candidates or particular matters of public policy. Christians have played a role in important civic and political movements in the past, such as abolition of slavery or the civil rights movement.

But it’s dangerous to try to use religion – in the outward, organized sense of that word – as a wedge to try to move things in the political world, just as it would be wrong for government to try to exert an influence on the world of organized religion. Christians on both ends of the political spectrum fall into this trap, from inner city churches to wealthy TV evangelists and authors.

When organized religion and organized government become too closely allied with each other, both are corrupted. The governments throughout history where religious and political power were too closely intertwined are not known either for good government or for true personal faith.

As we approach a presidential election, each of us is going to have to decide for himself or herself how to vote. Our choices will be shaped by our faith – but that doesn’t mean that two people with the same faith will come to the same conclusion about which candidate is best.

Charles Colson, the former Watergate felon who is now a leading figure in the evangelical community and in prison ministry, wrote in his column in Christianity Today that the civic duty of a Christian is to vote for whoever and whatever will serve the common good. Colson, and this is surprising to me, even quoted Martin Luther as saying that he, Martin Luther, would rather be ruled by a competent Turk than an incompetent Christian. Not all Christians feel that way, of course – for some, they want to know that the person in office shares their core beliefs. For others, it’s particular issues that matter. As Colson suggests, still others look for experience and competence.

Whatever your particular criteria might be, and whatever conclusion you reach about which candidates to support, I think it’s vitally important for us as Christians to fulfill our duty – to “render unto Caesar” — by being part of the process of government. That doesn’t just happen at election time, however. Just as Christians can’t just be naysayers when it comes to popular culture, we can’t just find ourselves every four years voting for the lesser of two evils.

We need to get involved in government, at all levels, at all stages in the process. We do that by staying informed, by trying to learn about what is really going on. And don’t think that just because some author or preacher or talk radio host claims to be a Christian means that you have to take everything they say as gospel. Find out for yourself, and don’t just trust one source for all your information.

But if we have to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, we also have to render unto God what is God’s – and, in fact, the two go hand in hand. The closer we are to God in our spiritual walk, the harder we try to understand God’s will in our own lives and the lives of those around us, the more it’s going to benefit our discernment as Christians.

And we need discernment. Going back to the idea of popular culture, we need to be able to watch a serious movie or read a good novel and figure out what it’s really saying. What are the good messages we can take away from it? What are the bad messages that we need to be aware of, and reject? The more complicated and serious a work of art is, the more likely it is to have a blend of both truthful messages and harmful ones. That doesn’t mean we run away from it; that means we use discernment.

It’s OK to watch something, as a Christian, and say, “well, I liked the way the movie was honest about our sinful nature, but I didn’t like the way it seemed to glamorize sexual conquest,” or what have you – to be informed consumers of popular culture, neither blindly rejecting everything or blindly taking in everything. It’s important, in fact, that we as Christians be aware – carefully and prayerfully aware — of popular culture if we are to understand it and react to it appropriately.

The same way, that sense of wisdom and discernment can help us decide how to work for a better community. No one candidate is going to have all the answers, and we need to guard against thinking so. Just as we need to be discerning with complicated works of art, we need to be discerning in the ways that we involve ourselves in the world of public policy and government and discerning about our choice of candidate.

That discernment comes from prayer, and study, and accountability. It comes from a recognition that we are God’s and must give our lives over to him.

So when Jesus tells us to “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and render unto God what is God’s,” he’s not really talking about two different things. We have to render unto God our whole lives and our full attention in order to render unto Caesar, and responsibly interact with the world around us.

END

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