Heads I Win, Tails You Lose
Scripture Reading: Matt. 22:15-22
When I was growing up, Sunday mornings meant two things: church, and then after church, at 11:30, an Abbott and Costello movie on WPIX Channel 11. For those unfamiliar, Abbott and Costello were a popular comedy duo whose career spanned from vaudeville and radio in the 1930s, to numerous hit films in the 1940s, and finally to TV in the 1950s. Much of their humor centered on Abbott, the fast-talking, sharp-tongued straight man, playing rhetorical tricks on the childlike and gullible Costello.
Abbott: Do me a favor, loan me $50.
Costello: I can’t loan you $50. All I have is $40.
Abbott: Fine. Loan me $40 and then you’ll owe me $10.
Costello: OK, I’ll owe you $10. But you still owe me $40.
Abbott: Don’t change the subject!
I’m not going to do the whole routine. Suffice it to say that they go back and forth like this until Costello, confounded and confused, gives away all his money and still thinks that he somehow owes his friend $10.
The title of this sermon, “Heads I Win, Tails You Lose,” sounds like it could’ve been an Abbott and Costello routine. It wasn’t, it’s actually from The Honeymooners, which I was reminded of a few days ago. Whatever the source of the phrase, in today’s passage the adversaries of Jesus use similar rhetorical tricks believing that they can play him for a fool. Actually, it’s much more serious than that. What they are trying to do is ensnare Jesus in a rhetorical trap by making him choose between two equally bad options.
As a reminder for where we are in the narrative of Matthew’s gospel, the setting is the temple in Jerusalem. Tensions are rising. Jesus has already verbally sparred with the chief priests and elders of the temple who had questioned his authority. Now in this passage Jesus is confronted by two other sets of Jewish authorities, the Pharisees and the Herodians.
The Pharisees were a powerful sect within Judaism. They espoused strict observance of Jewish law, especially in the face of Roman occupation. Adhering to the law was a way for Jews to remain pure and therefore separate from their foreign occupiers. Yet despite their distaste for foreign influence in Jewish affairs, the Pharisees were realists, in that they recognized Roman authority but only reluctantly. A spear pointed at your ribs will do that.
The Herodians, on the other hand, as their name suggests, although Jewish, were enthusiastic supporters of Roman power. They were loyal to Herod Antipas, the Roman-appointed Jewish ruler of Galilee, the region of Israel from which Jesus and all the disciples came. If you’re keeping score, this is not Herod the Great, the one who at the time that Jesus was born ordered the slaughter of all male infants under two years of age. This is his son, Herod Antipas. Herod Antipas is the one who had John the Baptist executed. For Herods both greater and lesser, murder seems to have been the family business.
With the Pharisees and the Herodians, you have two groups with dramatically different ideologies coming together over a common cause—their mutual opposition to Jesus. This is biblical realpolitik: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. The Pharisees and the Herodians have little in common other than they both would like to see Jesus discredited or done away with.
With the Pharisees and the Herodians, you have two groups with dramatically different ideologies coming together over a common cause—their mutual opposition to Jesus.
Toward that end they conspire and come up with what they think will be the perfect trap. They will ask him a question on a hot-button issue—one that combines politics and religion—and that no matter how he answers is guaranteed to get him in trouble with one group or another.
In order to catch him off guard, they will flatter him with false praise. Approaching him like Eddie Haskell talking to the Beaver’s parents, they say, “Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one, for you do not regard people with partiality.”
Oh my! They’re blowing so much smoke I almost can’t see the words of my manuscript! The funny thing is, every word they say is true, but they don’t believe a word of it.
Having prepared the ground, they’re now ready to lay the trap. Jesus, you’re so sincere, pious, and impartial, “Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” Cue the dramatic pause. You can almost picture them turning to each other with self-satisfied grins. They think that they have Jesus cornered, and there’s no way out!
If he says, “Yes, it is lawful to pay taxes to Caesar,” then he looks like a sympathizer with Rome, Israel’s colonial occupier. Taxes levied by Rome supported the Roman legions and colonial government and were a source of grievance for many Jews. Saying “yes,” then, will likely anger and alienate many in the crowd who have come to the temple to hear him preach.
But if he says, “No, it is not lawful to pay taxes to Caesar,” then he makes himself an enemy of Rome and runs a real risk of being arrested and accused of sedition. In today’s terms, we’d call this a “gotcha” question. Whichever way Jesus answers will incriminate him. He’s caught between two extremes: side with Israel against Rome or side with Rome against Israel. Tell us, Jesus, whose side are you on?
This is modern life in America where seemingly where every decision we make compels us to choose a side, and even the consumer choices we make are an expression of our politics. It used to be that you’d show your politics with a bumper sticker on the back of your car. Now you don’t need a bumper sticker to voice your politics because the car you drive says it for you. Do-gooding electric vehicle or gas-guzzling oversized pickup? The same holds for the beer you drink or the beer you boycott; and the cable news network you watch; and on and on and on.
Politics has even infiltrated children’s television. This past week I read not one but two articles about the political battle being waged in the comments of a Facebook fan page for a children’s animated TV show called Bluey, about a family of dogs from Australia. I know, it’s shocking that a political battle would break out on Facebook of all places, a forum otherwise known for hosting polite, civil, and reasonable discourse on all manner of topics. [Sarcasm alert.]
The irony is that Bluey, as one of the articles puts it, “is focused on social-emotional learning as well as on teaching kids how to handle life’s unpleasant moments with grace and navigate challenging interactions with other people.” That’s right. People trolling other people over a TV show that teaches kids how to navigate challenging interactions with other people. Irony is officially dead.
What’s going on here? Why is this happening? How is it that politics has infiltrated seemingly every aspect of daily life? I know it’s late October, but this isn’t even a presidential election year! My own best guess is that as the number of people who attend church continues to decline, an increasing number of people have turned to politics to fill the void. The church offers people grace, hope, a sense of meaning and purpose, as well as a community. Without these things, too many of our fellow citizens feel aimless, alienated, and alone. Even some who identify as Christians have allowed their politics to trump their faith.
I don’t want to be misunderstood. I’m not advocating for Christians individually or the church collectively to retreat from the world and eschew politics altogether. Christians should speak up and take a stand when they discern prayerfully that the Holy Spirit is moving them to do so. But sinful people that we are, and good Presbyterians that we are, we ought to recognize how easy it is for us to make a religion of our politics. I believe that people can in good conscience come to different conclusions on many issues, even if they choose to root for the Yankees.
But sinful people that we are, and good Presbyterians that we are, we ought to recognize how easy it is for us to make a religion of our politics.
Now, where were we? I know that was a bit of a detour from the gospel narrative, but that’s exactly what politics can do—take us away from the gospel. And that is what the Pharisees and the Herodians are trying to do. They have presented Jesus with a political dilemma, and one way or the other they expect him to make a political decision. They are waiting for him to reveal which side he is on.
But Jesus won’t play their game. He asks to see a coin used to pay the tax. Of note, Jesus has no coins on him. Of equal note, his adversaries do. They present him with a Roman denarius. A denarius featured on it the head of the emperor, along with an inscription that referred to the emperor as the son of a god. To Jews this coin was a mark of oppression and blasphemy, a violation of the First and Second Commandments. This is why Jesus calls his adversaries hypocrites. They’re walking around the inner courts of the temple—the holiest site in Judaism—with Roman coinage that bears the emperor’s image.
Holding up the coin, he asks his own question. “Whose head is this and whose title?”
“Caesar’s,” they answer.
“Give therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.”
In asking his own question Jesus has reframed the issue from one of paying taxes to one of who or what bears the image of God.
Now, some may see in this Solomonic answer a basis for the separation of church and state. I suppose, but it’s much more than that. In asking his own question Jesus has reframed the issue from one of paying taxes to one of who or what bears the image of God. Caesar can stamp his likeness on all the coins he wants, Jesus suggests, but the true image of God is not stamped on a coin but hung from a cross. For Jesus of Nazareth—not the son of a god but the Son of God—is himself the very image of God. And the image he embodies is not like that of the emperor, who lords his power over his subjects, but that of a slave who humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.
As Christians, we too bear an inscription. In our baptism we have been marked as God’s own, not just in that moment but always and forever. Some of us may have a hard time believing that. When we look at one another here in church or when we gaze at ourselves in the mirror, we may see only the marks that the world has left on us…marks of sorrow, disappointment, and regret. But if you look deeply, you may see what God sees…a beloved child of God whose every sorrow, disappointment, and regret has been fully and faithfully paid for and redeemed…not with a denarius or dollar but with his own flesh and blood.