Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time

          “Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not? Ha! Now we’ve got him? If he says ‘yes’ we’ll brand him for a Roman collaborator and a traitor to our people and to our religion.  And, after all, how could he be the Messiah and support these pagan tyrants, with their idolatrous currency, stamped with image of their so-called ‘God-Emperor’?  When the real Messiah comes, he will surely free us from their oppressive yoke.  But, if he should say ‘no,’ then we will throw him to the wolves.  We’ll turn him in to the Roman authorities as a zealot who seeks to overthrow their rule, and they’ll take care of the rest.”

          Undoubtedly, this was some of the thinking behind the question asked of Jesus in the Gospel today as the Pharisees and the Herodians team up to rid themselves of this meddlesome rabbi from Nazareth.  This pairing of the Pharisees and Herodians is in itself a little peculiar, in that the Pharisees considered themselves righteous observers of the law, who would have had little problem if their Roman overlords just packed up and left.  The Herodians, on the other hand, the supporters of King Herod (who by now was little more than a puppet with a title), took a decidedly more “secular” approach.  They had grown relatively comfortable under Roman rule.  Still, Jesus, was a thorn in both their sides.  They say “politics makes strange bedfellows.”  It would seem that opposition to Jesus and His message has the same effect.  As the saying goes, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

          It would be good for us to remember, too, that this is fairly late in Matthew’s Gospel.  We’re getting down to the wire, and the opponents of Jesus are grasping at straws for something to put Him away.  And so, the trap is set.  The snare is laid.  One way or another, they’ve got him…right?  Perhaps not. 

In response to this question, Jesus, as He has already done on several previous occasions, answers in a way that “threads the needle” between the positions that will get Him in trouble.  Or, more precisely, Jesus speaks in a way here that is not merely “somewhere in the middle of the political spectrum,” but truly above the spectrum.  He speaks of something higher than taxes, or politics or earthly alliances.  “‘Whose image is this and whose inscription?’  They replied, ‘Caesar’s.’ At that he said to them, ‘Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.’”  He’s not going to allow them to draw Him in or drag Him down to their level, to their worldly way of thinking about power.  Rather, even when He’s in the “hot seat,” Jesus, ever the “shepherd of souls,” tries to evangelize His persecutors by raising their minds and hearts to what is of God; to that higher claim on our humanity.  “[Repay] to God what belongs to God.”  And what belongs to God?  We do. We belong to God, each and every one of us.  In fact, we belong to God even before we belong to our own families, or to any society, culture, nation or state, before we belong to any club, team or organization.  We are God’s first.

          It is worth noting here that in describing this moment when Jesus takes the Roman coin and asks, “Whose image is this?,” Matthew uses the same word for “image” as is used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament story of creation where it reads, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…God created man in his image; if the divine image he created him; male and female he created them.”  In both cases it is the word eikon, from which we get the word “icon” in English. In other words, just as that coin was struck, stamped, pressed in the image or “icon” of Caesar Augustus, much more are we struck, stamped, pressed in the image, the “icon” of the Creator.  And so, it is only “right and just” that we make an offering of our whole selves back to the God in whose image we have been made.

          Over the years I have attended various Catholic conferences and heard a number of “big name” speakers.  And several of them have made the point that the Catholic Church feeds more people worldwide than any other “organization” on the planet.  And we don’t ask them if they’re Catholic; we just ask them if they’re hungry.  We could add to this that the Catholic Church also probably clothes more people, houses more people and educates more people than any other single group on the planet.  And, again, we don’t ask if they’re Catholic, we just ask if they need some clothes, or a place to stay, or if they want to learn.  (And, by the way, we’ve been at this for a while.)  We do all of this not because the people we serve are necessarily Catholic, but because we are.

Being “stamped,” as we are, in the image of God, it only makes sense to “repay” to God what is God’s.  This is who we are.  We are Catholic Christians, adopted sons and daughters of God, disciples of Jesus Christ; it’s what we do.  But also, we do this because we recognize that same “image of God” that is in us in all human beings, regardless of race, class, color, gender, sexuality, religion or creed.  In a sense, the image of God in us aches to honor and to serve the image of God in all of our brothers and sisters. 

And, for all of this, we shouldn’t expect a “ticker tape” parade when we reach the “pearly gates.”  In fact, we might find God a little “underwhelmed” by our good works, as if to say, “Well…yeah.  I figure that goes without saying.  That is how I made you, after all.”  In the end we can only say as it says in Luke’s Gospel, “We are unprofitable servants; we have done as we were obliged to do.”  It is not simply our Christian “duty” to do these things, be our truest nature to do them.

It should also be said that as Catholics we don’t have a “monopoly” on doing good in the world.  Many of our Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist brothers and sisters, just to name a few, are also doing great things for our world that honor our common humanity.  Just as we should call out evil wherever we see it in the world, so too we should be quick to point out the good wherever it is being done and by whomever it is being done, always giving credit where it is due.

I think of our first reading today from Isaiah, in which Cyrus, the Persian (that is, non-Jewish) king is referred to as the Lord’s “anointed” because of the role he played in liberating Israel from their captivity in Babylon.  A few verses later God proclaims through His prophet, “It is I who arm you, though you know me not, so that toward the rising and the setting of the sun [from east to west] people may know that there is none besides me.”  God is not, in other words limited to working through us Catholics.

I think too of the woman we honored this afternoon with the Pacem in Terris Peace and Freedom Award.  Dr. Widad Akreyi is an Iraqi-born Danish citizen of Kurdish ancestry, who, having witnessed violence and human rights abuses first hand and knowing what it is like to be a refugee, has devoted herself to calling attention such injustices, from illegal small arms trade to gender based violence, to human trafficking and torture.  She is the fifteenth non-Catholic recipient of this award.  Those who had the privilege of meeting her today would say that she radiates the love of God.  So, let’s not get too full of ourselves and forget that there are others who are arm an arm with us in the cause of justice.

Yes, we are stamped in the image of God, and so let’s repay to God what is God’s, as we place on the altar not only gifts of bread and wine, but our whole selves, our strengths and weaknesses, our joys and our sorrows, confident that God can work in and through us to further the kingdom of peace and justice on earth.