Caesar or God—A False Choice

Sunday, 18 October 2026 at 11:00am

In Matthew 22:15-22, the Pharisees come to Jesus with a trap: "Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?" It's designed to force him into either sedition or collaboration. But Jesus doesn't take the bait. He asks for a coin, points to Caesar's face, and responds with a question: "Whose image is on this? Whose name?" When they answer "Caesar's," Jesus says simply: "Give Caesar what is his, and give God what is his." It sounds like a separation of church and state. But Jesus meant something far more radical—and far more dangerous.

For centuries, we've read this as a tidy division: Caesar gets the political realm, God gets the spiritual one. Keep them separate. Stay out of politics; focus on your soul. But that's not what Jesus meant. He wasn't saying God and Caesar are equal but separate powers. He was asking something far harder: To whom do you truly belong? Whose image are you stamped with? Where is your real allegiance? The coin bears Caesar's image, so it belongs to Caesar. But you—you bear God's image. So Jesus's real question is this: What will you give to God? Your whole self, or only the parts Caesar doesn't demand?

We live in an age surrounded by systems of oppression—structures that weave together political power, economic exploitation, and religious justification to try to keep people complicit and silent. These systems tell us we must choose between faith and justice, between personal faith and fighting injustice, between staying "spiritual" and naming what's wrong with our institutions. They keep our faith private and powerless while institutional power quietly demands our compliance, our labor, our silence—sometimes even invoking God's name in the process. But what if Jesus is still asking: To whom do you truly belong? And more urgently: If we claim allegiance to God, how much longer can we tolerate systems of oppression similar to those that crucified Jesus?

Join us on Sunday, 18 October 2026 at 11:00am for scripture, music, spirited discussion, and the love of an inclusive community discovering what it means to give ourselves wholly to God. Come as you are -- you are welcome here!