Exodus 33:12-23 and Psalm 99 | Isaiah 45:1-7 and Psalm 96:1-9, (10-13) | 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10 | Matthew 22:15-22
Trust is good; control is better.
– German proverb
What gives life and what is counterfeit are often impossible to distinguish. Carbon monoxide, an invisible and odorless gas, is undetectable to our senses. Once inhaled, it binds to our hemoglobin 200 times more easily than oxygen. Because the poison blocks oxygen delivery, our cells and organs starve and then die.
Counterfeits kill because they offer a more attractive substitute.
Creeping idolatry poses an equivalent threat to the body of Christ. No one aims to become an idolater. In fact, coming to faith more characteristically leads to turning away from idols (1 Thess. 1:9). But small compromises and infidelities compound like interest, so that good beginnings culminate in disaster.
Jesus’ interlocutors in Matthew don’t look anything like the idolaters who fashioned the Golden Calf in the prequel to our Exodus text. Yet the Pharisees conspire with the Herodians to ensnare Jesus, like San Francisco progressives teaming up with Texas conservatives for cynical political gain. Both ends of Jerusalem’s political spectrum find common cause in assailing Jesus.
Their question, “Should we pay taxes to Caesar or not?”, aims to paint Jesus into a corner. Answering “yes” exposes him as a poser who talks big but has nothing real to offer his oppressed people. A “no” spotlights him as a revolutionary for the empire to crush.
But knowing that whoever frames the questions is in charge, Jesus asks them for the coin used to pay the tax. When they produce a Roman denarius, he responds, “Whose image is this? And whose title?”
His opponents are reduced to muttering, “Caesar’s.”
Then Jesus utters the famous words, “Pay back Caesar what is Caesar’s, and pay back God what is God’s.” Jesus’ listeners gape in wordless amazement.
So why don’t we have the same reaction?
Historically, Jesus’ words have sounded to Americans as though there were two kingdoms, “the misleading impression of a 50-50 split and a firewall between political duty and religious integrity.”1 We make our peace with Caesar by giving what is required in the public realm while insulating our worship so that it remains free from contamination. We can see all too well the dangers unfolding in real time as the separation between these two spheres crumbles.2
We are prone to fall into the same trap as Jesus’ interlocutors. No one aims to shut God out entirely. We are too sophisticated for that.
Instead, we structure life so that we can manage God bit by bit. We crave access to reliable blessings, not the unpredictability of absolute allegiance to this God. We covet control, not trust.
So we gradually domesticate life with God so that it fits smoothly within our current way of life. We draw a line right behind us and declare that faithfulness looks like everything on our side of that line. We are convinced we have arrived, but we are blind to the counterfeits we have embraced.
Behind the obvious idolatry of the Golden Calf lurks a hidden peril. “[T]here is no sense that the calf represents another god. It is meant to represent the LORD…the Israelites’ idolatry in this instance is not so much a turning away from the LORD as the fabrication of an illegitimate image of the LORD.” Crafting an image is meant to give them control over Yahweh’s presence and ultimately divine speech and actions. “The making of the calf is a way of domesticating a rather untamed LORD.”3 While attempting to control the Living God is nonsensical, we are incurably prone to trying. And the result is a deadly counterfeit.
Mercifully, Jesus exposes our settled arrangements. Jesus amazes where we have ceased to be amazed.
The Roman coin to pay taxes was doubly idolatrous because it bore the image of Tiberius Caesar and his claim to be “august son of the divine Augustus” (i.e., a son of a god). For a Jew to possess such a coin was a clear act of idolatry. The fact that Jesus’ opponents readily produce this coin marks them as enmeshed in Caesar’s economy of fear, oppression, and violence. They have, bit by bit, succumbed to idolatry. They are indeed hypocrites, posers dressed up as the faithful.
“Pay back Caesar in his own coin” sounds seditious. But when holding Caesar’s own coin, Jesus looks like he affirms paying taxes to the empire. But instead of giving Caesar the last word, Jesus relativizes Caesar’s claim: “Pay back God what belongs to God.”
Jesus does not immediately elaborate. His full answer comes later that week when he renders to God his full obedience, even to the point of death on a Roman cross. Caesar tries his best to put a claim on Jesus and demands Jesus’ life as a tax for the sake of Roman homeland security. But God overrules Caesar by raising Jesus from death.
Should we pay taxes to Caesar? Perhaps better questions are: If we give to God what is God’s, what is left for America? If Jesus is raised from the dead, what is left to give to the Economy?
We are no longer amazed by Jesus’ words because we only hear him naming the settled arrangement we have already embraced through gradual compromise. True amazement loosens our self-reliance and beckons us into worshipful self-surrender.
What is the antidote to creeping idolatry? While the Thessalonians demonstrate an authentic initial turning away from idols to the living and true God, I take great encouragement from the life trajectory of old Moses.
With a casual familiarity with Israel’s story, we might surmise that God will shrug off the Golden Calf incident. But Yahweh says, “I will not go up in your midst, or I would consume you.” Yahweh’s relationship with Israel has been rocked by the latter’s infidelity. “My presence will go, and I will give you rest.” What we miss in our translations is that the pronoun “you” is singular. God will go with Moses, but gives no indication that the divine presence will accompany the people. There will be an exodus, but without Yahweh.
Moses cannot countenance this possibility. “Unless You go with us, what hope do we have in being distinct from every other human community?” Moses could have come to God with a laundry list of things seemingly essential for leading God’s people: the pastoral gifts possessed by his brother Aaron, more energy in his old age, allies among the elders so that he wouldn’t feel so isolated as a leader, etc. But all of these things are insufficient.
We can so easily settle for our church being just another human community. We can have the right theology, liturgical practices, social ethics, and political positions. Israel possesses all of this at Sinai.
But Moses insists that only one thing is necessary: that the Living God be present among and for us. Anything less is a counterfeit.
Moses goes one perilous step further. He asks to see the divine glory. How far Moses has come from when he stammered before the burning bush! He did not know how to address the Living God. Now he will not settle for anything less than the wonder of God’s authentic presence with the people and for himself. Moses has been on his own exodus, a journey of conversion from idolatry to serving the living and true God.
Only amazement before the Living God can rouse us from the fatal stupor of idolatry.
1 Richard Lischer, “How shall we render?”, Christian Century, March 2025.
2 Admittedly, a Christian nationalist reading of Matt. 22 could refuse to see how the context of first century Jews under pagan rule has any relevance for an exceptional Christian America under God and thus ignore this text entirely.
3 Stephen Fowl, Idolatry, 14-15.