And when you have opened its mouth, you will find a piece of money; take that and give it to them for Me and you

 

 Now while they were staying in Galilee, Jesus said to them, "The Son of Man is about to be betrayed into the hands of men, and they will kill Him, and the third day He will be raised up."  And they were exceedingly sorrowful.  

When they had come to Capernaum, those who received the temple tax came to Peter and said, "Does your Teacher not pay the temple tax?"  He said, "Yes."  And when he had come into the house, Jesus anticipated him, saying, "What do you think, Simon?  From whom do the kings of the earth take customs or taxes, from their sons or from strangers?"   Peter said to Him, "From strangers."  Jesus said to him, "Then the sons are free.  Nevertheless, lest we offend them, go to the sea, cast in a hook, and take the fish that comes up first.  And when you have opened its mouth, you will find a piece of money; take that and give it to them for Me and you."

 

- Matthew 17:22–27 

 

Yesterday we read that when Jesus, together with James, John, and Peter, had returned from the Mount of Transfiguration, they came to the multitude, and a man came to Him, kneeling down to Him and saying, "Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and suffers severely; for he often falls into the fire and often into the water.  So I brought him to Your disciples, but they could not cure him."  Then Jesus answered and said, "O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you?  How long shall I bear with you?  Bring him here to Me."  And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him; and the child was cured from that very hour.  Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, "Why could we not cast it out?"  So Jesus said to them, "Because of your unbelief; for assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.  However, this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting."

 

  Now while they were staying in Galilee, Jesus said to them, "The Son of Man is about to be betrayed into the hands of men, and they will kill Him, and the third day He will be raised up."  And they were exceedingly sorrowful.  This is the second time that Jesus has predicted His death and Resurrection to the disciples.  (See this reading for the first, which immediately followed Peter's confession of faith that Jesus is Christ the Son.)  My study Bible says that Christ's repeated predictions of what is to come show that He is going to His Passion freely and is not being taken against His will.  

 

When they had come to Capernaum, those who received the temple tax came to Peter and said, "Does your Teacher not pay the temple tax?"  He said, "Yes."  And when he had come into the house, Jesus anticipated him, saying, "What do you think, Simon?  From whom do the kings of the earth take customs or taxes, from their sons or from strangers?"  Peter said to Him, "From strangers."  Jesus said to him, "Then the sons are free.  Nevertheless, lest we offend them, go to the sea, cast in a hook, and take the fish that comes up first.  And when you have opened its mouth, you will find a piece of money; take that and give it to them for Me and you."  My study Bible explains here that the temple tax was an annual head tax (meaning on individuals) for all male Jews over twelve years of age for the maintenance of the temple; only the priests were exempt from this tax.  See Numbers 3:43-51.  Since Jesus is the Son of God, it noes, He is both High Priest and "proprietor" of the temple, and is therefore exempt from the tax.  Nonetheless Jesus pays it anyway -- both to avoid unnecessary offense, and also to show that He has totally identified Himself with mankind.  

Several patristic commentaries on the passage regarding the temple tax comment on the coin as a symbol.  Roman coins bore the image of Caesar on them, together with an inscription naming Caesar as divine.  The tax itself is a kind of redemption, paid for individual salvation.  These commentaries note that Christ, having established to Peter that He is exempt from such a tax, does not take the coin from His own treasury of His ministry, nor from His own spending money.  Rather, we have this mysterious, seemingly "magical" story of the fish taken by the fisherman Peter.  In this miracle Christ tells Peter to go to the sea, cast in a hook, and take the fish that comes up first; in it he will find the money for the temple tax.  We look first at the specific direction here from Jesus; each detail makes us assured that this indeed is a powerful miracle which we must not overlook.  As Jesus has already shown that He is master over the sea (symbolic of the world) on two occasions when the disciples were struggling with storm and waves (see Matthew 8:23-27; 14:22-33), here He demonstrates the same again.  But in so doing, Peter takes from the sea an element of the world through the power of the Lord in order to "fulfill all righteousness" (Matthew 3:14-16).  We may also remember Christ's words to the fishermen Simon Peter and Andrew, "Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men" (Matthew 4:18-20).  Christ will work through His apostles to redeem human beings who will exchange a worldly image for the image of Christ, a true identity as a "son" or adopted child and heir of God.  Christ is the first, but there will be many more to follow (see 1 Corinthians 15:20-28).  Out of this world, the Lord will redeem human beings made in the image and likeness of God, through those who will become the fishers of men.  We remember also that the fish would become a symbol for Christology.  The ancient Greek word, which is the one used in the Gospels to mean fish, is ιχθυς (ixthys).  Used as an acronym, taking each letter as the beginning of a word, this came to stand for Ιησους Χριστος, θεου Υιος, Σωτηρ (Iesous Christos, Theou Yios, Sotir) meaning "Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior."  In His Incarnation, and through His Passion which He predicts for the second time in today's reading, He brings us salvation, the true manifestation of what it is to be "redeemed."  In His Passion, He pays the price for all of us, as He pays the temple tax today for Peter.  All of it through the power of the Lord, which turns the things which belong to our world into the things that work for God (Romans 8:28), allowing us all to become "sons of God."