29th Sunday Year A - Homily 4

Homily 4 - 2014 

The translation in today’s Lectionary is accurate: “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s”. Some translations give simply, “Render to Caesar..” or “Give to Caesar..”. In my mind there is a big difference. In Jesus’ time the Roman Empire had succeeded in making Europe and the Near East a peaceful place to live and a safe place to travel. It had extended Roman Law across its Empire. It prided itself on what it called the “Roman Peace”. Yet the relative peace and safety were secured by the power of its ruthlessly efficient military machine. Roman peace was peace through military conquest. The Empire flourished as it did because it was able to draw on the forced enslavement of many of its conquered peoples and the crippling burden of taxation it imposed on them. Roman Law extended only to Roman citizens. Just a few days after Jesus said the words we are now reflecting on, a Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate, sentenced him to death by crucifixion, knowing full well that he was completely innocent.

In saying, Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, Jesus may well have been suggesting something like, “Do not let its values become yours. Have as little to do with it as you can. Keep yourselves clean of its idolatry and its disdain of human dignity.”

Be that as it may, what is of greater interest to us is what Jesus may have intended by Give back to God what is God’s. What is God’s? Everything is! Everyone is! – our very existence, and everything else consequent on that. In saying, Give it back to God, he is indicating that everything, everyone, are already gifts given to us by God. Everything, everyone, is gift! 

What would our world be like if everyone understood that everything, everyone, were gift of God? It would powerfully affect our attitude to our world. For a start, it would suggest a profound respect for everything. Our world would no longer be approached as something to be owned and exploited at will. A humble stance of contemplation would replace that of domination. None of us could any longer be centre of the world. We could no longer see our world as something to be dealt with simply as we like, or used simply as we choose.

Our attitudes to ourselves would change. Again, we would see everything about us as gift: our creativity and initiative; our capacity to appreciate beauty, to seek truth and to understand reality; our ability to relate and to work out together what is just; above all, our ability to love and to see with compassion. All gift – not given to individuals to be horded but given to everyone to be shared

Give back to God what is God’s. Give everything, everyone, back to God. What might that giving back involve? Whatever about the practicalities, it would presuppose a conscious orientation, a deliberate choice. And would our giving back be reluctant? or free and joyful? That may depend on how we view God, on whether we see our God as rejoicing, loving, creative, surprising, gifting and gracious.

Today is Mission Sunday, the occasion for us to re-examine what we are doing to "make disciples of all the nations". We have a wonderful message to communicate, a beautiful vision to share – a message and vision that we keep discovering as we dialogue with our world. 

God’s greatest gift to our world is the Spirit. That Spirit is already present there and at work, needing only to be recognised. In the unity produced by that Spirit, together we give our world and ourselves back to God. Through, with and in Jesus we move forward into our Eucharistic hymn of thanks and praise of our extravagantly gifting God.