Do we pay taxes...or not?

 

My second-favorite story about Jesus (after the story of his meeting with the Syro-Phoenician woman) appears in my favorite Gospel—Mark’s. It goes like this:

"Then [Jesus’ Pharisaic enemies] sent to him some of the Pharisees and the Herodians, to catch him in his words. When they had come, they said to him, “Teacher, we know that you are true and care about no one; for you do not regard the person of men, but teach the way of God in truth. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not. Shall we pay, or shall we not pay?” But he, knowing their hypocrisy said to them, “Why do you test me? Bring me a denarius that I may see it.” So they brought it. And he said to them, “Whose image and inscription is this?” They said to him, “Caesar’s.” And Jesus answered and said to them, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.” And they marveled at him."

Mark, 12:13-17 NKJV

If nothing else, Jesus was a master rhetorician with the inborn ability to employ—seemingly off the cuff—sophisticated and subtle arguments. In this he surpassed by far the abilities of all those members of the well-educated and urbane one percent who dared match wits with him. The Gospels are riddled with exchanges like this that illustrate Jesus’ true genius: the ability to turn the tables, to turn his enemies’ words against them, to avoid rhetorical traps with ease.

Everybody knows about the awful tax burden imposed on the Judean peasant and artisan classes in the Ancient Near East. I have no need to go into detail about how—even more than today—the tax system was used to impose poverty on the lower classes, to keep them dirt-poor, to enrich Imperial Rome, the priestly caste, and those other Judeans who grew fat collaborating with it, and to feed an insatiable war machine. Everybody knows how Imperial Rome dealt with dissent and disobedience. Everybody knows how subservient Judea was and how the vast majority of the population hated the Occupation and those who collaborated with it.

So here came Jesus, the champion of those very persons most wounded by Rome. His popularity was rising fast, and the buzz around him was threatening to become a Movement. Something had to be done to derail the Jesus Train, and, as in the final seconds of an old-time movie serial, the Roman collaborators forced Jesus to the edge of a cliff from which there was seemingly no escape. They thought they had him. They thought they would destroy either Jesus’ person or his credibility in one fell swoop with their flattery and their incendiary question: “Shall we pay, or shall we not pay?”

Even if you haven’t listened to more than a score of Protestant sermons, you know Jesus’ dilemma. The story has become a part of the fabric of Western Civilization, so much so that even most atheists are well familiar with it. If Jesus answers “don’t pay,” he gets crucified by the Romans for sedition, probably by sundown; if he answers “pay up,” he loses all credibility with the very class that he has come to champion. He will become, in their eyes, just another collaborator. Either way, his ministry is finished.

If he was hooked on the horns of a dilemma, about to go over the cliff, at the end of reel 5, everybody knows how our hero miraculously escaped and triumphed at the beginning of reel 6. He gave his interlocutors the answer that confirmed his genius, confounded his interlocutors, and helped cement his position as the best hope of the common people. He provided the answer that has been used for two thousand years as justification for docilely paying taxes to support an unjust system. “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.” But I don't think Jesus was advocating providing support to an illegitimate occupying power—not at all.

Just as the Pharisees and Herodians thought, Jesus was a rebel and agitator—not just against the religious establishment of the time, but against Rome itself. But I don't think he wanted to be executed for being a revolutionary or to atone for our sins, or for any other reason. I think what Jesus wanted more than anything was to see Judea free of Rome and free of a religious establishment that—just as in the time of Jeremiah and Isaiah—had a stranglehold on the land. He preached a revolutionary message from the beginning to the end. And he preached a revolutionary message when he talked about taxes on that day.

But how to preach that message without being carried off to his execution? The answer is simple: he spoke in code. On the surface, he said nothing objectionable to the politico-religious authorities: how could fault be found with one who openly advocated paying taxes (“the things that are Ceasar's”) to Rome? Too, how could one object to something that the priests learned in Theology 101: things that belong to God should be given to God?

Why didn't Jesus' followers turn on him when he seemed to be telling them to pay taxes to Rome? It doesn't matter what he said about giving God his due. There's no way around it; whatever else he may have said, he did say, “pay your taxes.” So why didn't the Pharisees' strategy work? Why didn't Jesus lose all credibility?

Because the people Jesus was really taking to understood the code. They understood in ways that the priestly caste, the nobility, the lawyers, and the Romans never could. Those who grew fat off the labor of the peasant and artisan class thought the system was completely legitimate, so they didn't get it--the message sailed right over their heads. But Jesus was not speaking to them: he was speaking to the rabble, and the rabble got the message. They knew—just as Jesus knew—that the Roman Occupation was unjust and totally illegitimate. They knew that property does not become one’s own if it is stolen, and they knew that every last denarius, jug of wine, bunch of olives, bolt of cloth, and hour of labor the Romans and their collaborators extracted from Judea was the proceeds of theft. Nothing in Judea, in other words, belonged to Caesar. Everything belonged to God. “Let him with ears to hear listen!” said Jesus, and his followers heard the message loud and clear: “Hell, no. Don’t give the tax collectors a nickel.” That is why the rabble didn't turn on Jesus, that day.

Here endeth the sermon.