This Gospel passage tells us that the Pharisees and Herodians were trying to entrap Jesus. “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” (Matt 22:17, NRSV). With this question, they tried to force Jesus to choose between loyalty to his people and loyalty to his government. Paying taxes meant supporting the oppressive Roman regime, with its military-police who bully and abuse residents; incarcerate, torture and execute dissidents; and wage wars of colonial expansion. That was a betrayal to the colonized people of Judea. Encouraging people not to pay taxes was a surefire way to provoke Roman wrath and be labeled a criminal who deserves to be incarcerated, tortured, and executed — as Jesus would soon experience. (Remember that this text is set during Jesus’ final week, between his triumphal entry into Jerusalem and his Last Supper, arrest, and crucifixion.) Jesus very deftly skirted the trap by telling his interrogators to show him a denarius coin and asking them, “Whose image and inscription is this?” (Matt 21:20, CEB). They identified Caesar Tiberius’ face on the coin. Jesus famously told them, “Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God” (Matt 22:21, CEB).
The key word that the Common English Bible translation makes plain for us is “image” in verse 20 (Gk. eikōn, literally “icon”). The 3rd century north African theologian Tertullian interpreted this to mean that we should give “the image of Caesar, which is on the coin, to Caesar, and the image of God, which is on [humans], to God; so as to render to Caesar indeed money, to God yourself” (Tertullian, On Idolatry, chp. 15). In other words, we owe God our very lives because we human beings are made in the image of God.
What does this have to do with the abolition of prisons and police? First of all, this question about taxation is very relevant to contemporary conversations about defunding and divesting from prisons, police, and other harmful aspects of the criminal-legal system. As Jesus teaches elsewhere, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matt 6:21). It is right to question the morality of paying into systems that control, abuse, and destroy lives.
Secondly and relatedly, the way we treat the accused and incarcerated is dehumanizing. It defaces the image of God in each one of its victims. Police and prisons function to strip so-called “criminals” of their God-given dignity and human rights. But Jesus calls us to offer our whole selves, souls, and bodies to God because we belong to God. Belonging to God means that we do not belong to jailers, wardens, judges, governors, presidents, or Caesars. Even if they take our money, they should not and cannot take the image of God that is fundamental to who we are.
It is easy to use dehumanizing and demonizing language to describe criminals and enemies to justify the evils of police, prisons, and war. Demons and monsters don’t need to be treated with mercy or respect, after all; they simply must be destroyed at all costs. Right now, we are hearing about the dehumanization of Palestinians and Israelis alike (depending on your source) in the reports coming from this month’s brewing war . We are regularly exposed to the dehumanization of criminals in sensationalist, fear-mongering local news. But even those who commit heinous, dreadful, evil behaviors are not monsters. They are no less our siblings because we were all made in the image of God and God declared all of us “very good” (Genesis 1:27, 31, NRSV). God does not allow us to distance ourselves from other members of the human family. Offering ourselves up to God must lead to a recognition of the divine spark in every other person on earth. It must lead us to more compassionate responses to violence and crime in our neighborhoods and around the globe. It must lead to abolition of the United States’ violent, dehumanizing prison and police systems.
The Rev. Guillermo A. Arboleda is the rector of St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Savannah, GA, and the Missioner for Racial Justice of the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia.