Word to the Wise
Sunday, October 19, 2008 - Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time
[Isaiah 45:1, 4-6; 1 Thessalonians 1:1-5B; Matthew 22:15-21]"Whose image is this and whose inscription?" They replied, "Caesar's." At that Jesus said to them, "Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God."
The American notion of Church/State separation would have been completely foreign to the people of Jesus' time. All of life in that time was caught up in matters of faith. The coin that Jesus cleverly requested would create a problem for the Pharisees! It would be a Roman coin, a denarius (a day's wage), with Tiberius Caesar's image on it and an inscription that identified him as son of the "divine Augustus, high priest!" Just to have that coin on one's person would be abhorrent to a Pharisee! One of the Herodians must have had one! Then comes the question, which was calculated to put Jesus on the spot. If he says it's OK to pay tribute to Caesar, he offends the Pharisees. If he says it's NOT OK, then he can be denounced to the Romans (as the Pharisees tried to do later on). As far as Jesus was concerned, the matter was not about faith. It was about politics. If paying a denarius is what one had to do to live under the Romans, then that's what had to be done. Greater harm would come from not paying it! I suppose in today's election climate there are parallel instances about choices to be made. Some of these have the appearance of forcing someone to choose between two or more morally abhorrent positions! I feel that some of these efforts are ill advised. Voting nowadays in our secular society is the moral equivalent of paying the denarius. Since neither of the two major candidates follows a consistent life ethic (the position I take), I will be forced to hold my theological nose when I go into the voting booth. Our American bishops have provided sound and wise guidance in their document FAITHFUL CITIZENSHIP. It can help one to figure what what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God. AMEN