Homily of the Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

Your Entire Life To God

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily for the Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

Your entire life to God, your honor to the Emperor Before this today’s gospel, Jesus had been on the attack. He has been launching series of attacks against the Orthodox Jewish leaders. He had spoken three parables in which he indicted them. In the parable of the two sons (Matthew 21: 28-32), Jesus presented the Jewish leaders as the disobedient son who never went to his father’s vineyard to work. In parable of the wicked tenants (Matthew 21: 33-46), the Jewish leaders are the wicked tenants who killed the several servants sent by the owner of the vineyard, and when he finally sent his own son, thinking they would spare his life, they also killed him.

In the parable of the wedding feast, they are the condemned guest who was not wearing his wedding clothes and was thereafter thrown out of the wedding hall where he will weep and gnash his teeth. So with these parables which Orthodox Jewish leaders understood as a direct attack on them, they plotted for a counter- attack against Jesus by asking a carefully formulated question meant to bring him down. Before I forget, they asked this question in the public, before the watchful eyes and the listening ears of the crowd. The aim was to set a trap for Jesus so that he could discredit himself with his own words. By the way, what was the question? The question is “Is it lawful to pay census tax to Caesar of not? Why is the issue of taxpaying so dicey and risky? Palestine was an occupied country and the Jews were subject to the Roman Empire. Being subject to the Roman Empire, they were subjected to three different kinds of taxpaying. So the question here is “Is it lawful or not to pay tribute to Rome? The 3 taxes are:

1. Ground tax: Under this, a man must pay to the government one tenth of his grain, and one fifth of the oil and wine he produced. Now, this tax is partly paid in kind, and partly paid in money.

2. Income tax: here, a man pays one percent of his income.

3. Poll tax: This is a tax paid by every male person from the age of 14 to the age of 65, and by every female person from the age of 12 to 65.

So the question the Pharisees asked Jesus was a very risky one. It sets the Lord in a real dilemma. It was so dicey because if he says it was unlawful to pay tax to Rome, they would immediately report him to the Roman government officials as a seditious and unpatriotic person and they would immediately arrest him. And if Jesus said it is lawful to pay tax, he would stand discredited in the eyes of many people who are bearing the crunch of paying these taxes. It is worthy to note to that when the Jewish people resent paying taxes, the reason is not purely materialistic. They don’t resent paying tax because they want to keep their money. The reason is spiritual and religious. It goes beyond “Joe the Plumber” reason. To a Jew, God was the only King; their nation was a theocracy; therefore to pay tax to an earthly king was to admit the validity of his kingship and it was an insult to God. Jesus’ attack on them so hurt them to the extent that strange-bed fellows like the Pharisees and the Herodians joined together for the first time to fight a common enemy. For knowledge sake, the Pharisees were the fanatical Jews, the supremely orthodox who consider payment of tax to a foreign king as an infringement of the divine right of God. The Herodians were party of Herod, king of Galilee who owed his power to the Romans and who worked hand in hand with them. So the Pharisees and the Herodians were enemies, they don’t agree. They held different views on taxpaying just like Barak Obama and John McCain. But today, they find a common ground; they set their differences aside with the sole desire to eliminate Jesus. Mind you, any man or woman who insists in doing things his or her own way will surely hate Jesus. But in his answer, Jesus demonstrated he was wiser and smarter than all.

To the question, “Is it lawful to pay census tax to Caesar or not?” Jesus replied, “Show me the coin that pays the census tax”. “Whose image is this and whose inscription?” Of cause it is Caesar’s. Then the Lord directed, “Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God.” Brethren, today’s Gospel taken from Matthew 22: 15-21 calls for faithful citizenship. It reminds us of our double citizenship. Every Christian is a citizen of the country in which he or she happens to live. Because the Christian is a man or woman of honor, he or she must be a responsible citizen; failure in good citizenship is also failure in Christian duty. Today Jesus says, “Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God.” Caesar represents our leaders, political leaders to whom we owe a duty in return for the privileges which their rule brings to us. A lawless and chaotic human society risks being extinguished from the global map.

We give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar by being faithful citizens who keep the rules and laws of the land that Caesar swore to protect and uphold. The Christian is also a citizen of heaven. Remember we have dual citizenship: citizenship of the earth and citizenship of heaven. To give back to God what belongs to God means to give your very life to God. It means offering yourself as a living sacrifice, holy, and pleasing to God (Romans 12: 1). It means offering your life to God and everything you are, everything you have, and everything you have been through, and asking him to use it for his own glory. It also means offering your days to him as a pleasing sacrifice.

Now, the two citizenships should not clash. The demands of the State and the demands of God may not clash. God ultimately will never ask us to do what will obstruct or destroy the human family; after all, he is the Origin. But when a Christian is so convinced that complying with a particular demand of the State will ultimately violate the demand of God, he should resist it. One thing is so clear in today’s Gospel, and that is “A genuine Christian is at one and same time a good citizen of his or her country and a good citizen of the Kingdom Heaven. He or she belongs to two cities: city of the earth and the city of God. He or she will strive not to fail in his or her duty to God and to the human society. Remember the injunction of St. Peter in 1 Peter 2: 17 “Fear God. Honor the emperor”. Today, let’s ask our Dearest Lord, Jesus Christ to help us as we struggle daily to be faithful citizens of earth and that of the Kingdom of Heaven. May our Mother of Perpetual Help support us, and may St.

Alphonsus pray for us!