NOTES for Luk 20:19-26

For Jews at the beginning of the first century AD, the tax to Caesar was a humiliating sign of dependence on the Romans. If the Lord had said that it should be paid, He could have been accused of lacking patriotism (at that point the chief priests would urgently have become patriots). If He had said that it should not be paid, He could have been accused of inciting rebellion (in that case the chief priests would have had to present themselves as constructive collaborators with the Romans, which, in the end, is exactly what they did). Christ's answer is striking first of all because He clearly distinguishes the sphere of earthly ordering of life, to which all forms of national and supranational authority belong, from the sphere of the life of the spirit. The Lord does not reject the state and does not call for a religious reorganization of state governance. His answer places the life of the spirit and worldly authority on different planes.

On the one hand, this gives us the ability to see the real usefulness of authority for ensuring the normal life of society, as the apostles will later write in detail. On the other hand, Christ's answer frees His disciples from deifying authority and rejects the claims of earthly authorities over people's spiritual life. For that era this was an unprecedented revelation, and it was precisely for this that the Roman state persecuted Christians.

The most important thing in Christ's words is the call to render to God what is God's, to be no less concerned with fulfilling our duties before the Creator of the world than before its temporary rulers. And this is the hardest thing of all.

A very logical answer, isn't it? But is that so we cannot say we have one King, that all we have belongs to God? And so we should give nothing to Caesar (in a more common form - to the State)?

If everything for us really belonged to God, any thought, any act, not only ours, but also for all those who surround us; it would really have been the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of love; there would have been no properties, money (remember the Church's first days of existence), there would have been no violence, no crimes and in general no bad actions - and we wouldn't have needed the police, the army, the state employees, the government in whole. Then it's true, everything would be divine and belonging to God.

But such is not the case in practice. Let's look honestly how many our acts are motivated by love, and how many by something else. And if of us nobody is able of living according to God's will, then at least a certain human institutions maintaining order in the world, and not giving it to tumble in chaos are necessary; It is the money, government, "Caesar". Unfortunately, all these institutions always begin to claim that maintenance of order in the society doesn't enter their competence as regards the conscience, faith, man's spiritual freedom. And here, in all clearness the principle of Jesus should be applied: "unto God the things which be God's".

Today, even when we have no desire to “catch Jesus” in His words and simply ask Him honestly the questions that trouble us, we still often frame those questions in an “improper” form, sharply, as an “either-or.” Thus the simple question of whether to pay taxes becomes (not for everyone, of course, but for some) the dilemma: “Should I love the state with all my soul or hate it with all my soul?”... And the simple answer that the state may lay claim only to money, never to the soul, turns into the most difficult task of “rendering to God what is God's and to Caesar what is Caesar's.” In the same way, we are ready to construct the most astonishing conjectures about “life after death” and the “state of the departed,” yet cannot understand that for God there is no death and therefore no division between the dead and the living. Why is everything so difficult for us? Perhaps we simply lack experience of God's life and the ability to look at the world through His eyes.

Luke repeatedly emphasises the persistence with which representatives of the official religious circles ask Jesus the same question again and again: ‘By what authority do you do these things?’ (vv. 1–2). And again and again, Jesus does not answer directly. Yet, from a human point of view, the question could be considered quite appropriate: Jesus has just entered Jerusalem in triumph, and an enthusiastic crowd has greeted him as the Messiah; now, once more, he is behaving in a wholly incomprehensible way, and no one knows what to expect next from this strange Man who persistently refuses to fit into any framework.

Jesus, of course, does not refuse to answer in order to surround himself and the situation with an air of mystery, which he always avoided. Evidently, he does not answer because his mission really did not fit the frameworks familiar to his questioners. He is the Messiah, but not the Messiah the people expected; he could also be called a Teacher, but not in the sense in which religious circles used that word. Of course, those frameworks could have been expanded, but only with the questioners' agreement. Jesus tries to do this; it is no accident that he asks them about John's washing or ‘baptism’. An honest answer to this question determines how far Jesus' interlocutors will be able to understand and accept not only John but Jesus himself. But they refuse to answer, preferring to evade a difficult and unwelcome question; Jesus then understands that further conversation is useless (vv. 3–8).

His only answer is the parable of the vineyard (vv. 9–16), whose meaning, judging by their response ‘May it never be!’, his hearers understood perfectly. But Jesus leaves his listeners no false hopes: his remark about the cornerstone makes everything unmistakably clear (vv. 17–18). It is then that they want to kill Jesus, to get rid of this uncompromising Preacher (vv. 19–20), who, as has now become entirely clear, will not leave them alone or make any compromise. They also tried to trap him through his refusal to compromise (vv. 21–22): their question deliberately put the respondent in a losing position. To answer ‘yes’ meant being branded a traitor and collaborator; to answer ‘no’ was, under Roman law, tantamount to calling for rebellion, with all the consequences that entailed.

Here too, Jesus remains true to himself: he bears witness to the Kingdom, but not the Kingdom his hearers dream of; he bears witness to the one he himself has brought into the world. Thus, fitting into no framework and accepting no compromise, the Saviour who brought the Kingdom into the world gradually found himself alone, and his mission became a way of the Cross.

Such is the difficult fate of Christian revelation: all the time, everyone who could fish something out of it for himself tried to use it for his own purposes. But its true divinity consists in this, that these attempts never succeeded completely, and sooner or later they failed.

Such also is the fate of those who try to present the Christian gospel as a textbook of revolution and Christ as the chief revolutionary of all times and peoples. Such attempts have been made more than once in the history of European culture. Yet precisely to them one can present the words of today's Gospel reading: "render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's." The apostles Paul and Peter were probably inspired by these words when they spoke the following words to the people of God. "Therefore be subject to every human authority for the Lord's sake, whether to the king as supreme, or to governors" (1 Pet 2:13). "Let every soul be subject to the higher authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist have been established by God" (Rom 13:1).

Only in one case is submission to the authorities impossible: when authority appropriates divine powers for itself; what is God's can be given only to God. That is why the early Christians went, on the one hand, against the words of Peter and Paul, but on the other hand, if one looks more deeply at all three quotations mentioned here, it becomes clear that they were walking the only true path.

Should a Christian pay taxes? Christ's words about tribute to Caesar have often been understood as justification for a kind of “reasonable balance” between secular and religious life. Caesar, it is said, has his claims on us, and God has His. But Caesar and God are incomparable, both in their power and in our responsibility before them. God alone created us and gives us life. God alone must we serve and worship. We have received everything from God.

Many people think that we must first render “to Caesar what is Caesar's,” and then give God whatever remains. But if we first render to God His “due” (and we owe Him far more than we possess—remember the parable of the talents), what will be left for poor Caesar? Of course, a Christian must take part in the life of society, including paying taxes to the state, but this is not service to Caesar (one cannot serve two masters); it is service to society, to people, to our neighbours, and therefore service to love and to God. Thus Jesus' words about tribute continue His parable of the vineyard: we cultivate God's vineyard and must give Him its fruit.