St Simon Politicus is a very busy church. Every church member is very aware of what's going on in the world. Each week the vicar stands up and preaches from the latest news headlines. There are regular meetings with local councillors, and groups from the voluntary sector. People willingly volunteer to help with all manner of social projects. At the moment its mission is to become fully carbon-neutral, and the numerous recycling bins in the churchyard have caused a fair amount of local debate.
Down the road St Simon Charismaticus is also a very busy church, but for a very different reason. Its mission is very simple and very clear – to preach the gospel and win souls for heaven. Evangelism and worship are its twin goals. No matter what is happening in the news out there, inside you know you will always get the same focus on saving people from the world. It doesn’t have any recycling bins in the churchyard, but the number of tracts the church regularly hands out across town suggest a recycling facility might not be a bad idea.
As you might image, St Simon Politicus and St Simon Charismaticus rarely see eye to eye about any issue, if indeed they ever meet at all. But the one thing that both churches claim is that they are proclaiming the kingdom of God. Both of them take seriously Jesus' message: The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news! (Mark 1:15). For one, the kingdom of God is all about activity in the here and now, and addressing the political structures of the day. For the other, the kingdom of God is not of this world, and it's only a harvest of souls that truly counts.
So which church do you think is right?
I am going to suggest that the answer is "Neither". On the one hand, when Jesus talked about the kingdom of God, He wasn't talking about a physical kingdom, but the spiritual reality of God coming to reign over people's lives. But on the other hand, this kingdom Jesus proclaimed was always meant to have a direct and practical impact on the way we live our lives now. As we shall see in a few weeks' time, when we look at the parable of the sheep and the goats, this will include feeding the hungry, clothing the destitute, welcoming the stranger, visiting the prisoner.
And it was Jesus' teaching about the kingdom of God that so infuriated His opponents. In this final week of His earthly life, Jesus made it plain that God's kingdom would mean the coming of a new spiritual reality. The old way of doing religion with all its rules and regulations would come to an end. Jesus made that plain in the parable of the tenants we heard a couple of weeks ago. This particularly upset the Pharisees who had prided themselves on their scrupulous observance of the law, and thought they had the right to tell others the correct way to approach God.
But Jesus also upset the Herodians, the supporters of the ruling family who were in league with the Romans. Why? Because as we heard in last week's parable – the parable of the wedding banquet – Jesus talked about the king coming to destroy His enemies and burn down the city, a clear prediction that Jerusalem would be destroyed and their political privileges ended.
And so this passage begins with one of the more unlikely alliances in history, between the Pharisees who were devoted to the purity of the Jewish religion, and the Herodians who were devoted to serving the Romans. In the normal course of business they would have been at each other's throats. But faced with Jesus, who threatened them both, they were united. This dangerous teaching had to be stopped.
Thus they managed to bury their hatchet long enough to come up with a truly cunning plan. They would send a delegation along to Jesus who was easy enough to find in the temple courts and after softening Him up with a nice bit of flattery they would ask the killer question: Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not? Because, as far as they could see, whichever way Jesus answered they would have got their man. If Jesus said no, then the Herodians could accuse Him of stirring up revolt and revolution against the ruling authorities and He could be convicted of sedition. If Jesus said yes, then the Pharisees could accuse him of breaking God's law since Caesar considered himself a God and any recognition of Caesar would involve the worship of another God.
It really was a truly cunning plan. Except, of course, they hadn’t full grasped who Jesus was, and the fact that He was even cleverer than their most fiendishly difficult question. But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, "You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me? Show me the coin used for paying the tax." They brought him a denarius, and he asked them, "Whose portrait is this? And whose inscription?" The fact that the Pharisees were able to bring Him a denarius immediately undercut their own position. Even though they were ready to accuse Jesus of blasphemy, they themselves were using Roman coinage, and were enjoying the benefits of Roman rule - the military and political order, the trade, the improved roads and so much more besides. They might have pretended to be purer than the average Jew, but they too recognised the image of Caesar as having authority over their lives. And for that reason Jesus was quite right to label them as hypocrites.
Jesus' initial answer must have delighted the Herodians who for a moment might well have suspected He was on their side. But Jesus hadn't any time for them either. And they would have recognised that His words - Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's - were particularly aimed at them. For them, their whole position was aimed at keeping in with the occupying Roman army. It was even more important than their practice of their Jewish religion. They too were hypocrites because while they claimed to worship the Lord, in fact they were only paying Him lip service.
There is no doubt that Jesus gave a brilliant answer. But what does it mean for us today? Those little words Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's have over the centuries given rise to a whole variety of interpretations, and if we are to apply them correctly we need to know what Jesus is and isn't saying by them.
The first thing that Jesus isn't saying is that Caesar and God are equal. In the middle ages the doctrine of the divine right of kings was developed, partly developed from practice of anointing kings in the Old Testament. The king was king by God's right and so to obey the king was to obey God. Equally to disobey the king was to disobey the will of God. But that can't be what Jesus meant by those words. Later on in this chapter He teaches that the greatest commandment is to Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. It is God who demands our full devotion, not any king or political system or party ideology. And indeed we only have to look at the tragic history of the 20th century to see what happens when men blindly follow the teachings and commands of a human leader.
Perhaps rather more immediately to us, Jesus isn’t also saying that Caesar has authority over one part of our life, and God authority over another. Sometimes you will hear people say, "Politics and religion" don't mix. That's the point of view which says that faith should only be practised in private, at home or in church, that when it comes to the workplace or the debating chamber your beliefs should be left at the door. It's certainly the viewpoint that successive governments have been promoting over the past few decades, as they have made it increasingly hard for people to confess publicly they are Christians. There is at the moment the case of a doctor facing disciplinary action because a patient explicitly asked him what he believed, and he was brave enough to answer.
Jesus isn’t saying that Caesar and God are equal. Nor is He saying that Caesar is Lord over one part of our lives, and God Lord over another. What He is saying that Caesar has some authority over lives, and therefore we should obey him. But there is a greater authority still and that is God, and it is to Him that we owe our deepest allegiance. After all, if you think about it, a government can produce coins and bank notes and postage stamps that bear their image. But who or what bears God's image? Us. You and me. He is the maker of all things and He is the one we are called to worship.
You need to understand all this if you are going to properly make sense of our reading from Romans, which is often used as a proof text to say Christians should unquestioningly obey governments and act as model citizens under their laws. A closer look, however, reveals this isn't quite what Paul is saying, and there are a couple of points which I want to particularly draw out from this passage.
First of all, we should generally obey the rule of the law. Verse 1: Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. So the idea that you can be a Christian anarchist, for example, or set up some kind of commune with its own peculiar laws, is completely ruled out. That's clear enough. But what if the regime is so opposed to anything remotely Christian such as in Zimbabwe or North Korea or Saudi Arabia? Are we really saying these governments have been established by God and we must submit to them?
At first hearing, the whole idea seems completely absurd. Where Christians are persecuted, and basic human rights are denied, how can we say that the government is acting under God's authority? But if you think about it, somehow God must ultimately be in control. If God really is the maker of everything, and Jesus Lord of all, then there can't be any no-go areas where He is not sovereign. Of course we may wonder how God can be in control and like the souls of the murdered saints in the Book of Revelation we may cry out, "How long?" but if God is God then presumably there is no situation so bleak, so desperate where He cannot be at work.
But secondly, it is clear from Paul's writing that we are not to offer blind obedience in every situation. He goes in in verse 3: For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong and then in verse 4 talks about the one in authority being God's servant to do you good. And although Paul's teaching here is aimed at encouraging church members to be responsible citizens, he is also setting out strict limits to just what a government can and cannot do. When a government fails to do God's people good, when instead of upholding what is right and true, it passes harsh and repressive laws, then we are not compelled to obey. Indeed there may well be times when like Peter and John before the Sanhedrin in Acts 4 we have to say Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God's sight to obey you rather than God.
And the time when we have to make such a decision in this country is fast approaching. It's not too far-fetched to imagine that soon a law will be passed requiring religious organisations to conduct gay marriages on their premises. The government wants to be a world leader in gay rights, and it seems from recent pronouncements that gay rights triumph any other kind of right. Of course no-one should be persecuted because of their sexual orientation, but there is a world of difference between protecting minorities and forcing their views on others. So the question is – when the first minister is arrested for refusing to conduct a ceremony, will you be there to lend support?
Jesus said Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's. It was indeed a brilliant answer to the Pharisees and the Herodians who came to trap Him. But I hope you can see it was meant to more than just a put-down or a witty one-liner. It was meant to point us to an essential truth, that as followers of the Lord Jesus we belong to two kingdoms. We belong to a physical kingdom and I guess that like me most of you have a passport that confirms we are a subject of the country of our birth. But through faith we also belong to a spiritual kingdom and we live ultimately under the rule and authority of that king.
So, finally, let's go back to St Simon Politicus and St Simon Charismaticus. The one church is trying to build an earthly kingdom, the other a heavenly kingdom. Which one do you think is growing? The answer, it may surprise you, is neither. The churchgoers at St Simon Politicus have only been taught to address the issues of the day. The Jesus people see in them is a radical, but He doesn't offer any real spiritual transformation. Down the road, at St Simon Charismatics, the churchgoers have been taught to talk about Jesus. But the Jesus people see in them doesn't seem interested in the needs of the poor and the hungry.
That's why, to everyone's horror, the bishop wants to bring them together. To create a united church which is real and relevant to today's world but which also points beyond, to the real Jesus and the renewing power of His Holy Spirit. Because that in the end is what it means to Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's.
For when we take Jesus' words seriously, we realise that, yes, we should be involved in this world of ours, with all its mess and pain and confusion, and yes, we should generally live by the laws of the land. But we should also bear witness to that higher authority who is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. How? By a radical and costly obedience to Him. That is the mission Jesus gives the church, and that is our mission today. To take up our cross and follow Him, whatever the cost, whatever He calls us to do, so that others learn to live under His authority and see His kingdom come. For His name's sake and for His glory. Amen.
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