Jesus and the IRS (or Caesar): Homily for the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Is 45:1, 4-6

Mt 22:15-21

 

There is much truth behind the old saying, "politics make strange bedfellows," a saying that succinctly describes bringing together people  who have little in common and who may actually detest each other.  We see that dynamic reenacted every four years during the dreadful time leading up to presidential elections. It is amazing how people will compromise themselves, if not in actuality prostitute themselves, in the pursuit of power. 

 

Today's gospel shows that the dynamic existed even in the Ancient Near East. The Pharisees and the Herodians were not drinking buddies. The Herodians held no truck with the Pharisees and the Pharisees wanted nothing to do with the Herodians who were supporters of Herod Antipas, a non-Jew, who was the same Herod who had John the Baptist put to death.  The Herodians were mostly servants of the Roman Empire in contrast to the Pharisees who awaited a Messiah to shake off the chains of that same empire.  Strange bedfellows indeed, but in this case they teamed up against Jesus in order to entrap him with a difficult question. 

 

In this particular scenario, the reason for the question was more important than the answer.  It was the reason for the question that formed the kind of unholy alliance such as the kind we see in the American political scene. It is a classic question that illustrates the concepts of  a rock and a hard place, no- win,  and lose-lose.  The question was skillfully asked.  Like most politicians going in for an attempted kill,  Jesus' interlocutors opened with a fawning tribute to Him:  "Teacher, we know that you are a truthful man and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth.  And you are not concerned with anyone's opinion, for you do not regard a person's status. Tell us, then, what is your opinion."  They then asked the famous question: "Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?"

 

Because of the opposite positions of the Pharisees and the Herodians Jesus was in what appeared to be a double-bind. Had Jesus agreed that it was lawful to pay the census tax he could have been discredited by the Pharisees for placing secular law above the Law of God.  Had he said it was unlawful to pay the tax he could have been accused of treason by the Herodians.  

 

Jesus recognized their malice. Rather than blurting out a yes or no answer or beginning a long rambling rationalization arguing both sides of the question,  Jesus asked for a coin.  After asking whose image was on the coin he said,  "Render unto Caesar that which belongs to Caesar 

and unto God that which belongs to God."

 

Jesus' response has been analyzed under different lenses over the centuries. There are those who admire the rhetorical skill of his answer.  Some use it to make philosophical statements about the separation of church and state.

 

But Jesus was not intending a witty response to a hostile question, nor was he commenting on the various church-state issues that continue to rankle the U.S. today. Jesus’s reply was not meant to show off his rhetorical skills, nor was he making a philosophical statement about the separation of Church and state. He was not suggesting that the church should be confined within certain parameters and not get involved with politics. Jesus broadened the question and raised a challenge to his questioners. If the coin belongs to Caesar because it bears Caesar’s image then what belongs to God is that which bears God’s image. Because God creates us in His image and likeness every human being--including Caesar--bears God's image and ultimately belongs to Him.  In the first reading from Isaiah, we heard an echo of the Shema Yisrael, the central prayer in Judaism. 

 

"I am the LORD and there is no other,
there is no God besides me. . . . I am the LORD, there is no other."

 

Unlike the coins of the world that bear the images of rulers, living and dead, all humanity bears the image of God.  This includes the child in the womb and the old man dying of Alzheimer's.  We bear that image from conception until natural death. 

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The photos are of the pulpit in the Franciscan Church in Ljubljana.  I had unusual access to the church when I made a retreat at the adjacent friary.   The church is closed for two hours every afternoon for cleaning.  I had a key. 

Detail of the pulpit

+Fr. Jack, SJ, MD

The Wedding Banquet: Homily for the28th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Is 25:6-10a

Ps 23

Phil 4:12-14, 19-20

Mt 22:1-14

 

Psalm 23 is probably the most well-known, beloved, and often prayed of the entire psalter;  the prayer book central to Jewish and Catholic worship; the book of poems and songs that pleads with, praises, and thanks God while reminding us what He has done for us and what He will do for us. 

 

Even those who profess no belief or who are hostile atheists are familiar with the 23rd psalm.  They may not like it but they are familiar with it, if for no other reason than its frequent use in television and movie funerals.  None of the deaths in the old black and white John Wayne or Gary Cooper westerns seemed official until the preacher in the black frock coat and rumpled hat had intoned  "The Lord is my shepherd . . . " as the makeshift cross got pounded into the soil. 

 

"The Lord is my shepherd;

I shall not want . . . "

 

"Even though I walk through the valley

of the shadow of death, I fear no evil"

 

"You prepare a table before me

in the presence of my enemies"

 

"Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life"

 

The images of fulfilled yearning comfort the one praying the psalm. The vision of a splendid banquet with rich food and fine wine, the description of a time in which God will wipe away our tears and destroy death, are the same images evoked in the first reading from Isaiah.  That prophecy was fulfilled in Jesus. 

 

The images in Isaiah and the table spread before us in the psalm are a startling contrast to the Gospel. 

 

The parable of the wedding banquet is not consoling.   When the invited guests failed to heed the invitation, when those who were chosen rejected the invitation, when they mistreated and killed those who brought the invitation to the banquet, the king punished the ingrates and recruited guests from the crossroads. These recruited guests were outsiders and social outcasts: tax collectors, prostitutes, highwaymen, vagrants, and others.  These recruited outsiders were and are us.

 

As one commentator noted, the parable of the wedding banquet explains the difference between the Old Covenant and the New.  Whereas the covenant between God and Israel was from the top down, Jesus' invitation to the wedding banquet the New Covenant is freely given from the ground up.  The Israelites did not have a choice. They were a people and a nation chosen by God. They were a people with whom He forged his covenant. They were chosen and led through the wilderness into the promised land where they forgot that covenant and allowed all that God had done for them to fade from memory.  The guests summoned to the wedding banquet, on the other hand,  had an individual choice to accept or reject that invitation, as was made plain in the narrative.   Like the ancient Israelites, many rejected the covenant, sometimes with great violence.  

 

Millennia later, we continue to reject the covenant as individuals.  We reject it as a nation when we elect those who would exact violence on the unborn, the ill-elderly, and others while exulting in the perverse and immoral.  Like the actors in the parable it is our choice to accept or reject  the invitation to the wedding banquet.  Too often, we do reject it.

 

One wonders about the poor guy who showed up without being properly attired.  

 

A superficial reading would ask why anyone who was recruited to a banquet from the crossroads would be expected to show up appropriately dressed?  It would be like running out of the Four Seasons hotel on Boylston Street and dragging vagrants from Boston Common into a celebration.  More than likely they would not be wearing Perry Ellis.  But, this is a parable not a novel or a screenplay. The logical and the illogical coexist with equal weight and authority.  The parable of the wedding banquet is an outline of salvation history from a Christian perspective.  It explains the inclusion of the marginal in God’s Kingdom.  It also includes an important warning.  

 

Just as the Israelites were punished for repeatedly violating the covenant an invitation to the wedding banquet is insufficient.  We can accept, we must accept, the invitation.  But mere acceptance is not enough.  An appropriate response to the invitation is demanded--as symbolized by the wedding garment--a response of conversion of life, a response of faith, prayer, and the sacraments. Only then can we be assured that: 

 

"We shall live in the house of the Lord, all the days of our lives."

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Sacred vessels prepared for the banquet in a monastic church.  

The altar prepared for a private Mass

Lighting a votive candle at the Basilica of Notre Dame de Fourvière in Lyon, France

The sacristy at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception with the sacred vessels prepared for the Masses to be celebrated at the side chapels.  

+Fr. Jack, SJ, MD