Sunday’s Gospel moves away from the series of parables from the last few weeks, though Jesus’ confrontation with his adversaries remains at center stage. In this week’s episode, the Pharisees have regrouped and sent their disciples and some unlikely allies, the Herodians, to trap Jesus in his speech. The Pharisees and Herodians are unlikely allies because of their opposing political views. The Herodians supported the reign of Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee, and were, consequently, loyal to Rome. The Pharisees were zealous keepers of the Law and Jewish nationalists who opposed Roman occupation and regarded the Herodians as fellow usurpers with the Romans. “It is difficult to imagine any two groups more at odds with each other: their amazing pact shows how much they hated Jesus,” says the commentary in The Navarre Bible.
So the Pharisees and Herodians unite in their common hatred of Jesus and their desire to eliminate him. They attempt to get him tangled in his words. After flattering him, they ask: “What is your opinion: Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?” The Ignatius Catholic Study Bible says, “If Jesus opposed the tax, the Herodians could charge him with treason for instigating a tax revolt against Rome. If Jesus approved of it, the Pharisees would charge him as unfaithful to Judaism and its hopes of national independence.” It’s also noteworthy that they don’t ask the other side of the question: What’s due to God? So, Jesus is going to address that.
Knowing the intention of their hearts — the malice (and cowardice) of the Pharisees — Jesus asks, “Why are you testing me, you hypocrites?” Then he evades their trap with a kind of riddle. He asks for a denarius, the coin used for paying taxes, and then asks another question: “Whose image is this and whose inscription?” The answer is simple: “Caesar’s.” So Jesus says, “Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.” Jesus evades the question. He doesn’t appeal to what is lawful or right, but simply to the existence of Caesar’s power symbolized by his image on the coin. “Whether Caesar has a right to rule is not touched by the answer” and his answer “offers no basis for a theory of politics,” the Jerome Biblical Commentary says. He leaves open the question of what belongs to God and what belongs to Caesar, appealing to the discretion of each person. The Jerome Commentary adds that we can’t forget about the validity of Jesus’ statement about not serving two masters…
It seems that Caesar’s coins could be given back in the form of tax because they were his coins, minted with his image on them. Give to Caesar what is due to him, the tax for legitimate state expenses, but give him no more than that. Why? Because God must also be given what he has a right to (which is the response to the question they didn’t ask). The coin might bear Caesar’s image, but every person bears the image and likeness of God. So, the logic follows — sure, give your coins to Caesar, but give yourselves to God. This is to say, be obedient “to all his commandments—which implies personal love and commitment” (Navarre Bible). Still, we can go a bit further. Why were the Jewish people subject to Roman occupation and the subsequent taxes anyway? Well, it’s a result of their own sins, not being faithful to God, and so on. The Ignatius Catholic Study Bible concludes its treatment by saying: “In the end, Jesus affirms the propriety of fulfilling civil duties while emphasizing our primary duty of serving God.”
Prayerful Reading
This week, I’ve been pondering the final line of Sunday’s Gospel:
WHOSEIMAGEISTHIS
As noted above, Jesus asks this question with regard to the coin, but his answer to give Caesar what belongs to Caesar and God what belongs to God, makes us look beyond the coin.
Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis comments on this, saying:
He is…commanding them to search within themselves for their own deepest identity and origin, which the foundational text of Genesis repeats twice for emphasis: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him” (Gen 1:27).1
In a real sense, Jesus asks me this question: Whose image is on you? He invites me to look deeper, to search out what’s at the core, or better, who’s at the core.
Earlier this week, I noted that the early Cistercian monks “emphasized the imago dei, the image and likeness of God that resides at the core of man and woman. For the Cistercians, the ascetical and spiritual life, indeed, the monastic way of life, aims to uncover that image of God that lies at the core yet is so often marred by sin and buried under worldly attachments.” They push on the issue: We forget who we are because we forget whose we are. We forget whose image is imprinted on our hearts. When this happens, we become unintelligible unto ourselves (cf. Gaudium et spes, §36).
So we need a purification or renewal. Some process that clears away the clutter that we might see that divine image at the core of our being once again, and that it might shine out as a source of evangelization for others. I have in mind two images that can help us wrap our minds around this. The first comes from Scripture and the second from Michelangelo.
In Scripture, we read about the refiner’s fire (see Malachi 3:2–3; Psalm 66:10; and Zech 13:9). The goldsmith or silversmith would subject the precious metal to intense heat within the crucible causing the dross or slag to rise to the top. These impurities would be skimmed away till the refiner could see his own reflection in the gold or silver. In the spiritual sense, the purifying fire of God’s love removes impurities so that his image becomes clearly visible. If only we submit to the crucible of humiliation (see Sir 2:5).
A second visual trope comes from Michelangelo. Michelangelo envisions the task of the sculptor as that of removing or uncovering the pure image hiding under layers of rock. The sculptor’s task is simply removal, or ablatio. For us, our moral decisions, ascetical practices, growth in virtue (and removal of vice), acts of surrender, and detachment from worldly things, all of these are acts of freedom — in response to grace — that free the image of God within us from bondage. Along this line, Leiva-Merikakis points out that “as we journey materially and temporally through the world and what we call ‘our life', the real journey that matters is our spirit’s interior quest for God within us…[hence] our journey to God can only advance interiorly.”2
WHOSEIMAGEISTHIS, Jesus asks. “Can you see my image?” he asks.
Only Christ Jesus, who is “the image of the invisible God” and “the first-born of all creation” (Col 1:15) in the absolute, eternal, and consubstantial sense, has the power, not only to unearth that divine image in ourselves, buried and deformed under the rubble of sin, but above all the power to restore it to its pristine newness and return it to his Father.3
Only Jesus can act as that Divine Sculptor and unearth the divine image in us, and serve as the Refiner who can restore that image by skimming the dross of our personalities. Then and only then can he return us to the Father, we who belong to him in the first place. Then he can give to God what belongs to God.
Please use the comments to share your own lectio reflections if you’d like. It’s always a blessing to experience lectio within community — even online!
Leiva-Merikakis, Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word, vol. 3, 547.
Leiva-Merikakis, Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word, vol. 3, 548.
Leiva-Merikakis, Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word, vol. 3, 547.