Or maybe he would give us as ambiguous an answer as he gave the Pharisees: “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God, the things that are God’s.”
Whatever did Jesus mean by this remark? It’s often been used to support the idea that our spiritual lives are separate from our political and social lives; that God has to do with invisible, celestial matters while Caesar’s realm is about our real, every day matters. But Jesus was an earthy kind of guy, who taught us to pray that God’s “kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.” So I can’t believe that his ambiguous remark about taxes is suggesting that our faith has no bearing on our political, economic, and social lives. But what was Jesus saying when he said to “Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s”?
This text is the given scripture being read this Sunday in many churches across denominations. What a challenging scripture for us in the context of the Occupy Wall Street demonstration which is finding further expression in cities across the nation. While the movement has been criticized for not having a defined purpose, it is clearly a response to deep frustration over growing unemployment, greed on Wall Street, and an increasing wealth gap which is threatening the very concept and existence of a middle class.
We can’t call Jesus down to weigh in on the tax issue, but perhaps we can look more closely at today’s text and wrestle with how or whether our faith shapes our decisions, particularly our economic ones. Does our identity as Christians make a difference in our day to day living and how we approach the world?
