A few weeks ago, in the parish’s R.C.I.A. programme (Rites of Christian Initiation for Adults), one of the candidates for baptism spoke of the challenge of dealing with people who might find inconsistencies with some of the things that are said in the Bible. I am sure we have all encountered people like this. At work, we might meet someone who will ask if we really believe that the world was created in seven days. When we explain that we do not take the story literally, and that with God one day could be a billion years, they may try and find some other inconsistency with our behavior, or the Church, that would allow them to reject the faith. It is also not uncommon for teenagers to try and find ways of rejecting the faith that their parents try to hand on to them. A teenager might also decide that since his or her parents are not living the faith to the exact letter, he or she can reject it as not worth following. This kind of rejection of Christ also happens when people feel that the weak humanity of a Christian leader is reason to reject God.
Testing people and trying to find out if they are worthy of the trust they invite us to place in them is a natural part of the way all of us evaluate and relate to others in the world.
This is something that we often see Jesus dealing with in the scriptures. When we hear of this happening to Jesus, we have to remember that many of the people who met Jesus during his lifetime did not know who He was or what He was ultimately capable of doing. We see an example of this in today’s Gospel. The Scribes and Pharisees know that Jesus is a well-loved and respected teacher. Unlike us, at the time that this story takes place, they do not yet know that He is the Son of God and will rise from the dead. It is understandable then that they might try to trick Him to see how clever He really is and if He is really as gifted a teacher as some people claim that He is. It is for that reason that they try and pull a fast one on Him.
In today’s Gospel story, the Scribes and the Pharisees are trying to trap Jesus. They ask Him a question, which if He gets it wrong, could both get Him in a great deal of trouble and cause Him to lose followers. Jesus is asked if the Jews should pay taxes to the foreign Romans who have invaded Israel. If He comes out and says “yes, we should pay the Roman tax,” many of His followers who see Him as a kind of political savior will abandon Him and no longer look to Him as a leader. The Scribes and Pharisees are hoping to show Him as weak so that the people will no longer see Him as a great teacher. On the other hand, if Jesus says that they should not pay the tax, the Romans will arrest Jesus and throw Him in prison for causing sedition among the people. They think that they have Him in a situation that He cannot win and will be rid of Him either way. Brilliantly, Jesus navigates their challenge by responding in a way that the Scribes and Pharisees never saw coming. Jesus asks, “Whose image and inscription is on the coin?” Once they have answered “Caesar’s,” Jesus gives His brilliant response: “Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.”
The intention of the Scribes and the Pharisees was to find some reason to dismiss Jesus or get rid of Him. They did this because they did not yet believe that Jesus was the Son of God or know who He was. We can understand that they needed Him to prove Himself; and He did. It is possible that some of them actually began to understand who He was and began to follow Him as a result of this display of His teaching ability.
What sometimes concerns me in my own life, and what I think many of us who are Christian try to do, is those times that we try to dismiss Jesus and get rid of Him in the same way that these unbelieving Scribes and Pharisees attempted to do. So often, I think that we can all fall into the trap of trying to justify our own desires and wishes by trying to trap Jesus. We hope to catch Him, or perhaps more often, one of His followers, doing something so that we can use that as an excuse for doing our own thing.
How often have we heard people say that the reason they have stopped going to Sunday Mass is because of the way they were once treated by someone else attending Mass. I know people who have told me they stopped going to Church because the priest would not write a reference letter for their grandchild. I asked them if the priest ever met their grandchild and they say no, he lives in Edmonton. They expected the priest to write a reference letter for someone he did not know and used that as an excuse to justify not going to Church anywhere. Who is really going to suffer if they turn their backs on God because of a priest who will not lie to help their grandchild get a job?
In many cases, we can all fall into the temptation of deciding what we want and then going to every length to justify why it is okay for us to act as we desire. In doing this, we can take different events, things that have happened, and piece together a narrative that allows us to get and do what we want. This narrative sometimes includes an explanation about why we do not need to listen to Christ’s teachings and follow after His example.
As a Christian, one of the most important things that I try to do with great regularity is go to spiritual direction and confession. When I do this, I speak about my spiritual life with another priest and I talk about why I act as I do. The task of my spiritual director is to challenge me when I am dismissing Jesus’ call to me or am trying to justify choosing my own path in life and not following Christ. Not all of us need a spiritual director, but we do need to be able to speak honestly to ourselves, or perhaps another friend, about why we do things and how we relate our actions to our beliefs that Jesus is our Savior. If I claim to believe that Jesus is the Son of God and my Savior, and yet I dismiss all of His teachings and am constantly playing games in my spiritual life to try and entrap Jesus so I can justify my behavior, then perhaps I need to recognize that there are problems in my spiritual life.
Jesus has come to offer us a path to fulfillment, peace and happiness. If my response to His offer is to be constantly justifying my own path, dismissing His teaching as not applying it to myself, and finding ways to get around His teaching, I am going to be turning my back on the path to happiness and fulfillment that He is offering me. If I pray all day, but refuse to forgive or let go of the attachments in my life that are keeping me form knowing Christ’s peace, should I really be surprised that I am not finding the peace and fulfillment that He offers? Should it really surprise me that if I am always looking for a way out of Christ’s commandments that it is very difficult for Christ’s peace to penetrate my hardness of heart?
One of the most painful lessons to learn in life is that whenever we play games with God, the only person who loses is us. God never loses. God has all that He needs. God wants to share His life and His peace with us. If we try and find ways of dismissing Him and going our own way, the only person who loses out is ourselves.
In a homily that St. Augustine gave on today’s Gospel, he said:
In the same way as Caesar looks for his image on a coin, God looks for his in your soul. “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s,” the Savior says. What does Caesar demand of you? His image. But Caesar’s image is on a coin, whereas God’s image is in you. If the loss of a coin causes you to weep because you have lost Caesar’s image, would not any damage brought in you to God’s image be for you a cause for tears?”
St. Augustine’s point is that if you and I really believe in God and the resurrection, then we should understand that our true happiness is to be found in following His teaching and the eternal life that He is offering each one of us through faith in Christ. Jesus’ instruction that we should give to God what belongs to God, is a reminder that if we truly desire to know God’s peace and happiness in our lives, we ought to render everything that we have received from God to His plans and His teaching.
What this Sunday’s Gospel often calls me to recognize is that I cannot play games with God. In all honesty, when I have tried to catch God and dismiss His teachings for me, it is I who have suffered and not God. When I refuse to heed God’s command to forgive, it is I who continue to carry the burden of resentment and anger. When I dismiss Christ’s teachings on being overly attached to earthly things or my plans, it is I who know a lack of peace.
God offers to redeem everything that we hand over to His will and power. When we are asked to render unto God what belongs to God, it is because God desires to transform everything that we hand over to Him. Should we dismiss His invitation, or play games with our salvation, we are the ones who lose out on His offer. As we hear this Sunday’s Gospel, I would challenge each of us to think this weekend about the times that we have dismissed God’s commandments or teaching and chosen to do our own thing. Who really won because we refused to forgive or held on to an unhealthy attachment? In my own experience, I never win when I am in a contest with God. The only real peace and happiness that I have known in life has come when I have rendered unto God what belongs to God.
May we all know the peace of rendering to God what belongs to God.
Fr. Michael McGourty
Pastor—St. Peter’s Parish—Toronto.
This reflection is based on the Mass readings for the Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A: Isaiah 45: 1; 4-6; Psalm 96; 1 Thessalonians 1:1-5; and Matthew 22: 15-21.
