Twenty-Ninth Sunday In Ordinary Time (Year A)

WORLD MISSION SUNDAY

BE A TRUE MISSIONARY OF CHRIST

Isa 45.1, 4-6;  
I Thess 1.1-5;  
Mt 22.15-21

Today is World Mission Sunday. Today, we remember the mission mandate that Christ gave to his disciples and all Christians; to God out into the whole world and to proclaim the good news of salvation. Matthew28:19-20.

In today’s Gospel passage, the Pharisees and Herodians came up together to trap Jesus. They started with some insincere flattery, and then asked Jesus, “Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?” It is an ingenious trap because no matter how Jesus answers the question, somebody will get offended or angry, or take some action against Him.
But the Lord Himself knows they are trying to trap Him. So, He does not answer the question. Instead, He asks them to produce a coin that pays the tax, and asks them, “Whose image is this and whose inscription?” They reply, “Caesar’s.” And He replies, “Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and God what belongs to God.”

By way of trying to understand today’s gospel, we can usefully spend a couple of minutes considering a word that we use quite freely but perhaps without knowing what it means. The word is ‘piety’, Piety was the duty that one person owed to another.  Originally, the word piety referred principally to the duty owed to our rulers, and to those who govern us.  It could also refer to the duty we owe to someone who has done us a significant favor, someone who has a claim on us. So we see that in His words about rendering to Caesar, Christ was at one level simply commending piety in the sense of duty.

This principle was well understood by the Jews.  Throughout their history, they had always believed that all authority came from God, the Father of Israel. In the passage from the prophet Isaiah, which we heard in the first reading, God addresses Cyrus, a non-Jewish Babylonian king.  God says to Cyrus, “I have called you by your name and given you a title although you do not know me”.  King Cyrus, a gentile, is called the Lord’s anointed, a title previously reserved to Jewish kings.  Even a non-Jewish pagan King like Cyrus has divine approval.  Cyrus’ authority, like that of any legitimate secular ruler, came from God.  This is why the Jews would have understood Our Lord’s deeper point when He referred to the things due to Caesar and the things that are due to God.   He was reminding them that the secular state does have a claim on its citizens, but only because all authority, whether civil or religious, derives from God alone.

What then does Caesar, or any leader, have a right to expect?  Taxes certainly, and the other duties of a citizen.  And what does God have a right to expect?  What duty or piety do we owe him?  We can answer this by considering what sort of claims God has on us.  We can start by recalling that the Almighty created us out of nothing, and if he were to cease to sustain us, then we would cease to exist.  We could fall back into nothingness.  That total dependence on God as our Creator can only mean one thing; that in the end, we owe him everything.  Our duties to the state are real, though by their nature temporary.  Our duty to God is everlasting, because of who and what He is.  God’s authority is mediated to us in both the religious and the civil spheres. Civil duties are real but transient, and in that sense of relative value, negotiable.  By contrast, God’s claims are absolute and, properly speaking, sovereign.

One of the last of the Old Testament prophets, Micah, gives us a succinct answer: “What does the Lord require of you? To do justice, to show steadfast love, and to walk humbly with your God?” So much of Christ’s teaching in the gospels can be summarised under those three headings: to do justice, to show steadfast love, and to walk humbly with God.  If we do that, we shall certainly be fulfilling our duty both to God and our neighbor. We shall be pious, in the true sense of that word. We shall truly be missionaries of Christ in the world.

Fr Joseph Osho