Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time (A), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, October 21, 2023

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Twenty-Ninth Sunday of Ordinary Time, A, Vigil
October 21, 2023

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below: 

The following text guided the homily: 

• This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday, something that has to do with how we as disciples of Jesus order our whole life as citizens not only of our country but of the heavenly Jerusalem.
• In this Sunday’s Gospel, two groups that were archenemies conspired in an unholy alliance to try to trap Jesus. Both the Herodians and the Pharisees were trying to get Jesus out of the way, because both felt threatened by him. Like a 60-minutes journalist trying to ask a gotcha question to expose and embarrass an interviewee, they decided to ask him a question about which they themselves were constantly in disagreement — whether it was lawful to pay taxes to or support in any way the Roman empire. The Herodians were laxist sycophants, and, regardless of how they personally felt about a foreign power’s ruling over them, decided that if you couldn’t beat the Romans, you should join them. They cooperated with the Romans in almost everything, including taxes. The Pharisees, like most of the Jewish people, deeply resented being dominated by a foreign power, and found utterly repulsive the thought of giving a tribute to a foreign ruler who fancied himself a god. Both groups thought their long-standing disagreement was a perfect catch-22 by which to nail the carpenter from Nazareth.
• So they approached Jesus and manifested their mendacity and hypocrisy by a barrage of empty flattery: “Teacher, we know that you are a truthful man, teach the way of God with accordance to the truth, show deference to no one, and don’t play favorites.” Then came the question: “Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?” It was the perfect query, they thought, because no matter how Jesus answered it, they had him. If he failed to respond, he would lose authority by ducking one of the most controversial and radioactive political questions of the day. If he said “yes,” they could turn the crowds against him as a sympathizer of the tyrannical and hated Romans and of the emperor whom they hated being forced to recognize at all. If he said “no,” then they could turn him over to Pontius Pilate as a renegade revolutionary inciting lawlessness among the people.
• But Jesus would not be trapped, and he showed yet again here how he always brings good out of evil. In answer to their hypocrisy, Jesus pointed the path to true human integrity. In response to their deceitfulness, Jesus gave us a truth to live by, one that is as relevant today as it ever was.
• After he had asked to see the coin used for the tax and they brought him one. This showed, first, that all of them used the money when it served their purposes! It also was a manifestation of the way the chief priests were funded through the Roman tax system, which levied a two denarius tax on every Jewish ex-pat throughout the Roman empire, delivering a massive annual sum for the upkeep of the Temple. On its face, the question was hypocritical. Taking the coin into his hand, Jesus asked, “Whose image is this and whose inscription?” When they responded, “Caesar’s,” he gave them and us the principle that extends far beyond than the days of Rome. “Then give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God.” Most of Jesus’ original listeners thought that you couldn’t serve two leaders, God and Caesar; either you gave to God, they thought, or gave to Caesar. Jesus said it was not necessarily “either… or” but could be and should be “both… and.” To pay taxes or to participate in the social order was not de facto an act of idolatry. We have responsibilities in the social order (what we might call the horizontal plane); we also have responsibilities toward God (the vertical plane). The two should go together. One of our responsibilities toward God is to love our neighbor; and one of the greatest services to our neighbor is the service of the truth that flows from faith in God.
• This Sunday, we don’t come to entrap Jesus in his speech, but to learn from him the truth that will set us free. And as we ask him the same question about the allegiance we owe to the social order — to our country, our society, our cities and communities — he turns to us and asks us something. He doesn’t request to see a dollar bill, but rather says to us, “Look in the mirror!” “Whose image do we see?” He wants us to recognize that we are made in the image and likeness of God. And then he wants to say, “Then give to God the things that are God’s.” All that we are, all that we have, all our time, our talents, our money, our resources, our health comes from God, are part of our being in his image, and we’re called by him in justice, in wisdom and in love, to give back to God the things that are his. Jesus in the Gospel helps us to remember to whom we really belong. The greatest confusion of our age is not political, or gender-based or racial. It’s when we forget our identity, when we fail to remember that we’re chips off the divine Block, that we’ve been formed like God to become like him by participating in his life.
• I’d like to make a couple of applications of this wondrous mystery from today’s Gospel. The first regards our level of giving to God. The context of taxes in today’s Gospel is helpful. Most of us hate paying taxes and do everything we can to pay less — we save receipts, we take deductions, we vote for politicians who promise lower rates, we move savings to off-shore havens, and those who run corporations often lobby legislators for loopholes. Sometimes we try similar strategies with God, whom we don’t want to tax the time, money, talents, he’s given us, because, as we saw two weeks ago in the Parable of the Corrupt Tenants in the Vineyard, we prefer to be owners rather than stewards. Many of us do what we can to get out of our spiritual commitments. We ask how far can we go without sinning. We can do the minimum in terms of our prayers. We donate something, but often do not make a genuine sacrifice. We can even shop for Churches or Masses that are less demanding on our time. Today Jesus is calling us to a different way of living. He says to us, “Give to God the things that are God’s,” and “Give to the civil order what the civil order is owed.” The gift that Jesus is asking of us is ourselves, and our supreme task in life is to make our lives fit to offer to him and with him for others. We’re all in a 100 percent tax bracket, called to give everything… with love!
• The second application is what ought to happen when conflicts arise between the two orders of responsibility Jesus describes, to God and to the social order. The concern of the Scribes and Pharisees hasn’t disappeared. The best principle, I think, comes from the example and last words of one of the great saints in the history of civilization, Saint Thomas More. When King Henry VIII, whom he had served faithfully as chancellor or second-in-charge, had required all British subjects to swear an oath saying Henry (and not Jesus Christ or Jesus’ vicar on earth, the Pope) was supreme head of the Church in England and another basically swearing under God that Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon was null, his supposed marriage to Anne Boleyn was valid and that his rightful heir would be his and Anne’s offspring, Thomas More refused. Almost all of the Christians in England took the oaths. Almost every bishop in England, other than St. John Fisher, capitulated. Thomas resigned the chancellorship, his family was reduced to poverty, and those who were trying to kiss up to the king sought ways to harm Thomas. Eventually, the king’s loyalists trumped up charges against him to get him thrown into the infamous prison of the Tower of London. They tried to harass, molest and starve Thomas into submission, but he never relented. Finally, they framed him and got him sentenced to death. As he stood on the platform where he would be beheaded, he was asked whether he had any last words. His valedictory, right before he had his head chopped off, was “I have always been the king’s good servant, but God’s first.”
• Those words, each of us is called to make his own. All of us are called to be the good servants of our nation, of our communities, of our cities, but God’s good servants first and above all. Should there be a conflict between what we owe to God and what civil leaders claim we owe to them, God must win. And the greatest service we can give to society and to her rulers is to serve God faithfully, because by this we bring to them the truth, which is the only foundation on which society can be firmly grounded.
• This service, this duty, is becoming more urgent, because the supposed conflicts between what we owe to God and what others claim we owe to society are growing. There are two main fonts of these conflicts. On the one hand, there are various politically-correct and “woke” attacks on the Christian faith, mainly because faithful Christians won’t go along with the spirit of the age, whether that means allowing the killing of unborn children, or the redefinition of marriage or of what it means to be a human person, or other legal and conceptual assaults. The second is coming from those who want politics to be the defining reality of life and to reduce and concentrate people’s religious energies to the next election or referendum, putting political party or ideology above the truths of faith and morals, whether that means giving a total pass to gross character flaws in candidates or allowing them to denigrate others, refuse them dignity, and feel justified in not embracing them as we would embrace Christ. If we recognize that we are made in God’s image and likeness, then we must recognize that others are, too, and, we can’t allow those on either the left or the right to dehumanize people in the womb, at the border, on the death bed, or at any other point of human life for political gain. We Christians are called to be salt, light and leaven for our society, lifting it up, and this requires courage, sometimes even martyrdom.
• This weekend God asks us to look in the mirror anew and see in whose image we are made. Then he calls us to act in accordance with that dignity. Like SS. Thomas More and John Fisher, may God give us the help and audacity he knows we need always to render to Him the things that are His so that we may be able to say at every moment of our life —  and at the moment of our death — that we have always been good citizens of our great land who have sought to make it better, but we’ve always been God’s good servants first.

The Gospel reading on which the homily was based was: 

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