What belongs to Caesar?
Gospel Reading: Matthew 22:15-22
For Sunday, Oct.16 , 2011: Year A—Ordinary 29
In the first chapter of Genesis, the Torah teaches that God made Adam, and the human race, in the image of God. What does this mean?
Sanhedrin Sez…
The ancient rabbis taught:
Adam, the first human being, was created as a single person to show forth the greatness of the Ruler who is beyond all rulers, the Blessed Holy One. For if a human ruler [like Caesar, the Roman Emperor who was the ruler in the time and place of the Rabbi’s writing] mints many coins from one mold, they all carry the same image, they all look the same. But the Blessed Holy One shaped all human beings in the Divine Image, as Adam was…and yet not one of them resembles another. (Sanhedrin 38a)
The rabbis drew an analogy between the image a human ruler, Caesar, puts upon the coins of the realm, and the image the Infinite Ruler puts upon the many “coins” of humankind.
Limited Uniformity
The very diversity of human faces shows the unity and infinity of God, whereas the uniformity of imperial coins makes clear the limitations of the power of an emperor.
The Emperor, or the Empire, or the Masters of The Universe (to quote Tom Wolfe) or the Money guys/image makers—are limited. They are limited in their power.
Pledging Allegiance
Pledging one's allegiance to the empire by consuming everything one is asked to consume or thinking everything one is told to think, choosing between red and blue, will not help you to love your neighbor, know who you neighbor is, will not help you to become the person you were meant to be, give you peace or contentment.
The empire does not have the power to do anything like that. The empire cannot love you.
Reconciling Creation
Empire and power seeking always looks the same, but the continuing creation of God is both unified and diverse. The limitless possibilities unfold in the continuing of God’s creation by the life and lives he has minted.
Sometime this ongoing creation stumbles, produces oppression and violence, but there is nothing that has come into being that has not come into being the creator of life or the Word spoken into the world. There is also nothing the will not be reconciled by God. So, empires, oppression, the disenfranchised and the pursuers of power will all be reconciled to God’s self.
Pledge to Consume
Pledging ones allegiance to the empire by consuming everything one is asked to consume or thinking everything one is told to think, choosing between red and blue, will not help you to love your neighbor, know who you neighbor is, will not help you to become the person you were meant to be, give you peace or contentment. The empire does not have the power to do anything like that. The empire cannot love you.
The Hardest Question
When Jesus tells the Pharisees, render to Caesar what is Caeser's and to God what is God’s, it is a clever answer, it gets him out of the trap, but I am not exactly sure what it means. All that is, is God’s unfolding creation, being reconciled to God’s self, through God’s self. So, what belongs to Caesar?
Russell Rathbun is a preacher at House of Mercy in St. Paul, Minnesota, the author of Midrash on the Juanitos (Cathedral Hill Press, 2010) and the curator of The Hardest Question.
