Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XXIX per Annum A
22 October 2023

You’ve heard the phrase: Politics makes for strange bedfellows.  If you need a break from the strange bedfellows keeping the US Congress from being able to elect a Speaker of the House… then this gospel passage gives you a brief diversion.  In the gospel we have the strange bedfellows of the Pharisees and the Herodians.  The Pharisees view Roman occupation of Judea as an abomination and the Herodians adopt a more cooperative stance with living in the gentile Roman world.  Yet, these two groups come together in a very charged exchange with Jesus by which the Pharisees attempt to entrap the Lord in this well known dilemma of paying the census tax to Caesar or not.  The Gospel passage makes clear that the Pharisees are motivated by malice toward the Lord and they are seeking to test him and to entrap him.  They butter him up with flattery, “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.”  They ask: “Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?”  Now, this may not strike us as a really charged exchange, but it definitely is in the time of the Lord, for if the Lord answers “yes, it is lawful” then he will incite uproar among the Pharisees and their ilk by seeming to condone cooperation with Roman occupation.  If he says “no, it is not lawful” then he will be inspiring a tax revolt against Rome.  Rome historically dealt ferociously with such rebellions.

The ingenious response from the Lord is to ask for a coin that is used to pay the census tax.  Curiously, the Rome-rejecting Pharisees easily produce such a coin.  I guess they are more than willing to use the coin despite their protestations and religious purity.  In any event, we can learn a profound lesson by how the Lord dissolves their trap.  The Roman denarius coin bears the “ikon”, the Greek biblical text says, bears the “image” of Caesar, in this case the Emperor Tiberius Caesar.  The Pharisees and the Herodians easily identify that the coin bears the image and the inscription of Caesar.  The coin belongs to him, to the Empire.  The Lord then shifts the conversation away from the notion of cooperating in the tax.  Instead, the Lord maneuvers to make the focus about giving to someone what belongs to him.  In this case, Jesus says to give to Caesar what is his.

The Roman coin is stamped with the image of its owner, the one who has authority over it.  Jesus says to repay to Caesar what belongs to him. But he goes on to say, “and [repay] to God what belongs to God.”  Thinking about this Gospel image, we have a coin with the ikon, the image of Caesar.  It belongs to Caesar and should be given back to him.  But if we are to repay to God what belongs to Him, this begs a question: Where is God’s image? Where is it stamped so that we repay that “coin” back to Him?

In escaping their trap, the Lord teaches us a profound lesson about ourselves and about giving to God what He is owed.  And to grasp that we need to rest on the foundation of all that has preceded in the revelation of faith.  The Book of Genesis tells us a truth of creation.  In creation man is made, we are made, in God’s image and likeness.  Human persons are ikons of God.  Our faith tells us that, though we never lose the dignity of being made in God’s image, our likeness (that is, our “appearance”) is marred by the Fall, by the Original Sin we each inherit.  Though the image remains, our likeness to that image, our likeness to God, is disfigured by sin.  Our fallen nature, brought about by that first grave sin in the garden, carries the consequence of eternal separation from God.  By faith and baptism, our original holiness is restored, and the obstacle that bars our entrance to heaven is removed.  Thus, that is at least one reason why it is so important to be baptized, and quickly.  It’s a large part of why we baptize infants in our Catholic practice.  And so, I have some bad news for you, your kids are cute and all, but until they are baptized they are little pagans whose likeness to God has been disfigured!  That’s not so cute when it comes to heaven.  What about after baptism?  When in ongoing weakness we disfigure ourselves by sin, by the personal sins for which we bear guilt, confession restores our baptismal dignity long after we have been washed by the waters of regeneration.  And so, I have some bad news for us, we might look like disciples, but we are counterfeit “coins” for as long as God’s likeness is not visible in us, and not healed by confession.  When we commit sin and refuse the importance of confession we are fraudulent images.  In this, we aren’t giving back to God what belongs to Him.  In fact, God doesn’t accept sin as repayment for stamping us with His image.

This Gospel exchange takes place in the heated atmosphere of Jesus’ final days before he would lay down his life to pay all for us and for our salvation.  His words teach us of our innate dignity: that by God’s generous love He has stamped us with His own image, the image of His glory, giving us freedom, giving us the ability to use our minds, and to receive and to return His love.  And a repayment is expected.  The first reading teaches clearly that there are no other gods before the one true God.  We can’t make payment to idols, to other gods, and still have credit with the one true God.  The Gospel and the psalm tell us to give glory and honor to God, to give to Him what He is owed.  Living the life of faith and holiness guards our proper image and likeness and is the payment that gives to God what belongs to Him.  St. Paul says in his Letter to the Romans, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (6:23).

Sin mars the likeness of our image to God.  And sin is not the form of payment God accepts; it is not giving to God what belongs to Him.  The good news is that He Himself has paid the price to heal our sin.  In guarding our likeness to Him by faith and by striving personally for moral conduct, by using prayer and the helps He gives us in the sacraments, we are helping to populate the great census of Heaven.  By repaying to God what belongs to God, He pays greater dividends still by admitting us to eternal life in the Kingdom of His glory.