Homily Ordinary 29A: Citizenship of two worlds

Homily for 29th Sunday of Ordinary Time Year A 2017 

Isaiah 45:1,4-6; 1 Thessalonians 1:1-5; Matthew 22:15-21 

Introduction 

Preaching during national election time, is always a minefield, but especially last Fall.  Whatever you say in the homily, you are going to tick off some people. 

• Last year, I was accosted by a parishioner, who took issue with my telling people to study the issues, pray over them and then vote according to their consciences?  Why had I not just told them who to vote for? 
• A priest with whim I live shared a similar experience, when he too had been told by a parishioner that he was "a big fat liberal."  Now he agreed he was many things, big and fat, but "liberal" was not one of them. 
• A third priest, had been accosted by two parishioners, from two different parties, each of which thought that in his homily, he had been attacking their candidate.  One of them told the priest to “Give unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.” 

As all three of us were nursing our wounds that evening, we were consoled by the realization that we were, after all, sharing in the experience of Jesus. 

Scripture and Theology 

In today's gospel story, he is being trapped so that whatever he says, he will get in trouble with one of two opposed parties, the Pharisees and the Herodians.  For they ask him this loaded question: “Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?”  Jesus is in the same Catch-22 situation you would find yourself, if someone asked you: “Have you stopped beating your wife?” Whether you answer "Yes" or "No" you are between a rock and a hard place. 

• If Jesus said, “Yes it is lawful to pay taxes to the Romans,” the deeply religious and nationalistic Pharisees would say: “Aah.  We got you.  You are a Roman collaborator.  You have betrayed God and our nation.” 
• But if Jesus said “No, it is not lawful to pay taxes to the Romans,” the very secular Herodians, willing collaborators with the Romans would hand him to the authorities as a subversive. The Roman IRS would come after him. 

But Jesus, unlike me and my two-brother priests, was too smart for their trap.  He asked for the coin with which the tax was to be paid.  He pointed out to them that this coin bore the face of the Emperor and then gave the famous reply: “. . . repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.” 

This answer is famous, not just because it gets Jesus out of a tight spot, escaping the accusation of being either a traitor or a subversive, but also because in it Jesus teaches us the basic principles that must guide the relationship of Christians with the secular world.  For Christians must both give allegiance to legitimate civil authority and do so while obeying God and working for the things of heaven. 

Christians cannot, like the Pharisees or Herodians, choose one or the other.  The Pharisees chose religion, the Herodians chose politics. 

• Unfortunately, some, like the Pharisees want Christians and particularly Church leaders, to have nothing to do with the organization of society..  They have a skewed understanding of the constitutional principle of separation of Church and state, suggesting that a Christian must choose between Town Hall and the Cathedral, between the mayor and the bishop, between the President and the Pope. 
• Others, like the Herodians, want the Church to go to bed with government, take over politics, essentially creating a theocracy like you find in Iran, Saudi Arabia, or Medieval Europe. 

But Jesus says, “Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar AND to God what belongs to God.”  It is not a multiple choice; we must attend to both, especially because the truth is this, everything belongs to God, even that which we give to Caesar.  We should not think that what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God are in two boxes sitting side by side.  Rather we should think of the box of what belongs to Caesar as being smaller and contained in the larger box that belongs to God.  For while the things of Caesar will end on this side of heaven, the things of God will live on in the world to come, living with God for eternity. 

Christian Life 

And so as Christians, our involvement in society is not an optional extra.  We must transform, this society, this world, not some other world in "a galaxy far far away."  This is the world that Jesus wants to hand back to the Father on the Last Day.  How might we go about helping him transform it into the Kingdom of God? 

The wrong way to engage in society is to do DIRTY POLITICS.  We fail to give to Caesar and to God when our political involvement ignores God's teaching about charity and civility, justice and fairness, truth and facts and degenerates into personal attacks.  For the Christian, when it comes Politics (just like Football), the other aside are not enemies, but adversaries to defeat or win over.

Depending on our station in the Church, there are two ways to get involved in politics. For the lay Catholic, politics, even party politics is a noble profession, despite some bad examples in the profession.  Today's first reading gives us the example of King Cyrus, a ruler who feared God, even as he exercised his role as Caesar.  King David and King Louis of France also come to mind.  And so lay Catholics must participate fully in society by paying taxes, voting, going to town hall meetings, in standing for election themselves etc. 

Today, politics is mainly carried out as PARTY POLITICS, where each party presents different visions for managing the polis, society. In this country, the two main competing visions are provided by the Democratic and Republican parties.  The individual lay Catholics are free to belong to any of these parties, stand for office sponsored by them or even promote those ideologies and parties.  Hopefully a Catholic will rely on a well-formed conscience and look for the good to be found in these imperfect choices.  

But the Church as a body and its leaders, the bishops, priests and deacons do not engage in partisan politics.  They don’t endorse parties or candidates or political platforms.  I would bet that if Mother Teresa were to run for president, even she would not get an endorsement from the Church and its leaders.  This is because partisan politics is by its very nature contingent and conditional on circumstances.  For example, good Catholics, could disagree on contingent policies and actions, such as what is the best way to tackle the immigration problem.  Also, it is inherent in the nature of partisan politics, that the platform of each side will more or less be consistent with Catholic teaching.  No one party embraces the full gamut of Catholic teaching on social justice.  And so, it would be an abdication of its prophetic duty to uphold the full truth, if the Church endorsed one side that represented only part of the truth.  This self-censorship by the Church is not due to any tax laws, since even bishops in countries without tax benefits for Churches still uphold nonpartisanship in politics.  Church leaders must give to Caesar his rightful place, by not taking over his role, or substituting the consciences of Catholics with their own.

Finally, all Catholics, both lay and clergy, can legitimately get involved in NON-PARTISAN POLITICS, that is, by speaking to general moral principles regarding the management of society.  The bishops do this in the course of their normal teaching, drawing from the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes, to speak about protecting the life of the unborn and the elderly, the immigrant and the refugee, the widow and orphan, the sick and prisoner, the hungry and thirsty. In this way, Christians, all Christians propose, not impose, the values of the gospel, for society, even if society includes more than just Christians.  Christians share with Caesar what they have received from God, so that the society of Caesar has life and life to the fullest, so that we can anticipate a little, life with God in heaven. 

Conclusion 

There is a prayer the priest says at Mass during the season of Advent.  In that prayer, we pray that the Lord “may teach us to judge wisely the things of earth and hold firm to the things of heaven.”  For we are dual citizens; although our primary citizenship is in heaven, we are currently travelling on the passport of our earthly citizenship.  As we work fully take up our rights and our duties in this earthly city, let us not forget to work for our heavenly passport, which will grant us permanent citizenship in heaven.