Make it Evident, the Image of God in You
Is 45:1, 4-6; 1 Thessalonians 1:1-5b; Matthew 22:15-21
It is always nice to know, when to change one’s game or strategy, especially when it fails to yield the desired result. Haven used so many parables to talk to the chief priests and the Pharisees to no avail, Jesus now changes tactics to straight talk with the Pharisees. How does Jesus go about doing that – his straight talk?
A bit of background check on the adversaries of Jesus is in order today. In their plot to eliminate Jesus, there is a new alliance formed, there is a new strategy embarked upon by the Pharisees, they involved the Herodians, those whose very presence perpetuated and symbolized the colonization of the Jewish people; the Pharisees left the religious realm, and sought solace in the politico-economic domains—taxation. Two quick remarks, 1) the Herodians were those who sided with the Roman imperial rule of Judea and collected taxes from the Jews as a sign of their vassalage to Rome. By implication, the Herodians rejected the rule of God, theocracy, over Judah and accepted the Roman regime; that is to say, it was the Romans who called the shots in Judea no longer God. In today’s language, they will be called the secularists. 2) The Pharisees, although Jewish leaders, were rightly called hypocrites today because their major interest was not God, they form alliances with whomever stood them in good stead, especially economically and statutorily.
From the background of an attempted secularization of Judah, represented by the Herodians and the Romans, the question of taxation, put to Jesus, questions Jesus’ allegiance to the Roman leadership. Better put, will Jesus be consistent with his attribute of truth-saying and lack of favoritism, faced with a question of taxation, will Jesus side with the sedition camp? The political climate at the time was one of either/or, one was either for God, by refusing to pay taxes to Caesar, or one was on the side of Caesar, then one paid taxes to Caesar. The question to Jesus shows this divide, but Jesus’ answer is not either/or but both/and, which surprised his questioners.
Hidden behind the question of taxation is the need for Jesus to clarify whether the quest for the establishment of the kingdom of heaven, which was the dominant theme of the parables we have been reading for a while now, militates against the established kingdoms of the earth, especially the Roman Empire of the day. There are two key statements which help the interpretation of our gospel and they come from Jesus’ question and instruction to the disciples of the Pharisees and the Herodians: “Whose image is this and whose inscription?” And, “return/payback to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God that which is of God.”
Jesus makes clear, in his instruction to the disciples of the Pharisees and the Herodians, that they received an image and inscription from Caesar which they must return to Caesar—the coin for the census/toll tax. But the real question Jesus was interested in was what did the Pharisees and the Herodians get from God, which they must return to God as well? The fact is that humanity, according to the creation account of Genesis, was created in the image and likeness of God; therefore, human beings must return the image of Caesar back to him and then restore that of God in themselves. Jesus uses a politico-economic question to teach the compatibility of the kingdom of God with human establishments. Jesus accepts human participation in civic responsibilities, but also humanity must not forget God.
Two pieces of information will further enlighten our comprehension of our gospel reading. First, notice that today’s gospel follows immediately on the parable of the wedding garment. Implicitly, the man without the wedding garment of last Sunday, whom we said was fished out because of a failed moral rectitude, tallies with Jesus’ instruction to “return to God what belongs to God,” because what needs to happen is a return to the original image of God we had at creation, and not the question of taxation to Caesar. By the way, Jesus “returned to Caesar what was Caesar’s” because he paid the same tax himself, “And when he came into the house, Jesus spoke to him first, saying, ‘What do you think, Simon? From whom do kings of the earth take toll or tax? From their sons or from others?’ And when he said, ‘From others,’ Jesus said to him, ‘Then the sons are free. However, not to give offense to them, go to the sea and cast a hook and take the first fish that comes up, and when you open its mouth you will find a shekel. Take that and give it to them for me and for yourself” (Matthew 17:25-27).
The second element is that the discussion which follows today’s gospel (Matthew 22:15-22) is about the resurrection (Matthew 22:23-33). By implication, the kingdom of Caesar will come to an end and the kingdom of God will takeover, at the resurrection. Jesus’ mission was not that of Roman sedition, but preparation for the “kingdom of heaven” not “kingdom of earth”. Jesus makes a clear distinction between the kingdom of heaven and taxation to Caesar. “Census” – κήνσος tax, the payment of which is the bone of contention in today’s gospel, was valued on the basis of individual’s economic worth. The kingdom of heaven, on the contrary, is about each person’s spiritual and moral worth! Earthly riches are inconsequential for the kingdom of God, but moral rectitude is quintessential for accessing the kingdom of heaven.
If we took seriously the first reading of today, God uses every human being on earth to achieve his purposes. For instance, Cyrus, who wasn’t a Jew, was called “my anointed”, “my Messiah”. Cyrus was God’s instrument for the liberation of his people, Israel, from Babylonian captivity. So, God considers the fact that everybody was created in his image and likeness as the sole criterion to judge who is fit for use in order to achieve his purposes. From this optic, Jesus was not against Caesar in the gospel reading of today. By extension, the salvation of all and sundry is the preoccupation of God, no one is outside of God’s love and God’s plan of salvation. This point comes across strongly in the following statements of Isaiah, “I am the Lord and there is no other, there is no God besides me. It is I who arm you, THOUGH YOU KNOW ME NOT, so that toward the rising and the setting of the sun people may know that there is none besides me. I am the Lord, there is no other” (Isaiah 45:4-6).
Bishop Audu told a story of a man, whose job was to clean aircrafts after passengers had deplaned. One day, while cleaning the cockpit, this man saw the pilot’s manual and decided to read it. To his surprise, the instructions were simple, so he applied them. To start the plane, says the manual, click button 1, and he did; to taxi, click 2, and he did; to take off, click 3, he clicked it. Now that he is airborne, he looked for the next instruction, and it says: “in order to land, look for the next edition of this manual!”
The Pharisees and the Herodians, as well as many so-called holy people of today (born-again Christians, priests and evangelists, etc.), have taken off and are airborne, but they do not know how “to land,” how to see in other human beings, especially sinners and non-Christians, that they too are children of God, through whom God’s miracles and wonders can still take place. Such religiously highly-placed people forget compassion and the image of God borne by every human being, including the good, the bad and the ugly. Without conversion, such people will definitely crash, like the airplane cleaner of our story.
Perhaps, we can learn to see the image of God in everyone, including the bad people we have in our lists of untouchables and good-for-nothing individuals. If God can call and use Cyrus, a non-Jew as his Messiah and used him to save Israel, if God can ask us to give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, is it not the case that Cyrus and Caesar themselves belong to God? Where will your “holier-than-thou” attitude lead you, when you make distinctions among people? When you side with the world and all its glamor, like the Pharisees plotting with the Herodians, can you see that you are fighting against God? When you and I refuse to listen to the word of God and live it out in our lives, can’t we see that we are on the way to damnation? Today is “image of God Sunday”. Make the image of God in you radiant!
Assignment for the Week:
Avoid sin this week, so that God’s image in you will be evident!
2017
A beautiful reflection Padre!