You can’t trap Jesus to brew your tea no matter what side of the party you sit on. This text is not about taxes. There are no options save death when Rome demands it’s due and lawful or not, the tax collector doesn’t care what you think as long as you pay the bill. When we use any word about Jesus to support one political position over another we are like Pharisees making a deal with the devils of their day (Herodians) in order entrap Jesus. That’s not to say the scriptures don’t encourage all kinds of things that are emphasized on one side of the political line or the other. But the mission of Jesus is to reveal the God whose image is imprinted on the human heart and so for all the might and majesty mustered by Rome, a head on a temporal coin isn’t worth the metal it’s printed on. The lesson for us may be to measure our lives by the things that belong to God, love and life, which is eternal and unending and outside of our control. Jesus is perfectly willing to be entrapped for that mission and when his time comes he will not shy away from answering the question that for the sake of the world gets him nailed to the cross.
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