Isaiah 45/ Psalm 96/ 1 Thess. 1/ Matthew 22:15-21.
Gospel Matthew 22: The messengers of the Pharisees and Herodians are sent to stop Jesus’ ministry.
Intro about the day’s Scriptures
The readings have a theme going through them on the topic of remaining steadfast versus adversity. In the Old Testament selection we hear of the Jews in Babylon, who have lost their nation of Israel due to her infidelity to God. Yet in the exile there still are the faithful remnant Jews who have kept faith, and who still hold hope for God to not give up on them. God sends them a way to get free of Babylonian captivity. It will come through the Persians and their leader Cyrus. God uses him to subdue the Babylonians, and Cyrus lets the Jewish remnant leave and go back to Israel. Hope remains.
In the New Testament reading, Paul writes to the Greek Thessalonian people and encourages them to be a people of fidelity. There is no timetable when the Lord Jesus might return in Glory to end history as they know it, but they are to concentrate on just being a faithful church, remaining in the teachings and the Way of Jesus. Again, it is remaining steadfast versus adversity from the secular or unbelieving world. That’s the theme.
In the Gospel, opponents are coming at Jesus trying to get Him to depart to one side or another of worldliness. ‘Side with Caesar’ or ‘side with the Jews against Caesar,’ they demand. Both of the options show a choice of infidelity. Jesus says that God has another option: Life in the kingdom of God. There is a choice of remaining steadfast to God, and Jesus will be it, and reveal it to how we can live by it.
Homily What the Plan: Worldly I Plan, Worldly II Plan, or the Godly Plan?
I think of these devious men coming up to Jesus in this Matthew 22 account as like those who run a rigged game for their victim to always be losing. They say, the coin is tossed into the air to see your fate: Heads I win, tails you lose. Imagine if a person called “sides!” What do you mean, sides? The person says to the gamers and the coin result: Edge sides is my choice. Cleary there are two faces of a coin, but there also is its round edges. I will bid for that “side” to come up. The coin will land standing up, on its edge, not heads nor tails but its other surface, its side!
And it comes up sides.
The men who came to Jesus were enemies to Him in all their plans. They were sent to stop Jesus’ ministry. The ruse was to have Jesus to choose whether or not paying taxes to Caesar or not was to be done. For him to say: Pay taxes to Caesar would sound like a disloyalty to Israel, and these enemies could spread the world that Jesus publicly said that He’s not on our (the Jews) side.
On the other hand, for Jesus to say don’t pay taxes to Caesar could be used by these opponents of Jesus to name Him as being against Caesar, as in leading a rebellion against the Romans. He could get arrested by the Romans for that. But Jesus won’t give the answers they have provided. He is not a political opponent of Caesar. He won’t fall for their trick, even as they tried to flatter Him before the trap question.
It’s as like He called “the edge side” for the coin flip.
He was teaching these men that when considering choices in life, they were missing out on a third option. What was it? It was the invitation by Christ Jesus for people to repent and enter the kingdom of God! The kingdom of God was the calling of Jesus. “Repent and believe, the kingdom of God is at hand”. That’s a Matthew Gospel line from the start of Jesus’ Good News. A new option is available in Christ Jesus.
In Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount section it was called the choice of “the narrow way.”
In the Pharisees they have a shallow, legalistic, self-centered choice among the thorns that choke the Word. In the Herodians, the followers of the false king Herod—puppet king for the whims of Rome, they have the compromised way of the world, the seed that falls on the path to be picked off by vultures. It’s not a seed in good fertile ground of faith. Both are bad life orientations for God to sow His Word in you.
Yet the seed could fall on good soil and bear a solid and fruitful Catholic life. What will the sinner do? Respond to Christ as really the teacher, the way of truth? Let Him be the one to be fair to you in freely presenting you an option of belonging back to God, because of the world you are lost?
This story encourages us to pick the “side” of the kingdom of God, of being “poor in spirit.” God promises a good result of choosing things His way.
Isn’t it ironic that the plotters against Jesus actually say “it is said you are true and fair and wide”—but did not believe it. They grossly underestimated Jesus, too. He comes as Gift to share truth fairness and wisdom to humanity. Yet many will reject Him.
Here’s the deal He shows in a short example. The coin is the payment to a Caesar who really does not rule the world. It is to a person temporally granted to be in that position by God. The coin with Caesar on it is only worth the little amount its worth. So give little to that, for the greater choice is of what belongs to God, which is to be true and to last forever.
The world is only worth little in the end—let us not choose it—like the Pharisees and Herodians were doing.
The belonging to Jesus is worth everything.
Give to Caesar what is his (says Jesus holding up a little coin), and Give to God what is God’s (Jesus points to all existence as His, and we need to identity our Lord as whom we shall serve (and not the world_.
Jesus points to the vastness of what God owns and has made: This is the better choice to make—to live under God, but it is a bit challenging. In Matthew, Jesus explains just earlier (as in the time reported in Matthew 19:23-30) that the choice for God leads us through “the eye of the needle.” The directions? It’s Give to God what is God’s. And (then) you can do in faith what seems impossible, like in one going into relationship with God as through an eye of a needle.
So do we belong to God and serve our lives to Him as our choice of Jesus as Lord? It’s all a choice of fidelity to His Lordship and teachings and Church. That’s the choice to make, and not be like a modern day Pharisees in a conditional faith and surface-level-only one, nor of a Herodian following a king of the world, even a stepped-in imposter. Herod Sr. and Jr. were false Jewish king, puppets in place for doing what the Roman authority wanted, in exchange for a few favors. Herodians were real compromisers. As James Taylor sang once in “Another Way” “there are herods always out there” yes, lots of them today.
We don’t need Christians today to be like those hypocrites or worldly compromisers that are shady characters in our Matthew 22 lesson today.
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Further Commentary by me
I hope in the Church Synod that the kingdom of God folks, the poor-in-spirit, and the remnant obedient-in faith people will see the lead of the Holy Spirit to remain steadfast and faithful as a Church in 2023 and on. God provides a way of freedom always by a path of fidelity. The disenchanted people on exodus journeys, like those poor ones in Moses’ exodus, will lose out. Only the faithful get through to the promised-land.
The synod opinions that have been voiced this year (and now in Rome) have been a mix of cries to stay fixed on Jesus and the Church’s teachings off to calls of changing a whole lot of our Catholic faith to modern ideas and practices.
One odd proposal to solve the problems of a Catholic population going down in numbers, priesthood numbers going down, and of the problem of children not having a parent at home (in enough time to help raise and guide them) —was a serious-minded proposal by some (only in their mind as serious) for the Church to require polygamy for its members in marriage. They reasoned that, like the Mormons’ strategy in America for so long a time, the one husband to many wives arrangement gave many more Christians to be born, with likely a woman in the house to raise and guide the children, and the increase of numbers would then result in more reverends and missionaries to serve the Church naturally. It would let woman work in the workplace who wanted to, and let woman to be in the home with family who wanted to (full-time). It interpreted such a course of polygamous family life as ‘honoring’ the man’s procreation work as his identity as a sexual being. It was suggested that it be listened to—that his Mormon idea should be adopted by us Catholics—said this proposal. (Not by me!) What do you think of that new solution for the Church ahead, as required for all present and future marriage households? Should the Church decide on it—be there enough in Rome who like it at the Synod? You may likely say—that’s crazy. (Even if it worked for the Mormons to build up their church.) Yes, it is crazy.
I heard people also suggest that we Catholic men priests must be subjected to the changes ahead to our ancient vocation, of adjusting now to allowing for lesbian priests, homosexual men priests and other identities in the cloth, and that we share parish service and residence to woman priests, married priests. It further ask that priests serve as Sacrament functionaries more ahead, in taking away their authority or leadership/servant roles.
What an upheaval that would be! That would make for a more expensive situation, in lots of homes, lots of children of clergy to pay for, competing clergy, camps or cliques and divisions in the Church arising, and much more. The reality of such priests already exists in the denomination of the Episcopal-Anglican Church—and it’s not going well for them—it is a failed solution, seeming as from a spirit of the age action and not of a true Holy Spirit one. Yet some Catholics propose it (all above) as a so-called “solution” to find more vocations, more opportunities, and more diversity, and less discrimination in the Church. Yet the issue of fidelity and encouraging what we have in the priesthood is not on the table of discussion by these folks. I guess that so-called rights of people is more important that the present call for priests of frugality, sacrifice, full focus on the Church, chastity and imitation of Christ.
If you can imagine the polygamy idea as a screwball one, then see these Episcopalian -style priest changes as a screwball idea, too, at least to me, especially in seeing its recent results over in the Anglican side of their messing around and changing the priestly calling known since the early Church councils and times, as changed by the ultimate authority of a lay person (the king or queen of England does head their divided church since 1534 a.d.).
I go back to the scene in the gospel. Jesus noted these men in this meeting as proposing to Him a split course of action, of how He would relate to the Caesar situation of the nation. Those two proposals were bad ones, even traps set for Him. He turned down the two ways for a “third” or other choice—the Kingdom of God all-in choice. A new side of the coin.
Jesus gives a new look at the roman coin, too. Jesus shows the coin with image of caesar on it as a small thing, and contrasts it with the image of God on all things as large and universal, and meant to be the larger rendering of our life’s service. Serve God, He says.
As for how to live with caesars of the world, Jesus said our attention should first rather be of focus on fidelity to God. It all starts there. Then, in summation of Jesus in Matthew 22, He tells us to live in the world with its caesars and people in power, and do what a citizen ought to do, but then focus ourselves on faithfully serving God, as the poor-in-spirit have always done. What’s the reward in that? Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God!