Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 18, 2020 – Isaiah 45:1, 4-6; 1 Thessalonians 1:1-5B; Matthew 22:15-21

Since this gospel always occurs right before Election Day, a lot of preachers seize upon the opportunity to turn their homily into a political diatribe of one sort or another - separation of church and state, and what it requires of a good Catholic. But the fact is that this has nothing to do with the separation of church and state. If you said to Jesus, “We live in a country where we have separation of church and state,” He wouldn’t know what you were talking about. It would not compute in any way. There’s two expressions that come down to us in history from the French Renaissance, just before the French Revolution. One of them is l’etat, c’est moi - I am the state. From the time of Jesus to the beginning of the nineteenth century, that was the way things went. The entire political economy was tied up in the person of the ruler. Some countries had parliaments, but they really weren’t all that effective. The other expression is un roi, une foi - one king, one faith. Whatever the king says your religion is, that’s what it is. That’s one reason why the separation of church and state was incorporated into the first amendment of the constitution. Because the framers of the constitution recognized that either they themselves, or their direct ancestors, had come to America to escape from un roi, une foi, from being persecuted because they wanted to follow a different faith journey than the faith journey of the dominant power in their country.

So then what is this gospel all about? I said there were three clues. The first is in Matthew’s introduction. He starts off by saying the Pharisees, who were the religious teachers of Judaism - the interpreters of the law - the Pharisees wanted to trap Jesus, so they went off with the Herodians. Now, this is a really bad marriage, Pharisees and Herodians. Who were the Herodians? The Herodians were the followers, or the entourage, of King Herod, the Antipas family. All the Herods were half Jews. One of their direct ancestors was a pagan. So they were thought of as somehow unworthy to be called Jews. Then they did the unthinkable, they made an alliance with Rome, for political expediency. They got Rome to agree that the Jews could practice their religion freely - the only ethnic group in the empire allowed that privilege - as long as they continued to pay tax to the emperor. And, because this deal upset those who were deeply involved in the Jewish faith, they despised Herod. So this is an interesting combination, that the representatives of high-church Judaism would make common cause with the followers of Herod.

The second clue is what Jesus says first. He says, “Show me the coin you use to pay the temple tax.” What does that mean? It means that Jesus did not have one of them. He is a good Jew. He doesn’t carry in his purse coins that represent the hated Roman emperor. But He’s asking them to show him the coin, which means that one of the Pharisees took the coin out of his purse. The Pharisees were claiming that paying tax to the emperor was an abomination, or carrying the coins in their own carrying bags. Then He asks them, “Whose inscription, and whose visage, is on this coin?” And they say, “Caesar’s.” Now, this is the important thing. Around the edge of the coin was written Caesar Augustus Divi Filius – Augustus Caesar, God’s son. It was customary, in the Roman Empire, to deify the emperor. So any Jew who would carry one of those coins, was committing the gravest sin of all – “Thou shalt not make unto thyself a graven image. Thou shalt have no gods before me.” So here they are, demonstrating their own hypocrisy, by what they carry in their pockets. That’s the story.

So what do we make of this when we talk about giving to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s. Well, when I was a very young priest, - maybe second or third year after ordination - I got a letter in the mail from the IRS saying that I owed them forty eight dollars. Now, I had paid my taxes on time like a good citizen. But I didn’t know, and no one had ever told me, that priests were considered self-employed, and we were expected to pay our taxes quarterly. At that time I was making a hundred fifty dollars a month. And since I worked in a parish that had three Masses every day, I said Mass every single day. Whenever there was an announced Mass, I got five dollars. So, in a good month, I earned three hundred dollars. Multiply that by twelve. That’s what I claimed as my income. Take away the deductions, I didn’t have to pay much taxes, but I paid it. But the government was charging me one third of my month’s salary because I didn’t file quarterly. So much for rendering unto Caesar what belonged to Caesar.

Now what about rendering unto God what belongs to God. Well, here’s how it starts. Most of you never heard these words the day they were spoken for you, except those few of you might be adult converts. Do you renounce Satan? I do. And all his pomps? I do. And all his empty promises? I do. Do you believe in God, the almighty Father, the creator of heaven and earth? I do. Do you believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son and our Lord, who was born of the Virgin Mary, was crucified, died and was buried, rose on the third day, and is ascended into Heaven? I do. Do you believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and everlasting life? I do.
Therefore, I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. That’s the beginning of our giving to God what belongs to God.

I’m going to tell you a brief story. I’m reading an autobiography of a guy named Jim Forest. Among other things, he was the founder of the Catholic Peace Fellowship during those turbulent years of the Vietnam War. He was also, for a long time, an employee of the Catholic Worker Movement, and had a very close relationship, although a stormy one, with Dorothy Day, who is now being considered for sainthood.
He also had a relationship, both by mail and in person, with another prominent Catholic of that time period, Thomas Merton, the famous Cistercian monk. Well, Jim Forest was in a loveless marriage. He and his girlfriend, when they were teenagers, had conceived a child, and he did the noble thing and he married her. Over the course of their marriage it became clear they had nothing in common. They finally parted ways. And sometime after they parted ways, he actually fell deeply in love with another woman, who also had been in a loveless marriage, and had walked away from it. At that time it was not as easy to get an annulment as it is now, although, eventually, he did get one.

But Dorothy Day wrote to him and said, “You must resign from your position as one of the heads of the Catholic Peace Fellowship, because you are not a faithful Catholic. And he was horrified by that, and began to think maybe he should. So he wrote to Thomas Merton, and Thomas Merton wrote back to him that, “You have to follow your conscience. That very often there is true love in a new relationship, and wherever there is love, there is God. And, unless you’re thinking of causing a public scandal to the movement, there’s no need for you to resign in order to avoid the sin of giving scandal.” So here you have two different opinions, by two prominent Catholics. But that’s not the important part of the story. The important part of the story is this. By the time this happened, in 1968, the opposition to the Vietnam War had turned from an opposition based on principle, to an opposition against LBJ himself, personally, with people saying, writing and doing vulgar and violent things against the person of the President of the United States. And Jim Forest was one of those. In his kitchen he had a photograph of LBJ on a dartboard. And every night, just to relieve his frustrations, he would throw darts at LBJ. So this one particular night, in the midst of all of this, he had a dream. He dreamt that he got on a bus and was looking for an empty seat, and wound up sitting next to this tall, elderly gentleman, who turned out to be LBJ. And they had a very civil conversation about their differences of opinion about the morality of the present war. At a certain point, Jim Forest suggested to Lyndon Johnson that they get off the bus and walk for a while, together. It was autumn, and there were dry leaves all over the sidewalk. The two of them walked along in silence, kicking the leaves together. And then he woke up. He went into the kitchen to get a drink, after waking up so suddenly, looked at the dartboard, and began to cry.

Rendering unto God what belongs to God. There are two songs we sing from time to time, that can encapsulate that for us. One from a folk group called The Dameans. “All that we have, and all that we offer, comes from a heart both frightened and free. Take what we give now, and give what we need. All done in Your name. At Christmas, sometimes, we use Christina Rossetti’s beautiful little poem, “What can I give Him, poor as I am? If I were a shepherd, I’d bring a lamb. If I were a wise man, I’d do my part. What can I give Him? Give Him my heart.”