Whose Image?
In today’s Gospel, Jesus is asked a difficult question: “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” In Jesus’ time, Judea was under Roman rule. The taxes Rome collected weighed heavily on the poor. They also reminded people year after year that their land was under Roman control. If Jesus said they should pay the tax, he could be accused of siding with Rome. If he said they should not pay it, he could be accused of urging people to rebel. Either answer could get him into trouble.
The Pharisees are looking for a way to trap Jesus. They send their disciples to him along with the Herodians. These groups have different interests and different views, but they join together in trying to put Jesus in a difficult position. They begin with flattery: “Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality.” They praise Jesus for speaking the truth and for not judging people by appearances. But they have no intention of listening to him honestly. They call him sincere while trying to trap him. Jesus sees through them and says: “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites?”
Then Jesus says: “Show me the coin used for the tax.” They bring him a denarius. The coin bears the emperor’s image and title. People use coins to buy and sell, but this coin is also a sign of Rome’s rule over the land. Jesus asks: “Whose head is this, and whose title?” They answer: “The emperor’s.” Then Jesus says: “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”
Jesus does not choose between “yes” and “no.” He asks them to look at the coin they have brought and say whose image is on it. “Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s.” The coin bears the emperor’s image. But Jesus’ words do not end there: “Give to God the things that are God’s.” What, then, belongs to God? Genesis tells us that human beings are made in the image of God. Genesis was first written in Hebrew, but the Greek translation known as the Septuagint uses the word eikon for “image.” Matthew uses that same Greek word for the image on the coin. The coin bears the emperor’s image; human beings bear the image of God.
Paying taxes is one of the responsibilities people share as members of a community. But accepting that responsibility does not mean that everything about a person belongs to the state. The state can shape people’s lives, but it cannot claim their lives, consciences, or dignity as its own. Our dignity does not come from an emperor or a government. We are made in the image of God. In today’s first reading, Isaiah calls Cyrus, the king of Persia, God’s anointed. Cyrus did not know God. Yet God worked through his power to open a way for the people of Israel to return from exile. As Isaiah says, “I arm you, though you do not know me.” Political power can serve God’s purposes. But no power becomes God’s will simply because it holds power. We must look at what it does and ask whether it serves what God desires.
In 1934, some German Protestants spoke out against efforts to bring Nazi ideas into the church. Their statement, the Barmen Declaration, confessed that Jesus Christ alone is Lord of the church. No state or political ideology could take his place. The churches that gathered around this confession came to be known as the Confessing Church. The Confessing Church did not resist every crime committed by the Nazi regime. Still, its confession drew a clear line: the state could not take the place of the church’s Lord.
State power is not the only thing that can threaten a person’s dignity. The standards by which society measures people can take root within us, until we begin to judge ourselves by them. Society often sends messages like these: You must be young to have value. You must be healthy to be useful. You must be productive to count for something. When society measures people by their ability and productivity, those standards do not stay at the workplace. They enter our homes and our closest relationships. We may begin to measure a person’s worth by how much they can do, how healthy they are, or how useful they are to others.
Recently, I came across the story of an elderly man in Germany in a book on bioethics. He had tried to take his own life and was taken to a hospital. In conversation with the nurses, he said he had come to believe that his life was no longer worth living because he was growing old and his body was becoming weaker. He said that the way he thought about life might have been shaped by the Nazi era he had lived through as a young man. He had spent years surrounded by the idea that only the young, the healthy, and the able-bodied had value. In time, he began to look at himself through that same lens. By those standards, he felt flawed and useless.
But human dignity is not earned through youth, health, ability, or productivity. It comes from being made in the image of God. That dignity does not diminish when the body grows weaker or a person needs help from others.
Remembering that we are made in the image of God changes not only how we see ourselves. It also changes how we see our neighbors. The image of God is present in those who think differently from us, those we find unfamiliar or difficult to understand, and those pushed to the edges of society. Their dignity is not ours to grant or take away according to their opinions or their place in society.
The Gospel tells us that when the people heard Jesus’ words, “they were amazed; and they left him and went away.” It does not tell us what they did with those words. That question is left with us. “Give to God the things that are God’s.” These words remind us to ask whose we are, and whose our neighbors are.
Jesus asks us the same questions today: Whose are you? By what do you judge another person? Let us stay with these questions for a moment. May we learn not to measure ourselves by the standards of this world, or our neighbors by their appearance or circumstances. May we recognize the image of God in one another’s faces.
Amen.