Today we are sitting again as we have been for the last two Sundays, at the rear of the crowd gathering around Jesus on the great Southern steps of the Jerusalem Temple, the Rabbis’ Steps, where the religious teachers sit to address their audiences.  The teacher they’re waiting to hear is Jesus, the man who rode into the city yesterday on a donkey, with the people around him shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”

Some are saying that he is the Messiah. He then came straight to the temple and caused mayhem among the dealers and the money changers, overturning their tables, calling them thieves, and claiming the temple as his own!

The atmosphere in this crowd today is electric, no-one wants to miss a word. What’s going to happen next?  Standing together on the sidelines, listening to the excited buzz of conversation, is a group of priests, elders and Pharisees. They are waiting to see what this rebel, who has caused them so much trouble in the past, is going to say this time around. Jesus has challenged them over and over in the course of his ministry, and here he is again, this time more popular than ever, in the temple the bastion of their power.  They confront Jesus and demand to be told by what authority he presumes to teach.

Jesus rebuts their question with a question of his own that reduces them to silence.

He then goes on to tell the three parables we’ve been looking at with over the last two Sundays:

The disobedient son, (Matthew 21. 28-32),

the greedy, murdering tenants of the vineyard, (Matthew 21.33-46),

and the ungrateful, self-centred wedding guests who scorned their king’s invitation, (Matthew 22.1-14)

These parables together are an indictment, obvious to everyone listening, of the religious leaders’ self-serving abuse of power, the consequences of their failure as shepherds of the flock, and their wilful blindness to the message of God’s kingdom that Jesus has been preaching throughout his ministry.

They have been shamed in front of this crowd, and their revenge will be sweet and well planned.

All this sets the scene for the events reported by Matthew in today’s gospel.

The Pharisees go off to regroup.

They don’t come back themselves, but send a deputation of their disciples, supported by another party, the Herodians, to tackle Jesus. The seriousness of this attack on Jesus is shown by the fact that the Pharisees and the Herodians have planned it together. Normally they would oppose each other bitterly. The Pharisees are Orthodox in their interpretation of the Jewish law, ardent nationalists, and resent the payment of tax to a foreign king, seeing it as an infringement of the divine right of God.

The Herodians are the party of Herod, King of Galilee, a quisling who owes his power to the Romans, and who works hand in glove with them. The lives of the Herodians are lives of compromise.

Very strange allies, but their differences are for the moment ignored in their common hatred of Jesus and a shared desire to see him dead. Their revenge comes in the form of two questions, one seemingly political, the other openly religious, both designed to catch Jesus out, whatever he answers.

Aware of the audience sitting around waiting in suspense for the opening salvo, the spokesman for the group first acknowledges Jesus’ status as a teacher and then delivers a dose of flattery:

“Teacher, we know you are a man of integrity, and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You aren’t swayed by men, because you pay no attention to who they are.”

Then comes the question:

“Tell us then, what is your opinion~ Is it, or is it not, lawful to pay taxes to Rome?’

They can’t miss! If he says the tax is unlawful, the Herodians will report him to the Roman authorities immediately through King Herod. The charge would be sedition and the penalty, crucifixion.

To the ordinary people sitting, listening to Jesus, the Roman tax is the primary symbol of the hated Roman occupation. The first thing they would want an expected earthly messiah to do would be to get rid of the Romans. Most of those present do not yet understand that the kingdom of Jesus the Messiah is not of this earth.

So, if Jesus says that the tax is lawful, his popularity with the people will melt away, and he will be vulnerable to the whole Jewish religious hierarchy and their collective desire to destroy him. The silence is palpable. How is Jesus going to answer?

He doesn’t answer the question at all!

Instead, he begins by naming these men for what they are.

“You hypocrites! Why are you trying to trap me? Show me the coin used for paying the tax.”

Jesus doesn’t even deign to name it.

Roman law states that the official coinage remains the property of the person depicted on it. The coin in question, the denarius, is stamped with the head of Caesar, and around the edge are the words ‘Caesar, Son of the god Augustus, High Priest.’

 All of this is an anathema to any pious Jew sitting here listening to Jesus. Jews are not allowed to put images of people on their coins, for a start, and for Caesar to claim the status of a god to them is a blasphemy.

We watch the scene as Jesus takes the offending coin in his hand and asks,

“Whose image is this and whose inscription?”

The Pharisees are taken aback by Jesus’ unexpected response, and they answer by stating the obvious: “It’s Caesar’s!”

“Well,” says Jesus, “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s ….and give back to God what is God’s.”

Jesus has avoided this trap set by the Pharisees, and we watch as they retreat in disorder with nothing left to say.

But these words of Jesus ring bells for the crowd listening. Much as they resent paying tax to the invaders, they do benefit in practical ways from living in peace in a well-ordered society, (tough though that order may be), protected by the might of the Roman army.

The catch here is the fact that Roman religion and Roman government are tied together in the person of Caesar, who has declared himself a god to whom worship is due. Placating the gods is paramount in the Roman religion, linked closely with every aspect of life, both public and private.

So, the followers of Jesus can legitimately pay their taxes to Caesar, but their worship and their loyalty are openly owed to a higher power, God Almighty, in practice, under Roman occupation, a difficult balance to maintain with any level of safety.

These words of Jesus present each one of us with choices, too. I remember the beautiful words in the old liturgy as the offerings of the congregation were placed in the sanctuary:

“All things come from you, Lord, and of your own do we give you.”

Yes, we need to be good citizens of our nation, paying taxes honestly and participating in public life as we are able, but do we put limits on what we give back to God?  I think that’s a good question for us to ask ourselves regularly and often.

Jesus is both the giver and the gift.

He came, Emmanuel, God with us, living and dying that terrible death, taking upon himself in his agony on the cross the burden of sin and brokenness of the world he had created. Then he rose again, conquering death, the ultimate enemy, to bring us into his kingdom~ because he loves us!

“All things come from you, Lord, and of your own do we give you.”

 After the retreat of the Pharisees, the Sadducees appear with a trick question of their own for Jesus.

The Sadducees are a small group, but they are powerful. They are the governing class, wealthy and aristocratic, and among them are the chief priests. They’ve adapted to life under Roman rule by compromise, and they‘re quite comfortable with the political status quo.” Let’s not stir the pot,” would sum up their ideas. They have much to lose if Jesus’s teachings continue to resonate with the Jewish crowd.

The Sadducees have a very narrow understanding of the scriptures. They believe that only the Torah, (the first five books of our Bible), is sacred scripture; the rest of the Old Testament they discount as invalid.

Most importantly, the Sadducees completely deny any life after death because they see no proof of this in the Torah, and yet here they are, framing their trick question around an obscure text in Deuteronomy (25:5 ) dealing with the duty of a man towards his deceased brother’s widow i.e. marrying her, and, with her, fathering a son who can carry on the dead brother’s family line.

Today, the Sadducees take this situation to a ridiculous extreme by telling the story we’.ve just heard in the Gospel, of a poor woman bereaved seven times, bound to marry each of her husband’s brothers in turn, and, childless, at the resurrection being confronted with all of them! Then in spite of their well-known disbelief in life after death, the Sadducees put their question to Jesus, the question that they are confident will trap him, and incidentally, make a mockery of belief in the life after death. Whose wife will the woman be at the resurrection, since all the brothers been married to her?

 Jesus begins bluntly by telling the Sadducees that they are wrong, that their whole question starts from a basic mistake, the mistake of thinking about heaven in terms of earth, and of thinking of eternity in terms of time.

His answer is that anyone who reads scripture must see that this question is irrelevant, because heaven is not going to be simply a continuation or extension of this world. There will be new and deeper relationships that will far transcend the relationships of time and place as we understand them.

Then Jesus goes on to demolish their whole position, not as he did the Pharisees, with one significant, concise sentence, but with the authority of the Torah itself.

The Sadducees have always held that there is no text in the Torah which can be used to prove the resurrection of the dead.

Jesus answers quoting directly from Exodus, with God’s words to Moses from the burning bush in the wilderness:

“Have you Sadducees not read what God has told you in the Torah? Not, ‘I was the God of Abraham,’ but ‘I am the God of Abraham, I am the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob!’[1] They live! Almighty God is not God of the dead,” Jesus concludes, “but of the living!”

When the crowds hear this, straight from the Torah, words to Moses from God in that sacred place in the wilderness, they are astonished at Jesus’ teaching, and the Sadducees are silenced.

These three revered patriarchs died long, long ago, yet God is still holding them in life, with him, in ways past our understanding, in a dimension unknown to us, a place of rest, joy and refreshment that we call heaven, sometimes Paradise.

But this is not the end of the story.

In every Communion service we make three great statements:

Christ has died;

Christ is risen;

Christ will come again.

In one of our Orders of Service these statements are heralded by a call from the celebrant:

 “Let us proclaim the mystery of faith.”

It is a mystery.

In our faith, we live with mystery.

One day Abraham, Isaac and Jacob will be raised, with all God’s people, past, present and future, to enjoy the new heaven and new earth that Jesus has promised when he returns.

And while we wait in hope for that day, we pray the prayer that Jesus taught us:

Our Father in heaven,

Your kingdom come,

Your will be done on earth

As it is in heaven…

We ourselves are the answer to that prayer because of the hope we have, the glimpses we have of heaven in the people we love, and in the beauty and variety of God’s creation~ but most of all, in the loving, constant presence of his Holy Spirit. We live in our time as his light in the world doing our best on this troubled earth to bring in his kingdom while we wait for his return.  Amen

 From John’s Revelation of Christ’s return:

Revelation 21:1-7

The New Heaven and the New Earth

21 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. ² And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. ³ And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,

‘See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them;
⁴ he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.’

⁵ And the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new.’ Also he said, ‘Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.’ ⁶ Then he said to me, ‘It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life. ⁷ Those who conquer will inherit these things, and I will be their God and they will be my children.

Rev 22: 20,21 (NRSV)

²⁰ The one who testifies to these things says, ‘Surely I am coming soon.’

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!

²¹ The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all the saints. Amen.