October 20, 2002 29th Sunday "A"

Is 45,1.4-6a ; 1 Th 1,1-5b ; Mat 22,15-21

H O M I L Y

When the Pharisees, the Scribes and the Priests brought Jesus to Pontius Pilate in order to have him sentenced and executed by the Roman authorities, they used the following accusation against him: "We found this man inciting our people to revolt; opposing payment of tribute to Caesar..." (Luke 23,2). In fact, the most certain and well attested fact about Jesus of Nazareth is that he was tried and executed by the Romans on a charge of high treason. It is important therefore to analyze attentively what happens in the scene reported by this morning's gospel, since it is that scene that will be used by the Jewish authorities to have Jesus executed as a political agitator.

Jesus was full of understanding of human weakness and was shockingly compassionate with all kinds of sinners. But if there was one thing he could not stand, it was hypocrisy. He could no stand the hypocrisy of the Jewish authorities, that made them oppress politically, socially and economically their own people in the name of religion. And he certainly could not stand the hypocrisy that would consist today in seeing in this Gospel the foundation for a so called distinction between politics and religion that allows us at times to keep our social and economic behavior from being influenced by the Gospel. In reality such a distinction is a purely modern, pagan, concept.

The people of Israel lived under Roman rule. And there is ample evidence in the Gospel to show that Jesus wanted Israel to be liberated from the Roman imperialism just as much as the Zealots, the Pharisees, the Essenes or anyone else wanted it. But his preoccupation reached much farther than that of any of those groups. He wanted to reach to the root cause of all oppression and domination: man's lack of compassion. If the people of Israel were to continue to lack compassion for one another, would the overthrowing of the Romans make Israel any more liberated than before? If the Jews continued to live off the worldly values of money, prestige, group solidarity and power, would the Roman oppression not be replaced by an equally loveless Jewish oppression?

Jesus was much more genuinely concerned about liberation than the Zealots were. They wanted a mere change of government (nowadays man would talk of “change of regime”) from Roman to Jewish. Jesus had no problem with that; but he wanted first of all a change that would affect every sphere of life. He saw what no one else had been able to see, that there was more oppression and economic exploitation from within Judaism than from without. The middle class Jews who were in rebellion against Rome were themselves oppressors of the poor and the uneducated. The ordinary people had to suffer far more on account of the oppression of the scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees and Zealots than on account of the Romans. The protest against Roman oppression was hypocritical. And this is the point of Jesus' famous answer to the question about the paying of taxes to Caesar.

In practice Roman rule meant Roman taxation. For the Pharisees, paying taxes to the Roman overlord meant giving to Caesar what belonged to God, namely, Israel's money and possessions. But for Jesus this was a rationalization, a hypocritical excuse for avarice. It had nothing to do with the real issue.

In their question, they ask whether it is legitimate to pay the taxes. In his response, Jesus does ot speak about paying, but rather about giving back. "Give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God". That answer reveals that Jesus saw the real motive behind all the fuss that the Jews made about the taxation issue: greed for money. Those who ask the question are themselves in possession of Roman coins. Those coins had on them Caesar's name and his image. It was not God's money but Caesar's money. If you refuse to give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar then it can only be because you are a lover of money. If you really wished to give back to God what belongs to God, you would sell all your possessions and give them to the poor, you would give up your desire for power, prestige and possessions.

The real issue was oppression itself and not the fact that a pagan Roman dared to oppress God's chosen people. The root cause of oppression was man's lack of compassion. Considered in terms of compassion the hardship of having to pay taxes to a Roman government instead of a Jewish government were minimal in comparison with the hardships suffered by the poor and the sinners at the hands of their rich and virtuous fellow contrymen. Both hardships need to be removed but Jesus was much more sensitive to the hardships of the poor and the sinners, as so many Gospel stories clearly show.

Jesus did not reproach the Pharisees for being too political; he reproached them in a sense for being "too religious", that is, for oppressing their fellow brothers and sisters in the name of a loveless understanding of religion.

And, who knows, maybe we also are too "religious" at times...