^{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.}

^{Matthew 22:15-22}

¹³ Furious with rage, Nebuchadnezzar summoned Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. So these men were brought before the king, ¹⁴ and Nebuchadnezzar said to them, “Is it true, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, that you do not serve my gods or worship the image of gold I have set up? ¹⁵ Now when you hear the sound of the horn, flute, zither, lyre, harp, pipe and all kinds of music, if you are ready to fall down and worship the image I made, very good. But if you do not worship it, you will be thrown immediately into a blazing furnace. Then what god will be able to rescue you from my hand?”

¹⁶ Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to him, “King Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. ¹⁷ If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us from Your Majesty’s hand.¹⁸ But even if he does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.”

Daniel 3:13-18

When I am asked to pray at a civic event, I feel ambivalent. What is my proper role when praying for the State legislature, or a mayor’s inauguration, or speaking at a Memorial Day Parade? I don’t want to simply bless the status quo when I have moral reservations. I want to call a legislature to their best ideals and offer at least a little prophetic challenge to selfishness and disrespectful treatment of the opposition. At Memorial Day, I want to honor sacrifice, service and bravery without glorifying war and violence. Last time I was at the Maine House I read from Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address in 1865:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds.

This question is not about separation of church and state, which is next week’s sermon. This sermon is asking where we stand within a culture. Jesus prayed for his disciples at the Last Supper that they may be in the world but not of it. He didn’t command his disciples into separatist enclaves or monastic communities, but to be engaged in mission, do justice and love kindness, go make disciples. But what does it mean to not be of this world? Can we recognize when we have pursued power so that we look more like Caesar than a Galilean fisherman?

When Billy Graham preached in the 1950s, his revival strategy was proclaiming the end times. A great tribulation was coming, possibly nuclear annihilation, or a Communist takeover of godlessness. People needed to repent and warn others to save as many as possible before the end. Political life did not matter because the world is going to Hell. Oddly, Graham cultivated national leaders, from the Queen of England to American presidents, more than any religious leader of the time. His son, Franklin, now speaks more about gaining political power for Jesus and less about Hell and the end times. Evangelicalism has now claimed the seat of power and talks about American patriotism and Christianity as the same thing. God’s will and American greatness are aligned in the Evangelical mind.

Mainline Protestants took a different path. For much of the twentieth century we assumed we stood near the moral center of American life. Then we realized that center had left too many people out, black and native Americans, women and LGBTQ people. For the past fifty years, churches like ours have worked to welcome those who had been excluded and to build a more just and inclusive society. I believe that was the right thing to do.

But every strength carries its own temptation. As we worked to shape the culture, we sometimes neglected the work of letting Christ shape us. We became so fluent in the language of our culture that our own distinctive Christian voice grew quieter. We worked hard to help America become the nation we believed it could be, but we did not always ask what kind of people the church was becoming. Our spiritual formation has suffered. In trying to be so relevant, we have lost relevance.

How should the church relate to culture in this moment? As our society becomes both more secular and more polarized, there is pressure to choose a side in the cultural wars. But our question is deeper than what it means to be an American. What does it mean to be a Christian in a time such as this? Sometimes I feel patriotic and proud to be American; but the other foot stands in the words of the Sermon on the Mount and the prophets which call for repentance. How do I faithfully give to American Caesars what belongs to Caesar, and give to God what belongs to God? How do I live in this culture, but not be of it, not be too absorbed and uncritical of it?

In scriptural history, people live in a wide range of relationships to their culture. Abraham and Sarah left Ur and lived as migrants in foreign lands. His descendants were slaves in Egypt. After years of wilderness, they carved out a kingdom, and the monarchy of David and Solomon became the Golden Era. But that lasted only 90 years before the North split. Then Assyria swallows the north. Then Babylon takes Jerusalem, burns the temple, and marches the leadership into exile. Then comes Persia. Then Greece. Then Rome.

By the time Jesus stands in the temple, and a coin is placed in his hand, Israel has been living under someone else’s empire for the better part of six centuries. The people listening to him that day have never known anything else. Which means almost everything in your Bible — the Psalms, the prophets, the letters of Paul — was written by people who did not control their political fate. They were not writing from the top, but from underneath, from exile.

Jewish exiles in Babylon held two responses in tension. Jeremiah urged them to build homes, plant fields, seek the welfare of the city. Engage the culture, don’t withdraw. Daniel and his companions did exactly that. They served King Nebuchadnezzar inside the imperial bureaucracy and even took Babylonian names. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are not Hebrew names. They had assimilated deeply into the empire’s life.

But anxious emperors demand loyalty tests. Nebuchadnezzar builds a golden statue rivaling the Colossus of Rhodes and commands the entire court and musicians to commemorate his statue. Everyone is to bow when the music plays, on penalty of the furnace.

Everyone bows. Everyone except three – Shadrach, Meshach and Abendigo. What is remarkable about them is not just courage. It is their clarity. They knew their God. They knew the commandments. They could respect the King but knew when he stepped over the line of their faith. Live faithfully within your culture but never let your culture tell you who you are.

Rome is the next Empire in line to dominate Israel. In Matthew 22, Jesus’ opponents think they have the perfect trap. If Jesus says “no” to paying taxes, he is breaking the law, they will accuse him of inciting rebellion and arrest him. If he says “yes” to paying taxes, the crowd will view him as just another tool to the establishment and he will lose credibility.

When Jesus asks for a Roman coin, he demonstrates he doesn’t have any coins, and the Pharisees do. He demonstrates who is on the side of wealth and power. Then he asks about the image on the coin. It is more than just a picture. The inscription reads, Tiberius Caesar, Son of the Divine Augustus. The reverse side read “Pontif Maxim,“ High Priest. Everyone watching knows that possessing this coin breaks the first two commandments to have no other gods, and no graven images. The Temple leaders know because they don’t accept Roman denarii. First, you visit the money changers and exchange denarii for Jewish shekels, at a reasonable fee, of course. (Those are the very tables Jesus overturned in the previous chapter, just a day ago. We know where Jesus stands not just on Ceasar’s coins, but Jewish ones as well.) Don’t love either of them too much.

Jesus subtly makes a theological point by asking about the image on the coin. He is reminding the listener of the creation story of Genesis 1. God creates everyone in the divine image. Not just Ceasar, but every one of us. By asking who is on the coin, he is also undermining Ceasar’s claim of divine superiority.

The classic translation says, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s,” but the underlying Greek is closer to “Give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar.” What does Jesus mean by that? Notice that he never really answers the tax question. He changes the question to, “Who do you belong to? What image is stamped on you?”

Caesar’s image is stamped on the coin. Give it back to Caesar. But God’s image is stamped on you. From the beginning, that has been the deepest truth about every human being. Before you were an American, before you belonged to a political party, before you held any opinion or cast any vote, you were created in the image of God. And so is your neighbor.

That means our first allegiance is never to Caesar. We can love our country, pray for its leaders, and seek the welfare of our communities. But we cannot give to Caesar what already belongs to God.

That is why Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego remained standing when everyone else bowed. That is why Jesus stood before Pilate with courage. And that is our calling as well—not to withdraw from the world, nor to worship it, but to live fully within it, remembering who we are. When any government decides that some people bear less of God’s image than others, the church cannot stay silent. Naming Caesar’s idolatry is not politics. It is Genesis, the prophets and the Sermon on the Mount.

Whenever the music begins to play and everyone else starts bowing, remember whose image is stamped upon you. Because that image—not Caesar’s—defines who you are.