Reflection for 10/22/17 (Sunday)

Over the past few weeks, our Lord has been rebuking the Pharisees by telling parables about them.  They are the ungrateful towns people who refused to go to the king’s wedding feast, they are the tenant farmers who put the servants and the son to death.  So it is no wonder that the Pharisees have decided to try to trap Jesus with his own words.  They ask him a question that seemingly has no good answer, “Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar?”  If Jesus says that it is not lawful, then they will immediately turn him over to the Roman government for being a rebel, and the Romans will surely throw him into prison.  However, if Jesus says that it is lawful, then he will lose credibility in the sight of many of his followers.  The Jews thought that the Romans had no legitimate authority over them, and the zealots wanted to overthrow the government, not cooperate with it.  So what was Jesus to to?

 

Our Lord, being more shrewd than they thought, answered by examining the coin itself.  “Whose image and whose inscription is this?”  “Caesar’s.”  “Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.”  Jesus down not touch on whether or not it is lawful, but in a very subtle way he does justify paying the census tax while also giving God the higher authority.  If we recall in Genesis, “God made man in his image and likeness.”  The word, in Greek, used in the Gospel of Matthew and the Greek translation of the old Testament is the same, “eikon.”  The coin may be stamped with the image of the political leader of the day, but our souls are stamped with the very image of God.

 

We belong to the Creator of the Universe, and we must recognize this fact every day.  Sometimes, people fall into the thought that “I am not worth much.  I have sinned and therefore God cannot love me.  I am worthless.”  I would beg to differ.  We are worth very much in the sight of the Lord.  We are his own possession.  And we are told by St. Paul that God took it a step further.  Even through we belong to him from the foundation of the world, he became man and purchased us by his blood.  We are worth much in the sight of God because he shed his blood to pay the ransom for us.

 

On the flip side, when we sin, we are stealing from God, namely we are stealing our souls.  We must never forget who we are and whose we are.  We are sons and daughters of God and we belong to God.  Let us never become content with our sinfulness, for the very blood of Christ was shed that we might be set free from sin and death.  It is not always easy to be a Christian.  Being a Christian means that we must turn away from things that we might enjoy doing—being a Christian requires discipline, and sacrifice, and self-control.  Bring a Christian is not for the weak or the weary, rather being a Christian is for the courageous.  G. K. Chesterton once wrote, “Courage is almost a contradiction in terms.  It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die.”  We must be ready to shed our blood rather than sin against the one who loves us and gave his very life for us.  Let us never forget who we are and whose we are—God’s very own.