NOTES for Luk 20:1-26

Should a Christian pay taxes? Christ’s words about paying tribute to Caesar have often been understood as justification for a certain “reasonable balance” between secular and religious life. Supposedly, Caesar has his own claims on us, and God has His. But Caesar and God cannot be compared, either in their authority or in our responsibility toward them. God alone created us and gives us life. God alone must we serve and worship. We have received everything from God. The implication is that we should first render “to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,” and then give God whatever remains. But if we first render to God what is “due” Him—and we owe Him far more than we possess, as the parable of the talents reminds us—what will be left for poor Caesar? Of course, a Christian must participate in the life of society, including paying taxes to the state, but this is not service to Caesar, for one cannot serve two masters. It is service to society, to people, to our neighbors, and therefore service to love and to God. Thus, Jesus’ words about the tax continue His parable of the vineyard: we cultivate God’s vineyard and must give Him its fruits.

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.

There is a certain fatalism in the parable of the vineyard tenants: the chief priests must kill the Son who was sent, just as their ancestors killed and persecuted the prophets. But there is a way out of this fatal circle, for every listener to a parable can identify himself with one character or another and see how he must act in order to follow his chosen path. In this sense, each of us freely chooses his own path, while the parable merely points out the existing alternatives and the way out of the situation. Here too the question is posed squarely: the chief priests can either identify themselves with those who killed and persecuted the prophets, or refrain from doing so and gain the opportunity freely to recognize in Jesus the Anointed One, the Christ. But they prefer not to take risky steps and simply to remove the Jesus who offended them. If only we knew how to use parables for their intended purpose and see in them not a statement of a future tragedy, but a challenge, one more occasion to choose...

The question about authority, asked of Jesus by the Pharisees, as can be seen, returns to them like a boomerang: He, in turn, asks them a counterquestion, one that they not only find difficult, but are simply afraid to answer openly. Where does this fear come from? Of course, there are "uncomfortable" questions that people do not want to answer, questions usually met, in one form or another, with the traditional "no comment." But when the Pharisees asked their question, should they not have expected a counterquestion?

Could they have foreseen that to an "uncomfortable" question they would receive an "uncomfortable" answer? Yes. Yet perhaps they still did not expect that this Preacher would play by rules other than the ones they had established. Behind the question about authority stood something quite understandable and definite, something in roughly the same sense as when the representatives of the Sanhedrin had earlier asked John the Baptist: who are you? A prophet? The Messiah? What should we report about you? And if you are neither one nor the other, on what basis do you do what you do? Jesus is asked about authority in evidently the same sense, with the expectation that He will declare Himself a prophet, the Messiah, or at least someone who has the right to do what He did in the Temple when He drove out the merchants.

He is not going to fit Himself into their framework. He asks a question about the substance of the matter: by what authority did John do what he did? He understands perfectly well, of course, that John, like every true prophet, received authority from His heavenly Father, and if the Pharisees recognized John as a man of God, they would have to look differently at His ministry as well. Of course, the issue here is not proving something to someone or justifying Himself in anyone's eyes.

The point is that, for the Pharisees themselves, such a view, a view "outside the rules," was essentially the only possible chance to see Christ Himself and His Kingdom in the true light. But they had to begin by rejecting all human fears, anxieties, and prejudices. In essence, by asking the Pharisees the question about John, Jesus invites them to do exactly this. But they refuse: they are afraid. And by this refusal they too make their choice. Far from the best choice, but a fully conscious one.

The scene described in today's Gospel reading is remarkable for the Savior's wisdom and, one may even say, wit. Yet let us try to enter into its theological meaning, because unlike our ordinary human habit, Christ shows wit not for the sake of wit itself.

Why does He speak specifically about John? The main point is that John appears as the Forerunner of Christ not only in the historical, event-based sense, but also in the spiritual sense. He proclaims repentance, without which coming to Christ is impossible. That is why the Lord gives those who question Him no answer: giving it would be meaningless, just as it is meaningless to explain integral calculus to someone who has not yet mastered arithmetic.

The fact that John brings us only to the first step is also shown by the episode from the book of Acts (19:1-6): "He said to them, Into what then were you baptized? They answered, Into John's baptism. Paul said, John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the One coming after him, that is, in Christ Jesus. When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus."

And although now we are not formally baptized with John's baptism, since spiritually it has been joined to Jesus' baptism, in practice we live through it as that very repentance which brings us into the church. Let us remember that our Lord, who has no need of repentance, also passes through baptism by John in order to show us the way, for He is "the way, and the truth, and the life." And it is precisely this way that He recalls to the chief priests, scribes, and elders who question Him.

There was a significant difference between the leaders of the Pharisaic religious brotherhood and those who could conditionally be called "ordinary people," in particular in how they perceived certain people and events. Of course, when speaking of "ordinary people," one must still remember that they were not entirely ordinary. An illiterate Jew in Gospel times was a great rarity, as was a Jew who did not read or even study the Torah and the Prophets, what today we would call Sacred Scripture.

Every synagogue necessarily had a religious school where all local boys, and sometimes girls as well, were taught not only literacy but also elementary work with the sacred books, including a special practice of prayerful, or meditative, reading. The culture of working with the sacred books was quite widespread in Jewish society, and among the teachers of the Torah, whom the Gospel usually calls scribes, the majority were occupied precisely with teaching this work to children and adults, often for free or for a very modest fee.

On the other hand, there were also academies in the Jewish world where the Torah and other sacred books were studied in the greatest detail. This was a special world of experts, educated theologians, sophisticated commentators on sacred texts, sometimes entering such subtleties and reaching such depths that ordinary readers of the Torah did not even suspect them. Unfortunately, this rather closed little world of academic theologians had, as often happens in such cases, a considerable measure of learned snobbery, which made them look on the ordinary readers mentioned above as ignorant of the Torah.

And this same learned snobbery made them treat, if not with contempt, then at least with suspicion, those who might be called popular spiritual authorities, among whom, incidentally, John the Baptist belonged. Of course, such restraint was often justified: mass religious consciousness is not very discerning in choosing its religious leaders. But prior distrust sometimes prevented both academic scribes and educated leaders of religious brotherhoods from recognizing genuine people of God, as happened in the case of John the Baptist.

And then the leaders of the Pharisaic movement had only to maneuver between their own distrustfulness and even a certain spiritual fastidiousness on the one hand, and popular sympathies on the other, for open expression of their position could have ended badly for them. Yet such maneuvering does not promote either spiritual integrity or full spiritual life, and the Savior's question should have made His interlocutors think about this simple but non-obvious truth.

The question Jesus asked the Pharisees about John and his preaching with baptism was, of course, not accidental. It was not accidental precisely because it became the answer to the question about Himself, about His authority and His ministry. In essence, the Savior's question becomes for the Pharisees speaking with Him a test of sincerity and honesty, first of all before themselves. It would seem that the issue concerns things not only different, but incomparable: John, though great, is only a prophet, while Jesus is the Messiah and Son of God.

But this difference is not so important in this case. What matters is only what the Pharisees asking Jesus about His authority are ready to see and hear. And they would best answer this question for themselves. The question about John precisely leads them to such an answer. Here the issue is not the Messiah, but only a prophet, yet a prophet whom the people honored and against whom it was dangerous to speak.

It is quite possible that if the same Pharisees had directly answered Jesus what they thought, "from men," His answer to them would have been different. He deprives no one of freedom; He requires only honesty and sincerity. A person can be mistaken, can see everything in a wrong light; more than that, from the point of view of the Savior Himself all people are mistaken to one degree or another, since no human being sees reality as He sees it.

In every concrete situation, as much is open to Him as to His heavenly Father, and no human being can say this about himself. But what matters to Him is not our infallibility, but our inner wholeness. The very wholeness inseparable from sincerity and honesty before oneself, and therefore before others. Jesus asks the Pharisees a question whose answer should have shown them themselves whether they had this wholeness. And it turned out that Jesus' interlocutors failed the test.

They did not answer His question not because they did not know the answer, but because they were afraid. And yielding to fear is the simplest and most widespread way of destroying that very inner wholeness. But then it made no sense for Jesus to answer the question posed by His interlocutors: He would have had to speak in one way or another about the Kingdom, where a person with a divided heart and divided thoughts cannot enter. The Pharisees' answer to Jesus' question became also the answer to the question they themselves had asked. A sad answer, but the only possible one.

The parable of the Lord’s vineyard was first told by the prophet Isaiah at the end of the eighth century before the birth of Christ. Returning to it on the eve of His Passion, the Lord draws attention to certain details that make this parable not only an image of Israel’s relationship with God, but also an image of the fall into sin in general. “Let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours”: these words could serve as the grim slogan of all humanity in its opposition to God. Yet first and foremost the Lord is speaking about the chief priests and scribes, the leaders of the people. They regard the people of God as their own allotment, given to them “for their support,” as it was called in ancient Rus’. The absurdity of what is happening also lies in the fact that the tenants in this parable try to pretend that the true Owner does not exist, that God will not see their deeds. But God does not disappear because some people would like to be rid of Him. Therefore, for the chief priests, the Lord whom they rejected becomes the cornerstone without which the whole edifice of the Jewish religion, built over centuries, collapses.

The parable of the vineyard, like all parables of this kind, concerns above all the people of God: in the prophetic tradition they are usually symbolically called the vineyard. In this context the meaning of the parable becomes entirely clear, and everyone listening to Jesus understands it. More than that: those whom what He said directly concerned understood perfectly that it concerned them; the cry "May this never be!" is the best proof.

The Savior's answer to this "May this never be!" is also unambiguous enough: He reminds those listening to Him about the cornerstone. The image of the cornerstone appears constantly in Jesus' parables, and its meaning lies in the fact that such stones, used in building a house as the corner elements of a strip foundation, were good for nothing except the purpose for which they were intended. There is no doubt that, in speaking of the cornerstone, Jesus has Himself in mind, thereby making His listeners characters in the parable He has told. As we can see, He wants to make those listening to Him understand that each of them stands before a choice from which there is no escape.

Many people would have liked Jesus to turn out to be one among many - prophets, preachers, teachers of the Torah - in short, an ordinary man. Then He could be listened to without really heeding Him, and accepted without truly accepting Him, as we always do when inwardly we disagree with the speaker. In that case, polite, formal acceptance means only agreement with the other person's right to have his own opinion, a point of view different from ours, one that at times is, in essence, of no concern to us. But the one putting forward that point of view must then also recognize our right to our own understanding of truth, different from the one he proposes. He must allow what today is called pluralism, acknowledge the relativity of every truth and every opinion, including his own, and then in turn he will be allowed to speak, like everyone else.

Had Jesus agreed to such rules of the game, He would perhaps not have had to die on the cross. But that is precisely the point: He could in no way agree to them, not because He absolutely had to prove something to someone and win all the disputes into which His listeners drew Him, but because accepting such rules would have been false testimony for Him and the collapse of His mission.

After all, He brought the Kingdom into the world and revealed to the world the fullness of God, and this was no longer simply one opinion among many, or even one revelation among many: He truly revealed to the world the whole fullness of truth and the whole fullness of revelation. All the great sages and prophets who came before Him asked questions and expressed opinions; He did not ask questions, He answered them, and He Himself became the answer to every possible question. And He could be accepted only as such: any other attitude toward Him would be deceit.

Of course, if a person truly does not realize Who is before him, the matter can still be set right: what is not realized today can be realized tomorrow. But if the issue is an unwillingness to accept the obvious, an unwillingness to give up one's own right to an opinion in the face of the living Truth, the situation is a dead end: the Truth cannot stop being truth, no matter how much someone may want it to. What remains is either to accept or to reject. Either to regard this strange Teacher as the One He Himself considers Himself to be, or to treat Him, at best, as a madman, and at worst, as a conscious apostate and blasphemer claiming what no human being can claim. A choice had to be made: there was no third option.

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.