In 2017, I was blessed to be able to travel to Europe for the third time in my life. My first trip
was in early 2005, when a companion and I went to visit a relative who was studying at the University
of Uppsala in Sweden, and from there spent time in Stockholm, Helsinki, Copenhagen, Berlin,
Amsterdam, and St. Petersburg, Russia. (My second trip was several months studying in Germany as a
doctoral candidate during the 08-09 school year.)
The guidebooks told us that when you take a train from anywhere in Finland into St. Petersburg,
you will arrive at Finland Station. This looked like a good deal, because according to the map in my
guidebook, Finland Station was just one subway stop away from our hostel, and I figured, even being
unable to speak or read Russian – essentially illiterate – I could manage one subway stop.
We arrived in St. Petersburg after dark, and the station was completely confusing. A young man
appeared to try to help us obtain subway tickets and find our train, but he didn’t speak English and
seemed a little sketchy. (We later found out that there are gangs of orphaned teens who actually live in
the subway stations in large cities in Russia.) Finally, standing on the platform, trying to match the
Cyrillic on the subway schedule to the English in our guidebook, we heard a voice behind us.
“Americans? Perhaps I could help you?”
We turned around to see a nicely-dressed young man in his twenties, a Russian who spoke
excellent English. We told him where we were headed and he said he would help us get there. So we
got on the next subway and rode for four stops (it turns out we weren’t at Finland Station in the first
place because Finland Station was undergoing repairs) and then got off the train to head to our hostel.
We thanked the young man, but he insisted on walking us to our hostel. As we were walking, he gave
us tips on how to survive in St. Petersburg as an English-speaking tourist, such as: don’t cross the street
unless you make eye contact with the drivers at the intersection, because if they don’t know you see
them, they will just keep going. He also told us that he was an English teacher at the local college, and
had relatives who lived in the States.
When we got to the hostel, we thanked him again, but he insisted on walking us to the reception
desk, which for some obscure reason was on the fourth floor. Arriving at the reception desk, we offered
our thanks a third time, and he took one of the maps on the desk and wrote his mobile phone number on
it, in case we ran into any further difficulty while we were in town. It was only then that the young man
shared his name: Mischa – short for Michael.
The archangel Michael is mentioned in the Bible in the books of Daniel, Jude, and Revelation.
Revelation prophesies that Michael will lead the armies of heaven against the dragon, the great beast
that is to come forth. The name “Michael,” mikh -a- el, means, “Who is like God?”
The Michael that my friend and I met in St. Petersburg was certainly like an angel of God to us.
There we were, after dark in a huge, strange city where neither of us spoke or read the language, or
could even sound it out since it is written in a different alphabet. Unbeknownst to us, we had arrived at
a different train station than we had expected and booked a hostel in a part of the city that was not in
the central touristy part of town. Any number of horrible things could have befallen us, and even
Mischa’s kindness could have been unavailable had he been on the platform just a few minutes earlier or later, or failed to notice a pair of befuddled Americans, or chosen to ignore us. But I believe God
sent us Mischa to guide us to our destination and keep us safe.
How many of you have had the experience of someone who was clearly sent into your life at a
particular time when you were in need of help? I think probably all of us have, either in a big way or a
small way. It’s one of the experiences that really points to the truth of God’s provident care for us, as
well as the possible existence of guardian angels in some form or another.
The first verse of our Isaiah passage for today is addressed from the Lord to Cyrus. Cyrus is
described as the Lord’s anointed, but in this passage, Isaiah doesn’t otherwise identify who Cyrus is or
why he is important. Cyrus was not a Jew – in fact, he is the only non-Jewish person in all of scripture
who is described as being anointed – but he absolutely was sent by God as a savior to the Jews in their
time of need.
Remember that in the year 587 BC, the Babylonians, whose king at the time was
Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem, destroyed Solomon’s Temple, and force-marched a great number
of the Judeans into exile and slavery in Babylon. The prophets, especially Isaiah, Jeremiah, and
Ezekiel, had the daunting task of convincing the people to stay faithful to God, even though it looked
like the covenant had been entirely torn apart: the land promised to them and their descendants were
overrun by others. The Temple was destroyed, and the monarchy established by King David was
broken. The prophets helped the people to understand that God was testing them and giving them the
opportunity to repent of their past sins, but that God was and always would be still with them.
Meanwhile, Jeremiah and the psalmists were helping the people to voice their cries of sorrow and
lament: how can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?
Forty-eight years after the original deportations, Cyrus the Persian came to power in Babylon.
Cyrus had a different philosophy of governance than did Nebuchadnezzar and the other Babylonian
kings before him. Cyrus respected the customs and religions of the lands he conquered, and he also had
a much more enlightened view of human rights than did his Babylonian predecessors. This led him to
have a very successful administration of thirty years’ duration, under which his subjects prospered.
Cyrus issued a proclamation that the enslaved Jewish people were free to go home. For this
proclamation, Cyrus became the only non-Jew in scripture to be called God’s anointed.
Anointing, which is a practice still carried on by the Brethren and some other Christian groups,
is the practice of marking a person’s forehead, or sometimes other body parts, like hands and feet, with
oil and offering a blessing over that person. In the book of James, anointing is suggested as a particular
blessing to be offered to those who are sick. Elsewhere in scripture, anointing takes place as a way of
consecrating a person to a specific task: the judges, prophets, priests, and kings of Israel and Judah all
received anointing before they began their duties.
The word Messiah, in Hebrew, and the word Christ, in Greek, both mean “anointed one.”
Christ was anointed judge, prophet, priest, and king over all humanity, although scripture is somewhat
unclear who actually did the anointing. John says Mary of Bethany, Matthew and Mark indicate Mary
Magdalene and Luke just say it was a woman of the city. Jesus also indicated to this woman and those
who scoffed at her work that she was anointing his body beforehand for burial.
Our gospel passage for today comes from the last quarter of the gospel of Matthew, as the
tensions between Jesus and the Pharisees are beginning to come to a head. As Matthew narrates this
passage, he knows what’s going on. The Pharisees come with lots of flattery for Jesus: “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.” But even this flattery is a barbed remark, as the
Pharisees considered themselves to be the only true authorities on Jewish law. And then they ask their
question: “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?”
But Jesus knows the question is a trap, and in fact, the trap is twofold. If he answers wrongly, not
only will he be in trouble with the Roman authorities, he could also lose face amongst his followers.
This is because the tax to which the Pharisees were referring was the very unpopular poll tax, and so if
Jesus said that the Jews had to go ahead and pay it, his followers were likely to be angry about it,
seeing their rabbi as a collaborator with the Roman occupiers. And if he said they didn’t need to pay it,
the Romans would have just cause to arrest him for advocating seditious behavior.
To get out of the trap, Jesus asks to see a denarius, which was the amount of the tax. A denarius
was a small silver coin originally worth ten assēs, but by Jesus’s time, it had been revalued at sixteen
assēs. A denarius was the daily wage for unskilled laborers and common soldiers. As the scripture
notes, a denarius was minted with the image and title of the reigning emperor, in this case, Tiberius,
giving modern archaeologists an easy way to date materials in a dig if there are coins associated with it.
Jesus asking to see one of the coins by which the tax might be paid was a brilliant move. For
one thing, it demonstrates that he himself did not have a denarius on him; in fact, the only people who
would have transacted with denarii regularly in occupied Judea would have been Roman soldiers,
Roman officials – and Jewish collaborators with the Roman occupiers. So when one of the Pharisees is
able to produce a coin to hand to Jesus, by this very act, that Pharisee is outing himself as a collaborator
with the Romans. Before Jesus says another word, the tables have been turned.
It gets even better. This exchange between Jesus and the Pharisees takes place in the Temple
courtyard – so not only does the possession of a denarius on the part of one of the Pharisees point to
collaboration with the Romans, possession of such a coin on Temple property was a violation of Jewish
temple law, because the coins were dedicated to pagan gods and contained graven images. So not only
was the Pharisee outing himself as a Roman collaborator, he was being shown to be breaking the very
laws the Pharisees had appointed themselves the authorities on to uphold!
Jesus takes a look at the coin, and then, rather than giving the Pharisees an answer to their
question, asks a counter-question: Whose image and inscription are on this coin? Here Jesus continues
to show his prophetic wisdom. He is a skilled verbal chess player, making unexpected counter-move
after counter-move to evade all the traps that have been set for him.
Not only was the graven image of the emperor on the coin an offense against the holy space of
the Temple, but the inscription would also have been, as well. In a circle around the image of Tiberius were the
words (in Latin, in abbreviated form), “Tiberius Caesar Divi August Fili Augustus,” which, in turn,
translates, “Tiberius Caesar, Worshipful Son of the God, Augustus.” On the back of the coin was an
image of the Roman goddess of peace and the words “Pontifex Maximus” – “High Priest.” Just
possessing and transacting with such a coin could be considered breaking God’s law by honoring the
cult of the emperor and Rome’s gods.
This is not the first time that the Pharisees tried to trap Jesus. In the gospel of John, we have the
famous story of the woman taken in adultery. She is brought before Jesus by the Pharisees, and they
inform him, “This woman was taken in the act of adultery. Now in the Law Moses commanded us to
stone such women. Now, what do you say?” And again Jesus skillfully evades the trap. We are told that
he writes with his finger on the ground for a moment, maybe doodling while he gathers his thoughts,
and then he proclaims, “Let the one who is without sin cast the first stone.” And the woman’s accusers
all slink away, letting their stones drop to the ground.
Who were the Pharisees, and why were they so determined to catch Jesus out? Interestingly,
their history also dates back to the Babylonian Exile and the proclamation of Cyrus the Persian. You
see, Cyrus proclaimed that the people could return to their land, and their temple could be rebuilt, but
he did not allow for the restoration of the Judean monarchy. Thus, the priests of the temple became
effectively not only the arbiters of Jewish spiritual life but of their civil life as well. In 152 BC, the
Hasmoneans established themselves as a new dynasty of kings out of the ranks of the priests. The
Pharisees saw this as a problem and advocated separatism between civil and religious law. So it’s
interesting that the Pharisees in Jesus’ day were authorities on religious law but also working with the
Romans and thus involved in civil law as well. Part of the reason the Pharisees welcomed the Romans
is that it gave them a power boost in their feud with the Sadducees, who were part of the ruling priestly
class, while the Pharisees were the bible scholars in the group, trying to make sure the people upheld
the teachings of Torah. Since Jesus was seen by his followers as resisting the Roman occupation, he
was likewise a threat to the Pharisees’ power, as well.
While Jesus did not come to overthrow the Roman occupation, he did pose a threat in another
way, because he asserted the equality and dignity of all people before God. Part of what makes
occupation work is a superior force in terms of strength and numbers, but another reason occupations can
go on is because, through a hundred daily humiliations, the occupying force makes the occupied people
feel like they are inferior and deserve to be treated badly. So when Jesus says to carry someone’s pack
another mile, he is referring to the common Roman soldier’s practice of grabbing a random Jewish
civilian and making him carry the military pack for a mile, despite whatever else the Jewish person
might have been doing at the time – tending his vines, building a sheep shed, making wine, or what
have you.
The Romans also conducted Triumphs: parades through the major cities of their Empire to
proclaim the latest victory and conquest of new territory. Representative persons from the conquered
territory, as highly-ranking as possible, were put on display giving obeisance to the emperor. This
simultaneously served to proclaim the Romans’ might and humiliate the peoples they had conquered.
And finally, for criminals that were considered a particular threat to Roman authority, the
punishment was crucifixion, which was excruciatingly painful and humiliating, and also served as a
warning to anyone who saw the unfortunate victim to mind their step, or they could be next.
Through these means, the Romans, especially after the Republic ended and Julius Caesar
became emperor, consolidated their power, and the claim of the emperor to own and be owed
everything under his command – nations, land, people, cities, farms, produce, and labor.
But the Jewish faith, and our Christian faith as well, teaches and believes that everything on the
earth belongs to God. Psalm 24 proclaims, “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof, and they
that dwell therein, for God has founded it upon the seas and established it upon the floods.” The earth
belongs to God because God created it, beginning by separating the light from the darkness, the waters
from dry land, and then filling the earth with vegetation: plants bearing seed, and the creatures of the
waters, earth, and sky, and making the sun to rule over the earth by day and the moon by night.
And then on the sixth day, God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness” – our great-great-great-great-grandfather and grandmother, Adam and Eve, the parents of all
humankind.
Bobbi Dykema is currently serving as pastor at First Church of the Brethren in Springfield, Illinois. She is also on the pastoral team of the Living Stream online Church of the Brethren and serves on the steering committee of the Womaen’s Caucus. Bobbi is passionate about racial and gender justice, beauty and the arts, and reading scripture as a living document.
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