29th
Sunday OT
Fr.
Philip Neri Powell, OP
Our
Lady of the Rosary, NOLA
The
Pharisees show Jesus a Roman coin and ask whether or not they should
pay Caesar’s taxes. Matthew tells us that “knowing their malice,
Jesus said, ‘Why are you testing me, you hypocrites?... ‘Whose
image is this and whose inscription?’ They replied, ‘Caesar's.’
At that he said to them, ‘Then repay to Caesar what belongs to
Caesar and to God what belongs to God.’" Much has been made of
this infamous distinction between what is God’s and what is
Caesar’s. And even more could be made of it during this tense
political season. Ultimately, the distinction is meaningless because
everything belongs to God, including Caesar himself. I won't belabor
the point. The more interesting moment in this story is the moment
Jesus calls the Pharisees out for questioning him, or more precisely,
for “testing” him. According to Jesus, the Pharisees test him out
of a malicious hypocrisy; that is, a hateful insincerity, a spiteful
duplicity. Their apparently sincere question about paying taxes is
really a contrived event to catch him up, a staged incident,
choreographed and scripted to force Jesus into either treason against
Rome or blasphemy against God. Jesus skillfully dodges the trap with
an ultimately meaningless answer, but he manages to teach them and us
a truth nonetheless: “I am not who you want me to be. . .”
Let’s
get down to the question: who do you want Jesus to be? Father,
Mother, Santa Claus, mischievous elf, mythical Ego, Jungian
archetype, Ground of Being? Spiritual direction often starts with a
question about one’s image of God. Our prayer life tells us volumes
about how we understand who Jesus is for us. In desperate times, an
image of God emerges. Suffering carves out of us a hard figure of
God. When we reach beyond ourselves, beyond the possibilities of easy
helps and cheap fixes, we usually reach out toward heaven and call on
our God for His care, His rescue. And this is exactly what we ought
to do. There is nothing so humbling and spiritually purifying as a
moment of desperation, a flash of weakness, or damaging stupidity
that drives us to God’s comfort. But we must be careful: “Why are
you testing me, you hypocrites?” Our God is not our student, every
ready to be questioned, every ready to be tested.
Obviously,
like most politicians probing an opponents weaknesses, the Pharisees
are trying to trip Jesus up by asking him the “are you still
beating your wife?” sort of question. No answer is good, any answer
will be vacuous in the end. The point of the exchange is not to find
the truth but to expose a hated enemy as worthy of one’s hatred.
Jesus calls this attempt malicious and hypocritical. Malicious
because their intent is evil and hypocritical because they know that
they are not asking a real question but setting a trap. Their
insincerity is poisonous. But only to themselves. Who do the
Pharisees need Jesus to be? Or perhaps the best question: who do they
hope he turns out to be? Given their institutional investments in
riches and political commitments to power, no doubt the Pharisees
hope he turns out to be little more than some redneck preacher from
the podunk town of Nazareth. Most of those guys didn't live long
enough to know the truth of Christ's mission and ministry.
We've
heard the truth, so let's test ourselves: given your institutional
investments in riches and political commitments to power, who do you
hope Jesus turns out to be? Jesus says to give to Caesar what is his
and give to God what belongs to Him. Of course, this means that we
give all things to God in the end b/c all that belongs to Caesar
really belongs to God. For a while, while we walk around on the dirt,
we give Caesar his due—his taxes, our obedience to his laws within
our duties to God, our civic participation. But in giving Caesar his
due now our hearts must always be inclined to a longing and a goal
well beyond Caesar’s temporary crown; focused fiercely, permanently
on the Crown of Heaven. The Pharisees hope to use this apparently
split-allegiance to force Jesus into a political-religious quagmire.
They need for Jesus to be a madman or a traitor or a blasphemer, so
they test him in their malicious hypocrisy, rigging the test to give
them the result they hope for; and in getting the hoped-for answer,
relieving them of any duty to preach his message, teach his word, or
offer him their obedience as the Messiah promised by the prophets.
Rather
than giving them what they hope for, Jesus says, in essence, “I am
not who you want me to be.” Jesus is not a traitor or a blasphemer.
Nor is he a revolutionary or an institutional cog. He is not a
preacher of flaccid tolerance nor a fire-breathing demagogue. He is
neither a temple priest nor an institutional preacher. He is neither
a Democrat nor a Republican. He is the Prince of Peace who comes with
a death-dealing sword to deal death to our sin. He is the Lamb of God
who comes with a scourge to beat the unfaithful for their hypocrisy
and out of his temple. He is the Final Judge who died for us, making
us clean before the Father’s throne. He is the Lion of David’s
House who gently shepherds, protects, and provides. He tells Isaiah:
“I am the LORD and there is no other, there is no God besides me.
It is I who arm you, though you know me not, so that toward the
rising and the setting of the sun people may know that there is none
besides me. I am the LORD, there is no other.”
And
no other is the LORD! Not the state, not a political party, not an
institution, not a person or an idea or a theory. Nothing made
can save us. Nothing passing can give us eternal life. If it can die,
it cannot give eternal life. If it can change, it cannot impart
perfection. If it can fail, it cannot gift us with goodness. That we
want a man, a party, a system, or an idea to save us, to give us
life, to grant us goodness is a sin as old as Eve’s yes to the
serpent’s gift. Like the maliciously hypocritical Pharisees, don’t
we often find ourselves testing Jesus to see who he will be for us
today? Just poking him a bit to see if he will budge on a favorite
issue or yield a bit on a favorite sin? We've seen and heard quite a
lot of this week coming out of the Synod on the Family in Rome. One
cardinal wanted to test the waters and published a report on the
bishops' discussions to that point. The report contained language
about divorced and remarried Catholics, co-habitating couples, and
same-sex unions that directly contradicts the Church's ancient
biblical understanding of marriage. Apparently, the good cardinal
looks at Jesus and sees a therapist, or perhaps a man who really
didn't mean it when he quoted Genesis, “. . .a
man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and
the two will become one flesh.” Fortunately, a majority of the
bishops called the cardinal to task and the report was rewritten to
reflect the truth of the faith. The temptation to remake our Lord in
our own image and likeness is overwhelming; however, we do well not to worry him with our tests. He is the Lord, not our student.
Jesus
fails the Pharisees' test. Turns out that he is not who they hope he
is. He is not the traitor, the blasphemer, the arch-heretic they had
hoped for. Neither is he a cuddly affirming therapist, nor the
fiery-eyed God of Righteous Vengeance Come to Smite Our Enemies, nor
the sagacious prophet with a stoical temper. He is the Judge, the
Lamb, the Prince, the Child, the King, the Seed, the Vine, the Word,
the Spirit. He is the LORD. And there is no other and no other is the
LORD.
____________________________
No comments:
Post a Comment