29th Sunday OT: Is 45.1, 4-6; I Thes 1.1-5; Matt 22.15-21
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation


First, what belongs to Caesar? Nothing. Second, what belongs to God? Everything else. So, give to Caesar everything that is his. And give to God everything else.

Jesus is teaching nothing new or surprising here. Taking the gold coin he points out that the coin is stamped with the image of Caesar. The gold is molded into a likeness of the Roman emperor. It is an image and likeness that tells the world that this coin is legitmate tender, legal currency, and worth exactly the amount stamped on it. The gold, for all practical purposes, is Caesar at that moment—it represents Roman rule, Roman culture, Roman economic concerns, and Roman military strength. That coin is Rome. So give it back to Caesar in payment of your debt to Caesar. It is his coin to begin with. Jesus, you, I, we all know that though the coin is Caesar’s, Caesar is God’s. And so is everything else.

One way to tell this gospel story is to tell it as a story about how Jesus makes it possible for us to live IN the world w/o being OF the world, that is, how we Christians can do our daily business with the world but avoid becoming entangled in the sinful traps that world lays for us. The way we do this is to distinguish carefully btw our duty to Caesar and our duty to God. This is a fine way to tell this gospel story except it gives us no way to deal with the inevitable problem of conflicting goods—what do we do when our duty to the state and our duty to God conflict? Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s is simple enough if it’s perfectly clear to you what belongs to whom. If that clarity gets muddied then this way of telling this gospel story is useless.

Another way to tell this gospel is to tell it with a certain modern American flair. Jesus’ teaching makes sense if you think of what belongs to Caesar as a public duty and what belongs to God as a private duty. This is how we get the story about how it is possible for us to behave publicly in a way that contradicts our private beliefs. So, as a Catholic, I can support an overtly racist political agenda and at the same time claim that I find racism morally repugnant. You’re to think of me as a morally good person b/c, despite my actual public behavior, my private belief is a good one. For you to claim that my private beliefs should be acted out publicly is a failure on your part to understand that I must give to Caesar what is Caesar’s—public duty—and to God what is God’s—private duty. You may recognize this as a very American move to privatize religious belief in such a way that it is completely irrelevant in shaping the civic soul. Obviously, this way of telling the gospel story is also very problematic.

I started this homily by pointing out that Jesus makes an obvious claim about the gold coin: it is stamped with image and likeness of Caesar, and it is, therefore, Casear’s. But Caesar himself is made in the image and likeness of God, so he himself is God’s. What belongs to Caesar? Nothing. What belongs to God? Everything else. Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and give to God everything else.

The Pharisees and the Herodians are trying to entrap Jesus by asking him a very provocative political question. The question, at its root, is this: to whom do we owe our allegiance: our Roman occupiers or our God? They want him to say either Caesar alone or God alone. If he says Caesar alone, then they can claim he is a heretic and discredit him. If he says God alone, then they can claim he is a rebel and discredit him. The question is a trap. And Jesus answers, “knowing their malice,” and neatly springs the trap with the trappers’ heads caught inside.

So, how do we tell this gospel story so that it makes sense to us now? The two worlds story of Church and State makes no sense. The public duty/private duty story makes even less sense, so what are we left with? Jesus has taught his disciples that they cannot serve two masters. They serve God or they don’t. He’s taught them over and over again that they either line up with the blessed, the righteous or they burn with the damned. They serve the poor, the naked, the hungry, the oppressed or they serve selfishness, avarice, despair, and oppression. The prophet Isaiah says it rather nicely: “I have called you by your name…I am the LORD and there is no other, there is no god but me.”

This gospel story is about knowing who your God is. It is about who and what you are in relationship to Him. It is about how we, as bapitzed sons and daughters of the Father, walk and work and play in the world as living images and liknesses of the Father. We can only give to God what is God’s b/c there nothing that isn’t God’s in the first place. This is the answer under the answer that Jesus gives his malicious questioners. It is the answer that they will not understand b/c they cannot see and cannot hear the truth. They are consumed with political intrigue and the need to beat Jesus at an argument. It is a partisan fight. Jesus’ answer takes the fight out of the question and teaches us again a truth we have known from Genesis onward: there are no creatures w/o I AM THAT I AM. No earth, no sky, no ocean, no man or woman, nothing w/o the breath of God, the Word breathed over the void, and the telling description of our Creator, “It is very good.”

Everything we have and everything we are is owed to God. Not Caesar. In the waters of baptism, the chrism of confirmation, and the Body and Blood of the Eucharist, we are indelibly stamped with the image and likeness of Christ. We are washed, stamped, and fed with Christ. We are taken up, anointed, and healed by the Spirit. We owe to God our creation, our redemption, and our daily lives. Though we dutifully pay taxes, obey the law, participate in civil elections, we are not Caesar’s. There is a prior claim on us, a divine first dibs. Though we are citizens of a state and subject to secular power, we do not belong to any secular power. We cannot. Caesar changes names over time and takes on different forms. Whatever his name, whatever his form, his claim on us is secondary at best.

Of course, pay your taxes, obey the law, vote. But do these knowing that you belong to God alone. We owe Him our lives, our allegiance, and we owe Him first everything we could ever possibly owe Caesar.

What belongs to Caesar? Nothing. What belongs to God? Everything else. So, give to Caesar everything that is his. And give to God everything else.