Proper 24 Year A 10/18/2026
Exodus 33:12-23; Psalm 99; 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10; Matthew 22:15-22
Rev. Mark A. Lafler
Last week Bishop Justin was here…
And he talked about the man who was not properly dressed for the wedding…
The lesson was about allowing God to dress us…
To place his robes on us…
And not choosing our own clothing over the robes of the Master…
Not to be thinking that we are good without accepting the Master’s gift…
Allowing shame and guilt to dominate us…
But we belong to the Lord…
He dresses us!
He gives us the garment…
The cloak of righteousness.
He robes us with his salvation.
Our reading today from Matthew 22, follows on the heals of the parable from last week…
And we have another story about belonging…
St. Matthew sets this up beautifully to connect the parable of Jesus (from last week) with the questions from the Pharisees (in the reading this week).
I would suggest their placement in the Gospel is intentional…
That is the author wants us to link the stories together in our reading.
The Pharisees wanted to trap Jesus…
They conspired together and came up with a political trap.
And it was a good one.
However, they themselves didn’t go…
they sent their own disciples and the Herodians…
who would have been loyal to the royal lineage of King Herod…
in other words, this was a politically divisive group…
there was no sense of bi-partisan ideas here…
This wasn’t a casual conversation…
There was an agenda.
And it started off with flattery, saying:
Teacher… we know that you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth.
You aren’t swayed by others,
because you pay no attention to who they are.
And then threw the curveball question:
Tell us then, what is your opinion?
Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not?
It’s actually a great trick question…
because both obvious answers have major problems.
If Jesus said, “Yes, pay those taxes.”
He would have had the people mad at him.
He would lose popular support.
Who wants to pay the Roman Empire… the occupier of their land… their hard-earned money?
And if Jesus said, “No, don’t pay the tax.”
He would be in trouble with the civil authorities.
The Herodians would charge him for inciting a rebellion.
But Jesus was on to them.
He knew they were testing him… trying to trick him.
So, he asked for a denarius.
And they had one.
He asked whose image and title was on it.
Of course, it was the emperor’s image.
And then Jesus has a drop the mic moment…
Therefore, render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,
and to God the things that are God’s.
And with that they were amazed and had no further questions.
So, what does all this mean?
First, let talk about what it doesn’t mean.
Jesus is not giving some early lesson on the relationship between religion and the state.
Jesus is not thinking about the politics in the United States or about the separation between church and state.
That is not his point.
Many try to tie this passage to that modern philosophy,
and it is just placing something into the text which isn’t there.
To do this is anachronistic.
Jesus was a first century Jew living in poverty.
He was very much a person of his time and place.
That is why his parables are so often agricultural stories, or about weddings and (or) landowners.
He followed the local Jewish customs.
He read from the Old Testament.
He went to synagogue.
He knew about the rebellions against the Roman Empire that were violently smothered.
He knew how the local politics worked.
And so, we have to look at some of the cultural clues to help us understand what Jesus is saying and why the people were so amazed.
If we don’t, we will interpret what Jesus said through our own 21st century political culture…
Which frankly, will give us a very bad interpretation of the text.
Two Greek words are helpful here.
The first word is the Greek word εἰκών… meaning image.
We use the word today for famous Christian art or icons… called iconography.
Jesus uses this word icon when he asks, “Whose image is on the coin…”
Image is very important in Jewish thought (and Christian thought for that matter).
It is in Genesis 1:27 where it is written:
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.[1]
One of the amazing things about the early people of God is that when you went into the Tabernacle or into the Temple there was something that was missing that was in every other Temple in ancient times.
If you went to a temple of Artemis… you saw a statue (or image) of Artemis.
The same would be the case with a temple of Apollo…
or Marduk of Babylonians.
But in the Jewish temple there was no image of God.
There was the ark, the candles, but no image of the deity.
And this is because humans were created in the image of God according to the Old Testament…
And the Jewish Temple was alone in this feature in the ancient world.
The other thing to remember about this word image is that it shows up in the Ten Commandments.
In Exodus 20:4 we read:
You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything…
This graven image was big time important in Jesus’ day.
And the coin with Caesar’s image was a really big deal too.
Jews were not allowed to put images of people or human faces on their coins.
And only the imperial mint could legally produce silver and gold coins… which had Caesar’s image.
The coins also bore the words:
Tiberius Caesar, son of the Divine Augustus.
The other side referred to Caesar being the high priest of the Roman religion.
On the coinage Caesar declared himself to be a son of god.
So, when Jesus asks whose image is on the coin…
it is very much wrapped in a first century Jewish understanding.
In the same way that in our context you can’t hear “pursuit of happiness” without thinking about the Declaration of Independence and the cultural context.
When Jesus says:
Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s,
and to God the things that are God’s…
He is saying pay the tax to Caesar… because it’s got his image.
But give to God what is God’s…
Well… who has his image?
And that is where the second important Greek word comes into play.
ἀποδίδωμι… it’s the word translated as render or to give.
Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s…
This word carries the idea of paying back to someone that which is his or her due.
It is to give back what you owe.
So as one commentator put it:
The coin bears Caesar’s image: give it back to him.
[render it to him]
You bear God’s image: so give yourself back to him! [2]
Jesus is saying something so much bigger than pay your taxes or making a statement on some political ideology.
He is talking about your whole life’s devotion to God.
To render to God what was God’s was to render worship to him alone.[3]
That’s why he said… way back in Matthew 6:24 –
You cannot serve both God and money.
That’s why the greatest commandment is this according to Jesus:
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind…
Jesus was saying give your whole self to God.
Not just part of it.
Not just on Sunday morning.
Not just when it’s appropriate.
Not just when it’s convenient.
God wants all of you.
And he wants all of you… all the time.
Your heart, your soul, your strength, your mind.
That’s why as baptized Christians the main sign of our baptism is being united with Christ in his death and united in his resurrection.
It is a new life in the Holy Spirit.
It is no longer living for myself, but for Christ Jesus.
We belong to Christ Jesus.
We are encouraged in scripture to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is our true and proper worship.
(Romans 12:1)
You see, since men and women are created in the image of God, they belong to him as surely as Caesar’s coins belong to Caesar.[4]
So, the lesson today is about belonging…
We, who are in Christ Jesus, belong to the Lord.
We are created in the image of God…
And we do not worship any other image.
Not only does the Master – Jesus – clothe us with his garments…
With his righteousness… as we learned last week…
Jesus today declares that we belong to God.
We bear his image…
The mark, the seal, of God is crafted on who we are…
Jesus has come to remove the curse of sin…
To remove the shame…
To remove the guilt…
So that when we are in Christ…
As image bearers…
We are marked as Christ’s own forever.
And nobody can take that away…
Not even Caesar…
Not even the Caesar’s of our world.
May we live in this world with the knowledge and understanding of whom we belong to… (Let’s not get that mixed up).
Amen.
[1] In the Greek translation of the Old Testament (LXX) the word εἰκών is used.
[2] Michael Green, The Message of Matthew, TBST (Downers Grove: IVP, 2000), 234.
[3] Craig S. Keener, Matthew, IVPNTCS (Downers Grove: IVP, 1997), 326.
[4] Douglas R. A. Hare, Matthew, Interpretation (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1993), 254.
