Flip a coin, and it’s either heads or tails. This is a tried and true way of making a random but fair decision. Who gets the first kickoff at the football game? Or which child gets to be first in the game at the party. Heads or tails, which is it?
Whichever it is, a decision is made. It’s one or the other: it’s either heads or tails. You can’t have both. This is something of what Jesus confronts in the loaded question posed by the Pharisees. The Pharisees have set Jesus up for failure, either way you slice it. If you agree that one can pay taxes to the Roman government, then you are, in some sense, betraying your brother and sister Judeans who are being oppressed by Roman rule. You also risk offending God by giving more praise to Caesar the emperor. On the other hand, by refusing to pay taxes, you commit treason against the Roman government. So which is it: heads or tails?
Not for the first time, Jesus is unbelievably clever. It’s heads and tails, he says. You can pay taxes to Caesar and at the same time give God his due. They are not mutually exclusive. The Pharisees are boxed into a corner. They have been bested by Jesus. They leave, marveling, but they will be back.
But today, let’s stay with the coin that gets flipped. There may have been no literal flipping of a coin in Jesus’ encounter with the Pharisees, but those Pharisees were asking Jesus to pick a side. And, in the wily scenario in which they try to entrap Jesus, you couldn’t be on both sides. It was either heads or tails.
The coin that the Pharisees presented to Jesus was unlike our American coins. Think of the penny: on one side is an image of Abraham Lincoln, along with the words “in God we trust.” On the other is the United States motto: e pluribus unum. It seems that, even in a nation founded on the separation of Church and state, God and government are intended as two sides of the same coin.
This wasn’t the case with the coin Jesus asked the Pharisees to produce. This coin established quite clearly that the emperor, Caesar Augustus Tiberius, was a part of the lineage of emperors that had acquired near divine status. This two-sided coin was all about Caesar. God was nowhere to be found on it.
We might ask the same question the Pharisees directed to Jesus: is it lawful to pay taxes? Is it lawful to be invested in a secular government? Should we have any part in the affairs of the world, or should we run away from it? Flip the coin: heads or tails? If you pick heads, well, you get some reference to God. If you pick tails, then you’re only in the civic sphere. But flip the coin, and you know that you can’t choose both sides.
Or at least, that’s what many would have us believe, even today. And there are many who want to trip us up, just like those who did the same to Jesus. In our increasingly polarized world, we are told that we always need to flip coins. Heads or tails? Pick one, but don’t pick both. Some would like to blur the lines between state and religion, even at the risk of selling a corrupt Christianity. Pick one leader, and you get Christianity with it. Pick the wrong leader, and you’re on the dark side. Modern hypocrites proclaim that if support this candidate, you are supporting the ways of God. If you vote that way, you are on the side of evil. Others say that you can only have the worldly ruler and God is irrelevant.
Choosing a side is unavoidable in some sense. You have to vote for one candidate for a particular office. And it may be that one candidate represents a more just and godly path. That’s clear enough. But there are some who want to force us into dueling sides where there need not be a duel. Some people are more interested in throwing down the gauntlet when there’s really no gauntlet to throw.
And this is what Jesus confronted, and this is what Jesus upended. Jesus was not some mealy-mouthed politician. Jesus showed us quite unequivocally that one can indeed render to the emperor his things and also be utterly devoted to God.
And yet this can seem like a difficult thing, today, can’t it? In some places, the government embodies much that stands against what God desires for the world. Rulers throughout history have embodied evil, and people have rightly resisted, and continue to resist, this evil with all their being.
And so, returning to the central question posed by the Pharisees to Jesus, can you render to the government its due while also being loyal to God? And Jesus says yes. Jesus says that God does not make you pick sides in the way the world so often wants us to.
Here’s the coin that Jesus offers us. On one side is the image of a human being. On the other side, there is a clear reference to God. So, which side do you choose? God or humankind? God or the world? And Jesus’ answer is yes.
Mired in rigidly opposing loyalties, we have forgotten, at times, that loving the world, living in the world, and caring for the world doesn’t have to be at odds with God. It’s part of what loving God is all about.
The human being is not intended to be opposed to God. The human being is made in the image of God, is oriented towards God. And too often, we flip the coin: heads or tails? Which will it be? Choose the world or choose God. Choose those made in the image of God or choose God. And God longs for us to see both sides of the coin.
When we look at both sides of the coin, we see this: on one side the image of a human being, prone to sin, marred by systemic evil in the world, constantly turning her or his back on God but still possessing an internal navigation system magnetically pulled towards God. On the other we see the image of the One who created us and draws us more into his likeness.
The coin handed to us by Jesus is of one piece. It’s not a game of heads or tails. We came from goodness, and although we have lost our way, God intends to draw us back to that primal goodness. The human side of the coin is disfigured and coated with mud from being dropped in the mud too many times, but it’s nothing that a good cleaning wouldn’t fix. When we look at both sides of the coin, we can perhaps remember that we worship a God who humbled himself to share our humanity so that we might share the divine life.
It remains true that too many people do not know how to remain devoted to God and still live in the world. They are so used to picking sides that they can’t integrate both of them. Worldly Caesars threaten to occupy both sides of the coin by usurping some sort of divine status. And God becomes an irrelevant side of the coin. Pick or choose: heads or tails?
But when Jesus gives us permission to render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s, he reminds us that we do not have to choose sides. The world does not have to be at odds with God. It can be and often chooses to be, but it doesn’t have to be.
God is not in a game of competition. God does not require our material sacrifices, unlike Caesars who thrive on it. God doesn’t need our money or our worship or anything. God has no need of any of this to be God. God’s very nature is characterized by this freedom, and this is why God is so different from worldly rulers.
But God is deserving of our worship and praise. It is rightly given to him. And when we are told to render to God the things that are God’s, we are asked to render our very selves. It is our duty to offer our selves, our souls and bodies, and our worship and praise to God. It is our duty to integrate our whole lives in this world with the divine call.
The tribute tax about which the Pharisees ask Jesus was required of Judeans who were under oppressive rule by a hated government. It was a government that was an alien intrusion on a people who were yet required to pay money for being oppressed subjects. But our status as citizens in God’s kingdom is different. God requires no payment for citizenship in the kingdom of heaven except the offering of our whole selves to him.
God does not need to be fed with material things as a condition of his rule over us. And when God rules over us, it is only to draw us back to himself in love, so that the whole world might be reconciled to God.
When we offer our full selves to God, we begin to reclaim that image of God in which we were all made. Although our loyalty should be unswervingly devoted to God, we can be faithful to God and still live in the world. Indeed, because of the Incarnation, it is imperative that we do so.
In our life in God, there’s no need to choose sides. On one side of the coin, see that human face, tarnished by sin though it may be, and remember that it was wonderfully created in the image of God. The image is still there if you go deep enough. On the other side of the coin, see the image of the One in whose likeness you were made. But never forget who made the coin. Try to recall from whence you came, and know that with God’s grace, that is where he intends for you to end up.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost
October 18, 2020