29th Sunday of the Year -- 2017
In today’s Gospel we have Jesus being challenged again by some of the Jewish leaders (Pharisees and Herodians are mentioned specifically) who would like to catch him in error or put him in a difficult situation so that people would not listen to and trust him. So they asked him about paying taxes to the Romans. Most Jews disliked these taxes imposed by their occupiers. So if Jesus supported the paying of the taxes he would lose a great deal of popularity. However, if he opposed paying the taxes he would be in trouble with the Roman authorities. The Jewish leaders believed they had him in an “no-win” situation. But Jesus responded by asking them for the coin with which they paid their taxes. It had the head of Caesar on it. He then said: give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s. He avoided their trap. He refused to comment on whether or not it was right to have to pay taxes to the Romans; he simply responded by pointing out to them what their situation was.
Throughout the history of the Church there has been much discussion about what is the proper relationship between the government and the Church, especially if the government was hostile to the Church. There have been times when the Church tried to make Jesus’ response into a general principle. They would assert that everything belongs to God and the civil governments must acknowledge this. In the Middle Ages many bishops believed they had the authority to tell Kings and princes what to do, and this led to many conflicts. There were some situations where the Prince’s authority and the Bishop’s authority came together in one person as was seen in the Prince Bishops in Germany. Pope Innocent III in the 1200s saw himself as the Vicar of Christ and therefore believed that had political and religious authority over the entire universe.
But there were times in our recent history when the secular states believed that the Church had no right of its own to speak or act in the public square. Sometimes they would try to domesticate the Church by forcibly making it subservient to the government (for example under Bismarck’s Germany, France’s Third Republic, and present-day China) or they would co-opt the Church to support them in their government through wealth and influence and corruption as was seen in some of the Latin American countries in the 1950s and 1960s. In these cases they wanted to confine the Church to the sacristy!
The question the Church had to face in these situations was: what to do? Is it right to take the side of the poor and powerless in opposition to those who are wealthy and powerful? (In Latin America when one bishop was accused of “choosing sides” in supporting the poor, he told the government: we are not “choosing sides”, we are “changing sides”.) Is it right to side with the Communists (as some priest-workers did in France) because they were the only ones doing something to help the poor? Is it right to fight with those who are working to overthrow the government so that justice can come to the people? These are not easy questions to answer because the situation is so complex. “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s” really does not address the situation at hand.
As I wrestle with these questions (to which there is no simple answer) I am always reminded of the text that appeared in the late second century when Christians were being challenged in so many ways, the Letter to Diognetus. There we find words that remind us of our first duty: that we render to God what is God’s. For the Christians are distinguished from other men neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they observe. … inhabiting Greek as well as barbarian cities, according as the lot of each of them has determined, and following the customs of the natives in respect to clothing, food, and the rest of their ordinary conduct, they display to us their wonderful and confessedly striking method of life. … They marry, as do all [others]; they beget children; but they do not destroy their offspring. They have a common table, but not a common bed. They are in the flesh, but they do not live after the flesh. They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven. They obey the prescribed laws, and at the same time surpass the laws by their lives. They love all men, and are persecuted by all.
We cannot always look for simple answers.