NewCreation

Homily for Sunday 29 in Ordinary Time Year A

Welcome, my sisters and brothers, to this homily for the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time. This particular Gospel is rather fun because it's one of the occasions when Jesus responds with a mime rather than with an actual text. And we're going to see how much more sense is made of the exchange once this is understood. So first, just two places. Last time, you remember, Jesus had left the temple authorities in the situation of having to work out whether they were seeing themselves as part of a holy war run by vengeance, or part of a wedding banquet receiving forgiveness — that was enough to leave them in a state of some paralysis. And the Pharisees, who weren't necessarily all that friendly to the temple authorities but could see good arguments when they came across them, they decide to have a go at Jesus themselves. And they do this by means of strict interpretation of text — that's what they did, rabbinical students with strict interpretations of text, that's what they're about. So they decide to see whether they can put him on the spot in the same way as he had put the temple authorities on the spot. And they do this by means of their students, the rabbinical students, because of course what's more fair than that rabbinical students should seek out an authority figure and put a difficult question to him, to see if they can catch him out. But they can also do it in such a way as actually to expect a proper ruling from him, and that's just how the biblical rabbinical debate worked. The rabbinical students are accompanied by Herodians, and again, remember that these were people who were very much on the Roman side of things. These were the people who followed the tetrarchs, the puppet rulers who reigned at the pleasure of Rome, and who had been part of the Roman — actual, if you like — commercial and architectural improvement of the area. Remember that for many people the Romans were by no means the worst of the colonial overlords they'd had over the previous centuries, and in some senses were considerably better, and in the years leading up to Jesus's life had actually been considerably involved in building projects and all sorts of various forms of state building. So we're not talking about people who are natural anti-colonial militants, if you like. We're talking about people who no doubt dislike the imperial power but don't get on badly with its local reps — let us just say. Okay, so they come up to Jesus to put a question to him, and the question is quite an interesting one. But they start with a piece of flattery, and this is to show that they understand what he did to the temple authorities. So they're saying to him: "Oh, we see that you don't show favour to anybody in your answer" — so you can criticize the Romans, you can criticize the temple authorities — And then of course they hope to be able to use his answer against him — who can flatter him into saying something suitably silly that will set him up to be undone by others. But one of their phrases is interesting, because it's going to come back in a moment. They say, "You teach the way of God in accordance with the truth and show deference to no one, for you do not regard people with partiality." Okay, well actually the phrase there is "you do not look upon the face of men." That's how you say "you do not treat people with partiality," as we would say, because you're not a respecter of persons. But the actual phrase is "you do not look at the face of men" — look at the mask, the persona of a man. And that's going to be very important, because this text is going to be about looking upon faces. We'll see how that works in just a second. But so they then say, "Tell us then, what do you think? Is it lawful to pay a poll tax to Caesar or not?" Okay, here's what's not in discussion: paying taxes. They all paid taxes. They paid taxes to the local puppet rulers of the Roman emperor — that was no problem. Torah dealt with how you coped with the issue of taxes. There could be endless discussions between the public authorities and Jewish taxpayers as to what the acceptable forms of paying tax were, but that you should pay tax was not in question. The question here is: should you pay, and what does Torah tell us about paying a tax, a direct tax to the emperor? Especially — and there would be some concern in this — given that the coin for the direct tax, not the local coinage but the imperial coinage, the silver denarius, had the face of the emperor stamped on it: profile, half face, with words around it which might have included, for instance, the claim that he was a god. Augustus's coins, for instance, had that claim on them. In other words, it was a perfectly reasonable question: if you were paying a tax with a coin with an image of a god on it, was this not an idol? Were you not attributing value to an idol? And was that something that a good person could do, that a Torah-obedient person could do? So in other words, it's a proper question. It's not a trick question. It's a proper question: what does Torah enable us to understand? Of course Torah doesn't cover that eventuality — doesn't cover paying foreign taxes any more than it covers the East Timor fishing regulation. It concerns the internal running of the Hebrew people. That's what it was. It's like their constitution, not an international law. But so it's a reasonable question. What should we do? So Jesus is aware of them — in other words, aware that they were trying to do to him what they feared he had done to the temple authorities. He says, "Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites?" And he uses the word "put me to the test" — so this refers back to Matthew 4 and the devil's testing of Jesus, above all with the test of the offering him the power and the glory of all the world. And then he says, "Show me the coin used for the tax," and they brought him a denarius. Well, here is where the mime happens. I've posted the text that Jesus is in fact miming just below this YouTube video, so you can read it for yourselves. It's a somewhat obscure text, and it wasn't I who discovered that this is the text that Jesus is miming. It was discovered by my late friend, the great Anglican exegete J. Duncan M. Derrett. And once you begin to see it, you can see quite what a brilliant mime Jesus was, how he enacted this as the authority for his answer — and his answer makes so much more sense once you see what he's enacting. So let's have a look at this text. This is Ecclesiastes 7:29 to 8:2: "See, this alone I found, that God made human beings straightforward, but they have devised many schemes." Okay, so you can see the disciples have come, they've flattered him, they've talked about how he is a straightforward person in the eyes of God, and yet that has been part of their scheme. They've done that in order to set him up. So just that text automatically places them — saying, "I understand what's going on here: you're calling me straightforward, but it's part of your scheme." And then, let's take this at face value: "Who is like the wise man, and who knows the interpretation of a thing?" In other words, they are treating him as a wise man, and they're putting to him a question of interpretation, a proper rabbinical question, and he's giving them a proper rabbinical answer by actually miming a sacred text to them. Then he says, "Wisdom makes one's face shine, and the hardness of one's countenance is changed." So the wise person is going to give an answer with a shining face. That's what it's like to be utterly alive, while the hardness of a countenance is changed. The countenance that is on a silver coin shines, but it's a fake shine — it's not the shining of wisdom, and it's a hard countenance. So we get to see something of what's going on where he says, "Show me the coin used for the tax." He gets them to actually produce a silver denarius, and they bring him the denarius. Then he said to them, "Whose head is this, whose face is this, and whose title?" And they said, "Caesar's" — because the coin contained the face of Caesar and his title, giving his authority and his power. This is then where Jesus has recourse to enacting the second part of the mime, which is the next verse in Koheleth: "Keep the king's command, because of your oath to God" — except that what we translate as "keep the king's command" is literally in Hebrew "mark the king's mouth," which is exactly what he had got them to do by looking at the king's mouth, and what he had done. by looking at the king's mouth – meaning the mouth of the profile of the emperor on the coin – along with his inscription, saying, giving his authority and his power. So then Jesus, having got them – who had said "you don't look on the face of men" – to look on the face of a man, looked on it himself, and done so as an act of obedience to a passage in Scripture, is then able to say to them: "So give to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." In other words, mark the king's mouth because of your oath to God. Notice that this is not a way of saying, "Oh, let's dream up a system of separation of church and state." No, he's saying: because the power of God is absolute and complete and unrivaled with anything that is. So much so that God was able to move Cyrus in all sorts of ways without Cyrus having the remotest idea who God was. And so with Caesar, merely another idol. So obey. This is what the book of Ecclesiastes says you should do. Obey. Of course you understand perfectly well that it's your obedience to God, out of obedience to God, that you obey such a paltry command. And of course you only obey it insofar as it doesn't interfere with your obedience to God. In other words, he's teaching them about God and God's complete unrivaled being, in the presence of whom idols are as nothing. Rulers are not in any sort of rivalry with God, and therefore the question of what is good is going to have to be worked out by them in obedience – but also aware that following God's commands could put them into trouble eventually. This is the complete response that he's given them, with a rabbinical authority. So it's then that they say – when they heard this they were amazed, and they left him and went away. In other words, not only did he sidestep their trap; actually he spoke straight into the midst of what they were asking and actually gave them an answer. I suggested that this wasn't a text about the separation between church and state, and it isn't. It's a text about the unrivaled power of God to do everything. But part of its effect, and one of the reasons why that reply lingers through the ages and should linger through the ages even if we don't know the mind that Jesus was responding to, is that it has set us up in a world which is actually part of the Christian understanding of things, whereby we have learnt to de-divinize all forms of earthly power. There is nothing sacred in any of our legal systems. There is nothing sacred in any of our constitutions. They are all to be worked through at a human level, treated as just the human things that they are, in obedience in as far as we can be obedient to them, but then changing them when they need to be changed because they don't reflect the wisdom that shines and brings things into being, which is the command of God. In other words, part of the amazing secularization, if you like, of law, which has been one of the results of Christianity. We do not think of God fundamentally as a lawgiver. The commandments are owed to God. God's command is given us in the person of Jesus going up to his death and revealing what is at the base of so much civil and religious law: various forms of scapegoating, vengeance, and oppression. That, of course, is the reverse of the command of God, and our task is always to work with great freedom and sometimes at great risk to make sure that our laws are answerable by those who are seeking to obey our oath to God.