Cyrus, Caesar, and Christ

The scriptures referred to are Isaiah 45:1-7, Psalm 96:1-13 and Matthew 22:15-22.

Cyrus the Great was a Persian ruler who not only overthrew his grandfather and father but went on to conquer the Babylonian empire in October of 539 BC. The people greeted him as a liberator. One of the first things he did was issue an edict that let peoples conquered by the Babylonians return to their homelands. He also let them restore their places of worship. This included the Jews, who had gone into exile in Babylon in 586 BC. It's no wonder he is mentioned favorably in several places in the Old Testament, specifically in 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Daniel and Isaiah. In today's passage from Isaiah, God calls Cyrus his anointed. This is not because Cyrus worshiped the God of Israel. We know from the Cyrus Cylinder, which recorded this decree and was discovered in 1879, that he was devoted to the god Marduk. Cyrus was simply used by God to let his people return to Judea and rebuild their temple, just as Cyrus let other peoples go home and rebuild their pagan worship spaces. He didn't privilege one religious group over another.

Nevertheless, in this passage God is letting Cyrus know that he is in fact the only God. He is ultimately in control. “I form light and create darkness; I make peace and I create disaster; I the Lord do all these things.” (My translation) Think of God as a chess grandmaster. We are free to make whatever moves we choose but he always has a countermove and a strategy. In the end he will be victorious. We can either try to work against him or work with him.

And each of us has gifts and talents which we can use for him or against him. Some people have gifts that enable them to become leaders in government. Some have gifts that enable them to become religious leaders. And those are two different roles. Even in ancient Israel, there was the king and there was the priesthood. And there were the prophets as well. The king was expected to set the tone of reverence for God and care for God's people. But he was not a priest. He may on occasion prophesy. But he was not a prophet. (1 Samuel 10:9-13)

Remember that Israel having a king was not God's original plan. (1 Samuel 8) He permits Israel to have one but warns them of the dangers of giving one man so much power. God is his people's king, as it says in today's psalm. Any earthly ruler operates under God and is accountable to him. When David committed adultery with the wife of his soldier Uriah and then had her husband killed in battle to cover up Bathsheba's pregnancy, Nathan the prophet confronted the king about his sin. (2 Samuel 11 & 12) Confronting and correcting the king is part of the prophet's job. And David's sin has real consequences. He has problems in his family. Because he has shed so much blood, David cannot build God's temple. (1 Chronicles 28:3) Being a king, and even one after God's heart, does not give him carte blanche to act however he wants to. (1 Samuel 13:14; Acts 13:22) He is expected not only to enforce but also to personally obey God's laws. (Deuteronomy 17:18-20)

It was common for kings to be seen as God's representative on earth and many kings even declared themselves to be descendants of a god. Peoples in the eastern half of the Roman empire often worshiped the genius, or protective divine spirit, of the emperor. After the emperors died, they could be declared to be gods by a vote of the Roman Senate. Yet Caligula liked to dress up as one of the gods. The Senate did propose dedicating a temple to Nero as a living God. Domitian was called “master and god” in imperial documents. The temptation for a leader to see himself as a god is an old one.

Tiberius, the emperor during the time of Jesus, was a reluctant emperor and only allowed one temple to be dedicated to himself and the Senate in Smyrna. He was not deified after his death. It would have been his face on the coin shown to Jesus during the incident reported in today's gospel.

The setting of this controversy is important. Jesus is teaching in the temple. His critics are trying to trip him up and get him to say something that will get him into trouble. Their question about whether it is lawful to pay taxes to Caesar is a trap. The taxes paid to the Romans who occupied what used to be an independent Jewish nation were not popular. Jesus would lose the crowd if he said paying them was lawful. If, however, he said it was not lawful to pay those taxes, he would be uttering treason in the eyes of the Romans. And the Antonia fortress, housing the Roman garrison in Jerusalem, overlooked the temple. Everyone was really interested in what Jesus would say.

Jesus knows this is a trap. He asks to see the coin with which the tax was paid. They bring him a denarius. And this shows that they were in fact hypocrites. They shouldn't have had this coin on them. The whole reason that moneychangers were allowed in the temple was because Roman coins had graven images on them. Tiberius' face was on one side of the coin and his mother Livia, portrayed as a goddess, was on the other. The inscription identified him as the “son of the divine Augustus” and the “chief priest.” They were idolatrous. In order to make donations to the temple or to pay the temple tax you had to change these coins for local shekels.

So they give him a coin that should not be on the temple grounds. Jesus looks at it and asks “Whose head is this and whose title?” Nobody repeats the blasphemous title but his critics simply say, “Caesar's.” So Jesus replies, “Give therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's.”

It's not just a clever way to avoid their trap but a profound statement of our relationship to human government and to God's kingship. Caesar, through the Roman government, issues the coins. His image on them tells us to whom they ultimately belong. Also money relies on trust and thus makes a large economy possible. Money that is issued by a stable government and which keeps its value lets people trust their financial transactions. So Jesus is saying that government has a valid role in civilization. But human government is not the only thing that matters.

Money may have images of humans on it, but humans also bear an image. We are all created in the image of God. (Genesis 1:27) Just as the image of Caesar says that a coin has a value, so too the image of God in us says that humans have an inherent value. That's why God tells Noah that shedding the blood of humans is serious. (Genesis 9:6) It is a desecration of God's image and murder is symbolic deicide. Jesus reaffirms that connection between humans and God when he says that whatever we do to others, especially those who are hungry, thirsty, under-clothed, sick, imprisoned or resident aliens, we do to Jesus. (Matthew 25: 31-44) Jesus is God Incarnate and in him we see most clearly the unblemished image of God. (Hebrews 1:3; Colossians 1:15; John 14:9)

So Jesus is saying that money and other things can belong to human government but that people belong to God. As C.S. Lewis said, next to the elements of communion, the most holy physical thing you can encounter in this life is your fellow human being. And just as it is against the law to mutilate, cut, deface, disfigure or perforate money with the intent to destroy it, make it unfit to circulate or to commit fraud, it is against God's law to intentionally mutilate, injure or otherwise harm another human being to take them out of circulation.

Notice too that Jesus refers to the things that are Caesar's and to the things that are God's. The things of Caesar are the lawful instruments of government: taxes, political offices and functions, government agencies, the police, and the military. What, besides humans, are the things that belong to God? That would include the instruments that he uses: churches and church organizations, the freedom to gather and worship him, and the freedom to spread his word and do the good works to which he calls us.

One reason James Madison included the separation of church and state in the first amendment to our Constitution to keep religion from being an arm of the government, as it was in Britain and Europe at that time. Just like ancient kings and emperors claimed to be divine, governments love to say that their policies and laws are divinely approved. That makes it seem sinful to criticize or disagree with them. It allows them to paint their perceived enemies as enemies of God. That's why it is not only wrong but dangerous to claim that the US is a Christian nation and should be run only by Christians. Just which Christian denomination would that be? A mainstream one or one that has a lot of doctrines and practices that are specific to their version? What if some group like the Westboro Baptist Church took over the government? To prevent that, the first amendment of the Bill of Rights says the government cannot establish or prohibit a religion.

Jesus clearly limits the authority of human governments. And he did so at a time when nobody could elect their government leaders and nobody could tell the king or emperor that certain things were off limits to him. We live in a different situation these days. Yet there are those who wish to end democracy and do away with elections and have said so publicly. There are rich individuals who want to use their power to make the government do what they want, like cut their taxes, give them contracts and do away with any regulations that will hold them accountable. There are elected politicians who want to end the process which would allow anyone else to be elected.

A leader who had godlike power that no one else could limit was a feature of the world Jesus and the early church inhabited. When told to stop proclaiming the good news of Jesus, the apostles said to the authorities, “We must obey God and not men.” (Acts 5:27-29) I hope it doesn't come to that today.

Ultimately the imperial cult of the Roman empire could not shut up the church or stamp out the gospel. Christianity was an illegal religion for the first 300 years of its existence. In that time, it grew from a handful of people to 6 million, or 10% of the population of the empire. That was enough for Constantine to make it legal in 313 AD. I just wish that the emperor Theodosius 1 had not made it the official religion of the empire in the year 380. That wed the church, the bride of Christ, to the state. That made the things of God the things of Caesar as well. And it recast the things of Caesar as the things of God. Mixing these two not only dilutes the appeal of the gospel—think of all those beautiful empty churches in Europe that used to be state churches—but it also corrupts the church. When Caesar took over the authority of God, that was when it became acceptable to force people to convert rather than to persuade them. That was when it became acceptable to hate rather than love our enemies. That was when it became acceptable to injure, harm and even kill people in the name of Christ, thinking that the mere existence of non-Christians was somehow a dire threat to the church.

It makes you wonder if those who think that way really believe that God is in control. Do they really believe Jesus when he said that the gates of hell could not prevail against his church? (Matthew 16:18) Do they trust in the power of Christ or do they actually trust in the power of Caesar? Fortunately, in our day and age we can decide to keep the things that belong to God out of the hands of Caesar.