“Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and give to God the things that are God’s.” This famous line, sometimes worded in the old English, “Render unto Caesar,” is attributed to Jesus, and is the climax of one of his more well-known confrontations with religious authorities. Jesus is teaching at the temple in Jerusalem when he is asked the question, “Is it lawful for us to pay taxes to Caesar or not?”
For the Israelite to pay taxes to Caesar is to abide by Roman law. It is also in a very practical sense to enable the force that occupies and subjugates your people. Supporting paying taxes to Caesar would be seen as either pro-Empire, or at the very least as accommodating the unjust status quo.
On the other hand, the Israelite that does not pay taxes to Caesar indicates support for Jewish independence, agency, and sovereignty – but is also breaking Roman law and therefore has the capacity to encourage violence and more intense persecution from the occupying empire. To speak against paying taxes to Caesar would be seen as support of civil unrest, and resistance to the stable status quo.
The question that is posed to Jesus then, is a political one. And Jesus’ answer is anything but direct. He requests to see the coin they would use to pay taxes, and asks whose face is on it. The answer comes back that Caesar’s face is on the coin, and Jesus then responds with the now notorious quip, “Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and give to God the things that are God’s.”
It feels a little like a misdirect, doesn’t it? Is Jesus saying some things are civic and some things are religious and those are utterly different? Or is he making a pointed comment reminding people that literally everything belongs to God, so we should act accordingly? Is he, as some have suggested, noticing that the Roman coin says, “Caesar is Lord” on it – something that would fly in the face of the Jewish belief that only God is Lord? So the very use of this coin implies their complicity in a broken and hypocritical system – no ethical consumption in the empire?
In any case, it’s certainly not a straight answer, as centuries of varied interpretations attest.
This anecdote is often seen as Jesus refusing to engage in politics. He declines to clearly answer an explicitly political question, and his riddle of an answer has the whiff of separating church from state. This text then is often used by Christians as a way of discouraging the mix of religion and politics. It is especially used by Christians when another Chrisitan is espousing a political perspective that makes us uncomfortable.
Please understand that the question posed to Jesus is not asked genuinely – and I will say/write more about that next week. But it is worth saying here that the question is not asked with a desire for understanding Jesus’ perspective: It is a trap. Whichever way Jesus answers is problematic. Not because it is political, but because it is partisan. For Jesus to answer in either direction would put him in a category with a specific existing political constituency. To radically oversimplify things for our current context, the ones asking the question are doing something akin to getting Jesus to tell them if he is a Republican or a Democrat. Those who confront Jesus aren’t seeking his wisdom, aren’t interested in learning from him: They want to know which group to put him in so that he can be more easily classified, managed, and dismissed.
Jesus rejects this binary immediately. He will not be confined by the labels that make him easily objectified then ignored. But to take this as a statement that Jesus rejects politics or political life is naïve and short-sighted. To say it makes Jesus non-political just puts him in a different box so we can easily manage him.
First of all, Jesus’ teachings all had social implications. Even if they were strictly individual directives and teachings – and they weren’t – but even if they were, to follow Jesus would be to make a clear practical daily commitment to building healthy community, to living for one another, to caring for people who are poor, who are sick, who are imprisoned, who are systemically marginalized. This would not be an extracurricular activity for anyone taking Jesus seriously: It would be the center of your life.
But Jesus’ teachings were not just individual directives: Jesus spoke in the context of community. He spoke as an Israelite to other Israelites. Their shared identity was first and foremost as a people brought together, liberated, loved, and led into covenant by God. The commandments that defined that covenant were lived out in community – they were literal laws for how to build a society that reflects God’s love and justice, not just for how an individual person should live their private lives.
Jesus. Was. Political.
To follow Jesus is to have politics that are influenced by his teaching: Politics centered on love and mercy, justice and compassion; politics that honor the dignity of every human being.
Jesus’ disciples were not enfranchised in the workings of the empire. They had no say. We do. We have a say – however small. When we leave Jesus and his repeated emphatic teachings on how we treat those who have the least in our society at the door of the voting booth, we are insisting on an anemic half-Christianity.
Do we want a theocracy? Lord, have mercy. No. Because whose version of God wins? We are seeing that struggle play out right now in America with the attack on our culture and history by Christian Nationalism. And make no mistake – though Christian Nationalism works under the moniker of restoring some romantic past version of who America once was, it is antithetical to the founding principles and values of our beloved country. To force a specific version of Christianity down America’s throat is both anti-American and anti-Christ.
So I am not suggesting that to be a Christian is to insist everyone else be Christian too, to value what you value, to hold dear what you hold dear. But following Jesus does mean you will have opinions about what kind of community you want to create. And in a democracy, part of how we create community is through voting. So, yes, in fact, if you claim to follow Jesus, that should influence the way you vote.
Many of us have grown up in houses that taught us not to talk about religion or politics at the dinner table – that these things were inappropriate and could only cause trouble. Someone I read said recently that this is exactly wrong: If we’d learned how to discuss these things around the dinner table, we might be a people much more adept at managing different perspectives in humane, loving, and respectful ways than we currently are. We’re uncomfortable with being made uncomfortable, which renders us ill-equipped to deal with the divisive times in which we live – times in which religion and politics are being mixed like a Molotov cocktail.
If Jesus’ teachings have no political implications, then I do not have to allow my politics to be influenced by him. This requires me to ignore the overwhelming testimony of our Scriptures to do so, but that’s rarely stopped me before. I am quite capable of compartmentalizing my life – with faith in one box and politics in the other.
But my soul cannot be compartmentalized. It is not fooled by my delusions, and it is not left unaffected by my disobedience to Jesus. When I praise Jesus at church on Sunday and then berate the waiter at brunch on the same day, my soul knows the hypocrisy. My soul is diminished. When I hear Jesus say how I treat the poor is how I treat God and I shout Amen, and then vote for policies and politicians that starve the hungry, my soul is not unaffected. Jesus may not be a Republican or a Democrat, but he’s not checked out of the real world.
