Listen to the audio of today’s Reflection:
https://soundcloud.com/hapearce/reflection-for-february-20-2025
Mark 12:13-27
Paying Taxes to Caesar
13 Later they sent some of the Pharisees and Herodians to Jesus to catch him in his words.14 They came to him and said, “Teacher, we know that you are a man of integrity. You aren’t swayed by people, because you pay no attention to who they are; but you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not? 15 Should we pay or shouldn’t we?”
But Jesus knew their hypocrisy. “Why are you trying to trap me?” he asked. “Bring me a denarius and let me look at it.” 16 They brought the coin, and he asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?”
“Caesar’s,” they replied.
17 Then Jesus said to them, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”
And they were amazed at him.
Marriage at the Resurrection
18 Then the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question.19 “Teacher,” they said, “Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. 20 Now there were seven brothers. The first one married and died without leaving any children. 21 The second one married the widow, but he also died, leaving no child. It was the same with the third. 22 In fact, none of the seven left any children. Last of all, the woman died too. 23 At the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?”
24 Jesus replied, “Are you not in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God? 25 When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. 26 Now about the dead rising—have you not read in the Book of Moses, in the account of the burning bush, how God said to him, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? 27 He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. You are badly mistaken!”
A few days ago, our Reflection was based on two stories about leadership that we said are usually thought of a separate stories, but that should probably be considered together. Now here’s another case like that. In this case the connection might seem more obvious. Both stories are about confrontations between Jesus and the Jewish leadership, and in each story, the leadership plots to trick Jesus into saying something that might get him in trouble, either with the population or with the Roman authorities. Both stories are set during the last week of his earthly ministry.
In the first story, Jesus is approached by representatives of two Jewish groups, the Pharisees and the Herodians. As you might remember, the Pharisees were a group of super-observant Jews who took a vow to obey the Laws of Moses very strictly, and who all-but-demanded that other Jews to do likewise. (You might see them as a first-century equivalent of the morality squads that patrol the streets in some Muslim countries, demanding that women cover their heads.) The Herodians were active supporters of the Herod family, which ran the country under Roman authority. The Herodians would be considered supporters of ‘the Hebrew establishment’ in ancient Palestine.
The Pharisees and Herodians ask Jesus whether it’s right for Jews to pay taxes to the Romans. Nobody likes paying taxes in any time or place, but patriotic Jews harbored a special resentment toward these taxes, for an obvious reason: They resented Roman rule over their country. And to make matters worse, these taxes had to be paid in Roman coins. Those coins had images of the Caesars on them, and the Jews considered using them as trafficking in graven images, which is forbidden by the commandments.
So the question the Pharisees and Herodians ask Jesus is meant to be a trap. If he said people should refuse to pay the tax, he could be handed over to the Romans, who might well have executed him for sedition. On the other hand, if Jesus said Jews should pay the tax, the group of leaders must have assumed that patriotic Jews would turn against him as a collaborator with the Romans.
But of course, Jesus comes up with a third option. He says that since Caesar’s image is on the coin, that makes it his coin, so using it to pay his taxes is giving him what is his own.
In the second story, Jesus is approached by a different group of Jewish leaders – some Sadducees. This group of Jews came from some of the ‘best families’ — you might consider them ‘blue bloods’ — and they had close ties to the high priesthood at the Temple in Jerusalem. The Sadducees Had a major theological disagreement with the Pharisees and other Jewish leaders. The Sadducees taught that there was no resurrection, but the Pharisees said there was. (As a matter of fact, in Acts 23, the apostle Paul almost causes a riot by getting the Pharisees and Sadducees Into a public argument about this question.)
Since the Sadducees believed there is no resurrection, they had come up with a theological riddle involving “levirate marriage,” which was the custom of a man marrying his deceased brother’s widow and fathering children who would be considered the dead brother’s children. The Sadducees’ riddle involved a highly unlikely scenario of one woman being married to seven brothers who all died childless. Then they ask Jesus to rule on whose wife the woman would be after the resurrection.
But Jesus refuses to answer their question. Clearly he understood that there is a resurrection. But Jesus pointed out to the Sadducees that marriage was established by God as an institution of this world, and that life in the kingdom of God will be very different. Jesus just rejects the Sadducees’ whole way of thinking about this issue.
What these two stories have in common is that in both cases, Jesus refuses to allow himself to be drawn into debates about the “hot-button issues” of his time. In each case, the people involved in the disputes were sure that God was on their side. But Jesus not only refused to take sides in the disputes, he even questioned the people’s basic assumptions.
In our time too, a lot of time and energy goes into a handful of hot-button issues. And people on both sides of every issue are absolutely certain that Jesus is on their side. But these two passages – and the fact that they’re right next to one another in Mark – suggest to me that we’re being cautioned against assuming that Jesus is on our side in the theological controversies of our time.
Those who know me well might remember my saying that a lot of what God teaches me comes from people I start out disagreeing with. So it seems to me that some humility is called for from disciples of Jesus. It seems to me that in many disputes, neither side is entirely right. Maybe sometimes, God has something to say into the life of the church through both sides. Maybe being open to the possibility that we can be wrong is what Jesus meant by being “poor in spirit,” as he put it in the Beatitudes. And as you probably remember, he pronounces that blest.
Let’s pray. Lord, you know how inclined we are to tell ourselves that we are right and others are wrong. Touch our hearts, we pray, and give us a humility to accept that we are often wrong, and that even when we’re right, you might still be trying to teach us something through those who disagree with us. Amen.
Blessings,
Henry
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