Matthew 22:15-21
I was educated in Catholic schools all the way through college, as many of you were. I remember as a grade school student we of course began and ended our days with prayer, throwing in a little extra at noon, when we said the angelus, and of course when we got into a season like Christmas or Easter. But I was not shocked or surprised that kids in my neighborhood who went to public schools also began and ended their day with prayer. And Christian oriented prayer, as well. There were two Jewish families in town when I grew up, but they attended the Episcopalian church.
In 1947 the Americans United for the Separation of Church and State was founded, surprisingly, by several protestant denominations, who opposed what seemed to be going on in publicly supported schools in which most of the students were Irish or Italian -- Catholic oriented prayer! Hail Mary’s! The purpose of the AUSCS was to get rid of Catholic influence in public schools. As time went on the agenda became more and more radical. The organization now consists mostly of people who profess no religion. They proudly refer to the wall they are continuing to build between church and state. And of course a superficial reading of today’s gospel suggests that maybe Jesus himself would be on board.
But when you get into the gospel, maybe there is a deeper message here. The Pharisees felt that paying the census tax was wrong for several reasons; this tax, and it was one of many, went to pay the roman soldiers who kept the people under control. And it had to be paid with Roman money, which had an engraving of Caesar’s face on it, which was against Jewish law --- you couldn’t depict people. The Herodians on the other hand, were people who supported the Jewish royal family. They were mostly people who didn’t believe in life after death and tried hard to conform to the Roman customs. They favored the census tax, obviously.
I suspect they both felt threatened by Jesus, which is why these two groups got together to get him in trouble. And we always admire the clever way he refused to side with either group. But is he endorsing separation of church and state?
Someone recently remarked that Jesus only gave us two commandments -- to love God completely, and our neighbor as yourselves. But he gave others as well. I know because I googled it. There seems to be consensus around seven statements, but one source counts 49 statements you could call commandments, although most were in context, like when he told the rich young man to sell all he had and give to the poor. But I think we could all agree that the commandment Jesus gives today is directed to all of us. Repay to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what belongs to God. We have to answer the question of what is Caesar's and what is God’s for ourselves. What is Caesar's, in my mind, has to do with our participation in the world. Taxes, yes, but taking care of ourselves and our loved ones, taking care of the environment, working at our jobs, enjoying our leisure time, and so forth. What is God’s on the other hand, is everything. All there is is ultimately God’s. Now among practicing Catholics we see people who get to Mass at Christmas and Easter, and on the other extreme, monastic orders who rise at 4:00 AM to begin a day punctuated by prayer and fasting. Most of us are somewhere in between. But that in itself doesn’t define giving to God what is God’s.
Giving to God has perhaps been best defined by Saint Josemaria Escriva, the founder of Opus Dei. He said that every person is called to work -- humans were given that duty before the fall of Adam. And we have to strive to do our work in a Godly way -- striving to do it well and as perfectly as possible; we need to make our work holy. And we need to make ourselves holy through our work, primarily. And finally, we have to make the world holy through our work. All of this requires that we pray about our work, meditate on it, and think about how we are progressing in this threefold goal, which ultimately becomes the task of giving the world back to God.
And whether you are a homemaker, a mechanic, a priest or even a cloistered monk, you can choose to render to God what is God’s. Because we are made to work, to make the world and ourselves holy through our work.
So ultimately, you can give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s when you make it your goal to give yourself to God through the work that you do. We are the coin with an image -- we are made in God’s image. And we belong to God.
