Dual Citizenship of a Christian

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

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

St. Gerard Majella Church, Baton Rouge, LA

Sunday, October 19, 2014

Today’s Gospel begins with “The Pharisees went off and plotted how they might entrap Jesus in speech” (Matthew 22:15). Why? Because Jesus has been on the attack. He has been launching series of attacks against the chief priests and the elder of the people. He has spoken three parables in which he indicted them. In the parable of the two sons (Matthew 21: 28-32), Jesus presents the Jewish leaders as the disobedient son who never went to his father’s vineyard to work. In the parable of the wicked tenants (Matthew 21: 33-46), he regards the Jewish leaders as the wicked tenants who killed several servants and the son of the landowner sent by him (the owner of the vineyard) to obtain his produce. In the parable of the wedding feast, Jesus suggests that they are the condemned guest who was not dressed in a wedding garment and was thrown out of the wedding hall where there’s weeping and grinding of teeth.

Now, instead of reflecting on the parables of Jesus, instead of trying to examine their lives and make effort to do things differently, instead of asking Jesus what they should do to be authentic believers of God- to be saved, the Jewish leaders went away angry and started planning a counter-attack against Jesus. Sure enough, they found one. It was a carefully formulated question meant to entrap him and to bring him down. So, they sent some their disciples with the Herodians to Jesus to ask him, “Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?” 

Their question is a very tricky one. Their main goal is to set a trap for Jesus so that he could get himself in trouble. If he says it’s unlawful to pay tax to Rome, the Pharisees would quickly report him to the Roman government officials as a rabble-rousing and unpatriotic person and he would immediately be arrested. And if he says it is lawful to pay tax, they would jump on it, use his own words to discredit him before the people who bear the burden of paying these taxes. Jewish people hated paying taxes, but not for the same reasons that some people of our time hate paying taxes. They resented paying taxes not because they wanted to keep their money. The reason for the resentment is spiritual and religious. Their nation was a theocracy, which means, God was the only King; therefore to pay tax to an earthly king was to admit the validity of his kingship and it was an insult to God.

In his answer, Jesus demonstrates he is wiser and smarter than all. To the question, “Is it lawful to pay census tax to Caesar or not?” he replies, “Show me the coin that pays the census tax”. “Whose image is this and whose inscription?” They replied, “Caesar’s”. Then he shocks them, “Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God.”

This Gospel passage (Matthew 22:15-21) calls for faithful citizenship and also reminds us of our double citizenship. Through birth, we’ve become citizens of the earth, and through baptism, we’ve become citizens of the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, each of us is called to be responsible citizens. Failure in good citizenship is also failure in Christian duty. “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 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. To give to God what belongs to God means offering ourselves as a living sacrifice, holy, and pleasing to God (Romans 12: 1). It means offering our life to God, everything we are, everything we have, and everything we have been through, and asking him to use them for his own glory.

Now, the two citizenships should not clash. The demands of the State and the demands of God ought not to 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 commands of God, he or she should resist it. One thing that’s so clear in today’s Gospel is: An authentic Christian is also a good citizen of a country and a good citizen of the Kingdom Heaven. The Christian belongs to two cities: city of the earth and the city of God. As such, such a Christian will always strive to carry out what God requires and what the society demands, as long as what the society requires does not violate God’s command to love. In 1 Peter 2:17 says, “Fear God. Honor the emperor”.