URC Daily Devotion 28th March 2025

St Luke 20: 20 – 26

So they watched him and sent spies who pretended to be honest, in order to trap him by what he said, so as to hand him over to the jurisdiction and authority of the governor.  So they asked him, ‘Teacher, we know that you are right in what you say and teach, and you show deference to no one, but teach the way of God in accordance with truth.  Is it lawful for us to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?’  But he perceived their craftiness and said to them,  ‘Show me a denarius. Whose head and whose title does it bear?’ They said, ‘The emperor’s.’  He said to them, ‘Then give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’  And they were not able in the presence of the people to trap him by what he said; and being amazed by his answer, they became silent.

Reflection

Johnny Nash once sang that ‘there are more questions than answers and sometimes that seems true of the Gospels. Jesus often asks searching questions which provoke confusion. In return he is often questioned himself, but the questioners very rarely get the answer which they expected, or even one which makes sense to them. That’s what happens here. To use a sporting metaphor Jesus not only escapes the fiendish snooker set by his opponent, but lays a tricky one of his own in return.

Christians still discuss what this passage means. Is it about the separation of the sacred and profane, the heavenly and the earthly, or a rejection of the power of empire? Perhaps some of this ambiguity has to do with the nature of money itself. Jesus asks for a particular coin, a denarius, which featured an engraving of the Roman Emperor, making a theological and political claim about his divinity. The coins we use today in the UK do the same thing, proclaiming that the monarch rules by the grace of God and is defender of the faith. On all bank notes issued by the Bank of England there’s a puzzling statement – ‘I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of….’ This seems puzzling – doesn’t possessing the note mean you already have that money? But it goes back to days when a bank note represented gold held in a vault, which is where the real value lay. Today money, whether notes and coins or their digital equivalent in our increasingly cashless society, has value because we believe it does. If everyone loses confidence in a currency then it ceases to have that value, and becomes worthless. Is faith the same? By having faith, are we creating a new world, new meanings and new values? Is that how we reach the Kingdom of God?

Prayer

Loving God,
sometimes we find your word hard to understand,
sometimes you challenge us and make us think,
and sometimes we ask for help
and don’t like the answers we hear.
Help us to trust in you and be ready to listen,
help us to hear and recognise your voice when you call,
and help us to put our faith in the values and actions
which bring your Kingdom to our troubled world.
Amen.