Sermon: It's a Trap!

First Presbyterian Church

October 22, 2023, Pentecost 21A

Matthew 22:15-22

 

It's a Trap!

 

 

 

One of the most recognizable and most quoted bits of Star Wars film lore is a simple three-word exclamation, spoken by an admiral in the Rebel fleet upon learning that not only had they not caught Imperial forces unprepared, but that the Empire had a brand-new Death Star powering up and ready for them. Upon seeing this, Admiral Akbar (a distinctly non-humanoid character, exclaims "It's a trap!" And for that line, Admiral Akbar is one of the most-quoted characters in Star Wars lore. 

Were Admiral Akbar lifted out of Star Wars and plopped into today's reading, he would have multiple opportunities to let out his famous quote, some of which are obvious to pretty much all the readers of this passage, and some of which require a bit more work to detect.

The first clue that "it's a trap!" is the composition of the squad who approaches Jesus in the first place. Under normal circumstances, the Pharisees and the Herodians would have nothing to do with one another. The Herodians were not necessarily a religious group, and were open in their support for the Roman-installed puppet king Herold, and by implication the Roman Empire who propped him up. By contrast, the Pharisees were an extremely religious group (you probably know the type) and were practiced in the p.r. of opposing Rome, but not loudly enough to get Rome to pay attention. That these two groups were appearing together before Jesus at all was plenty enough reason for Admiral Akbar to exclaim "it's a trap!" (and we see in verse 18 that Jesus is well aware of this trap). 

Admiral Akbar would be yelling out again pretty quickly once he heard the opening statement of the Pharisee-Herodian cabal. Verse 16 is a classic bit of buttering up, some deeply insincere flattery spouted forth as if Jesus were susceptible to such a thing. If they truly believed what they were saying, they would know very well that it wasn't going to work on Jesus. Cue Admiral Akbar again: "it's a trap!"

A clearly sprung trap is what we see in verse 17. "Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?" Admiral Akbar would be spewing out "it's a trap it's a trap it's a trap" on a seemingly endless loop by this time. Sure enough, in verse 18 Jesus calls out the cabal for their "malice" - no pulling punches here! - and then springs his own trap on them by asking them to produce "the coin used for the tax."

This is a part of the trap that Admiral Akbar might not catch. Jesus's phrasing here sets this particular tax apart from all the other random taxes the people might have imposed upon them from Rome or from the Temple or from anywhere else. The particular "tax" referenced here is one that Rome reserved especially for those lands it had taken by conquest. It was, in effect, an "occupation tax," one that Rome levied on its conquests to pay the salaries and expenses of those soldiers and other officials doing the local physical work of occupying a territory. 

In other words, Judea (and many other regions taken by the Roman Empire) were paying a tax to fund their own occupation by Rome. And to further the aggravation, such tax (roughly equivalent to a normal day's wages) could only be paid this particular coin. No other currency would be accepted. So you had to go through the hassle of getting one of these coins before you could pay the "occupation tax." No wonder many in such occupied territories never paid it and hoped the Romans wouldn't notice. 

So, by inducing his questioners to produce this particular coin, Jesus had trapped them into revealing that they were apparently OK with paying this tax, since there was literally no other use for this coin. Admiral Akbar might respond with a variant of his usual phrase, but in a much more admiring tone - <slowly> "now THAT'S a TRAP!!!"

There's one more potential trap in this passage, but it's a lot more subtle, and might be the one that modern readers and scholars of this scripture are more likely to get caught in. Jesus finishes the conversation by asking them whose image was on the coin, and when they correctly answered "the emperor's" in verse 21 Jesus springs his get-out-of-the-trap card: "Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's." It's enough to get the Pharisee/Herodian cabal to beat a hasty retreat, to be sure. Still, though, we moderns (as well as many generations of the church before us) might well be trapped by the particular interpretation of the scripture we want to see.

It's not hard to come up with a scripture like Psalm 24:1 - "The earth is the Lord's and all that is in it" - and jump quickly to the conclusion that "hey, we Christians don't have to pay any taxes!" The trouble is that even before we get to Matthew 22, we've been through a passage in Matthew 17:24-27 that doesn't let us off the hook so easily. In that passage the collectors of the temple tax show up wondering if Jesus was one of those tax-skipping types (leaving aside the fact that Jesus literally had no income). Peter answers straight out of fear "yes, he does" and then goes running to Jesus, who oddly enough seems to know exactly what's on Peter's mind. He uses an illustration about whom kings assess taxes on (hint: not their own children) to acknowledge, in a way, that the claim is correct; the children of God really don't "owe" the empire. And yet, in the next breath, Jesus suggests that "so that we do not give offense to them," Peter should go and literally fish an "occupation tax" coin out of the lake via a fish's mouth and pay the tax with it. 

Jesus doesn't see any good in a agitating, performative, but not very effective way of sticking it to the Empire. Left unspoken but implied is that if you are truly following Jesus, you're going to offend the empires you live among soon enough. If you're going to offend the empire, do it in a way that means something and does people some good in the process. Admiral Akbar might be wondering at this one: "it's a trap?"

One could argue that there's one more trap inherent in Jesus's final answer. Remember that the coin used to pay the "occupation tax" literally had no other use anywhere in the Roman Empire; all it could do was pay that tax. Why would God want such a thing? It truly was the emperor's in that sense, and frankly, it's best to let him have it. Give God the actually useful stuff; your time, your abilities and efforts, and yes, your financial resources as you can. 

This might be a place where we get tripped up today. We may occasionally get tripped up (or trapped up?) by our sentimental attachments to certain things, even certain things about the church, and confuse our attachments to those things with things that the church can actually use. Or perhaps society has conned us into thinking some of its own obsessions and infatuations are something we need to offer to God. Even Admiral Akbar might have to concede, "yeah, it's a trap." 

Let's put this bluntly in stewardship part two: aside from our own time, energy, presence, and work for the church, the most useful thing we are going to be able to give to the church is money, or something that can be redeemed for money, the stuff that enables the church to do things like keep the lights on and the air conditioning or heat running, to fix things that need to be fixed or remove things that need to be removed, and yeah, to pay folks who work for the church in some capacities. 

Don't give God the useless things of the world; give to God what is God's, starting with ourselves. 

For staying out of the traps of stewardship, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #450, Be Thou My Vision; #693, Though I May Speak; #711, Lord of All Good

 

This guy. Remember?