Matthew 22:15-21, 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time

A musical instrument such as a violin makes its unique sound from waves of air that ripple from the action of the bow on its strings and the echoes from its wooden body. Another instrument, the flute, pipes its sound by creating a different set of waves from the wind.

The sound from each, although unique, you can try to compare. And even combine to create some blend or harmony. After all, they are musical instruments, each with its own timbre or character. To some extent, they are comparable enough for us to even prefer one over the other.

Without air however, the fluid medium within which musical waves are produced, the music does not happen. The music does not reach our ears. We say the air, this all-encompassing field that surrounds us, is the very condition for the possibility of sound. You cannot compare this atmosphere with the sound of music. Your preferring one over the other does not make sense. 

Today in the Gospel, the Pharisees and the Herodians try to trap Jesus by asking him whether it is lawful to pay taxes to Herod or not. It is a trap because whatever the answer, he (Jesus) will get into trouble either with the authorities of the state or with believers who held that the emperor was not God.

Implicit in their question is a misguided comparison.  When Jesus replies with the cryptic, give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s, he is not giving us the basis for separating affairs of the state from  matters of faith.

He is in effect reminding us that God and Caesar are not comparable. They cannot be set side by side, as we sometimes do when we reduce God to a ruler among other rulers, or faith to an institution among other institutions. God and Caesar can hardly be placed on the same bench for us to decide where our loyalties should lie.

To use our analogy, God is not just another musical instrument among other instruments. God is not just some sound created by our instruments. God is music itself, the very atmosphere and condition which makes music possible. In philosophical language, God is not some being comparable to other beings; God is Being itself. In theology, God is Creator not creature, hardly a caesar competing among caesars. Of our Lord Jesus Christ, in the Creed we say, “through him all things were made.”

Comparing God and Caesar then is like comparing the atmosphere to the sound an instrument makes. Matching what belongs to Caesar with what belongs to God is pointless.

What then are we to give the One through whom and by whom everything is made? If we are given to drama, we might say everything. The prophet Isaiah suggests a more modest gift when he shares the sentiments of our God today:

“I have called you by name…though you knew me not…. It is I who arm you, though you know me not…. I am the Lord, there is no other.”

The more modest gift we can then give to God is to care just enough to know the One through whom and by whom we are brought to life. It is the gift of simple remembrance and acknowledgment, our gratitude, our love. Whether we know it or not, it is God who gives us life, not Caesar. We can care again to know (as once we did when we were little) that it is God through whom, in whom, and by whom we live. There is no other.

One last. Just because God and Caesar are not comparable does not mean that faith should remain a private and personal matter, confined to the altar. Neither should it mean that public affairs have nothing to do with our faith and its ethical imperatives.

When we render unto God what is God’s, we do not renounce our citizenship. Our faith in God whose face we discern in the least of our brothers and sisters is motive enough for us to engage ourselves in the realm of Caesar. Our societal involvement, our social love is a vital expression of rendering unto God what is God’s.

With our instruments, we can make all the wonderful music in the world. We can even be convinced that it is through our agency, our action alone that music happens. Today we can care again to know that we are mere instruments and not the music. God is. There is no other. God is life. And life is God’s.

Render then unto God what is God’s.

*image from the Internet