Word to the Wise
Monday, August 9, 2010 - Monday in the Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time
[Ezekiel 1:2-5, 24-28c and Matthew 17:22-27]When they came to Capernaum, the collectors of the temple tax approached Peter and said, "Does not your teacher pay the temple tax?".......
There is considerable irony in this scene. The fish and the coin could command a lot of attention for sheer ingenuity, but the real irony comes in asking Jesus to pay the tax. The irony would, of course, have been hidden from the tax collectors but there was no real way to explain to them. Jesus reveals one level in his question to Peter about who pays census or toll taxes in the real world. His point is that those who worship in the temple should not have to pay for the privilege - they are "subjects" and not "foreigners" in God's kingdom! A deeper level, it seems to me is that Jesus will replace the temple with his very person. Paying the tax becomes irrelevant. Sending Peter to find a fish with a coin in its mouth is a way of calling attention to the irony. The new "temple" can produce a "tax" with his own word! How this new temple will be built was actually revealed in the first few lines of this gospel passage where Jesus predicts his suffering and death. Although the church is a physical and spiritual manifestation of the kingdom of God, it does so with all the faults and problems of any huge institution. The Body of Christ is, of course, greater than these troubles, but the Lord chose to entrust this reality to humans who have organized it, and these humans, all of us believers, occasionally forget that the Body of Christ is not brick and mortar (as glorious as some of it is), but living persons as St. Paul reminds us in the Letter to the Ephesians: You are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord. It's an interesting thing to think about when that collection basket shows up in front of us! AMEN