Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost; 22 October 2023; Proper 24A (RCL); Exodus 33:12-23; Psalm 99; 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10; Matthew 22:15-22.
Since 1 Thessalonians is chronologically the first piece of Christian literature of which we have evidence, it is an interesting exercise to try to forget everything we know about Jesus and infer only what we can from Paul’s letter. What strikes me immediately is Paul’s use of phrases like “God the Father,” and “the Lord Jesus Christ.” As familiar as those phrases are to us, they would have sounded a new note to the readers of this letter.
Father was not often used as a title for God before Christians made it so, and it would have had some political overtones, as Caesar like to figure himself as father of the whole Roman family (as benefactor and pater). And certainly the phrase, “the Lord Jesus Christ,” would have hit the same political notes. Even the word “church” (ecclesia) would have rung political; ecclesia was the word for the council of free men (the demos) of a Hellenistic city, of which Thessalonica was one. In the first line of this letter, Paul is already setting up an alternative to Roman power. No wonder persecution figures so prominently in this letter.
In the passage from Matthew’s Gospel, I hesitated when I read the NRSV translation. Jesus asks whose head and whose title is on the denarius. They use this translation in all three versions of the story (Matthew, Mark, and Luke). I quickly checked other translations. The RSV translates, “whose likeness and inscription.” The New American Bible has “whose image is this, and whose inscription.”
The Greek is τίνος ἡ εἰκὼν αὕτη καὶ ἡ ἐπιβραφή; (tinos he eikon kai he epigraphe?); whose image (or portrait) and whose inscription? Eikon is the word used in the LXX of Genesis 1:26, when God says, Let us create humankind according to our image and according to our likeness. The NRSV completely misses the theological implications of Jesus’ question. Money bears the image of Caesar; humanity bears the image of God. Render therefore to Caesar Caesar’s things, and to God God’s things.
Here again, the political implications are profound. Caesar has no hold over human beings. Jesus (or Mark, or whoever authored the original form of this saying) is suggesting opting out of the political (money) economy, and living strictly in God’s economy. It’s a stunning answer. Paul and the Synoptic Gospels seem to be on the same page here. God, not Caesar, lays claim to our loyalties. What does it mean to render to God all the instances of the coin on which the image of God is stamped? Or to be a member of the city council of God in the cities where we live? The Pax Romana came at the expense of the defeat of all Rome’s enemies, and the Roman boot on the neck of all who would object. The peace of God has to look completely otherwise.