Introduction
Jesus exposes manipulative behaviour and idolatry, yet holds together in his very being the practical and poetic, the material and spiritual, the timely and the eternal. The question ‘how are you with God?’ is perhaps even more acute for the powerful than for the powerless. Once we ask it, we start to see the powerful aren’t always as strong as they think they are. It also brings into question where we put our trust and exposes how we hide from responsibility by assuming others should sort everything out, while we blame them for our woes.
Context
With the October deadline for self-assessment tax returns looming one might hesitate to say this: tax is a beautiful thing. It pays for infrastructure and security (something Romans were very good at). Tax allows us to share blessing (for example, through educational provision) and pain (through healthcare and emergency services). In doing so, tax profoundly embodies and expresses our interdependence. There is something deeply civilised, trusting and humane about such a sharing. At least there should be. Wondering what the upcoming budget will contain, aghast that America can be so arrogant as to impose a 300% tariff on foreign built aircraft while criticising others for protectionism, and eyes watering at the effects of the universal credit roll out on benefits claimants, it is not unreasonable to feel uneasy about the word ‘tax.’
Contrasting the togetherness tax should affirm, some say:
- ‘It’ll all be better when we Scots have independence’
- ‘It’ll all be better when we Brits are out of Europe.’
- ‘It’ll all be better when we Catalans are independent from Spain.’
- ‘It’ll all be better when we Kurds are separate from Iraq and Turkey.’
There is an almost neurotic assertion of independence in the air; a febrile atmosphere where the beauty of life-giving inter-dependence is hard to articulate without ridicule. Of course, there are serious justice issues at stake and freedom from oppression is always God’s desire for us, but assumptions that it’ll all be rosy when were left alone can rather diminish our sense of mutual responsibility in the present.
In a country far from independent, watching the Pharisees and Herodians come together to entrap Jesus, we sense dark forces aligning. If they are collaborating with each other against him, Jesus has reached a very dark place.
Reflection
If we feel tax is spent badly, or wasted, or unfairly collected then our stomachs may churn. (We perhaps have ourselves to blame in this country, consistently voting against rises in direct taxation and acquiescing in the face of increased regressive taxes such as 20% VAT.) This week there is high anxiety about the performance of hospitals. The cruel inefficiencies and wilful punitive structures of Universal Credit are felt by many of us giving out foodbank vouchers at churches round the land. Meanwhile, our taxes pay for nuclear weapons; for brutalising detention centres where asylum seekers and refugees are confined; we haemorrhage money wasting valuable civil service time on negotiating separation from Europe; Catalan citizens are surely reflecting that their taxes pay the salaries of the police who beat them with truncheons as they went to vote.
Good infrastructure and police brutality exemplify the ambiguity for Jerusalem’s intellectual and political elite, who were divided about whether to keep pure and clean from (Pharisees’ pietism), or collaborate with (Herodians’ pragmatism) the occupying power of Rome. We should understand and respect there were deep currents moving and genuine dilemmas for them to live with. Rome did help to rebuild the Jerusalem Temple they were standing in, yet the Maccabean revolt was still vivid in the group memory, countless crucifixions of tax evading rebels having taken place. By the time Matthew was being written, another Jewish revolt (66-70 CE) had been crushed and new Roman tax coinage was in circulation picturing a weeping woman, with the humiliating inscription ‘Judea Capta’ - ‘Captured Judea’. (Ellen Davis speaks of ‘the mass media of roman coinage’.) Adding deliberate idolatrous insult, having destroyed the newly finished Jewish Temple, this money was used to build a new temple to Jupiter in Rome. Also, in Antioch (where the Gospel was probably written) after the revolt a 20,000 strong garrison was established, so all the requisitioning of labour, food and property that went with it was being felt as this encounter of Jesus was recalled. For Matthew’s first readers it is hard to downplay Jesus’ provocation as he gets his interrogators to read for themselves the idolatrous inscription on the Denarius ‘Tiberius Caesar, son of the divine Augustus, great high priest’. They clearly pay the tax, as they were able to produce one right there in the Temple courtyard. The coins must have burned holes in their pockets as they walked away.
He has held up a mirror to them, calling them ‘actors’ because the purist Pharisees are clearly more pragmatic than they like to think. They boast of integrity, but their flattery before entrapment is sleazy. He through whom all things were made says ‘give back’ (Greek apodote) to Caesar with delicious irony. For the punch line, ‘give back to God’ sets Caesar’s notion of possession and power in the context of creation. The phrase allows Jesus, as it were, to toss the coin back to the Emperor, to accept the practicality of governance, and show how pathetic is imperial power. Yes, there is an empire to run, a world to function, government to be sorted, otherwise it’s chaos. Even Pagan Cyrus did good things when supposedly faithful Israel was dysfunctional. The enduring question is, Jesus suggests, whatever regime you are living in, how are you with God?
The Thessalonian Christian community is impressive for its ability to live the Gospel with joy, even under persecution. The false distance between holiness and pragmatism which the Pharisees and Herodians illustrated for themselves in their collaboration, has been closed and redeemed by Jesus. The Word become flesh, the creator of the minerals that make the coins that arrogantly declare both divinity and political power, is indeed heading to the cross as they hope, but not for the reasons they think he should go. He goes, Emmanuel, to be with humanity in the worst place of conflict; our most embattled struggling place where innocence and power collide; to the place of projected inadequacy and violent expression of political insecurity. He goes there to close the supposed gap between the ideal and practical, the pious and the pragmatic, the monetary and the spiritual. He goes to prove and make possible the inter-dependence of humanity and to reveal our ultimate dependence on God for our identity.
The seemingly powerless Thessalonian community, trusting the risen Christ’s witness to this reconciliation, live with such integrity that others cannot help catching their faith from Macedonian to Achaia and beyond. Their lives are knowing, not naïve; grittily hopeful, not dreamily sectarian; they are marked by the labour of love, the work of faith, the steadfastness of hope. Precisely when under pressure, defiant joy (v.6) is a mark of Christian spirituality whatever regime we live in.
In our peculiarly conflicted, yet still relatively privileged British political context, I wonder what a joyfully realistic church would look like.
Prayer
We pray
- for the Chancellor preparing the next budget;
- for wisdom for anyone craving independence, politically, emotionally, economically, and for patience to discover inter-dependence may be an even richer goal;
- as wind and reddened sun have reminded us what a small world it is, guide the governments of the world towards environmentally wise spending of our taxes;
- as Weinstein and Price scuttle shamefully into the shadows, we pray for any oppressed at work by a regime of sexual injustice.
For the end of the service you could craft a blessing from the magnificent Thessalonians passage (especially 1.6 and 1.3):
Rejoicing in the Word,
and filled with the Holy Spirit,
fulfil the labour of love and the work of faith
in steadfastness of hope;
and the blessing…
Questions
- When did you last give thanks for the opportunity to pay tax?
- The Chancellor is preparing a budget right now. What would you advise him to prioritise?
- The state provides ‘benefits,’ churches offer foodbanks. How far do you think the balance is right?
Meditative Action
Sit with a range of coins to play with in your hands. Feel their weight and shapes. Dwell on their colour. Note their inscriptions and the signals they are intended to send. Then begin to imagine them being made, soft enough to be impressed; then as molten alloys; then as ore; then being mined; then way, way back, hidden in the swirls of rock. Further back still, to the formation of elements in the first explosion of the universe: God’s bright idea.
Give thanks for existence.
Then return to the present, the politics, the purchasing, the poverty.
How does it all look when you have such a thankful heart?
What do you feel prompted to prioritise?
Young people
‘When we rule the world’
Even under eighteen, you are tax payers. I hesitate to suggest you do some maths but, if you look at what you spend this week, you can calculate how much VAT you have contributed to our government purse. (Value Added Tax is a curious name. Perhaps it should be ‘Value Taken Away Tax’.) If you have an opinion on how that money should be spent, you could message your MP with suggestions, warning them you will soon be a voter. You could discuss in a group how you will spend taxes when you run the world.
David Warbrick is Vicar of All Saints Kings Heath in the Diocese of Birmingham. Having finished PostScript he is hurrying off joyfully to fill in his tax return. (NB as he is a stipendiary priest, the honorarium for this writing is assigned to the diocese. David is proud that C of E clergy are all – pretty much – paid the same, expressing God’s equal attention to every neighbourhood, whatever their taxable income.)
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