Christian Art | Render To Caesar
Mark 12: 13-17 – Week 9 Ordinary Time, Tuesday (Audio Bible KJV, Spoken Word)
13 ¶ And they send unto him certain of the Pharisees and of the Herodians, to catch him in his words.
14 And when they were come, they say unto him, Master, we know that thou art true, and carest for no man: for thou regardest not the person of men, but teachest the way of God in truth: Is it lawful to give tribute to Cæsar, or not?
15 Shall we give, or shall we not give? But he, knowing their hypocrisy, said unto them, Why tempt ye me? bring me a penny, that I may see it.
16 And they brought it. And he saith unto them, Whose is this image and superscription? And they said unto him, Cæsar’s.
17 And Jesus answering said unto them, Render to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s, and to God the things that are God’s. And they marvelled at him.
In today’s Bible verses, the confrontation continues between Jesus and the Jewish authorities, who now send Pharisees and Herodians, themselves mutually hostile, to seek to provoke and condemn Jesus.
The Jews try to set a trap for Jesus, and in so doing they demonstrate both their malice and hypocrisy and also their real failure to acknowledge what should be their true relationship with God.
Under Roman rule, the people were heavily taxed, and this was greatly resented. It seems, then, that the Pharisees and the Herodians are setting Jesus an impossible question. On the one hand, if he says that the people should pay taxes to Caesar, this could turn the people against him. On the other hand, if Jesus says that they should not pay their taxes, then his enemies can accuse him to the Roman authorities.
In response, Jesus asks his questioners to see the self-evident. He points to the great distinction between Caesar’s coin and our proper relationship with God. We are called to understand how our sense of that distinction can become confused and corrupted, just as the secular, and financial, interests of the Jewish authorities have perverted their proper role and led to their preventing the people from being in proper relationship with God.
Yes, we’re to pay our taxes. We live in society. ‘I am the way, the truth and the life.’ And we must give our whole being to God.
‘Now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. Let us walk honestly, as in the day. Romans 13: 11-13
Audio Bible KJV | Endnotes
Taxation Of Nazareth At The Time Of Jesus
At the time of Jesus, Nazareth did not suffer Roman taxation or use Roman coinage. Nazareth was a predominantly Jewish community and it was remote. Some Jewish communities were granted exemptions from Roman taxation and other forms of Roman control.
During the Roman occupation of Palestine, Jewish communities were allowed to govern themselves according to their own religious and cultural traditions, without interference from Roman authorities. This meant that Jewish communities were able to maintain their own legal and judicial systems, as well as their own cultural and religious practices.
Jewish communities were still required to pay certain taxes to the Roman authorities, such as customs duties on imported goods. Nazareth is not mentioned in any Roman historical or tax documents.
This is kind of the point of Jesus being born there – it was nowhere.
We can be confident in Jesus of Nazareth. It was a no-place! (What a place for God to be born!)
Nazareth at the time of Jesus was not on the map. Literally.
Psalm 124 is a narrative of danger, deliverance, and gratitude. The psalm moves from contemplation of what might have been to a celebration of what is – the Lord’s protection and deliverance. The psalm serves as reminder of the need for divine protection and the importance of acknowledging and giving thanks for such protection. Psalm 124 is a testament to faith in the face of adversity and the power of divine intervention [ … ]
‘Death,’ says His Grace, ‘throws it all apart. For we are not as we should be. Faith requires our adjustment to God’s truth. God’s triumph in a very real sense requires in us the loss of our everything. Which, as with Mary at the other end of Jesus’s life, is God’s truth.’ The Gospel reading is of John 11: 1-45, which is a long passage, and His Grace’s homiletic theme commences in textual wilderness. Our brokenness – in this place – a family home. Our faith, our doubt, our death… The irruption – death, doubt, fear – within our precious scenes and our most intimate places. Our domesticity. His Grace speaks from the chair, as is a bishop’s prerogative, and says: ‘So much is obscure in the Gospels. We’re always reaching through them. We’re never there. Really, we never are. Our knowledge, our understanding, of the Gospels is never complete, and with each reading comes a new revelation. There are always new riches there. Just as there are between all of us, between myself and you. The Gospels are living texts. This is a part of the conversation we have with our own Christianity. It is a part of who we are in our relationship with Jesus. We are in this sense always on the brink. ‘So yes, there is plenty that doesn’t seem to make sense. As one of the order of bishops, we would be lying if we said that weren’t the case. They are not easy texts to encounter, if by that word we may signify something more than a superficial glancing off against, but rather a profound search for the word of God. The Gospels are written by people who had their own ideas, and often didn’t know what had really happened. Luke is quite explicit on this point. His is an investigation, from the explicitly claimed point of view of an historian, rather than that of a first-hand witness, who attempts, so he says, to set out an orderly account, out of the chaos, the sheer muddle, that has been handed down to him. It is possible to imagine Luke researching and composing his account after many years, when there has arisen a desire to know what exactly happened, and this implies a certain call to faith and certain demands of historicity, to historical exactitude. So in these different ways, the people of the first years of Christian faith are in the dark. There is also a decisive need to define the life of Jesus. And people didn’t get Jesus. The whole meaning of Christianity is only now beginning to take root throughout the composition. So much needs to be evangelized. The light shines almost in tentative fashion like that first star, which drew the wise men from the east to our Lord’s cradle. ‘John’s is widely held to be a very late Gospel. There are others who say that John’s Gospel might have been the first to acquire its true shape, because it most fully expresses Jesus, as we know him to be, as members of the Catholic Church. We don’t really know when any of this is being written, but we get a feel in John of a Gospel refined over many years, through a community. So there’s a lot going on there that I’d like you to think about. ‘What I would like to suggest to you is that, while within the Gospels we are often confronted with clues, guesswork, stories that have been handed down through so many people, and so in this sense we might find ourselves to be in the wilderness, this is the very desolate space itself to which we must give ourselves in order to experience Christ’s full redemption in our lives. I suggest it is for God’s glory that we do so. ‘As we become aware of ourselves, in this seminary, we find ourselves in a very secure, comfortable setting, and there are signs of Easter everywhere. Within the very fabric of these buildings, our Lord is risen; our Lord lives. But now this is our Lenten journey, where death enters, where death breaks us. We are to ride into Jerusalem in triumph, and then we are to be utterly broken, all hope gone, our hope extinguished. And really, I suggest to you, it is only by inhabiting this thought, as if we don’t know Easter is there, that our new life can follow, just when we have given up all hope, when every promise that Jesus made to us seems to have been cancelled. ‘And here now we have the story of Lazarus. I should like to suggest to you that we have a very powerful call now. In our very comfortable space, our domesticity, with all this comfort, where so very little might seem to happen each day, so it might seem to you, there is a disturbance within all of this comfort, and that is a disturbance within ourselves, and that is our call to Jesus. I think it is correct to say that our most comfortable places break in the light of Jesus from the inside, in order that we may take the necessary steps to be with Jesus. ‘Faith is not comfortable. I think that we can all receive the message of the rolling away of the rock from the tomb of Lazarus to say something of vital importance to ourselves concerning our openness to God’s love. The rock we roll away can come in all sorts of guises, but we know when we are blocked, and I firmly believe if we are truthful then we know where those blocks might be. ‘Next Sunday, which will be Palm Sunday, we process as it were to Jerusalem, to begin our Holy Week. Now as I speak to you we are on the brink. Even now, I suggest it might be very good for all of us to lay aside what we think we know, to fall apart a little, and so […]
Psalm 113 is a hymn of praise within the ‘Hallel’ collection (Psalms 113-118). Traditionally recited during significant Jewish holidays, especially Passover, this psalm is prayed in liturgical practices of both Judaism and Christianity. The psalm’s composition, themes, and stylistic elements reflect its historical and religious context and spiritual and literary significance [ … ]
