It's a Trap!
Matthew 22:15-22
Matthew 22:15-22 (NRSV):
15 Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said. 16 So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one, for you do not regard people with partiality. 17 Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” 18 But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? 19 Show me the coin used for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius. 20 Then he said to them, “Whose head is this and whose title?” 21 They answered, “Caesar’s.” Then he said to them, “Give therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.” 22 When they heard this, they were amazed, and they left him and went away.
Entrapment! There’s a legal definition of entrapment, but this scene demonstrates a kind of entrapment in real-time, where one party is trying to put another party in a difficult if not impossible situation, in hopes that this person will say or do something problematic that gets them in trouble.
Last Sunday, at the end of meeting, I recalled the time I gave my then-four-year-old two options, neither to their liking and they responded with “you’ve trapped me in a trap where I don’t know what to say.” Jesus amazes his entrappers with a third way, but it’s not a perfect way. But how often is there a perfect way, in an imperfect world, that at times offers us difficult if not impossible choices?
It’s a real “gotcha” situation, here for Jesus: a question, not asked in good faith, but to attack and discredit him. “Teacher, you’re sincere and impartial. So tell us what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” It’s a simple question, Jesus!
There’s a Saturday Night Live sketch from the late 90s where cast member Will Ferrell is playing Chicago Cubs broadcaster Harry Carey, hosting his own TV show about space. So Ferrell, in character, during a conversation about actual science with his guest, a scientist played by…Jeff Goldblum…asks the question: “if the moon were made of barbecue spare ribs, would you eat it?” A silent but slightly mumbly Jeff Goldblum is stunned, not sure how to answer. “It’s a simple question!” Ferrell continues. “If the moon were made of barbecue spare ribs, would you eat it?” I mean, what would you say? If you say “yes,” you’d be eating the moon, and that’s a big problem. If you say “no”…don’t you know how to have a good time? Of course the real issue with this absurd question is that it deflects from the real topics the scientist is there to discuss.
Now that’s a silly example, but two recent, real-life examples come to mind. You may remember the late Charlie Kirk—the conservative celebrity who went around to college campuses and tried to “own the libs.” Charlie Kirk, who said things like “gun freedoms are worth the cost of a few gun deaths every year.”(1) Kirk would carefully stage and film these “dialogues” to try to trap people—to make liberal students look unintelligent, all to energize fellow conservatives who would later watch the videos online.
It’s not that these college students were wrong, or that their opinions weren’t grounded in facts and lived experience, it’s that Kirk was really good at guiding conversations to these either/or questions that felt impossible to answer quickly. Kirk would ask a truly weighty question, but it was an ambush, not a good-faith dialogue. He would ask but then interrupt, give them a bunch of rapid fire outlier-type facts, and then mock students for not being as quick as him, when they may have either just not had the chance to articulate an answer or because the question itself was flawed or demanded a more nuanced answer. “What about this?! Yes or no? Answer the question! You’re a scholar and you don't know the answer? Seriously?” Kirk wasn’t there to learn. He was there to bully, and was really good at it.
As a more recent example, a few of you may have seen the video last week of a young man named Tommy, at a town hall meeting, asking Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, who’s running for U.S. senate in Michigan, whether he would disavow the Muslim Brotherhood. Now this is not the same thing as asking “would you disavow your Muslim faith?”, since the Muslim Brotherhood is a kind of Islamic nationalist organization—sort of like how there are Christian nationalist organizations—but I’m not sure Tommy saw a difference. You might say he was asking, “is your agenda to make America Muslim?” hoping to trap El-Sayed by forcing him to answer a yes-or-no question that might make him either appear dangerous to voters or appear to have betrayed his Muslim community.
Dr. El-Sayed, after quickly saying, “yeah, I’d disavow them,” engaged Tommy in a very conversational and authentic way but also pointed out the racism and Christian nationalism underlying the question—which you can tell the room recognized. Turns out that Tommy is a former staffer of senator Josh Hawley, whom you might know for many reasons, one of them being his connection to the Jan 6th insurrection.
El-Sayed responded to this “gotcha” question with, basically: “My loyalty is to the constitution, which protects my right to practice my faith.” His answer protected his own campaign but also his Muslim community, I would think. El-Sayed eventually got Tommy to admit his double-standard: a country shaped by Muslim doctrines is unacceptable, but a country shaped by Christian doctrines—not values, but doctrines, a centering and imposing of a particular form of Christianity—that’s how Tommy believes it should be. Tommy, having failed in his mission to entrap, promptly left the meeting.
You know, some people once tried to entrap Jesus with a question about loyalties. He noted the question was not asked in good faith but gave an engaging, authentic answer that showed concern for his community’s safety. And then his question-askers, having failed in their mission, bailed.
“It’s a simple question, Jesus: is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” If he says yes, people who want to stand up to Rome, to Caesar, to the Empire, might feel like he’s a sellout, like he’s on the side of the oppressors, like he’s abandoned the people. If he says “no,” he might start a violent revolt by those just looking for that permission from someone they trust, to fight for their liberation. And while Jesus is no fortune-teller, he might know, in this time and place, how such a revolution will play out. A “no” might also get Jesus killed, which may have been the inevitable outcome of his ministry.
So what does he say? What would he have his community do? Challenge Empire? Or survive it? In the time it takes from question to answer, I bet Jesus is…frustrated. Frustrated…with these question-askers, who should be his allies in the work he’s doing. “Why are you putting me to the test? Am I really the one who should be on trial?” Frustrated…by the genuinely challenging situation they all find themselves in, knowing what a better world could look like but stuck in this flawed world. Frustrated…with himself, maybe, as someone who wants to make real change but who is, given the opposition, finding it difficult to change stubborn structures and stubborn minds.
“Show me the coin used for the tax” he says, as if to…buy some time. Maybe he looks at the coin, sees the image of Caesar, and with the deepest sigh, contemplates the impossible situation that he, and many, are in. I think his answer shows one, imperfect way forward. “Stay faithful to God, and do what is necessary, for now, to stay alive.”
The people gathered don’t like the Empire! Saying “give to Caesar what is his” isn’t somehow a “Rome’s not so bad!” message. “Look at these nice roads they made for you!” I actually think his response raises the implicit question: “what actually does belong to Caesar, truly? Do we belong to Caesar? Does our money belong to Caesar and his war machine?”
I don’t think Jesus was necessarily anti-taxes—especially if a person’s reasonable amount of taxes fund things like food and shelter, more than war and colonization. Though maybe in his vision of human community even taxes that fund really good, life-giving things aren’t needed, because people share out of their abundance and look out for each other. But he is very much anti-Rome. So maybe his answer is…playing the long game. “Justice? Yes! So how can we lay the groundwork for…and survive long enough to realize…that justice?
People are “amazed” by his answer. I don’t know if that means annoyed, or impressed, or…just kind of not sure what to make of it? I do think Jesus is not simply proving he’s clever but answering out of protective concern for his community. As if to say, “don’t abandon your faith, it will sustain you.” But also “don’t poke the bear in a way that brings calamity upon you, just…hang in there.”
It might be hard for any community who hopes for liberation to “just hang in there,” but while liberation theology might generally be about changing the order of the world, some liberation theologies also emphasize survival—finding the inner resources and friendships and community needed to sustain us in a hostile world. I think Jesus is radical and realistic. Any radical change, whether social or personal, usually takes time.
Jesus' answer is a kind of query. “Whatever you discern belongs to Caesar, give that. What belongs to God, give that.” He invites those present to wrestle. Yes, Jesus’ highest loyalty is to God, not Rome, but I think one point in Jesus’ answer is that: these are not two separate spheres of life, but interwoven. We know what it looks like to marry religion and politics in a harmful way, but we also don’t expect people’s deepest values, shaped by their faith, to be set aside when it comes to politics, economics, and so on. To modify the famous quote: what has Jerusalem to do with Rome? What has Camas Friends Church to do with Washington DC or Wall Street?
Returning to taxes: how can we carry on paying our taxes to an imperfect government and flawed system, while letting our faith guide us to change what could and should be better? How can our highest loyalties, say, to loving our neighbor, impact how we engage in the world—not just with regard to taxes, but where we live, what we buy, how we vote, what we make noise about, and so on? We participate in an economy that is imperfect, that might create jobs and important innovations but also hurts the land, exploits the poor, and benefits the rich.
Think about that ten dollar bill in your wallet or that x amount of dollars in your checking account. Are we supporting something bad, by spending our money on…anything? We do have the ability to be more selective about whose business and work we support. But also, many are in impossible situations, and it’s not always super practical for every person to simply say “this money supports corporations led by billionaires who support war and facism, so I won’t buy food to feed my family” or “I refuse to work for this company” when your options feel limited. In a way, we’re all kind of trapped, and some might feel the confines of that trap, more than others.
Maybe that’s the challenge Jesus and his hearers face. We don’t get to build the world from scratch. We’re stuck in this unfolding, evolving, messy world and have to find our way forward. Jesus is not anti-revolution. But an insurrection is clearly not what he had in mind. Incidentally, by the time Matthew’s gospel was written, the first Jewish-Roman war had taken place, including the destruction of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. Hearers of this story, a half-century after the life of Jesus, would recognize the fraught situation of living under Empire while living faithfully to God’s law of Love.
Maybe you can appreciate the larger question of our participation in civic life, raised by this scripture, but maybe there are parallels here to something more personal and individual. Maybe you find yourself in a difficult situation, let’s say, with a difficult person. What’s the way forward, for you? Do you do nothing and put up with the crummy situation? Not ideal. Do you stand up in defiance? What are the ramifications, say, in your workplace, or with a friend, or an authority figure, if you do that?
How many of you find yourself, from time to time, feeling conflicted, juggling loyalty to more than one thing at a time, even more than one good thing?
Maybe it’s the choice between caring for others who matter to you and caring for yourself. Maybe it’s the choice between leaving or continuing in a job you don’t like but feels necessary or unavoidable at this point. Maybe your friendship with a toxic person is taking its toll on you, but you need their help, so you feel trapped. Maybe the world is telling you “you’re either for this, or you’re for this” and you don’t think either of those sound quite right but you don’t yet have clarity on another way.
To be clear, Jesus is not facing a question of competing goods. Rome is not “good” in this scene. But it’s unavoidable. This is a trap—get Jesus in trouble—within a trap—the status quo. Maybe the question askers are frustrated too, partly hoping for a public takedown of Jesus but maybe hoping he actually knows the way out of this trap.
The world is not only a trap. You may feel the world is beautiful and vibrant and filled with possibility, and I would agree! I don’t feel trapped when I go on a hike, or laugh with a friend, or eat a meal with my family. These are good things. But if I start to think about it, there are other ways I do feel trapped, or recognize how others in our world are trapped—the way forward not as accessible and feasible as we wish it would be.
“It’s a simple question!” they say. But “simple questions” sometimes have complex and even disheartening answers.
Where, to borrow from my family lore again, have you or do you feel “trapped in a trap where you don’t know what to say?” Or what to do? How are we all trapped in difficult or impossible situations? What’s the way forward, for us, even if it’s not a perfect way?
Queries:
What do I notice about how Jesus navigates this situation? What is his way forward?
How have I navigated seemingly incompatible commitments?
Where are people “trapped” in the world around me? How do I feel trapped?
How can we participate in a flawed economy with integrity?
When does my faith put me in tension with my world? What is my way forward?