Matthew 17.24-27

Honestly, this passage that we are covering today is a very obscure passage. Take a look at it:

²⁴ After Jesus and his disciples arrived in Capernaum, the collectors of the two-drachma tax came to Peter and asked, “Doesn’t your teacher pay the temple tax?”
 ²⁵ “Yes, he does,” he replied.
   When Peter came into the house, Jesus was the first to speak. “What do you think, Simon?” he asked. “From whom do the kings of the earth collect duty and taxes—from their own sons or from others?”
 ²⁶ “From others,” Peter answered.
   “Then the sons are exempt,” Jesus said to him. ²⁷ “But so that we may not offend them, go to the lake and throw out your line. Take the first fish you catch; open its mouth and you will find a four-drachma coin. Take it and give it to them for my tax and yours.”


What?! 


What is going on?!


We got tax-collectors asking Peter for money, Peter saying that Jesus paid that tax. Jesus telling some parable about the sons of kings not paying taxes, and then instructing Peter to go fishing and in the fish's mouth the money for the tax will be there. 


This is just plain weird.


Yet...Matthew places this story in his book for a reason. And since he was a tax-collector himself, he might have some invested interest in this story. 


This temple tax was not a legal Roman tax, but the Jews expected that each male between the ages of twenty and fifty would support the temple each year with two drachma, which would equal about two day's wages. Perhaps the reason they were asking him now for it was because he missed the Passover last year and there were some rumors spreading that he did not pay this tax. One thing that is interesting is that officially ordained rabbis were exempt from this tax, yet Jesus did not at ten their schools so he had no right to claim this exemption. 


Yet why is this story inserted here, after the confession of Jesus, his transfiguration and the healing of the demon boy and leading up to his teaching on being the greatest in the Kingdom? The key is the theme that is developed in the fourth discourse of chapter 18, the theme of humility.


No one expected Jesus, the Son of God, to pay this temple tax. That is why Jesus brings up the question of the kings of the earth collecting taxes from their sons or from others. Jesus is saying that he is the son of God, and is above the tax, yet, because he does not want to offend the ruling officials, he pays it anyway. 


But why?


Here is a rule of thumb, our ethic, the default action we take as Christians, is that of submission. In the book of 1 Peter, it talks about over and over again how we submit in every realm we find ourselves. We submit to our governing nation, to the class system we are a part of and even to our family members. The reason we do this, is because when we submit, even to unjust suffering, we win.


That is what Jesus did, he submits to the authorities of Rome by going to the cross and offering himself as a living sacrifice, and his submission and sacrifice blesses the nation. 


And we are to do the same.


Jesus is living out a model of humility for his disciples, and this is the theme that he is going to address through chapter 18. 


So what does it look like to live a life of submission today?