Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. So, this is the Gospel passage where we start talking about politics and religion, church and state, and how the two intersect, how they should or shouldn’t intersect, what’s right in politics, what’s wrong in politics, etc. Politics, though now considered a dirty word in some arenas, is a good thing, as it is the science of running the polis, the city (in Greek). But I don’t know about you, but it seems like politics is all we talk about any more, even as a church.
Don’t get me wrong: the Gospel has political implications. If we truly believe in Jesus and follow Him, there are some things we cannot support, and some things that we must support. But our Lord’s point is much greater than what we owe to government, and what we owe to God.
Let’s start with the fact that, although the Herodians had tried to trap our Lord in a trap, He set one of His own. And though Christ didn’t fall into the trap, the Herodians were quite easily ensnared. What was that trap? Well, to begin with, you have to go back one chapter to realize where our Lord is. He was in the Temple. He had entered into Jerusalem, had left for Bethany, and then had returned. And the traps that the Pharisees are laying for Him are everywhere! But the Savior ducks and weaves, and lands a few punches (metaphorically speaking) of His own.
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| Denarius with the image of Marcus Aurelius |
So, in the temple, the Herodians are asked to pull out a Roman coin. We don’t think much of it, because we carry money around with us everywhere. But, because there was a commandment about not having a graven images, a good Jew would have never brought a Roman coin into the Temple, because that was bringing the image of a pagan god (the emperor) into the house of the true God. That’s why there were money changers in the Temple: you had to exchange your pagan coins–that, outside the Temple were necessary for daily business–for Jewish coins that did not break the Law. So the Herodians are actually shown to be breaking the law by having those Roman coins with them.
But further, there’s this point about giving God what belongs to God. A good Jew, going back to Genesis 1 and 2, would ascribe everything as a good creation of God. Certainly, we wouldn’t talk this way about artifacts (like coins) that were man-made. But break the coin down to its constitutive parts, and you get metals, which are fancy rocks, which are part of the earth, which God created. And the skill of mining those fancy rocks was given by God by the creation of a rational brain in humans. And the strength needed to flatten out the fancy rocks and shape them in such a way was also given, at least indirectly, by God. Everything came from God. God loaned, as it were, everything to mankind, making man and woman the stewards of creation. So everything really belongs to God.
So are we to give God everything? In a word, yes! When God asks for something, He’s not asking for a gift from us, or asking us to be benevolent and generous. He is asking for what is rightfully His. A steward was never the owner of the property of the household, though he could buy and sell. A steward always did business realizing that the goods which he bought and sold truly belonged to the Master, for which he would have to account. So nothing is, strictly speaking, ours. This is where St. Thomas Aquinas gets the idea, repeated throughout the ages and dating back to the church fathers, that while we can own private property–we can possess things for ourselves–there is a universal destination of goods. As St. Basil the Great says, “The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry; the coat unused in your closet belongs to the one who needs it; the shoes rotting your closet belong to the one who has no shoes; the money which you hoard up belongs to the poor.” He can only say that if everything, ultimately, belongs to God.
Consecrated men and women live this out radically (at the root) by not owning private property. I was recently at dinner with a family whose son is a religious brother. This topic came up about owning all things in common, and, as happens, the question of common underwear came up. Of course, people use their own underwear (at least in most congregations). But, this brother was quick to point out that the underwear was not, technically, his; it belongs to the community. For we seculars, whether priests or married, we can’t simply say that the universal destination of goods are only for consecrated men and women. According to our vocation, we also are called to make sure that others, especially in the household of faith, are not in need while we are in excess.
But offering God everything does not stop at what is tangible. God desires and deserves everything, and that means everything. The joy that we have when we are praised for a job well done should be given back to God. The sorrow we have when we don’t do as well as a job as we wanted should also be given back to God. And everything in-between.
God desires our all. Lumen gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, states:
For all [the laity’s] works, prayers and apostolic endeavors, their ordinary married and family life, their daily occupations, their physical and mental relaxation, if carried out in the Spirit, and even the hardships of life, if patiently borne–all these become "spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” Together with the offering of the Lord’s body, they are most fittingly offered in the celebration of the Eucharist.
Everything you do as laity, and everything I do as a priest, is meant to be offered to God, because, in the end, everything comes from God; it is His. The only thing we do on our own is sin, and even that God wants, so that He can, by His grace, heal us and transform us.
As with any Scripture, there are many ways to apply today’s Gospel. But today the Lord invites us to truly give Him our all, united with the bread and wine which I offer on your behalf to the Eternal Father, through Christ the Son, in the power of the Holy Spirit. Offer to God your everything, and you will find that you have lost nothing, but gained everything, because God, as our loving Father, withholds nothing of what we need. So give to God what belongs to God: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
