In Whose Image?
Well, Jesus is really in a pickle now! At least that’s what His accusers are hoping!
As today’s Gospel opens, Jesus is at the Temple during the last week of His earthly life. It’s been a long week … and it’s only Tuesday! He has upended the tables of the money changers, and driven the dealers from the Temple courtyard. The Pharisees and elders have repeatedly tested Him on various religious issues - to no avail - and the Jewish powers-that-be are becoming more and more aggressive (and fearful) of Jesus’ influence. So the Pharisees have now - in today’s Gospel - racketed up the pressure by forming an unlikely alignment with the Herodians, setting another trap for Jesus, this time, over the issue of paying taxes to Caesar.
These are particularly strange bedfellows - the Pharisees and the Herodians - for the two groups despised each other; they had very different relationships with Caesar, and thus with the payment of taxes to, and the authority of, secular government.
In ancient times, coinage was the sign of kingship. As soon as a ruler came to power he struck his own coinage, with his own image and an inscription declaring his own divinity! Any and all coins bearing the king’s likeness were held to be the exclusive property of that king. For most Jews, and the Pharisees in particular, the payment of taxes to any earthly king was to accept that king as valid and, thus, was seen as an insulting diminishment of God’s authority and divinity.
The Herodians, on the other hand, were the party of Herod, the puppet governor who owed his power to Caesar’s occupying, Roman governance. The Herodians needed Roman authority to maintain their own authority, and taxes were surely an important means for the preservation of that power. Most Jews, especially Pharisaic Jews, saw Herodians as traitors if not heretics. So, it speaks volumes that these two groups formed an alliance! Their collective determination to maintain power and their fearful hatred of Jesus (and His ascendancy with the people) eclipsed even their deep abhorrence of each other!
So, the Pharisee’s oily, opening flattery of Jesus (“Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth…” blah, blah, blah) was their set-up to entice Jesus to respond to a test in which they felt sure He would discredit himself by His own words in the presence of the people overhearing the exchange. If Jesus said it was unlawful to pay Caesar’s tax, they would immediately report Him to the Roman officials and He would promptly be arrested for sedition. If He said it was lawful to pay the tax, He would stand discredited in the eyes of the people who despised and resented Roman occupation of their country.
And when His accusers asked their question: “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” they carefully worded it so as to offer Jesus only a lose/lose, “yes” or “no” option. All in all, these guys are feeling pretty sure they were finally about to (well…) nail Jesus!
But Jesus’ stunning response takes into account the web of hot-button issues before him. Essentially, He simply says: “Give back to the emperor what is already his, and give to God what belongs to God.”
Of course, Jesus’ response is clever and blows right through their trick question. Even if this had been all He’d said or implied, it would have been revelatory, given the predominate view at the time that Jews should reject any secular power. So the first thing Jesus does here is to actually pronounce a new element of salvation history by expanding the ways and places that God’s people are to function in the secular world beyond the perimeters of strictly religious life. They should - we should - pay to Caesar what is deemed Caesar’s. We should be good and responsible citizens of the secular state. That alone would have gotten their attention.
Christ’s response is revelatory, yes … but it is also loaded! Loaded with meaning. Loaded with Biblical reference. Loaded with His own implied question - for us as much as it was for those 1st C Jews. For, in answering his accusers’ question, Jesus uses a specific word: “Eikon,” translated in today’s reading as “head,” but more often and literally translated as “likeness” or “image” or “resemblance.” Jesus is asking his challengers “In whose image is this made?”
“In whose image is this made?” Does that question ring a bell with anyone? It certainly would have with His original audience, for Jesus is reminding His listeners of God’s declaration at the very beginning of all time and space - in the first chapter of the first book of the Bible, just as He creates human beings from the dust of the earth. “Let us make humankind in our image, after our likeness,” God says. And, in the next verse underscoring his decision: “God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them.”
Christ turns His accusers’ ploy into a broad reminder of how uniquely precious we are, and in whom our human loyalty and ultimate purpose lies. In creating everything else in the universe - out of nothing - and declaring it all Good … it was only when God crated humans - in His very own image - engraving each person with some irreplaceable, sacred part of Himself! - that God declared His work very Good! We are precious guardians and dispensers of God’s image in the world around us. We were created for that very purpose!
I can imagine our Creator, eyes wide with delight - smiling - bent over some lump of clay, His strong, gentle hands shaping, caressing, molding us into existence as He places some special part of Himself into every unique human soul. We - dear Ones - are God’s beloved treasure and the pinnacle of His creation! What personal tenderness and individual care He pours out to us … one by one by one.
And here’s the thing: knowing that every one of us is created by God Almighty in His own likeness … knowing that God somehow engraved Himself into us… makes all the difference in what it means to be human. It makes all the difference in how we see and treat each other - inside and outside this church. It makes all the difference in how we define what it is to be a civilized culture and a healthy community.
In a few moments (at the 10:15 service) we will dedicate a beautiful new baptismal font, given to Good Shepherd by Katy Gukich in memory of her parents, who were one of Good Shepherd’s first three families. As I count it, there have been five generations of Katy’s family in this church, marking something like 100 years. Five granddaughters and 9 great-grandchildren have been baptized into this community - the family of Christ that is The Church of the Good Shepherd. At the moment of each of their baptisms, like all Christians, those five generations were “sealed and marked as Christ’s own forever!” By God’s amazing provision, we are literally (as the old song goers) “signed (+), sealed and delivered,” through Christ, in God’s imprinted Love and Mercy!
Knowing that every human creature is created by God in God’s own image means - proves - that every Life is - in God’s reckoning - precious and sacred. This is especially true in the life of the truly defenseless: the unborn and the physically or mentally challenged, for example. When God engraved Himself on each and every human being, He made no exceptions, and we are wise to remember what a Gift and responsibility we are given in that truth.
And, amazingly, among all countries the world over, only our own nation was founded on this same divine truth. That is precisely what American Exceptionalism is all about! For, when people speak of “American Exceptionalism,” they are not promoting some platitude of national pride or superiority, but really something quite the reverse.
Our founders, flawed men that they might have been, designed this nation around the exceptional idea that all people are created in God’s divine likeness, bearing within themselves His divine spark. We are therefore - if for no other reason than that - precious and worthy, as individual souls, with individual thoughts, capacities and goals. Our Founding Fathers affirmed - unlike any other government the world has ever known - that all people are created equal, and that each is given (by God - not by any government!) certain absolute, unassailable rights of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of happiness. Ours is the only nation founded not on prohibitions or restrictions imposed by some earthly power, but on the truth of our Freedom as children under God’s authority and directive, and that, as such, we can be counted on to discern and follow our Divine Creator’s will and greater purpose for a country formed under His Holy stamp and guidance.
We have certainly not always lived up to these standards, and like all sin-tarnished humans, we often place our own interests above these ideals, but - unlike any other nation in the history of the world (to my knowledge) the United States was founded on the belief that every person bears the image of God and is therefore worthy of equal opportunities and the pursuit of his or her own dreams.
The timing of today’s specific readings, less than three weeks before what is surely one of the most contentious and ugly elections in our history could not be more, well, challenging. 2020 has been a long, unnerving often tragic year in so many ways, for so many, many people. Hearts and lives have been rattled and broken. We surely would be wise to recognize that we really are in a battle with more than mortals, and acknowledge there are also spiritual forces in the battle. I pray each of us will test and decide our own vote mindful of God’s life-affirming principles.
As faithful Christians, we have every reason for Hope! We have much to be thankful for. We know that God is not surprised or overwhelmed by any of the recent events that have rocked not only this nation but the entire world. In whatever way our own election is resolved, we are blessed to be in a country designed to confirm God’s authority as her foundation. The transfer (or the sustaining) of any elected government here is not the result of shed blood and brutality, but of ballots completed freely and in secret. God can and will use any person placed in a position of authority - just as He did Egypt’s Pharaoh or the brutal King Cyrus who “did not know God.” Our God is in charge, and He will not be mocked or dismissed. The One who made us, and marked every human as His own creation sees and knows, and He is at work in these turbulent times.
We are simply called to turn to Him - with repentant hearts - and faithfully, humbly, daily follow the cross-bearing call of our Lord Jesus - as His servants and beloved (if broken) children. And, as we respond to this time of upheaval and isolation, with His spirit of peace, gentleness, kindness and Love… we are sure to see - in His Good time - our faithful, creative Father, bending over this ailing nation and world, gently shaping and caressing these rough lumps of all sorts, colors and types of clay - into His holy, humble, faithful men, women, peoples and nations - baring God’s sovereign, holy image and light into a renewed world.
“If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.
2 Chronicles 7:14
Thanks be to God. AMEN