three takers between two givers

Many will know that the Ten Commandments were given by God to Moses and that they’re recorded in a book called Exodus. This book, along with four others, was written down by that same Moses. All five books – which date from around 1300 BC - are part of the national archives of Israel, part of the Jewish Canon of Scripture. They’re included in all Christian Bibles.

Why the literature lesson? It’s because, in Jesus’ day, around 30 AD, the Jews were still keeping to an interesting, little known requirement of Moses’ laws. You won’t be surprised to know that it related to a kind of tax – only a half-shekel per person per annum. Moses carefully recorded that every Israeli had to give (yes, it was supposedly, but only euphemistically, a gift) a half-shekel a year to the representatives of the LORD God as a gift to pay for their lives – an annual religious acknowledgment that they owed, to the LORD God, the life that was in them. 

Because they were using their life for their own purposes – for themselves – this annual gift acknowledged that they needed to acknowledge God’s ownership of all life.

 

What is “life”? If you take the “you” that you are right now and subtract from it your dead body (if you died straight away) the remainder would be the “life” that you now claim as “yours”. Should you be thankful for that life – that intangible thing which means that you’re alive? What should you give, per annum, to pay for your “life”?

Come with me now to the extract from Matthew’s biography of Jesus in bold above. Yet again we find Jesus teaching that he must die. But this time, he emphasises that men are going to take his life from him. He says he is about to be given away into the hands of human beings, that human beings will kill him and that he’ll be raised on the third day.

Then Jesus is in Peter’s house at Capernaum. He often stayed there. Whilst Peter is outside, the half-shekel tax collector asks him, “Doesn’t your teacher pay the tax?” Peter says, “Yes.” Of course. But when he comes in, Jesus first asks him what he thinks about taxes in general. 

At that time taxes were taken by kings. Today the UK tax-taking authority is still called Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. (The Queen has voluntarily been paying UK taxes since 1992 but taxes can’t be legally taken from her.) Jesus asks Peter, “From whom do kings of the earth take duties or taxes? From their sons or from others?”

What did he this mean? Was it the LORD God who was taking the half-shekel temple tax? Was the LORD God asking, by way of taking this tax, for payment from all human beings for the life he had given to each one?

He continued. “However, so as not to offend them, go to the sea, cast a line, lift up the first fish that comes up, and, opening its mouth, you’ll find a shekel. Take that and give it to them for me and for yourself.”

 

Two givers. The Son of Man would be given away into the hands of human beings. They would take his life and he would rise again. The LORD God would give Peter the shekel to “give” to the religious authorities who wanted to take payment for the life that was in Peter and in the Son of Man.

Three takers. The takers of the annual half-shekel. The kings of the earth who take taxes. Peter who takes what the LORD God gives so as to meet the debt owed by himself.

Are you a taker? Don’t you want to become a son of the unseen giver?