A Homily for the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time, 2008
Not every question is an honest one. In today’s Gospel reading, the Pharisees asks Jesus a dishonest question. They were not really trying to ask Jesus for advise on a spiritual or moral issue. Rather they were trying to trap Him; to get Him in trouble with the authorities. If Jesus tells them to pay the taxes to Rome, they will undermine His reputation among the people by accusing Him of betraying the Jewish people by collaborating with the Romans. If Jesus tells them not to pay the taxes to Rome, they will accuse Him to the Roman authorities of treason and sedition.
Jesus sees what they are trying to do; He sees their dishonesty and hardness of heart. Instead of ignoring or humiliating them, Jesus decided to teach them a lesson. And that lesson is as valid today as it was twenty centuries ago: Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God.
As a Christian, each of us hold two citizenships, and each of these citizenships entail certain duties and provide certain benefits. Our birth made us citizens of a particular nation here on earth, while our baptism made us citizens of heaven. In many things, our two citizenships overlap, however eventually our earthly citizenship will come to an end while our heavenly one is forever. It is obvious which of these two citizenships is most important — right? Through the centuries, many Christian saints and martyrs have taught us that if we are ever forced to make a choice between the two, if Caesar ever tries to take what belongs to God, we must remain faithful to our true and everlasting homeland, Heaven, even if it means suffering painful consequences here on earth. We only need to look at the examples of people like St. Polycarp and St. Thomas More.
So, how can we be good citizens to both here on earth and a good citizen in Christ’s Kingdom? Let’s start by looking at what it means to be a good citizen of the Heavenly Kingdom.
Do we owe the “heavenly” IRS taxes? All we need to do to answer that is open the Bible. In the first chapter of Genesis, the first book in the Bible, we learn that all that we are, all that we possess, and all that we can hope for has come to us from God. Just as the Roman coin bore the image of the Emperor who made it, so the human soul bears the “image and likeness” of God (Genesis 1:26), our Creator and our Father. He called each one of us into existence; He wants each of us to exist, so that we can enter into and develop a personal relationship with him. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “Coming from God, going toward God, man lives a fully human life only if he freely lives by his bond with God” (#44). This means that we need to live as God intends us to live, and He has shown us how He wants us to live by sending His only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, as the model of every Christian life, and the friend of every human soul. Therefore, giving to God what belongs to God means obeying His commandments, following the example of Christ Jesus our Savior, and following the teachings of the Church, which Christ established as His Mystical Body and breathed His own Holy Spirit into, endowing it with His Life. Failure to do any of this is a kind of spiritual thievery.
The duties of our earthly citizenship are just as real, although they will only last for our lifetime here on earth – not forever. Jesus sums them up by saying, “Give to Caesar was belongs to Caesar,” where “Caesar” stands for the civic or political community.
When God created us, He did not make us self-sufficient beings, unlike a fern. Rather, God created us as social beings, who not only need but enjoys the company and assistance of other human beings. Our human nature requires us to live in communities – just look at how long it takes for a human baby to become capable of surviving on its own, much longer than any other mammal on the planet. This social aspect of our nature is also part of our being created in God’s image. After all, Jesus revealed to us that God is both one and three; the essence of God is love, the everlasting love between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Therefore, for us to live our human lives to the full, we must image the Divine Community, the Trinity, by living as responsible members our earthly communities. These communities come together to form civil society, and they provide us with many benefits: protection from crime, public services, and opportunities for personal and family development. And so, it is our strict duty of justice to give back to society through obedience to good laws and active collaboration, like paying taxes and doing community service. In this sense, patriotism is a virtue in which every Christian should excel; we should be the most dependable and loyal citizens of all.
In non-democratic societies, that’s about where our civic duty stops. However, in democratic societies, where all the citizens participate directly in the political process, we have two other responsibilities.
First, we have to make a decent effort to stay informed about the important political and cultural issues facing the community – this will enable us to vote intelligently and responsibly.
This is not always as easy as it sounds, because not all issues are on the same level, even though much of the news media fails to realize this. It is precisely our Catholic faith, full of God’s revelation, that enables us to distinguish between foundational and secondary issues. Treating unborn children like a disease, as abortion does, is a foundational injustice – what good are any of the other human rights if those innocent people never even make it out of the womb? Marriage is a foundational issue – true marriage between one man and one woman is the DNA of human society; would you like someone to mess around with your DNA? When we vote for political candidates and issues, we cannot pretend that those kinds of foundational issues are on the same level as other important but secondary issues like taxes, diplomacy, and alternative energy sources. These secondary issues are like the walls of a house: you can knock out a wall or rearrange a room without the house falling down, but if you mess with the foundation, you lose the whole structure. If foundational issues are at stake in an election, we must give them first priority. Foundational issues are things that belong to God, not to Caesar, and when Caesar tries to take them over, we who are God’s children must defend them.
Staying informed about important current issues is only half of our democratic duty. As Christians, we are called not only to help maintain civil society, but also to help improve it, to help build up a civilization of Christian justice and love. In democratic societies, we have a unique opportunity to do this by making good use of the many conversations that happen in election years – conversations about social virtues and values that never even happen in non-democratic societies. Many of our friends, colleagues, and neighbors want to make the right decisions in the voting booth, but don’t understand the difference between foundational and secondary issues. They are hungry for the truth on these complicated issues. As followers of Christ, we are called to feed the hungry, to let our light shine before others. Sociological studies have repeatedly shown that the single biggest influence on how people vote is not the mass media, but the input and advice they get from friends and colleagues. We should never be afraid to explain our point of view and the Church’s teachings in conversations around the water cooler or at dinner parties. We are God’s messengers; we have something important to contribute to these conversations! And if you think that you might need or want to learn more about being both a good citizen here on earth, and a good citizen of Christ’s Kingdom, I highly recommend a book that is on the New York Times Best Sellers’ list by Archbishop Charles Chaput, the bishop of Denver, Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living Our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life.
The great Anglican political thinker Edmund Burke once said, “All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” In today’s largely democratic world, where good and evil are still fighting it out, let’s do something. Let’s give to God what belongs to God (nothing less), and give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar (nothing more).
