13 Later they sent some of the Pharisees and Herodians to Jesus to catch him in his words. 14 They came to him and said, “Teacher, we know that you are a man of integrity. You aren’t swayed by others, because you pay no attention to who they are; but you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not? 15 Should we pay or shouldn’t we?” But Jesus knew their hypocrisy. “Why are you trying to trap me?” he asked. “Bring me a denarius and let me look at it.” 16 They brought the coin, and he asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?” “Caesar’s,” they replied. 17 Then Jesus said to them, “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.” And they were amazed at him. (Mark 12:13-17)
What are your politics Jesus? That is what these questioners sent by the Pharisees and the Herodians want to know. They trot out a specific and highly contentious political issue in an attempt to trip Jesus up. The Pharisees and Sadducees were theological and often political opponents. If you grew up going to church then you are familiar with the shenanigans of the Pharisees and Sadducees. Here we have some operatives of the Pharisees and the Herodias interacting with Jesus. The Herodias were sympathizers of Roman rule. They liked the polilital power it afforded them. Pharisees wanted the Romans gone and figured the best way to do that was by being as holy as possible. However, the Pharisees, for all their faithful study and devotion to the law, never considered that their view of God might be wrong. Both groups wanted Jesus to fail. They want him shamed and discredited.
Thus they ask Jesus a continuous question. Asking about taxes and political issues were just as continuous then as they are now. Basically they want to know something like “What are your politics Jesus?” What is your political persuasion? Jesus to what political party are you a member?
It is important to understand the background of the question being posed to Jesus. The tax that is being asked about is not about taxes in general. It is a particular tax. A clue about the tax being asked about is given to us when Jesus asks for a denarius. In Jesus' day, there were lots of taxes but there was one particular tax called the head tax. The head tax was an annual tax of one denarius. It was a tax for the privilege of being a subject of Caesar.
About 25 years before the story of Mark 12 a revolt of the Jewish people was started over the head tax. A man named Judas the Galilean led the revolt. He called on all Jews to not pay the tax. He gathered up some men, who armed themselves with swords and spears, and that cleansed the temple. They threw out all the foreigners, Gentiles and Romans who were at the Temple. Then Judas announced that God’s Kingdom was coming into the world and God was now the King of Jerusalem not Caesar. He was a rebel and was eventually caught and executed by the Romans. About 25 years later Jesus starts his ministry and his main topic was the Kingdom of God. On top of that he too had just cleansed the temple. The actions of Jesus seem familiar and questions arise. Jesus what do you think of the head tax?
If you have heard this story multiple times before, you might have lost sight of the predicament that Jesus is in. If Jesus were to say, “Yes, pay the tax”, then he would be viewed as supporting Roman rule. If Jesus were to say, “Don’t pay the tax”, then he is aligning himself with those who want to revolt against Roman rule. Often when people ask questions there is a question behind the question. The question behind the question they are asking Jesus is something like are you a revolutionary?
Can you see where the question is coming from? Jesus you have cleansed the temple and you have been talking about the Kingdom of God. All of this sounds like something that has happened before that was all connected to the head tax. So, Jesus, what do you think about the head tax? Are you calling for an armed revolt against the Romans or are you saying that all your talk about the Kingdom of God is bogus.
The Kingdom of God was the main message of Jesus. It is what he spent his time talking about. All of Jesus’s parables are about the Kingdom of God. The Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7 is all about the Kingdom of God. The healings that Jesus performs are all about signs pointing to the Kingdom of God. When Jesus talks about the Kingdom of God he is not talking about some metaphorical Kingdom of God that lives in a person’s heart nor is he offering to bring people an inner sense of peace. When Jesus speaks of the Kingdom of God he is tapping into a long told story. The Old Testament prophets, such as Isaiah,1 offer all kinds of thoughts, imagines and hopes for the day when God’s Kingdom arrives on earth. When Jesus starts his ministry he kicks it off by saying ““The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!”” (Mark 1:15) Over and over again the words and actions of Jesus all point to the Kingdom of God being near (breaking into the world). In other words when Jesus talked about the Kingdom of God he was talking about something that has implications for daily living.
In American culture things that are considered religious are things that are to be kept private. It is all the fallout from the Enlightenment project. Long story short is that the Enlightenment offered a new way of thinking. Thinking became personal. The more an individual could disentangle themselves from church doctrine, family ties and traditions the more that person was free and authentic. If this is true then anything considered religion or spiritual had no bearing on the real world. What truly matters is rational thought free from any constraints. Thus in American culture things that are spiritual are highly personal matters that are not to be brought into the public square. For most Americans, then, this creates a separation between spiritual matters and political matters or real life issues and spiritual issues.
In most cultures over most centuries people didn’t think like that. They figured your religion had everything to do with every area of your daily living. In the ancient world to speak of politics was to speak about how you organized your daily life. In Jesus’s day there was no such thing as a separation between things considered spiritual and that which was labeled political. When Jesus talks about the Kingdom of God he is not about a private spiritual matter. The term Kingdom of God can be found in both the Old and New Testament. The Kingdom of God, according to the Bible, deals with real poverty, injustice, suffering and hunger. In Jesus’ first sermon in Luke 4:18-19 Jesus quotes a passage from Isaiah that talks about the Kingdom of God. He then says” “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”” The phrase “The year of the Lord's favor” is code for the Kingdom of God. This is no private spiritual matter. When Jesus talks about the Kingdom of God he is living and acting as if God ruled the world. If God rules the world then this is a challenge to all other Kings and Kingdoms and systems that are unjust.
If Jesus says, “Yes, pay the tax”, then the Kingdom of God is nothing more than some spiritual thing to bring you inner peace. It has no bearing on daily life and certainly poses no challenge to the Kingdoms of this world including the Romans. If he says, “No, don’t pay the tax”, he will be crushed by the authorities. He would be challenging Roman rule and all of the unjust systems that prevented the poor from getting justice and protected the powerful and allowed greed to create hunger. Walter Wink, in his book The Powers That Be, puts it this way “The gospel, then, is not a message about the salvation of individuals from the world, but news about a world transfigured, right down to its basic structures.”2
Jesus asks for a denarius. A Denarius in Jesus day had a picture of Tiberius Caesar on one side and on the other it had an inscription that read, “Tiberius Caesar Son of the God of Augustus, priest and King.” So Jesus holds up a coin that says Son of God, priest and King and asks whose image is on the coin? They say Caesar. Then Jesus tells them to give to Caesar the things that are Caesars and to God the things that are God’s. Give Caesar the thing that has his image on it. It is his coin so give it to him but give to God what has his image on.
Give to Caesar that which is his but don’t give him your allegiance. What does a tyrant deserve? Maybe he deserves his money back but he also deserves some resistance. Give to Caesar what is Caesar's. Yet you can’t give to Caesar what he ultimately wants. Caesar wants your loyalty. Caesar wants your allegiance in the system he created that is built on injustice, coercion and exclusion. Give Caesar his little coin back but don’t give him your allegiance. Give to God what is God’s. Jesus of Galilee was offering a different kind of revolution than that of Judas the Galilean. Jesus was saying neither acceptance of the system nor an armed revolt like that of Judas the Galilean. Jesus is signaling that a revolution is happening just not in the way you thought.
The coin that Jesus asked to see gives us two claims. Both Jesus and Caesar say I am the King, the Son of God and a High priest. One King has all the coins in the world and the other is broke, he has to ask for a coin. One King says I bring peace (Pax Romana) at the point of a bloody sword and the other King kills no one. All revolts are about someone wanting power, recognition, money and success. Jesus is a King without a quarter, heals and seeks no recognition, and by the standards of the world is a failure due to his death. Jesus’ Kingdom of God revolution is not driven by power, money or success (as the world might view it).
There is much more that can be said about Jesus and his message about the Kingdom of God. A few places to learn more would be to read the books Simply Good News by NT Wright and or The King Gospel by Scot McKnight. Both of these books revisit Jesus’ teaching about the Kingdom of God. My simple point is this, that Jesus’ talk about the Kingdom of God has real world implications. In other words, saying you are a follower of Jesus means that you are seeking to participate in the Kingdom of God in the here and now. That means a re-examination of one’s allegiances is in order. It means questioning the separation of spiritual and real world matters. It means questioning the ways we have been complicit in systems that have perpetuated injustice.
At one point the disciples ask Jesus to show them how to pray. Jesus responds by giving them what is known as The Lord’s Prayer. Part of the Lord’s prayer goes, “Your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” (Matthew 6:10) What could happen in your life if you considered what it would look like if heaven was present in the here and now. That is what Jesus got started by his resurrection and he is wondering if we will continue the project.
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