Oct. 22: 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Is 45:1, 4-6; Ps 96:1, 3, 4-5, 7-8, 9-10; 1 Thes 1: 1-5b Mt 22:15-21

What About Caesar?

New Testament scholars debate what was the attitude of Jesus and the early Christians to the Roman Empire. After all, they were living under the powerful authority of the empire that, at its summit, stretched from the British Isles through most of Europe and around the rim of the Mediterranean, covering every place where a Christian lived. 

In the case of Jesus’ encounter with Pilate and the Romans, the impact was brutal and decisive. For the Book of Revelation, Rome’s oppressive force was deemed demonic and to be resisted. But in the Gospels and in the writings of Paul and the Acts of the Apostles, encounters with Roman authorities were occasional and not at the center of focus.  

This subject is raised by this Sunday’s readings, particularly the famous scene from Matthew’s Gospel where Jesus’ opponents try to trap him: “Tell us … what is your opinion: Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?” 

The “census” or “head” tax was levied on everyone living under Roman rule between the ages of 12 and 65. Jews living in Judea, which was under direct Roman rule in Jesus’ lifetime, were obliged to pay the tax and had to use Roman coins to do so. These coins had the image of the Emperor Tiberius stamped on them and the inscription, “Tiberius Caesar august son of the divine Augustus, high priest.” 

Paying this tax was a cause of resentment and debate among Jews of the time. Jesus foils their clever trap by asking them to come up with the hated coin (which some of them had available) and then replying in a riddle-like way: “Whose image is this and whose inscription?” When they said, “Caesar’s,” Jesus responds: “Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.”

We hear this Gospel not as part of a history lesson but at worship. What do Jesus’ words and the Scriptures tell us about our Christian obligations to “Caesar,” that is, to the political reality in which we currently live?

Jesus’ fellow Jews could see “what belonged to Caesar” in the military power of Rome, in its monuments and wealth and political structures. But what belonged to God? Other New Testament texts in Paul, the First Letter of Peter and the Acts of the Apostles speak of respect for legitimate authority. 

The early Christians were not “revolutionaries” in the usual sense of the term, but implied in Jesus’ words and barely beneath the surface of the New Testament writings is another important assertion: imperial authority could never claim absolute sovereignty — that was owed to God alone. While the early Christians did not openly challenge the ordinary political authority of the emperor and his representatives, on another level the call for absolute trust and obedience to God alone undermined the claims of the empire. Everything — including the empire itself — belonged to God, not to Caesar.

The first reading from Isaiah makes that point as well, noting that Cyrus, the great king of Persia whose decree freed the Jews from exile, allowing them to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their temple, was in fact an instrument of God. Cyrus himself would be ignorant of this, and thought he had absolute authority. But as the words of God state: “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.”

We don’t live in the Roman Empire but sometimes the prevailing political rhetoric might lead us to think that the state and its political power — as important and benevolent as it might be — is sovereign, living above the rules. “America first,” we sometimes claim; or we are an “exceptional” nation. There are some defensible truths in such slogans but, when all is said and done, the Christian and Catholic response is to steadily affirm that the power of the state is limited and its espoused values and practices are ultimately subservient to another, who alone is truly “first” and “exceptional.” 

“Render to God what belongs to God.”