What Belongs to God?

Then the Pharisees went on and held a meeting about how to entrap him with his own words. They sent their students along with the Herodians to him to say, “Teacher, we know that you are truthful and you truly teach the path of God, not caring what anyone thinks of you because you don’t defer to those with high status. So tell us, what do you think? Is it right to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?” “Pretenders!” Jesus said to them, knowing their corruption, “Why are you posing tests for me? Show me the coin used for the census tax.” So, they brought him a denarius. “Whose image and inscription are these?” “Caesar,” they told him. “Then repay the things of Caesar to Caesar and the things of God to God,” he responded. At hearing him, they were confounded, so they left him and went away.
— Matthew 22:15–22 (LIT) https://www.litbible.net/matthew-22#v15-22

I used to believe that the only moral position a Christian could take in elections was to abstain from voting.

After all, no candidate could meet the true moral standard of Christianity; each one promoted evil in their own way, and everyone was corrupt. There was no ethical choice, so I refrained from voting, believing my political stance was not neutral but was a protest against the systems of the world.

I had no thought for how my apathy—that’s what it really was—would affect the people I called neighbors.

A friend of mine was a barista at the local coffee hub I was at almost daily. He was gay. In the early two-thousands, queer people did not have the same rights as other folk. I didn’t think about how my “protest” could keep him from legislation that would benefit him and all queer people.

That’s just one example—people of color, those under the poverty line, women; I could go on—of how my choice to refrain from participating in politics sided me with the status quo, which kept people in the same place, which meant they remained in their oppression.

I wasn’t being a “good Christian.” I was being a bad neighbor.

The question in my mind was, “How can I (selfishly) keep my (again selfish) conscience clear and feel good about every choice I (see a pattern) make?”

It was never, “What is the best way to participate in the freedom of those around me?”

I was giving the things of God to Caesar.

When Jesus answers a question about paying taxes, he doesn’t appeal to the conscience. He doesn’t appeal to Torah. He doesn’t even appeal to a good morality. Jesus’ answer rested simply on the image and the inscription.

Most Roman coin (which is what paid the Roman tax) had the image of Caesar on them, and the denarius (the coin used to pay tax in the Judaean region) had this inscription on it, “Tiberius Caesar Augustus, Son of the Divine Augustus.”

So, what does all this have to do with loving your neighbor?

Everything.

Here’s the truth: all people (the worst of us included) are created in the Imago Dei, the image of God. We are the shape of divinity. We are the likeness of the eternal one. We hold in, on, and through us what God’s image is. Just like the Roman coin held the image of Caesar.

The image of Caesar that was stamped on the coins told everyone that they belonged not to the holder of the coin, but to the image the coin bore. That’s why taxes made sense: you were giving back to the emperor what was his because of the image it bore.

Since we bear the image of God, perhaps giving each other to God through care and honoring the Imago Die is the way we begin to truly fight the systems of oppression, scarcity, and fear. When we care for each other, we are admitting the value each one of us intrinsically has. To ignore the plight, the pain, the oppression of other people is to overlook, deny, and ignore their worth.

A coin bearing the image of Caesar held worth; how much more valuable are humans bearing the image of God?

We have to take care of each other, acknowledging the value and worth of each and every one of us. Politics is part of that care. So is mutual aid. So is solidarity. So is presence. So is feeding people. So is harm reduction. So is housing services. So is addiction treatment. So is protesting in the streets. So is… The list goes on and on.

This is what it means (in part) to give God the things that are God’s.

Jesus’ question had two parts: one was whose head was on the coin, what image it bore, who valued the coin and who owned the coin.

The next part of the question was a bit deeper, even though on the surface it seemed to simply be a question about wording. Jesus asked, “Whose title” was on the coin.

The straightforward answer was Caesar’s title, but what was that title? The inscription read, “Tiberius Caesar Augustus, Son of the Divine Augustus.” It was lettering that called Tiberius the son of god.

Tiberius’ father, Ceasar Augustus, had declared himself to be divine and worthy of worship. So, Tiberius carried on the family name and became the son of god, also worthy of worship.

“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.”

This was the first commandment given from Sini to Israel. This was a holy commandment, rooted in the liberatory salvation work that God displayed in bringing a people out of slavery in Egypt and making them God’s own people. God alone had done these mighty works, and God alone was worthy of the worship of the Jewish people.

Here is Israel again, occupied and oppressed by Rome. The emperor of their captivity is now demanding worship, now claiming divinity, now calling himself the son of god.

So what do the people do? Do they acknowledge the divine heritage of Ceasar Tiberius, going along with Rome for the sake of peace and stability, even if it’s at the expense of their identity and liberty? Or, do they faithfully worship God alone, not giving in to the cult of Caesar worship? Do they move with the Empire, or act as a stone in the stream, remaining faithful in protest of the claim?

Maybe that’s overdramatizing the situation, but this is the ultimate question: would the people worship God or Caesar?

“Give to God the things that are God’s.”

Worship belongs to the one who can liberate, not the one that enslaves.

I don’t know what your relationship with God or the divine is, but for the people of Judea in the first century, worshiping God was an identity piece, something integral to their idea of who they were as a people.

Jesus was calling the people back to faithful worship of God only… all the while knowing he was the true son of God.

Jesus had the true claim to the title “Son of God.” And in that claim, he challenged everything that Rome was, that Rome stood for, and that Rome worshiped.

Jesus, in telling the people to give to God what is God’s, was urging the people to follow the greatest commandment: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.

The emperor can have his coin and his play at divinity. The people of God were called to remain faithful in their work and their worship.

This is what we are being called to now by these words of Jesus. We are being called away from the affairs and unfaithfulness of the empire to faithful work caring for each other and in doing so bringing honor to the divine, whatever that may be for you.

For me, God always was, always is, and always will be love. God is the shape of love, the embodiment of love in Jesus, the action of love. Through kenosis—the emptying of Godself of God hood and obediently becoming one of us—sacrifice, solidarity, and promise God displays love for us. The Spirit moves to show us how to dismantle this system of fear, violence, and oppression. And the way, the Jesus way, is loving each other like God loves us.

We belong to each other; that’s how we get out of this. AND we belong to God, not to empire. We are not stamped with the image of the modern Caesars, nor are we inscribed with their claims to worship. We remain Imago Dei, the image of God, the image of love, and we know that what is inscribed on our hearts, the worship we are called to, is loving God and loving each other.

So, yes, give to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, but give to God the things that are God’s.

Let the world be amazed.