Proper 24, Year A | Matthew 22:15-22
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
October 22, 2023
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
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“…he said to them, ‘Whose head is this, and whose title?’” – Matthew 22:20[1]
This week’s Gospel looks like a pretty straightforward application of the modern concept of the separation of Church and State, the idea that religion needs to settle down in one corner of our lives while politics isolates itself in a different space. It’s a genuinely noble ideal on a governmental level. Unfortunately, on a human level it’s incredibly difficult to keep the distinction between faithfulness to God and moral responsibility toward our neighbor, on the one hand, clear from laws and public expectations on the other. It seems like no matter how hard we try, one of the areas always begins to take over more and more internal territory until the other begins to feel pressured or even unwelcome. To keep both alive, we wind up either fragmenting our internal selves, causing our choices and actions to no longer reflect what Christ truly teaches, or we reject our previous associations, searching out our primary fellowship in a group of people that better fits what we already think. And that happens in every area of life, whether we’re talking about politics or music or even church decor—people will find reasons to divide themselves over just about anything. As Christians, we might argue that we’re making the changes for theological reasons, but I often find we’re really just trying to escape the discomfort that rises when we begin to recognize that Jesus’ call for repentance—to genuine, visible, practical change—isn’t just for “them,” whoever “they” might be; it’s for me.
Entertaining as the scene may be, Matthew’s story has some oddities built into it that we, approaching from a wildly different context thousands of years after the fact, are almost certain to miss. First off, we need to understand who Jesus is dealing with. The Pharisees were an influential religious sect within greater Judea during Jesus’ time and were known for encouraging everyone to follow Moses’ rules and customs as closely as they could. By doing so, they hoped that God would no longer punish Israel for its generations of disloyalty and instead bring them back to their rightful place of prominence as God’s “chosen people.” Herodians aren’t mentioned very frequently in world literature, but they appear to have been a political party, one most likely advocating for the social status quo: Rome’s in charge, which means Herod’s in charge; the only way to win is to be patriotic and play by the system. It’s a genuinely strange combination if you think about it. For us it would be something like the Green Party aligning itself with the Roman Catholic Church: not an impossible pairing, but not what we would typically expect.
When talking about Pharisees, it’s important to note that Pharisees weren’t bad people. They have a bad reputation because of how the New Testament recorded some of their leaders’ conflicts with Jesus. But most of them were like you and me—normal people just trying to manage their own lives while honoring God as well as they could from day to day. Pharisees weren’t inherently evil; they weren’t maliciously trying to make life harder for those around them. But, as happens throughout history, the negativity of a few of the more outspoken members of the group is all that people are left to remember.
Coming back to our text, we also need to be aware that, as Matthew presents it, all of this is taking place not only within the Temple grounds but not all that long after both Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem and his cleansing of the Temple, where he ran off the money changers, among others. That money-changing aspect is another significant item we miss. The Temple had its own special coinage, called a shekel. Regular, everyday money wasn’t allowed inside because of its genuinely idolatrous imagery and claims.[2] So when Jesus calls for someone to bring him a denarius—a Roman coin about the size of a dime—Matthew’s early readers would have noticed a sharp and meaningful contrast: Jesus, not having one of the coins, reveals himself as attentively following the requirements set for the Temple; the Pharisees and Herodians, commonly presumed to be upholders of “the law” in all its forms, openly compromise their integrity simply by handing over this forbidden item.
But there’s an even more significant detail here that we often overlook—or in the case of today’s translation, just plain can’t see. When Jesus talks about the coin, he specifically asks about the “head,” better translated “image.”[3] The term he chose would have directed all of those present to readings they had grown up hearing in their synagogues: “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness…So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them…”[4]
So Matthew isn’t showing us a scene where Jesus is simply approving of modern political philosophy, comically outwitting his opponents, or even quietly exposing their duplicity to everyone present, including themselves. Jesus is trying to upend our concept of what’s truly important in life; he’s reordering the universe at one of the most basic levels of human culture: money. Managed, produced, and glorified by Empire—the passion and pride of all humanity—money allows us not only to make our way through the world but to get our way, to buy whatever we might want, including the power to control the people around us, to make them conform to our interests and fit our wills. But God isn’t interested in adopting that kind power or influence. The demands we humans make on our neighbors, well intentioned as they may be, don’t give God any pleasure or glory. They often distract from—or even harm—what Jesus tells us is truly important. That’s because people, messy and frustrating as we may be to one another, are the currency of God’s Kingdom; people, collectively and individually stamped forever with God’s own image.
The lies of Empire run deep. We’ve all grown up with its whispers of superiority and self-righteousness, its silent guidance toward blind certainty in God’s approval of our own thoughts and expectations. For far too long even the Church has been trapped in this delusion, the idea that the Kingdom comes only when everyone looks and acts and thinks like us. The truth is, God’s Kingdom is already here, and it has been longer than recorded history. Heaven’s coinage has flooded the world billions of times over. God’s image might not look exactly how we always hope or expect, but it abounds almost anywhere we can look. Hard as it may be for us to recognize, the basis and core of God’s economy—the currency of the Kingdom—is something we encounter continually: at the store, on the street corner, even on the pew near you right now.
In this brief exchange, Jesus shows us what’s most important to God—what’s always been most important to God. That being the case, I’d like us each to pause and take a few moments to consider, what is most important to me? What is it that drives my choices in my everyday life—in my work, in my interactions, in my religion, in every single decision I made regarding not only myself but others? What do I value most greatly—my neighbor, or my comfort? And does my life—my physical actions and interactions—reflect God’s values, or should I take this opportunity to change so I might better reveal the Divine image inherent in each of us? What is my inmost desire? Is my life directed toward power, control, or any of the other coinage of Empire? Or do I truly long for the flourishing of what God values most—the currency of the Kingdom?
“…he said to them, ‘Whose image is this?’”
[1] All Bible quotations are from the NRSV unless otherwise noted.
[2] The Temple’s concerns about the coins being blasphemous or idolatrous had merit, even by today’s standards. On our coins and currency, we generally have a former president or other famous American’s face along with text saying, “In God We Trust”—a vague statement that never specifies who or what that god is. Roman coinage was a lot more bold. People argue about exactly which kind of coin Jesus’ opponents presented. The most likely candidate is a Tiberian denarius, which had an image of the current Emperor on one side and a picture of the goddess Pax on the other. The side with the emperor’s face read, essentially, “Tiberius Caesar, Son of the Divine Augustus,”—a title meaning “magnificent” which was generally reserved for religious contexts—“himself Augustus.” The text on the side with Pax then said, “Pontif Maximus,” meaning “priest above all.” So this common coin literally declared that the Emperor was a supreme being in both the economy of the Empire and its religion. The second most likely candidate for a coin was even more explicit, directly calling Tiberius “God.”
[3] Greek εἰκὼν (eikon) | The term is the source of the English word “icon.”
[4] Genesis 1:26a, 27 | The commonly read Septuagint used the same Greek word in its translation of the Hebrew Bible.