Who's Image?

But, before we dive in to that, I need to prove to you that I know what I’m talking about, and also get a particularly embarrassing story out of the way.

You see…I am a politician myself.

Accidentally elected

Sarah and I were just married, living together in our first house.

Sarah was at this point a good bit more politically motivated than I was.

She informed me one Tuesday that we were going to vote.

This was a off-year primary election, which meant we were not voting for presidents or senators or congressmen, but for local elections like dog catcher and school board and stuff like that.

AND it was a primary, which meant we were voting for the people who might have a chance to be voted on later.

But, my wife said we were going, so I went.

As I found myself in the voting booth, pulling levers next to people’s names who sounded funny to me, I noticed one particular office on my ballot was empty.

Inspector of Elections.

And admittedly, I was new to any kind of political activism, but this was an outrage!

How could it be that no one, absolutely no one wanted to run for this prestigious office?

(Admittedly, this should have been a clue)

Would not the walls of democracy itself fall down if no one inspected our elections?

And so, seeing that no one was running for this office, I decided that it was in fact my patriotic duty to write my own name in as the inspector of elections.

I finished up voting, we got our stickers, and went home to watch TV and thought nothing more of it.

Until that is two weeks later, when I recieved priority mail from the PA State Department congratulating me on my 1 vote margin of victory.

That’s the story of how I accidentally elected myself to public office.

Politics and the Church: A warning before we begin

We live in a time where everything, whether it belongs in the political sphere or not, is hyper politicized to a damaging level.

So I need to ask us a few favors before we proceed:

Do not auto-fill

Realize that any time we are offered a choice between only two things (Partisan politics), there are often infinitely more choices available to us.

I believe firmly that the church cannot help but be political, in terms of the original meaning of that word:

Polis- Citizens. So politics is the welfare of the citizens of the state, town, nation, etc.

So our missions, when we provide for those in need, is a political act.

Our budget, when we decide what our priorities are as a church, are a political act.

Even, as we will see, our insistence that Jesus Christ is Lord, is a political act.

What I think the Church needs to distance itself from is partisan politics.

The church should not, and in fact as far as I’m concerned does not, have a preference for candidate or party.

All view points and agendas, be they Republican, Democrat, Green, Tea Party, Independent, or Libertarian are welcome here, so long as those views and agendas are rooted and grounded in the person of Jesus Christ.

Our love for Christ is what we’re after here.

So…with that out of the way…This passage talks about politics, but it actually points us beyond politics in to a deeper spiritual reality.

Studying Mark

Some History

We are in the passion week, and Jesus is just outside the Temple in Jerusalem.

Jerusalem is the capital city of Israel, a nation that is not just centered in the Jewish religion, it is the Jewish religion.

As we talked about last week, any time you hear someone talking to Jesus about “the law,” what they’re actually referring to is the Torah.

Imagine using the Bible as your constitution!

Incidentally, this is why it is nearly impossible to read straight through the Bible. It’s like reading law briefs.

But! At this point there’s a bit of political problem at foot.

Isreal is an occupied nation.

They were a tiny country to begin with, but then after the reign of King Solomon, they were a divided kingdom, which meant they were in fact two even tinier countries.

This made them super easy to take over and conquer.

Assyrians

Babylonians

Romans

The Romans were particularly strict in their occupation.

You could worship as you saw fit, but only if Rome didn’t see it as a threat.

There were regional governors, like the Herrods, that were placed over the people, but did not at all share their religious views.

And, the Romans needed cash to keep occupying.

They had a pretty sweet arrangement laid out.

They would hire local Israelites to go around and collect the taxes from people.

The Romans would say something like “Go collect 10% from the people” and would send armed guards with these tax collectors to get it.

But then these tax collectors were able to actually ask for as much as they wanted. So they might ask someone for 15%, give 10 to Rome, and keep the 5 for themselves.

So these were people who had betrayed their countrymen to work for the (literally) godless occupiers, and were ripping their countrymen off at the same time.

Taxes are an extremely hot button issue at the time of Jesus.

It’s a Trap!

Now in Mark, the Pharisees (religious leaders) and the Herodians (political) leaders have been trying to kill Jesus from all the way back in chapter 3!

It is almost redundant that Mark puts “to trap him” in this opening line.

Given the politically volatile situation, to see the religious leaders of Israel and the political leaders of Rome show up together would have been an enormous red flag to the first readers of this text.

The Greek word for “trap” here is the same word that fishermen would have used for hooking a fish.

It’s a catch and kill situation.

You can also see the trap coming in the way they butter Jesus up.

Everything before the “but” doesn’t count.

You’re a really great person, and I like how you’re working around here at the company, but...

And then they set the trap: Should we pay taxes or not?

If Jesus says yes, we should pay taxes, all of the Israelite people who are tired of getting ripped off by the Roman occupiers are going to revolt and kill him.

If Jesus says no, we shouldn’t pay taxes, the Herodians (and presumably their guards) are standing right there to arrest him for insurrection and have him killed.

This is a high stakes round. Jesus’ life is on the line.

Images and Inscriptions

Again, Jesus is a master teacher, and so his response is utterly amazing!

The kind of coin that is used for this particular tax is unique to Rome.

Israel would have had it’s own currency, which would have had to be exchanged to pay the tax.

So it’s kind of telling in the answer to this question that while Jesus doesn’t have a coin on him, the people who are setting the trap do.

Jesus asks the question at the heart of our sermon: Whose image is this, and whose inscription?

Both would have brought about some outrage from the Jewish listeners.

The inscription on the coin of Jesus day was “Tiberius Caesar, son of the divine Augustus.”

Caesars, in both an attempt to hold power and stroke their egos, started to insist that they were gods.

This would have gone against the Shema that we studied last week, which insists there’s only one God, and it sure ain’t Caesar!

So imagine having to read that every time you paid for something. In your nation, established under your belief in God, your oppressor thinks that they in fact are God.

But it’s the image question that really gets interesting.

The word in Greek here is eikonos, where we get our word Icon

Unlike our currency, the current administration would put their head on the coins, and with that inscription would have been seen as an idol.

Plus, it was almost like writing children’s names on all of their toys. The emperor believed that anything minted with his image on it was in fact his personal property, even while he was loaning it out to his subjects.

They had to return it to it’s owner.

And in one beautiful answer, Jesus robs both the image and the inscription of their power.

Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s.

Sure, go ahead and pay your tax.

If he’s got his sights set on this coin, let him have it.

But give to God the things that are God’s.

Oh, this is brilliant!

If you determine what belongs to Caesar by what bears his image and inscription, you might need to ask what bears God’s image and inscription.

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