Trinity 23-Matthew 22:15-22

Brothers and sisters, I want to begin with a strange partnership. In our Gospel today, the Pharisees and the Herodians come to Jesus together. Now these two groups could hardly stand each other. The Pharisees despised Roman rule and resented every coin paid to the occupier. The Herodians were the ones who profited from Rome and wanted to keep the peace with Caesar. They agreed on almost nothing. But they found one thing that could unite them, and that was their wish to trap Jesus.

Listen to how they do it. "Master, we know that thou art true, and teachest the way of God in truth, neither carest thou for any man: for thou regardest not the person of men. Tell us therefore, What thinkest thou? Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar, or not?" (Matthew 22:16-17, KJV).

It is a beautifully built trap. If Jesus says yes, pay the tax, then he is a collaborator, and the crowds who love him will turn away. If he says no, then he is a rebel, and the Roman soldiers will be at his door. Pick a side, Jesus. Join a camp. Tell us who you are against.

Now, I suspect that many of you know exactly how that feels. You don't have to look far to find a world that demands we choose a camp before we have even finished the question. We are tired. We are tired of the shouting and the headlines. Some of us are tired of the family dinners where we have learned which subjects to avoid. Some of us have felt a friendship grow thin over a yard sign or a post online. Weary and divided, and pressed to declare our side.

And here is what I find so freeing about this Gospel. Jesus does not take the bait. He sees their malice, as Matthew tells us, and he does not play the game on their terms. He says, "Shew me the tribute money." They bring him a penny, a denarius. And then he asks the question that changes everything: "Whose is this image and superscription?" (Matthew 22:20, KJV).

They answer, "Caesar's." And he says, "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's" (Matthew 22:21, KJV).

Let us stay with that coin for a moment. Picture it in the palm of his hand. On one side, the face of the emperor, stamped in metal, with an inscription that declared him a god's son and the high priest of Rome. It is his image. It bears his name. So Jesus says, quite simply, let it go back to him. The coin belongs to Caesar. Give it back. It is not worth a fight.

But notice that Jesus does not stop there, and neither should we. He says "and unto God the things that are God's." And any listener steeped in Scripture would have heard the question underneath the question: what, then, bears the image of God?

The answer is on the very first page of the Bible. "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them" (Genesis 1:27, KJV).

We are the coin, my friends. Caesar's face was pressed into metal, but God's image was breathed into you. You were stamped by your Creator before you were ever registered by any government, before you were ever counted by any party, and before you ever held an opinion about anything. At the font of baptism, that image was claimed again and sealed with Christ's own name.

So yes, render to Caesar what is Caesar's. Pay what is owed. Honor lawful authority. Saint Paul tells us to be subject to the governing authorities, and the Church has always taught that civic duty is a real duty. Vote prayerfully. Serve your community. Pay your taxes. That is not a distraction from holiness; it is part of how we love our neighbor.

But Caesar's claim is limited. It reaches the coin. It does not reach the soul. No party, no platform, no election holds the title deed to you. Not the left, not the right, not the loudest voice on the news. Your deepest allegiance, your very self, belongs to God, and that is a claim no one can repeal.

This is the word of comfort for the weary. You do not have to carry the whole weight of the world's arguments as though your worth depended on who wins. You belong to God. That is settled.

So how do we live this out when we walk out those doors and back into a divided world? Let me offer two simple things.

First, honor your civic duty without letting it become your identity. Take it seriously, but hold it loosely. When our politics become the thing that tells us who we are, we have started to hand Caesar something that was never his to take. Let your faith shape your citizenship, and never the other way around.

Second, look again at the person across the divide. The neighbor whose vote you cannot understand, the relative whose views frustrate you, the stranger on the other side of the argument. Look again. That person is also a coin stamped, not with a party's logo, but with the face of God. You may disagree with them, and sometimes you must. But you may never forget whose image they bear. If we truly believed that, how differently we would speak. How much more gently we would listen.

And here is the beautiful thing. We do not have to manufacture this unity by our own strength. In a few moments, we will come to this altar, people of every political stripe, side by side. The One whose image we bear, Jesus Christ himself, gives himself to us in the Eucharist. He feeds the weary. He gathers the divided into one Body. The same hands that held up a coin in Jerusalem now hold out the Bread of Life.

So come, and receive. Then carry that unity into the week ahead. Render to Caesar what is Caesar's, and render to God what is God's: your whole self, your heart, your voice, and your love for every neighbor, each one made in his image.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.