Matthew's Tax Story

Matthew, the ex-tax collector turned apostle, is the only writer to record this story (Matt.17:24-27). This is a story we must not rush into. This is not simply "Jesus paid taxes, thus I pay taxes." There is a lot going on here. Remember we are searching for the mind of Jesus. How does Jesus think? What exactly is He teaching us? I have broken the story down into five points:

• The nature, practice and history of the temple tax.
• Peter's quickness to bind Jesus to the tax by saying "Yes."
• Jesus' question about sons and strangers, and how this relates to His sonship.
• The idea of "offense" since Jesus often cares little about offending authorities on earth.
• The  way Jesus chose to get the money to pay the tax.

A good place to begin is Exodus 30:11ff and 38:26. God's original intent in Moses' Law was that all sons of Israel over 20 years of age would pay a half-schekel of the sanctuary tax as a contribution to the Lord to prevent a plague because of numbering the people, to make atonement for themselves, for service for the tent of meeting, and a memorial for the sons of Israel to the Lord. There is a lot going on with this tax or contribution. In Moses' day there were 603,550 men 20 years and older numbered. If each one contributed the equivalent of two days wages we would have 1.2 million in days' wages, or at 10 hours per day, over 12 million man-hours of income. This is a huge amount. With that kind of money floating around you can bet corruption is not far away. (I am reading a book right now about the amount of money we have spent in Afghanistan over the years in non-military aid, much of it going into the pockets of greedy and corrupt people who grow poppy/heroin that kills people around the world.) Where there is money there is corruption. This might have something to do with this discussion. Where was Jesus' tax money going? Was it really "to the Lord?"

For Matthew who had participated in the Roman counterpart to this corrupt system it had to be interesting to him how Jesus handled these tax-collectors. I think it had to be humorous to him where Jesus got the money to pay the tax, i.e. from the mouth of a fish. We have a lot of unpacking to do in this story to get at the heart of what is going on. But, for now, let's all take away from Matthew's tax story that the sons of the kingdom often intersect with the sons of the world. Jesus will teach us something about how to manage this encounter.