1 19th Sunday after Pentecost In this morning’s Gospel Jesus is asked two very different questions, it is well worthwhile to think about both these things; The first question they asked was a clever trap to try and trick Jesus into committing treason, or putting himself off side with the crowd who were anti Rome. You can see the Herodians and the Pharisees rubbing their hands together and saying among themselves – “well we’ve cornered him this time!” We need to remember the setting, Jesus’ homeland was occupied territory, the Jews hated the Romans and resented paying taxes. And also the Roman Emperors by this time had declared themselves to be divine, though the Jews were exempted from having to sacrifice to them. If the monotheistic Jews were loyal – they were exempt from Emperor worship. Herod, who had rule of neighbouring land, was still a vassal of the Emperor, and had to pay tribute to Rome. The ordinary Jew hated the Romans and didn’t like the Herodians much better. So, Jesus had to be careful; the wrong answer could land him in a real mess. Jesus asked to see a coin – Roman coins were the common currency, but they could not be used in the Temple, hence the money changers in the forecourt of the Temple – whom at one stage Jesus threw out of the Temple, because they were rogues, robbing their own people. But no, Jesus was well aware of their evil intent and put it back on his questioners: The coin had an image of Caesar on it: and so the story concludes with Jesus saying to them: ’Then he said to them, ‘Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’ And so Jesus gave to us a timeless principle: Give to the State that which is due to the State, and give to God, that which is due to Him. That might seem straight forward enough, but there would come times when Christians would have great difficulty: e.g. when persecution broke out against first and second century Christians the authorities would try to make them worship Caesar; when they refused they would be thrown to the lions, be burnt at the stake or whatever other nasty punishment suited the official passing judgement. In pre W.W.II Germany and as the war progressed many Christians in Germany found themselves in a real bind. Are we loyal to the State, when such evil (the Holocaust) is being perpetrated or do we revolt against the State - such was the dilemma that caused Dietrich Bonhoeffer to be imprisoned and hung by the Nazis. As loyal citizens, how do we as Christians respond, when we see the State doing or approving of things that we believe to be wrong and contrary to the will/law of God? It is never easy. Then we come to the second question – a question about the concept of the resurrection of the dead. Jewish thought was pretty divided over this one: the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, the Pharisees entertained the idea, the Qumran community accepted the idea, those influenced by Greek philosophy thought it could be real enough and so on. There was a lot of ferment about the idea, and in Jewish circles Jesus was probably the first to be so explicit about the reality of “the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come”. The Old Testament talks of Sheol – which is a vague shadowy existence of those who have died, and certainly not what we would describe as “life after death”.
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