Twenty-ninth Sunday of Ordinary Time-A
This weekend’s Gospel reading presents an encounter between Jesus and religious leaders who try to catch him in a contradiction by asking a thorny question. It was well known that the Jews who were occupied and oppressed by the Romans had no allegiance to them. From this perspective, they asked Jesus whether it was lawful to pay Caesar a poll tax.
Before we analyze Jesus’ response, it helps to step back and consider how questions shape conversations. People ask questions for three reasons. They may seek information, direction, or knowledge they lack. The second type of question is used to acquire something, like a child asking her mother for a cookie.
The third type of question is less innocent because, by its very nature, it is used to entrap or contradict what someone says. It tries to make someone take a stand, not to share knowledge, but to judge or extract information to denigrate them. This is the questioning the Pharisees used to trap Jesus. If he said it was all right to pay the tax, they could claim he sympathized with the Romans and did not share the same feeling about the Romans as his fellow Jews. If he said it was wrong to pay the tax, they could turn him in to their overlords. Either way, the Pharisees were trying to set Jesus up.
Knowing their malice, Jesus responded to them by asking them to give him a Roman coin. He then asked them whose inscription is on the coin. They replied, “Ceasar’s.” Jesus then said, “Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.” Jesus avoided the conundrum by saying that a person lives simultaneously in the temporal and spiritual worlds.
In the civil world, Christians must obey the law, pay taxes, and be good citizens for the common good of the society they live in. At the same time, responsibility to the civil order and obedience to God’s order are not equal partners. For a Christian, the ultimate allegiance is to God first.
St. Thomas More embodied this principle, remarking that he was “the king’s good servant, but God’s first.” In 1535, St. Thomas was martyred for refusing to take the Oath of Supremacy, which would have acknowledged King Henry VIII as “the only supreme head of the Church of England.” At the time, St. Thomas was Henry’s Chancellor, and his high-ranking position meant his family profited from the affiliation. Thomas had much to lose, but he knew when to give to Caesar and when to give to God. When Thomas’ duty to the king was against his beliefs in God’s law, he chose God and was martyred for his witness.
Not as dramatically, we face similar situations where we must choose between the temporal world and our spiritual lives. It happens most often when we vote. The question of defending life arises on the ballot every election cycle. Unfortunately, the moral waters have been muddied by the claim that voters don’t have to vote on just one issue; they can weigh it alongside concerns like the economy or other issues as equal to protecting life from the womb to the grave.
The claim that somehow money or a passing position is on the same level as the protection of life is giving to Caesar what belongs to God. Voting isn’t the only way we give Caesar more than he deserves. This happens in myriad ways when we spend more time on our temporal needs and less on our spiritual needs. Rabid sports fans make an exception on Sundays in Fall, when they get up at the break of dawn to tailgate instead of go to church.
A Christian must balance the world’s needs with the needs of their spiritual life. Tension will always exist between the two. Normally, there is room for both, but when they conflict, we must follow St. Thomas More’s path and give to God.
And this is the point of the Gospel. You don’t need to deny your human and temporal needs, but you cannot let them take over completely. One simple suggestion to fend off problems is to say a quick prayer every time you do a load of laundry. It is as easy as that!