“Repay to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”
Once every 12 years, the readings that we hear today
coincide with a general election in our country.
It seems providential that we hear these readings
and talk about state and religion in all the readings.
It seems providential that it speaks to us
especially now in such a divided time.
Yet, one has to be careful because there is a deeper context .
These readings have a much deeper reality that Jesus is speaking to.
For example, in this very text Jesus acknowledges
and we know from the very outset that
they really were not interested in the answer to his question.
They were trying to “entrap him.”
They had malice in their heart.
They were not really interested in the truth
that Jesus was going to speak.
And Jesus knows this.
He does not really answer the question per se.
He goes to is the deeper reality.
Here is the interesting thing, as Jesus often does,
and you have heard me say this over the last several weeks,
Jesus takes one of these sort of malicious questions and reframes it.
They give him a false dilemma: either/or.
And Jesus never falls for this,
He always gives an answer which is: both/and.
Let’s unpack it a little to understand.
When they ask, and they were trying to entrap him,
if he had said yes and it is okay to pay tax,
they would have had the information
they needed to condemn him as a heretical prophet.
And if he said yes, it is not okay
then he would have reported to the civil authorities, to Rome.
They thought they had him cornered.
But Jesus outsmarts them:
He asks, “Show me the coin!”
This meant that they “had the coin in their possession,”
which by the strictest of Jewish laws was itself a sin
because to keep a coin with the claim that it was Caesar on it
and that he was like a god.
So by mere possession they were actually committing a sin
in the Jewish understanding of the law;
that they were holding onto a coin that was blasphemous;
that there was somebody else that was God.
Jesus leaves that sitting there “Here’s the coin.”
And then he sort of dismisses that by saying,
“Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s”
but he does not stop there.
He says, “Give to God what is God’s.”
Now he is going deeper!
The religious leaders would have been the teachers of the law
and they would have taught that God is the creator of everything
and that everything belongs to God.
In other words, yes, give to Caesar what is Caesar’s
but everything is really God’s!
Basically they condemn themselves by their own behavior.
Ultimately the message that God is giving to us through Jesus
and we hear this in these last several weeks;
and again today is that God wants us to remember who we are;
that we are children of God and
that everything we have and everything we do
is all part of that gift.
But the true gift that we are is being this child;
this child that God created
and that he has a love for us in that way;
that we are his and that he loves us so much
that he would send his only Son.
We get lost in that because we get carried away with the stuff of life
whether it be material things;
whether it be wealth; or
whether it be titles or
whether it be possessions in relationships
that we hold onto and we tend to over-identify all of this.
And they are all more symbols;
yes they are things we have
but it is not who we are.
It is in the center of who we are as we are as children of God
and he, Christ, comes to share that message.
But let me tell it another way.
When I was a kid, I had significant back problems
and one of the doctors suggested that
I get a special pair of shoes to try and
ease my back problems because they were extraordinary.
I remember it was during the summer.
My birthday is in the middle of summer.
And all my siblings were gone to foreign countries to work for the summer.
I was the only one left at home.
I was around 14 or 15 at the time.
My Mum ran a bed and breakfast house.
I was working at the bed and breakfast house with Mum.
I got up, it was my birthday and my Dad was gone to work.
My Mum was cooking breakfast and I was serving breakfast.
In the middle of plating this bacon, egg and sausage,
she goes “Oh yeah, happy birthday, Brendan.”
And that was the totality of the exchange for the entire day.
I was like, “Wow!” and I continued cleaning the house.
We had a lot of guests and there was a lot of work.
I was so like mopey and in a bad mood;
my birthday and nobody ever said anything.
I was feeling sorry for myself.
In walked my Dad after his long day at work.
He brought me into that room at the front of the house.
We called it a sitting room but you don’t call it that here;
you call it, the one you never use, what is that room called? Okay.
The living room.
The one you never use.
That’s the one.
Go figure, the room nobody uses is the “living room.”
Anyway, he brought me into the living room,
and he had a box and it was a box of shoes.
I was like mopey so I sit down and
I opened this box as my father eyes were opened wide with excitment.
I open up the box and I am not lying,
they were the ugliest pair of shoes I have ever seen in my entire life.
I look at the shoes and I’m like,
“Wow, they are so ugly.”
I didn’t say it out loud but my face said it.
“They are so ugly. That is amazing.
How could you have found a shoe so ugly?”
But I said a simple ingracious, “Thanks, Dad.”
Then I walked out.
As I was walking out I turned around and caught my father’s eye.
And I could see a tear in his eye.
And I did what any teenager kid would do,
I continued walking down the hallway.
Then guilt hit me about half way down
and I turned around and walked back to him.
I said, “Sorry Dad…”
I will always remember what my father said for the rest of my life.
“Shh Brendan. Sit down.”
He said, “You know that these shoes are special shoes.
They are very expensive shoes and
we have been saving up to buy them for you.
And you know that to get those shoes
I had to give up my lunch break to go across town to get back.
You know that.
But you think that the shoes are my gift to you.
And they are not.
They are just a symbol of my gift for you.
My gift for you is my love for you.
That is my really only gift for you.”
I will always remember that because it changed my life
because I stopped looking on the things of life as a gift
not only from my father and my mother
but from God the Father.
That is what God is trying to teach us over and over again;
that everything we have is not who we are.
Everything we have are just symbols;
they are gifts, yes but the real gift is God’s love for us.
And when we can feel that inside our heart that changes everything.
That sets our heart on fire and
we beam with a light that is so bright that nobody can quench it.
That is what Jesus is trying to teach us over and over again.
Can we hear it today?
That who we are are children of God
and that God loves us, every single one of us,
and there is nothing that we can do to separate us from that love.
We might separate it where we do not feel it
because of our sinfulness but
God still loves us as the child that he created.
Today, when we come to the table once more,
we come to celebrate that great gift, not all the other gifts,
but the great gift that God loves us as his own child.
“Repay to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”
