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In Whose Image…
If you are old enough you will remember the 1990s-television ad campaign for Canon cameras featuring the then very young Andre Agassi. He was a brash young tennis pro sporting long hair, a head band, and was ready to take on the world. He was flashy, a media star, a great tennis player. He was hot, happening, the icon of cool. At the end of the commercial he looks into the camera – into your soul and simply says, “Image is everything.”
And it seemed like that when we were teenagers. Back then – sure we were alone – all us spent some time inspecting our image, gazing into mirrors, creating the face we want the world to see. Practicing a smile, a frown, a smirk, seeing what we would look like with spiked hair or getting our hair just so. I can’t speak for the ladies present, but if we guys are honest, there was some time spent flexing not-yet developed muscles and convincing ourselves we were ripped. Time did not erode the inclination. In our middle years, we check the mirror to make sure we project confidence, competence, and all the market place and business requires. In our later years, we gaze into the mirror to wonder where the lines on our faces came from and where our hair is going. Image is indeed something.
At first blush it all seems terribly vain and shallow, but…we must value something about images… between our cell phones, our camera, and all the other devices that are photo-capable, we capture, post, share, and print tons of images – to share, decorate, and ultimately to remember. I know that I can review my life in the series of images I have stuffed in albums, boxes, desk drawers, cases and a hundred places I have set aside and cannot recall. The oldest ones are polaroid and Kodak black and white images, eventually evolving into the first Kodachrome color images. Then came the digital age. Now my photographed-life is on a hard drive and occasionally posted on-line somewhere.
Images of a lifetime. Images that tell a story – the story of our lives. And they whisper to us… remember what you look like – what you have been, what you are and what you are becoming. Maybe image is everything – at least in the story they can tell…. If we would listen to the whispers. In those whispers are reflections of the mirrors of our soul; reminders of a time when we glanced in a real mirror.
Caesar would have understood. “Show me the coin that pays the census tax.” Then they handed him the Roman coin. He said to them, “Whose image is this and whose inscription?” They replied, “Caesar’s.” The Roman Emperor looked into his mirror and wanted to see a reflection of power, stability and prosperity. And he wanted that image on every coin. Each Roman coin told a story… and they sold an image. Pax Romana – the peace of Rome. For an Emperor, image was everything. He wanted to remind you that everything belonged to him. That you belonged to him.
“Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.”
What is it that belongs to God? Surprisingly enough, Jesus is trying to answer that question for the Pharisees by telling them that Image is important. If you only look at the coin you can be seduced into believing Caesar. If you look into the mirror of your life and only see your own face staring back, you can also be deceived.
What should we look into so that we are not deceived? There is an adage that says to read the newspaper in one hand with the gospel in the other. Perhaps our parallel wisdom for today is to glance into the images of our lives with one hand while holding the gospel in the other. We need to take St. Paul’s suggestion from the 2nd reading and peer into the gospel that came in power and in the Holy Spirit. We need to look to the image that Isaiah would have us consider and remember – when we peer into the mirror that we know:
- We are created in the image of One who chooses us in love and calls us by name.
- We are created in the image of One who anoints us and gives us a title.
- We are created in the image of One who unbars all the gates, opens all the doors, and grasps us by the hand.
- We are created in the image of One who is always with us – who loved us so much he became one of us
In the exchange with leaders of Jerusalem, Jesus isn’t asking us “How much do we owe?” He is asking them to shake off the amnesia, for they have forgotten who they are, in whose likeness they were made.
We are a people who are called to look into the mirror of our lives, into the mirror of this day, into the mirror of the gospel, and see in ourselves the Image of Christ – an image we are called to reflect into the world. To be people in the world that if Christianity were a crime, we would surely be charged and convicted. We are called to be the imago Dei in the world and point to the Reign of God.
Like Agassi at the end of the commercial, Jesus looks into our souls and in the final judgment will simply say, “Image is everything.”
Giving Back
This coming Sunday is the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time. The word “give” in Jesus’ answer, can mean “give back” (apodidomi). The word was used in the sense of “paying back” a debt in the parable of the unforgiving servant (18:25, 26, 28, 29, 30, 34). It is the word used of the new tenants who will “give (back)” the owner the fruit at the proper time (21:41). The word carries the sense of giving (back) that which already belongs to the other person. How do we know what things belong to Caesar? They have his image on them! How do we know what things belong to God? They have God’s image on them!
The word for “image” (eikon) is used in the LXX in Gen 1:26-27: “Then God said, “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; male and female he created them.” And in Gen 5:1: “This is the list of the descendants of Adam. When God created humankind, he made them in the likeness of God.” And in Gen 9:6: “. . . for in his own image God made humankind.” What are we to give to God? The things stamped with God’s image. That would be us! We are to give God ourselves, our whole selves, not just some part.
When they heard this they were amazed, and leaving him they went away. As Keener (526) notes: “Here people marvel at Jesus’ response (22:22); elsewhere people marvel at his teaching (7:28), his nature miracles (8:27), his healing (9:8), his exorcism (12:23), and in the Passion Narrative Pilate marvels at Jesus’ silence (27:14). In all these cases, Jesus confounds others’ expectations.”
Still there is much to consider. While Matthew is clear that loyalty to God is a different and higher category than loyalty to Caesar, this text is not instruction on how people who live in a complex world of competing loyalties may determine what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God. It simply declares that the distinction between what belongs to Caesar (as some things do) and what belongs to God (the ultimate loyalty) must be made, and he leaves it to readers in their own situations to discern, in the light of our own life to ponder the distinction (cf. 5:21–48).
A final thought; as Patricia Datchuck Sánchez notes: “Perhaps it is tempting to be amused at the picayune bickering of the Pharisees and Herodians; but they were intelligent enough to realize that Jesus had given them cause to reflect. Rather than be entertained by Jesus’ one-upsmanship it might be better to join the Pharisees and Herodians in considering his challenge, “give to God what is God’s.”
Image credit: The Tribute Money, Peter Paul Rubens (1610–1615), Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, Public Domain PD-US
An Underlying Thought
This coming Sunday is the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time. Jesus’ answer calls into question the basic presupposition behind their question, that there is an essential incompatibility between loyalty to the governing authority and loyalty to God. This was precisely Judas the Galilean’s position as explained by Josephus (War 2.118 and Ant. 18.23): to pay the tax was to tolerate a mortal sovereign in place of God. It was loyalty to God which was the basis for Zealots’ objections to Roman taxation, but Jesus, without reducing the demands of loyalty to God, indicates that political allegiance even to a pagan state is not incompatible with it. This is not a rigid division of life into the ‘sacred’ and the ‘secular’, but rather a recognition that the ‘secular’ finds its proper place within the overriding claim of the ‘sacred’.
It is possible to pay one’s dues both to the emperor and to God, to be both a dutiful citizen and a loyal servant of God. This principle, more fully expounded in Rom 13:1–7 and 1 Peter 2:13–17, has now been so widely recognized for so long that it causes no surprise to many of us in many parts of the world, but in first-century Palestine under Roman rule it was not at all so obvious. The theocratic basis of OT Israel, even if it had not been able to prevent periods of tyranny under unscrupulous rulers, had at least in theory held its rulers accountable to God. But the Roman emperor was not under Israel’s God, or indeed under any god—according to imperial propaganda he was a god. But Jesus’ response here puts him in his place: it is possible to be subject to the emperor as ruler, but at the same time to honor God as God
Jesus’ answer may also raise another, more subtle issue: “repay…to God what belongs to God.” The people of Jerusalem did not allow the Romans to carry Caesar’s image on a flag standard, but seemed to acquiesce to the coinage to a point. Some things are worth fighting for, some not. Why make an exception for money? Was it that important? By contrast, surrendering to God “what belongs to God” implied the surrender of all one was and possessed. In Jesus’ teaching elsewhere, possessions have zero value, and those who seek them are not ones who trust in God (6:19–34). Jesus is known as a poor, itinerant preacher carrying no coin – trusting solely on God. The Pharisees carry the emperor’s coin. It is clear in whom they place at least part of their trust. And trust was something that did belong to Caesar.
Image credit: The Tribute Money, Peter Paul Rubens (1610–1615), Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, Public Domain PD-US
The Response
This coming Sunday is the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time. “Why are you testing me?” is the response, using the same word as in Mt 4:3 where the interlocutor is Satan. Here the Pharisee plays the role. The narrator’s comment to the reader in Mark’s gospel becomes Jesus’ direct address to the Pharisees in Matthew, “hypocrites” and will become the keynote of 23:1–36 (“…The scribes and the Pharisees have taken their seat on the chair of Moses. Therefore, do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you, but do not follow their example. For they preach but they do not practice…Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites…”).
But Jesus, as always, knows their thoughts (9:4; 26:10), and responds accordingly. Jesus’ answer famously avoids either of the dangerous alternatives – as with response to the authorities in 21:23–27 (“By what authority…”). He asks them questions that are more probing and revealing. “Show me the coin that pays the census tax.” Then they handed him the Roman coin. He said to them, “Whose image is this and whose inscription?” “ In two ways it undercuts his questioners’ position, and in so doing provides an answer in principle which has much wider application than simply to their trick question.
In the first place, Jesus’ request for a denarius was more than just the provision of a visual aid. Pious Jews objected to the “idolatrous” coin (described above) which contravened the first and second commandments (Ex 20:3-4) of graven images and other gods. Roman imperial policy, aware of this sensitivity, allowed the Jews to coin their own non-idolatrous copper money, which sufficed for normal everyday business. Although the census tax required the official Roman coin, on a daily basis there was no need for them to carry the silver denarius with the image of the Emperor. Jesus apparently did not have one—but they did, and in the holy precincts of the temple at that! The moment is revelatory in many ways. It reveals them as hypocrites and makes it clear to the on-looker, if these Pharisees are using and carrying the emperor’s (idolatrous) coinage they could hardly object to paying his tax.
The verb in v. 21, “give back to the emperor”, neatly presses the point, and underlines Jesus’ description of them as “hypocrites” (v. 18). When Jesus pronounces that what is already the emperor’s should be given to him, while avoiding either a direct yes or no, he in fact gives an indirect yes. It is not against the Torah (this was the form of the question in v. 17, “Is it lawful?) to pay taxes to the emperor. The Pharisees acknowledge this by participating in the economic system made possible by Rome, even by having Roman coins in the Temple area. Although unconvinced, the Pharisees are silenced and depart from this encounter “amazed.”
Image credit: The Tribute Money, Peter Paul Rubens (1610–1615), Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, Public Domain PD-US
Coach Jon Gruden Visit USNA
Something a little different. Jon Gruden gets a great tour of the Naval Academy. The second half of the video is focused on his presence at the USNA-Tulsa Football game. Enjoy.
Even More
“Woe to you Pharisees!” Today’s gospel gets right to it! In our 21st century experience, we understand the phrase as one of condemnation, or at least as a warning of the coming condemnation. The phrase calls to mind the evangelical preacher admonishing the backsliding, church-skipping, no-good, no-count, reprobates who are sweating like sinners in church. Before pressing on, I would like to let you know that the expression “woe to you” appears in Greek as “ouai soi.” It arises from a Semitic expression used in the Old Testament and it took another route to the English language which captures the original sense. The expression is the Yiddish “oy vey” – a Jewish way to react when you find out how much your son’s root canal will cost. It is primarily a lament or expression of disappointment.
Is Jesus condemning the Pharisees? Possibly. He could also be expressing disappointment in how little these leaders of the faith actually understand about the God of the Covenant. Here is the cause of Jesus’ disappointment: they block the way of others to God, “locking the kingdom of God.” They are supposed to be leading people to an encounter with God. Spiritual leaders are meant to be the one who open the doors to show to the way. A reminder that our words, actions, and attitudes can either open the way to Christ for others or discourage them. Think of gossip or harsh judgment – just two of the ways love and mercy can be lost.
The scribes and Pharisees are called hypocrites because they don’t practice what they preach. Or consider yesterday’s post: “For freedom Christ set us free; so stand firm and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.” As the post ended: “Paul begins with freedom and ends with love because, for the Christian, love is what freedom is for. Christ did not set us free so that we would have nothing more to do. He set us free so that what we do might finally be done in love.”
The leaders obsess over the externals forgetting what truly matters: faith, mercy, justice, love. As they obsess on the minor things they are missing God’s presence, the source of all holiness that makes things holy. The Gospel invites us to examine our hearts and ask: “Am I a door-opener or a gatekeeper?” “Do I focus on appearances or on God’s presence? Do my words and actions lead others toward Christ—or away from Him? Do our lives reflect the mercy and truth of Christ, so that by our example others may not find the Kingdom closed, but wide open?”
The Pharisees and scribes had so much and they did nothing…Oy vey!
We have even more..
Image credit: FrG in Canva, CC-0
The Question
The coming Sunday is the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time. The question comes only after some false praise. The opening address to Jesus “Teacher” (didaskalos) uses a secular term rather than the religious connotation of Rabbi. Nonetheless the opening lines note that Jesus is a “truthful man” and teach “the way of God in accordance with the truth.” It is not clear who the words are intended for. It is easy to imagine these words are intended for the listening crowds. The opening contains the sort of complimentary words with which a rhetorician might seek an audience’s favor at the same time seeking to have their opponent lower his guard.
Tell us, then, what is your opinion: Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?” The question had a superficial innocence about it, since Jesus, as a Galilean under Herod’s jurisdiction, was not subject to this particular tax, and so was in a position to give an “objective” opinion without his personal political status being affected. But there is little doubt that a negative answer would have been used to denounce him to the Roman authorities (as Luke 20:20 says explicitly).
The question itself is likely an halakic question that seeks to clear up a point of law or teaching. But in reality it is just a means to the already planned ends – Jesus’ execution (Mt 12:16). They are asking a question calculated either to alienate the people of Jerusalem and the nationalists (if Jesus replied in the affirmative) or to make him subject to arrest by the Romans (if he declared against paying the tax). The people in the crowd would have been well aware that Jesus was from Galilee by either reputation or the accent of his voice. The memory of an early revolt against taxes and Roman domination by Judas the Galilean would likely have been a strong catalyst for whatever his answer might be. The Pharisees are there to fan the discontentment should he support the tax, undercutting his popular, messianic support. The Herodians are there to report him to the Romans as an insurrectionist if he denies the taxing authority.
Image credit: The Tribute Money, Peter Paul Rubens (1610–1615), Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, Public Domain PD-US
The Path to Freedom
The first reading today begins: “For freedom Christ set us free; so stand firm and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.” The larger context of his message to the Galatians is about reports he is receiving that some among them are advocating an adherence to the Law of Moses as the basis of salvation – hence his reference to slavishly following the precepts of the Law. To be clear, Paul holds that the Law is God-given and good, and he is certainly not arguing that Christians have been liberated from its moral obligations. However, Paul will go on to describe a new foundation for moral agency: the Christian is no longer trying to earn a relationship with God through obedience but is called to exercise freedom because that relationship has already been given in Christ. The key word being “exercise.” Christ has set the believer free, but that does not mean that nothing is now required of the believer. With freedom comes responsibility.
Our belief in Christ and the grace received does not eliminate human agency. Grace makes a new kind of agency possible and this is central to the life of all Christians. Paul is clear that Christian life is not passive and because Christ has accomplished salvation our actions are not irrelevant. The question is not whether our choices and actions matter, but rather, what makes them genuinely Christian.
The first reading concludes: “For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.” (Gal 5:6) The Greek is pistis di’ agapēs energoumenē meaning faith becoming effective, active or operative through love. The believer’s choices become the place where faith takes visible form. Those choices become the basis of our moral life. It is no longer “what must I do so that God will accept me” but now the basis becomes: “Because God has already loved and accepted me in Christ, how shall I now live?” The latter understands obedience as the response of a person who has been loved.
Just beyond our reading Paul admonishes the Galatians to “use this freedom as an opportunity… [to] serve one another through love.” (Gal 5:13) In other words, Christ frees us from slavery so that we may freely become servants of one another. Or put another way, this is how we are to exercise our moral agency, which is neither autonomous self-sufficiency nor passive dependence on God. It is cooperation with the Holy Spirit which transforms our capacity to decide well. We still must choose whether to forgive, whether to tell the truth, whether to be generous, whether to respond to another person’s suffering. But now those decisions can arise from a heart being transformed by grace.
Returning to Paul’s admonitions about the Law of Moses, think of this way: the Law can tell us what love requires; grace and the Spirit makes us capable of loving. This is more demanding than a secular understanding of freedom, the ability to make one’s own choices without interference. Freedom in Christ asks that we not only choose, but choose the good, especially that which is good for the other.
Christ frees us not merely from external constraints but from the powers within us that prevent us from loving as we ought. And the Spirit gradually forms a person capable of acting from love rather than fear, resentment, compulsion or self-interest. That is moral agency in its deepest Christian sense.
In the everyday choices we make when we choose whether to forgive or hold on to resentment, to speak kind words instead of gossip, to be generous and in all the small choices we make over the course of a single day. Paul asks us to consider something deeper than the choices themselves – be clear about what is moving us to make them. He admonishes us to work toward a position in life where our faith is working through love.
Paul begins with freedom and ends with love because, for the Christian, love is what freedom is for. Christ did not set us free so that we would have nothing more to do. He set us free so that what we do might finally be done in love.
Image Credit: generated by WordPress AI using the text of the post and the prompt path to the light of freedom.
Taxes and Faith
This coming Sunday is the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time. In the previous post we noted that Matthew is sending us in the direction of a series of controversy stories that follow on the heels of the three parables of the Kingdom of God. As it has throughout this section of Matthew’s gospel, the question of authority continues to play out. In this scene the Herodians have been added to the playing field as a counterpoint and yet similar view as the Pharisees. Boring (Matthew, The New Interpreters Bible) comments:
Although the Herodians play no role in Matthew’s time… they represent the overt supporters of the Roman regime and would support paying the tax. The Pharisees, on the other hand, were popular with the people because they in principle resented and resisted the tax, but did not go as far as the radical nationalists who publicly resisted its payment. [p. 420]
The controversy is initiated by those Pharisees who have already decided to kill Jesus (Mt 12:14). It is ironic because in each of the three following controversies (taxes, resurrection, the Great Commandment), Jesus affirms the Pharisees’ positions. But then it was not about the answers; it was about authority as it has been since 21:23 “By what authority are you doing these things? And who gave you this authority?”
Certainly the question of taxes is as much about authority as any topic. And there is perhaps no thorny or inflammatory topic of conversation than taxes. As noted in v.18, it is with “malice” that the Herodians ask about the census tax payable to Rome. The empire exacted three types of taxes: a ground tax, which required that ten per cent of all grain and twenty per cent of all oil and wine production be given to Rome; an income tax, equivalent to one per cent of a person’s income; and a poll/census tax, which amounted to a denarius or a full day’s wage. To add insult to injury, the tax could be paid only in Roman coin, most of which contained an image and inscription considered blasphemous by many Jews: Tiberius Caesar Divi Augusti Filius Augustus Pontifex Maximus (“Tiberius Caesar, august son of the divine Augustus, high priest”).
There are four different words used in the NT for taxes.
- The most general is telos (used of “taxes” in Mt 17:25; Ro 13:7)
- The word in our text kensos is borrowed from Latin (“census”) which was a tax paid by each adult to the government (Mt 17:25; 22:17, 19; Mk 12:14).
- The word used in Luke’s parallel phoros is the payment made by the people of one nation to another, with the implication that this is a symbol of submission and dependence. (Lu 20:22; 23:2; Ro 13:6, 7).
- The final word, didrachmon, refers to the annual temple tax of two drachmos required from each male Jew (Mt 17:5).
The idea of taxes is laced with controversy in both the secular and religious worlds. Combine the two arenas and the results can be disastrous. Remember that from the perspective of Israel, their God-given homeland was under foreign occupation. The census tax, which was instituted in 6 CE when Judea became a Roman province, triggered the nationalism that finally became the Zealot movement, which fomented the disastrous war of 66-70 (the Jewish War according to Josephus) that resulted in the destruction of the city of Jerusalem and the Temple. The annual payment of the census tax to Rome was a painful reminder of being in lands occupied by foreign powers who worshiped false gods.
Image credit: The Tribute Money, Peter Paul Rubens (1610–1615), Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, Public Domain PD-US
It’s Enough
In today’s first reading we hear Jesus’ reference to “the sign of Jonah.” I think we have been conditioned to think: “Jonah, three days in the belly of the whale. Jesus, three days in the tomb. Ok, the ‘sign of Jonah’ must be Jesus’ Resurrection.” Maybe. I think it is more than that.
If I said, “Oh, say can you see…” most citizens would recognize those words as the opening verse of the national anthem. But I am not asking a question about your visual acuity. I am asking you to recall the whole story of a nascent nation struggling for its independence. In the same way, I would offer that “the sign of Jonah” is asking us to consider the whole of the story of Jonah – and not just the whale.
The Lord came to Jonah and asked him to be a prophet to the city of Nineveh, capital city of the moral enemy of Israel. Jonah’s response was to run away and attempt to sail to the farthest ends of earth. In short: storm at sea, crew throws Jonah overboard to appease the Lord, whale swallows Jonah, and the whale spews Jonah on the beach. Jonah begrudgingly makes the long journey to Nineveh.
Nineveh was located hundreds of miles from where the whale spewed Jonah on the beach. It is not likely that Jonah’s arrival in Nineveh was heralded by the news that he had spent three days in the belly of the whale. Yet somehow Jonah’s recalcitrant and truncated announcement, essentially, “repent or die” was heeded by everyone from King to people, even the animals.
What was the experience of Jonah in the belly of the whale? All of Chapter 2 is Jonah’s realization that he has sinned against the Lord and because of that is at the point of death. Does Jonah ever repent? He certainly realizes that only God can save him, but I am hard pressed to find where he repents. It seems to me that Jonah relents and gives in to the inevitable rather than death. God wants him to be a prophet to Nineveh and God gets what he wants.
The city of Nineveh witnesses the unlikely prophet of Jonah walking their streets with the basic message repent or die. In Hebrew his entire message is five words and I doubt it is given with either volume or enthusiasm. Jonah is a reluctant prophet at best – as shown in the last chapter of the book where he is sulking because they did repent and the Lord was not going to destroy them.
There were no miracles or great signs, just the prophetic word. It is enough and it is clear that the people of Nineveh repent.
Israel witnesses the unlikely prophet from Galilee – what good ever comes from Galilee, right? They were witness to a whole host of miracles and signs, yet they resist. It is as the Gospel acclamation says: “Even now, says the LORD, return to me with your whole heart for I am gracious and merciful.” (Joel 2:12-13) And yet they resist. They want another sign. Jesus says that at this point they will get what Nineveh received, the unexpected prophet announcing repent or die. The life, death, and ministry of Jesus is that sign. The choice is theirs.
We have the one sign given, Jesus the Christ. We have the Word calling us to turn to the gracious and merciful God. As always it is our choice.
