Homily – Twenty-ninth Sunday of Ordinary Time

October 16, 2011   Cycle A

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

Throughout history people have invoked the name of God before going into battle with people of another nation who have also invoked the name of God.  They both do so with confidence that God would defend them.  This puts God on both sides of the battlefield.  This is a troublesome place for people to put God.

When any country, or group of people, begins to believe that God is solely on their side, for whatever reasons, it only goes to solidify a nations belief that it is totally right and that those who are being fought are completely evil spirited.  They believe that any disagreement with this position is both unpatriotic and heretical.

In our passage today from the prophecy of Isaiah, we are reminded that God used Cyrus, a king not among God’s chosen people, to do the work of God.  This would be very disconcerting to the Israelites. The Pharisees tried to trap Jesus into saying something either disloyal to the Romans, or disrespectful to His God.  Jesus refuses to do either, showing that being a good citizen and being a person of faith are complex realities. 

Isn’t it true that we often think of Jesus as gentle, meek and mild?  But as the Gospel authors teach us, He lived in a society where competition and conflict were in the open.  Particularly around two pivotal cultural values: honor and shame.  Challenges to honor -- a person’s worth and reputation -- were common-place.

The biblical opponents of Jesus frequently challenged Him in an effort to shame Him.   As we see in our Gospel today, Jesus is beset by two groups, who did not usually see eye to eye.  As we’ve said, they were the Pharisees and the Herodians, and they put Him in a double bind. Whatever way Jesus answered He would lose face.  If he said to pay the tax He would become a collaborator.  While saying “no” to paying tax would make Him a criminal.  As we saw in the end, Jesus turned the honor tables on all of them, both by questioning their motives as well their very faithfulness.  He turned the tables on them by pointing to what is most important: honoring God!  Misusing the name of God undercuts the First Commandment!

We, who are followers of Jesus, are called to be good Christians – people of faith.  When we attempt to use the force of nations to impose our beliefs we stray from the Gospel message.  You see that the purpose and meaning of life, the path to dealing with the complexities of our place and time, are found in our struggle with our consciences and in the values we hold in the depths of our hearts.  Jesus’ answers are not the clear, unambiguous solutions we seek.  But Christ’s response is the heart of living our faith: the struggle to return to God what is God’s.

Each one of us has to do for ourselves the hard work of deciding exactly what is the way of God in our complex and interconnected world of politics, money and human relationships.  Jesus would appeal to us to look beyond the simplistic politics and black and white legalities represented by Caesar’s coin.  The late Trappist Monk, Thomas Merton, wrote, “You are made in the image of what you desire.”  We are to realize that we are called to embrace the values centered in a faith that sees the hand of God in all things and recognizes every human being as being part of one human family under the providence of God. 

It is our prayer today that the Spirit of God’s wisdom and compassion helps us through the complexities and challenges of our lives so that the light by which we make our way, the measure by which we weigh our choices, the star by which we set our course, is always under the umbrella of God’s providential care and grace!  

Amen.  Amen. Msgr. Tom Adrians, Pastor Christ the King