NOTES for Mar 12:13-17

Jesus' words about taxes ('tribute') paid to the emperor are often taken as a demand for complete submission to any authority, one element of which is the careful payment of all required taxes. Yet in the Gospel story the question is framed somewhat differently. It is not about whether taxes must be paid at all; the discussion is about whether it is permissible to do so.

The point is that in those days in Judea there were supporters of extreme, essentially extremist views of Roman power and of any secular power in general. These were the so-called Zealots - or, in Russian, 'the zealous ones.' They believed that the messianic uprising had to begin as soon as possible, and that it had to be directed first of all against Roman rule, since Judea was then part of the Roman Empire, and then against every other secular authority as well, including the authority of Herod the Tetrarch, who then ruled in Galilee.

Since rule in Judea at that time was hierocratic and power belonged to the high priest, this situation remained on the whole acceptable to the Zealots. But the Roman procurator in Jerusalem was a constant irritant to them, as were the Roman soldiers who walked, even if not often, through the streets of the holy city, together with the tax collectors, who naturally worked first of all for Rome. These Zealots believed that paying taxes was impious, that it was treason against God and the true faith as they understood it.

Meanwhile, in Roman eyes a direct call to refuse to pay taxes was equivalent to a call to disobey authority and rebel; it was treated as treason, with all the consequences that followed. So the question asked publicly of Jesus was plainly provocative. The Savior answers it in a somewhat unexpected way: He says that the question of taxes has no direct relation to spiritual life. Whether the emperor receives the money due him or not is a question of this world; for the Kingdom it has no significance. By not paying a tax, a person does not come closer to the Kingdom, just as he does not come closer to it by being the most careful taxpayer. Taxes, like economic and political issues in general, matter only insofar as they in some way affect a person's spiritual condition; everything else is secondary.

This was the Savior's answer to those who believed that the Kingdom and its establishment were a political question, not a spiritual one, and that the Kingdom would be built according to the laws of this world. Jesus reminds them once again: although the Kingdom enters our fallen world, it does not exist according to that world's laws, and taxes have no more relation to it than all the other institutions of the fallen world.