Quoting Old Ben Franklin, “The only things certain in life are death and taxes”. I would like to emend this with the help of church historian Dr. Robert Handy, “What is certain in life is death, taxes, and graffiti,” and then further emend Handy’s observation by adding “coinage”. Whether you engage in procuring the ever-elusive bitcoins or hedge against inflation with the purchase of gold, all of you have your lives shaped by the iconic prospectives of currency. (There are times when it is so nice to be a mouse!) From the days of “Let George do it,” referring to giving a dollar for Pullman porter privileges on the train, to paying for priceless family moments, captured with photographic precision with your Pentax, or maybe just your phone, iconography is a major preoccupation in the world today.
In writing of missives to one another, iconography intrudes. It is difficult to go through a day without seeing an emoji conveying hyperbolic states of attitudes because apparently punctuation is no longer adequate (place emoji here). And can there be a Hallmark moment without some depiction? And don’t get me started on trademarks. (place emoji here)
All of this is to say that we live in a world of images that have the potential of becoming Idolatrous, distracting us from the fact that we are created in the image of God. Before artists started shaping images out of clay, painting images on cave walls and canvases, and revealing the inner-stone image, God shaped us in God’s own image and declared it good.
“Is it lawful to pay taxes or not?” (Matthew 22:15-22) Taxes represent the social contract we have with the governing bodies that lend order to our lives. These taxes may be oppressive. They may support agendas we do not approve. There may be expenditures on projects or people we deem underserving, and there may be graft amid the procedures of procurement, but taxes remain the financial backbone of a social contract we have with one another. Taxes fund many of the social structures on which we depend: municipal governance; school; streets; sewage treatment; maintenance of parks, recreation, and green spaces; water sampling and purification processes; garbage pick-up; building codes; legislation for lifting the rights of all people; our personal, local, state, and national protection. This social contract is good as long as the citizenry complies with the expectations of the governing body.
This, of course, is not addressing the issue that the disciples of the pharisees and Herodians were asking. Is it proper to pay taxes which are above that prescribed in Torah, the law that God has laid down for the governance of God’s own people? Is paying taxes to a government placing that government in the place of God? If one pays the tax to the empire (government), then must one also pay the tax to the temple? Is the tax paid to the temple (i.e., benevolence or mission support) actually giving to God what is God’s, or is it just the administration of Godly work? In the midst of all this giving, is there a difference between giving our lives to God and living a Godly life?
Both and … are posed to Jesus in the courtyard of the temple and are for our consideration today. (See Nickey’s Corner re Matthew 16:13-28. It feels so good to footnote myself.) There were life and death, political implications pending on that 1st century day, but the question continues to plague us. Somehow, we need to determine under whose rule we will live. In paying taxes do we regard the governing body of our day as being the ultimate purveyor of our political reality or is there a greater justice to strive for?
Borrowing from Paul Tillich, is government or God our “ground of being”? With a more Buddhist lens, “Where do we find our center?” Then, if our “ground of being”, that centered place, reveals a greater justice to strive for, what does that justice look like? How will we go about the work of reaching that more just place? Can that place of justice be attained without a government requiring taxes?
In the world of icons, which icon will we depend on?
Will we depend on the imprint of famous dead people with
their various claims?
or
Will we depend on the diverse, living body of God’s own
corpus revealed in the places where weeping and gnashing of teeth against
oppression and injustice surround us daily?
More importantly in today’s world, will the icon of the flag or of the cross be our “ground of being”, our center?
As a blind mouse, I find most of this dependence on pictures overwhelming. I find the dependence on image to be part of what Rod Michalko claims as “sighted people proving to other sighted people that they are sighted.” It seems to be a strange insecurity of the sighted.
(And what do you think, did Jesus give the denarius back, or did he keep it?)
“Whose picture is it?” You tell me.
(Personally, hearing God’s word for God’s people is much safer than striving to see God. Seeing God is deadly, as deadly as the cross itself, while hearing God’s voice is the foundation of relationship.)
And, just as an aside, as famous as Patrick Henry was, have you ever wondered why he never made it to our currency?
Your Pal,
Nicodemus,
Pontiki Ekklesias*
*Church Mouse
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