We live in a world permeated with images and opinions that we are sometimes convinced to be the truth. All you have to do is turn on the television and see an advertisement, or even a “news” report, to see how convincingly many times an opinion or a familiar image is touted as the truth. It is tempting and we so often fall prey to listening to opinions and accepting images too quickly as the end all and be all of truth. There are potentially dark motives behind the forces that drive these opinions and images, motives flowing from malice, hatred, personal gain, all of those things that if we pay attention to what the Gospel seems to say consistently, we will see are the very things that do not align with perhaps the deeper and meaning of the Gospel message.
I was recently in a gathering of people who were having a short scriptural service, when the leader of the gathered after reading the Gospel (which happened to be today’s Gospel reading) said clearly that instead of talking about the Gospel, he preferred to share with the group “what is going on in our world.” As the talk progressed, I sensed it going in a very uplifting and encouraging manner that seemed to be heading toward a theme of how despite the many differences in our world’s religions we actually can contribute to a fuller understanding of who this awesome God of all is about. I was rudely jolted out of this self-interpreting lens of the situation, when the speaker began to vehemently spew very divisive and finger-pointing statements about other faith traditions.
When I reflected about this later, it struck me of how the speaker in the gathering literally and perhaps at a deeper level dismissed the gospel. Not only did he overtly state that he was not going to talk about the gospel, but the content of what he spoke about, seemed to – in a perhaps unconscious way – dismiss the deeper meaning of the Gospel. I wonder how often do I do that myself? How do we assume an opinion based on an image that we have of God and then impose it on others? And how in doing this do we set up a separation where you are either “in” or “out” based upon if you agree or not with an opinion, or whether or not you subscribe to the “validity” of a particular image or not? It seems that when we get so enmeshed in the world of opinions and images, we lose sight of or fail to ask the deeper questions about belonging and what that may really mean.
In today’s Gospel (Mt 22:15-21), we have the Pharisees attempting to set Jesus up, to entrap him in a decision that he must make about paying taxes to the oppressive Roman occupation of the people. The words are telling…
“Teacher, we know that you are a truthful man
and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth.
And you are not concerned with anyone’s opinion,
for you do not regard a person’s status.
Tell us, then, what is your opinion:
Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?”
Jesus, fully aware, of the “set-up” confronts their question by asking them to produce a Roman coin…
“Show me the coin that pays the census tax.”
Then they handed him the Roman coin.
He said to them, “Whose image is this and whose inscription?”
They replied, “Caesar’s.”
At that he said to them,
“Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar
and to God what belongs to God.”
On one level, we can look at this story as a question of the justice in paying taxes to a known oppressive force. Perhaps going deeper, the questions may become more complicated, or really, more simple. I wonder if Jesus could also be saying something here about images and opinions? Does it seem sometimes that when we hold on to tightly to familiar and comfortable images and the opinions that accompany those images and then as a result we tend to use them against each other? I have found this in my own life. It is as if these images and opinions can become something we feel we own, when in fact, we could ask whether or not they (the images and opinions) own us! This is a sense of “belonging” that has to do with a “mine” and “not yours” attitude that breeds contempt and exclusion. Having opinions and images themselves are not “bad” things, but when held with such rigidity, they can become dangerous and produce a warped sense of exclusive “belonging.”
This sense of belonging that Jesus uses in answering the question of whether or not to pay the Roman coin to Caesar strikes at the very heart of OUR true image. The very first book of the bible tells us clearly that WE, all of us, are created in God’s image. How often do we fail to reflect on what the ramification of this may really entail? It’s as if Jesus is saying here that the details of our lives, the experiences that we may find ourselves in – good or bad or otherwise – always have a wider and more abundant context that we overlook. In being created in the image of God, we belong to God. But this belonging is not about God wielding his almighty power over us in a manner of self-seeking ownership. No, this belonging seems to me more about being chosen in love from the very beginning. As Paul says in his letter to the Thessalonians (1 Thes 1:1-5b), “knowing, brothers and sisters loved by God, how you were chosen.”
As God reminds the Persian king Cyrus over the Hebrew people in today’s first reading (Is 45:1, 4-6 ),
“I have called you by your name, giving you a title, though you knew me not.
I am the LORD and there is no other, there is no God besides me.”
This is what God is telling all of us. In saying that there is no other God besides me, God is also saying there is no other YOU besides me. We are created and sustained as the unique and beautiful person (as the gospel says “regardless of status”). Jesus is calling the Pharisees to true accountability by pointing to the image on the Roman coin and then asking them to remember in Whose image they were created. We are created in the image of God, who is Love. We are created and sustained uniquely in the loving gaze and embrace of God. This is not a belonging wherein we are “owned” by a God who subjects us to whimsical divine opinions. This is a belonging that is placed within a loving embrace wherein there is no “outside” and there is no “outsider.” There is no “other.”
This relationship in belonging has the power if we allow it to transform and indeed eradicate if necessary the dangerous opinions and false images that we my hold onto about ourselves and therefore others. Perhaps the most powerful and challenging aspect of this beautiful mystery of belonging is that we are created in image of God, each given that particular and unique spark of light that can never be repeated. We are “without status” the same “image” of God as well as that never-to-be-repeated unique loving expression struggling wonderfully to unfold. I very recently watched a beautiful film directed by Michael Carney that so intimately captured this and in its title described it so well…”Same Kind of Different as Me.”
Peace,
Thomas