An excerpt from Chapter 22.
Beep! Beep!
Warner Brothers introduced Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner in the late 1940s. Ever since, that determined coyote has ordered one ridiculous invention after another from the ACME Corporation in his never-ending attempt to capture the elusive bird.
The humor lies in the predictability. Every plan backfires. The trap intended for the Road Runner inevitably catches the coyote instead. The episode ends with a triumphant “Beep! Beep!” while Wile E. nurses another set of self-inflicted injuries.
Enter the Pharisees.
By this point in Matthew’s Gospel, nearly every appearance they make involves another attempt to trap Jesus. Having recovered from their previous encounters, they return with a strategy they must have considered foolproof.
This time the trap is political. “Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not?”
You can almost picture the ACME anvil suspended above a carefully painted X.
If Jesus says the tax should be paid, He risks alienating many Jewish listeners who regarded the payment as humiliating submission to Rome. If He says the tax should not be paid, His enemies can report Him to the authorities as a revolutionary encouraging resistance.
At last, they must have thought, we have Him.
“But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, ‘You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me?’”
This is the point in the cartoon where Wile E. looks upward, sees the anvil hanging over his own head, glances down, notices that he is standing on the X, and then stares helplessly at the audience.
Jesus asks them to show Him the coin used to pay the tax. Holding it up, He asks, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?”
“Caesar’s,” they reply.
Then Jesus gives an answer that transcends their carefully constructed dilemma: “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”
The coin bore Caesar’s image and belonged to the earthly system over which Caesar ruled. Human beings, however, bear the image of God.
Pay the tax. But give yourself to God.
Jesus refuses to be pulled into their political categories. He acknowledges legitimate civil obligation without surrendering the greater claim God has upon every human life.
Matthew tells us they were amazed by His answer. Then they left Him and went away.
Beep! Beep!
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