Give to God what is God's

“Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” What a great line that is. Short and memorable. Easy to quote off the top of my head. I have a terrible memory, but this is one of the few verses I have memorized. This and “Jesus wept.”

And it’s nice to have Jesus saying something for once that’s not ambiguous, not open to interpretation. Here, he is clear. He means… um, pay your taxes… right? Yeah that must be it. Okay, wink at me if you think that’s what it means. Oh? Hmm, I feel flattered, but not enough winks here to make me blush.

While the traditional interpretation is “pay your taxes”, Jesus didn’t say, “pay your taxes.” Not directly, despite being asked directly: “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” That’s a yes or no question, to which Jesus said “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” His answer stumped the Pharisees who were trying to entrap him.

If I reduce it to a simple, “yes, pay your taxes” then I might be missing the nuance here. It gets suddenly more complicated the moment you reverse the order: Give to God what is God’s.

What is God’s? Creator of the universe, maker of the molecule, the voice that spoke and gave life to all beings, who scattered the stars and the sands of the desert, who mapped our coastlines and carved the rivers with their finger, who knitted you together, who in our mother’s womb, crafted each of us; What is God’s? What isn’t God’s?

Yes, Caesar can put his face on a coin, but who put the face on Caesar? If you are able to claim all that which bears your image, then what about us who bear the image of God? We are made in God’s image, each of us. That smile of yours, it’s God’s. The furrow of your brow, that’s God’s. All of us together, in all our diversity, reflecting the face of our Creator.

You are stamped with God’s face as much as a coin is stamped with the face of a king. A prior claim is already made. It’s like a child finding a rubber ink stamp in their parent’s office and stamping all the walls, claiming mine, mine, mine, mine. Even if that worked, the kid is just stamping their parent’s name and address.

Oh Caesar, putting your name on a building doesn’t make it yours. I wonder if it makes God chuckle or sigh with the exasperation of all parents with toddlers? Give to God what is God’s, give to the toddler what belongs to the toddler.

So do we pay taxes? I, um, I…. ek — I don’t know. Jesus does not say yes or no. Instead, it’s a statement that makes us reflect back on us. What is Caesar’s? What is God’s?

The claims of empire are increasingly voracious. It starts with coins, then buildings, then streets and avenues and cities and provinces until it devours whole countries and peoples. An empire is never full, never satiated. Land alone is not enough. It will claim all that is produced, it will take a cut on all profits, it will over-reach and interfere because it believes it owns everything. (This is either a statement about the Federal or Provincial governments, depending which political side you want me to be on.)

But really, all governments, all empires, operate the same way. All corporations, all companies, all CEO’s and Billionaires, Empire of every type feeds relentlessly, like a cancer eats its host, like a toddler stamping his name on buildings and lakes, like a nation paving over the ranges of the buffalo.

Mine, mine, mine.

Jesus’ statement gets us to pause and ask “what has Caesar claimed? Are the things he wants really his? And what am I already surrendering?”

Truth is, I think I’ve given to Caesar far more than just the money. Many times, I have given Caesar my full attention. And if I’m truly honest, I fear that I might have given Caesar my heart.

While politicians are the noisy cymbals of society, the real emperors are more insidious. It’s the puppet masters of greed and lustful consumption, the barons of anger and brutality, the Czars of scarcity and anxiety. They rule empire from behind green curtains orchestrating a mistrust that has me turn against my neighbour, and a fear that makes me buy and hoard more.

As I stare at their advertisements, as I scroll through their apps, they shape, reel by reel, my values and thoughts. Are the outfits I buy or the activities I do really what I wanted, or am I just feeding this algorithm? Are my opinions and positions truly my own, or am I just repeating what bot farms told me to believe? I can’t be certain.

It’s hard to see clearly when the empire’s image is burned into my retina; An optical stamp claiming “mine.” Caesar takes and takes. Having planted his flag across the globe, the empire now goes after the terrain of my heart.

Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s? But what IS Caesar’s? If only it was only taxes, then I would give all the tax. Take the silly coins; Money is all make-believe anyways. But I will take back what belongs to my Creator.

Local Edmonton author, Carissa Halton, in her debut novel “Revolution Songs” writes about a unique moment in Alberta history when the town of Blairmore in the Crowsnest Pass elected Canada’s first Communist town council. (True story)

Blairmore was a mining town, and as you can imagine, workplace safety was not a top concern in early 1900’s. It was hard work and many miners were injured or lost their lives. This was the impetus of the communist uprising in Alberta.

Halton’s story follows the daughter of one of these mining families who worked as maid for the Manager of the mine. It’s based on an actual historical detail, “a single sentence in a locally produced publication… that mentioned the mine boss taught piano to an Eastside girl.” Halton uses the relationship between the boss and this girl to illustrate the two sides of this conflict.

At the story’s climax, the girl is arrested for participating May Day riots, and the boss comes to pay her bail. Halton doesn’t paint the boss as evil, but complicated.

He says to the girl, “The pressure from your father’s family is comprehensible. They will never understand the complexity of factors that go into operating a business that is the engine of this nation’s economy….”

“Stop lying,” the girl says, “It is you who will not negotiate.”

“Do you know what my shareholders would have me do?” he responds, “They want me to shut the entire mine down and starve the miners out. But I refuse their demands too…. You see? There is work, and there are workers who want to work — need to work. These strikers refuse others the right to live without the dole.”

Sweat traced her spine. She said, “The work is enough for only a fraction of the families to live well on.”

The boss retorts, “I do not control the grain harvest, Annie.”

Carissa Halton, Revolution Songs

In her story, Halton successfully shows how empire makes demands not just on the workers, but the owners too. Caesar might compensate you with money, but only because he puts his stamp on so much more.

The way of the empire is to make you feel helpless, no matter which cog you are in that machine. It makes itself feel inevitable and unstoppable. “What can we do?” we say, “we don’t control the grain harvest.”

Maybe not. But I know who does control the grain harvest. I know who controls the mountains. I know who really owns the coal. I know that this world and our lives are not the property of empire. I know that Caesar can make no claim on my heart.

Jesus’ statement to give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s is a call to take back that which the empire has falsely claimed. Take back our time, take back our bodies, take back our values and our hearts.

The empire has taught us to fear our neighbour, to resent those who “threaten to take our jobs”. It has reduced complex lives into statistics, and determined that suffering is an acceptable cost to keep the machine running. This is how it tries to claim us.

And so we take back our love, we take back loving our neighbour and welcoming the stranger. We take back the value and inherent worth of each person. We take back our image as created children of God.

For we all bear God’s image. The miner and the mine boss. The worker and the shareholder. The person who has nothing and the person who has spent a lifetime accumulating. None of us belongs to Caesar. None of us is merely a resource to be extracted, or a consumer to be manipulated. The world does not belong to whoever can seize it.

It belongs to the Lord. The Lord of the mountains. The Lord of the rivers. The Lord of resources beneath our feet. The Lord of my breath and my very life.

Caesar can take the tax, but he can’t take me.

I am already claimed.

Amen