John 2.13-22, Exodus 20.1-17, 1 Corinthians 1.18-25
Bridestowe, Lydford, Lent 3, 11/3/2012
During the trial of Ken Dodd for tax evasion, held in Liverpool in 1989, Dodd’s representative in court George Carman QC famously quipped, "Some accountants are comedians, but comedians are never accountants". [1] The trial revealed that Dodd had very little money in his bank account, but did have £336,000 in cash stashed in suitcases in his attic. When asked by the judge, "What does a hundred thousand pounds in a suitcase feel like?", Dodd made his now famous reply, "The notes are very light, M'Lord."
While this court case rumbled on I was working in an office block which overlooked the main entrance to Liverpool’s Queen Elizabeth Law Courts, which opens out into a large public square dominated by a massive monument to Queen Victoria. I worked for the Department of Trade and Industry but the two floors above us housed the regional offices of the Inland Revenue - and the officers who had put together the case against Ken Dodd.
Every day of the trial Ken Dodd’s exit from the court was met with a large crowd of supporters cheering him through the square, and above them from the tax office, lines of civil servants hanging out of open windows booing and jeering him. On the day that Dodd was acquitted of all charges the boos from the tax officers were louder and bitter; but the crowd on the square was enormous and in great celebratory mode. Beneath Queen Victoria’s stern gaze an impromptu street party took place with the vindicated Ken Dodd at its core. As I watched this astonishing scene through our office windows I thought, it shows just how much ordinary people love seeing someone turn the tables on the taxman.
Preparing for this talk this week, I got to thinking that the scene I’ve just described has a very strong gospel feel to it. For one of the great themes of the gospels is Jesus turning the tables on the taxman. He did it in the Temple, as we just heard (and we’ll return to that story in a short while). And he did it many other times too. In his exchange with the Pharisees about paying taxes to the emperor; in the observation he made about the widow’s contribution to the treasury; in the call of Matthew and his meals with tax-collectors and sinners; Jesus turned the tables on the taxman.
Turning the tables. Reversing the positions of adversaries. The phrase is often used when the weaker position subsequently becomes dominant. Jesus turning the tables on the taxman doesn’t mean him breaking the law. It means him operating from another system of law altogether - a law of love which puts God and neighbour first. It means him challenging those who claim to be operating under God’s laws but who are actually caught up in the ways of the world in which the tax system is a mainspring.
Jesus challenged the scribes, who, he said, ‘like(d) to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the market-places, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honour at banquets!’ Jesus noted how they inherently supported the system of temple tax, which kept the poorest people in poverty - a situation which the scribes piously ignored. Jesus said, ‘They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.’
Jesus turned the tables on these advocates of the temple tax on the day he sat down and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury, watching many rich people put in large sums, and a poor widow coming and putting in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. Mark’s gospel records Jesus calling his disciples and saying to them, ‘Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.’ (Mark 12.38-44)
In the event we now call the story of the Widow’s Mite Jesus reveals the injustice in the temple tax system which took the last pennies from the poor widow. And he turns the tables on those who appeared to be pious but whose inherent support of the system implicated them in her poverty. His criticism of their unjust behaviour made him very unpopular with them and their allies, and they began looking for ways to trip him up.
And so to the story of Caesar’s coin when the Pharisees and the Herodians, plotting to entrap Jesus in what he said, asked him whether or not it was lawful to pay taxes to the emperor. These proponents of Jewish renewal, wrapped up in the complex politics of their day, were trying to turn the tables on this Jesus who had been challenging their faithfulness to the laws of God, by getting him involved in their political conflict.
They wanted him to say something which either incriminated him as a supporter of Rome - and thus against the Jewish people, or as an opponent of Rome - and thus fair game to be either enlisted as a partner in their political struggle or handed in to the authorities as a dissident. What Jesus said sidestepped the trap they set for him, and revealed that the worldview of the Pharisees and the Herodians depended on their opposition to Roman taxation, rather than on an obedience to the laws of God. Asking them to show him the coin used for the tax, he said to them, ‘Whose head is this, and whose title?’ They answered, ‘The emperor’s.’ Then he said to them, ‘Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’ (Matthew 22.15-22)
Jesus turned the tables on those who opposed the tax system but would use it to try to score political points over him. More than that, his words revealed that he was disinterested in the internal and oppositional politics of his day, but keenly interested in the greater laws of God. These laws transcend all earthly politics whilst at the same time deeply influence the social and political behaviour of those who obey them. Jesus turned the tables on those obsessed by taxation by reminding them that love for God and love for neighbour is not factional but universal, teaching them that whilst the kingdom of God operates here on earth it does so completely independently from any earthly kingdoms.
The Widow’s Mite makes it clear that tax systems hurt people who live on the lowest incomes; the story of the call of Matthew, a tax-collector, reveals that others caught up in the system get damaged too. Tax-collectors were Jewish people reviled in Jewish society because their daily work involved them taking money from their people and passing it on to Rome. It didn’t help that some of them relished their role, for it could be lucrative. Shamed, despised, treated with contempt, tax-collectors were people to avoid. So imagine the effect of Jesus, one day seeing a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and saying to him, ‘Follow me.’ (Matthew 9.9-13).
Jesus turned the tables on the tax-collector Matthew whose expectations of others towards him were rock-bottom but who found in Jesus one man who showed him trust, one man who would lift from Matthew the veil of shame which shrouded him and enable him to hold his head up again, affirmed in the love of God and neighbour which Jesus showed him. And he turned the tables on those who controlled the laws which caused the shame which tax-collectors and sinners had to endure.
The Pharisees questioned Jesus’s practice of eating with tax-collectors and sinners, who were all contaminated people in the eyes of those who set the rules over debt and purity, but he turned the tables on the Pharisees by suggesting that it was their attitude that was toxic, saying, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.’
When Jesus went up to Jerusalem before the Passover festival, and found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money-changers seated at their tables in the temple, he drove them all out, sheep and cattle and all, with a whip of cords. He poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, ‘Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a market-place!’
This was a different sort of table-turning altogether. A set of aggressive actions by One who was greatly angered by the way the people had permitted the worship of God in the temple to become secondary to the system of taxation which the cattle, sheep, doves, and money-changers represented. Shocked by his actions Jesus’ disciples remembered the words of scripture, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me.’ Jesus was zealous for the temple where the commands of God - commands to love God and love neighbour - should be upheld above all. Jesus was angry for the disobedience of the temple authorities claiming to be operating under God’s laws but who had subjected themselves to the ways of the world in which the tax system is a mainspring.
His opposition to the temple tax system got him crucified in the end. Those who set the temple tax laws destroyed the One who in his very body represented the laws of God - the laws of love for God and neighbour. But they didn’t have the last word. ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up’, Jesus said to them, speaking of the temple of his body. (John 2.13-22).
The resurrection of Jesus was his ultimate table-turning act against the taxmen. For the ways of the world manifested in the tax system died with him on the cross; and since his resurrection the ways of God open out for eternity in the lives of those who embrace his law of love.
Many Christians today give time and energy to turning the tables on the taxman: anti-poverty campaigners seeking to change tax rules which today in this country impoverish the most vulnerable members of society [2], pensioners, taxi drivers and road hauliers together lobbying parliament about fuel tax rises [3], conscientious objectors campaigning to have the military part of their taxes diverted to a peace fund [4], supporters of Christian Aid campaigning on the issue of tax dodging by multinationals [5], and advocates of the Robin Hood Tax on the banks, which could raise tens of billions to help protect public services, fight poverty and tackle climate change at home and abroad [6].
Christians involved in activities such as these are showing their concern to follow God’s laws of love in which our obligations to God and to others are paramount, overshadowing our own desires or anxieties about our financial position or place in the world. Injustice in all its forms crumbles before the God who liberates all who follow Jesus from the crushing, limited, joyless ways of the world into the eternal ways of love.
Next week our government will set a new budget. It is natural for us at such a time to be worrying about our financial situation, our tax position. It might drive some of us to hide banknotes in our attics. But we needn't resort to such desperate mesaures. Instead, be assured, Jesus turns the tables on the taxman. Be affirmed by him, be loved by him this week - and take your perspective on all these things from him.
Notes
[1] Wikipedia: Ken Dodd's tax evasion court case
[2] Church Action on Poverty's General Anti-Avoidance Rule campaign
[3] Fuel tax campaigners lobby MPs, UK Press Association 8/3/2012
[5] Christian Aid's Trace the Tax campaign
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