Hook, Line, and Caesar

It’s tax season, and once again I wonder when the government is going to simplify things by doing what it really wants to do— design a tax return with only two sections: A) How much did you earn last year?, and B) Send it.

Taxes were not part of God’s original plan. The second sentence of Genesis tells us “the earth was formless.” That means there were no tax forms anywhere. No federal forms, no state forms, no W-9s, 1040s, 433-Bs … It was glorious. But then God made Man, and Man made Bureaucracy, and Bureaucracy made, well, more Bureaucracy, and it all required taxes, and forms, and so here we are.

Even Jesus paid taxes. There was a thing called the temple tax. It was required of all Jewish males over the age of 20, and the money was used for the upkeep of the temple in Jerusalem. Expenses were more than usual at the time because the temple priests were adding a wi-fi café (wi-fi was short for “wine and fish”).

As the Gospel of Matthew tells us, Jesus and his disciples were hanging out in a lakeshore town one day when tax collectors approached Peter and asked him and Jesus to pay up. Jesus sent Peter to the lake. “Cast a hook, and pull in the first fish that bites,” Jesus said. “Open its mouth and you’ll find a coin. Use that to pay what we owe.” The rest, as they say, is fishtory.

There are important points to make here, like “God wants us to be responsible citizens and pay our taxes”, and “There was a time when the metal found in a fish wasn’t mercury”. But to me, the best thing about it is how it illuminates Jesus’ sense of humor.

The easiest course of action would have been to settle the account from the disciples’ meager little cash box. And even if there wasn’t enough, Jesus could have used his supernatural powers to make a coin materialize in his pocket. But no. I’m convinced that Jesus was simply in a playful mood that day. So off Peter goes to the shore, more than half-believing that he’s been sent on a fool’s errand. Yet when his fishing line goes taut, he pulls in a water-breathing wallet.

I imagine Peter returning to the group, smiling at Jesus, who winks back, and then Peter holds up the coin as the two men roar with laughter, immediately joined by the others, until everyone’s wetting their robes over the absurdity of it all. Jesus’ command of everything in the universe is once more demonstrated, further establishing his credentials as the Messiah, and, no less important, highlighting the joyfulness at the heart of God.

Let’s tell it from the underwater angle …

“Is that him?” asked the carp.

“That’s him,” answered the sardine.

“Hey, you!” said the carp, swimming over to the tilapia. “I heard you went to the other side and came back.”

“It’s true! It all started with my buddy and me playing ‘I Can’t Believe I’m Gonna Eat That’— you know, whatever you can find on the lake bottom. He swallowed a pebble. Big deal. But then I saw one of those big coins with the Roman Emperor Augustus on it. I gobbled it up with some seaweed and said, ‘I see your pebble and raise you a Caesar salad!’ I got serious indigestion right away. It’s kind of a stupid game, now that I think about it.”

“Well, you look perfectly healthy now. Very green around the gills.”

“Thank you. So anyway, a hook on a line drops into the water, and I’m thinking, ‘Lucky me! I can use this hook to carefully pull the coin out of my stomach.’”

“What could go wrong?”

“So I start letting the hook go down my throat, and can you believe it, it got stuck in me!”

“You know what’s stuck in me? The Baby Shark song. Sharks already make our lives miserable, and now they’ve got that.”

“Well, next thing I know, I’m yanked out of the water and a hand grips me so tightly that the squeeze shoots the coin out of my gut and back up into my mouth! The man’s finger jabs between my lips and scoops out the coin. Now he’s got the coin in one hand and me in the other! And while I’m gasping for breath, he starts laughing!”

“What a bully! I’ve never liked humans. One almost stepped on me while he was walking on the water.”

“Then he removes the hook, gives me a big smile and says, ‘Rabbi, you’re incredible!’”

“You’re a rabbi?”

“The guy is so delirious that he runs over to some other men nearby and, still holding me, hands them the coin and says, ‘Here you go, tax collectors!’ They’re all amazed, and one of them asks, ‘Did you take this coin out of that fish?’ So the guy carrying me grins and says, “Well, I can’t use a piggy bank. That wouldn’t be kosher!’”

“Good one.”

“Meanwhile, I’m out of oxygen and about to die! My life flashed before my eyes. It was very boring.”

“Well, we’re fish.”

“Then the guy runs back to the shore and tosses me in the lake. Gotta admit, that’s a nice thing for a fisherman to do.”

“He owed you! You paid his taxes for him! Just for that, humans ought to raise you up as a new symbol of generosity! A symbol of man-and-fish collaboration!”

“Me? Ha! I don’t expect to see humans rally around a fish symbol anytime soon.”

And so the carp and the tilapia swam off to live another day. So will you, dear reader, despite it being tax season.

Many happy returns.