A question people ask quite frequently is about the relevance of their faith and religious practice to the rest of their lives. If we look around we can probably see a range of responses: from those who make their faith commitment central to their lives, to those who only think about it from time to time, and generally then only when things are difficult. Some people are looking for an excuse not to make a connection between faith and life – as if too strong a connection will somehow tie them down or restrict their freedom. Nevertheless, I believe it is important to acknowledge the legitimacy of questions about the relationship between faith and life. Only by asking them and facing up to the challenges they pose can be live authentic lives.Something of this is going on in the gospel today, even if it has a nasty streak to it. Those who are asking Jesus questions are really trying to trap him and catch him out. We all know the style of question: no matter what answer you give you upset people and get them offside. The issue dealt with today was very important for the people who would have been following Jesus. These were the people who were suffering badly under the heavy and unjust taxes imposed by the Romans. So, if Jesus said that they should pay the taxes most of them would probably have walked away, seeing him as no different to their foreign masters and a betrayer of their religious traditions. On the other hand, if he told them not to pay the taxes then he would have left himself open to being accused by the authorities of being disloyal and subversive, and would have found himself liable to punishment, even death.
Jesus recognises the trap and refuses to be drawn into it. Two things are worth noting. The first is that he asks his questioners for a coin. Quickly and innocently they reach into their pockets and pull out one of the despised Roman coins. He has caught them out! They carry the coins with them, which suggests that they support what is on them. Jesus, on the other hand, doesn’t have one of these coins. They are the ones who are no doubt now red-faced! The second thing to note is that Jesus only answers their question indirectly. By telling them to render to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God he hasn’t said that they either must or must not pay the tax. They have to work out what belongs to God and what belongs to Caesar.
We can draw lessons for ourselves from these two points. The first lesson is to think seriously about the way we might pose our questions about the relationship between our faith and religious practice and the way we live our lives as citizens. It is not enough simply to ask the question with our minds already made up as to what the answer should be. There are some ways we can ask questions about our faith that are a genuine search for knowledge and truth. These are important and we should do this. But there are other ways where the starting point is that there must be something a bit odd about this ‘religion thing’, and about people who have faith. I think this would be an unfortunate starting point because it cuts off the possibility of getting to the truth, or even of finding ways to live an authentic life.
The second lesson we can draw from Jesus’ response is really about the way we use his teaching and the Bible in helping us to determine authentic ways to live the Christian life in our type of society. One thing Jesus did was to throw the question back to those who asked him. He wanted them to think through the issues in relation to the situation and to arrive at their own conclusion. This is important because it reminds us that the practical decisions we make about our lives all require good judgement on our part. We should not expect the Bible or Jesus to provide answers to every question we have about our practical situation. The world of that time was very different to our own. Rather, Jesus gives us fundamental principles that we can apply to our own practical situations. It is up to us to weigh up the facts, to understand the context we find ourselves in, and to bring the gospel to bear on these. This is what is called practical judgement, and it presupposes that we are developing a moral consciousness.
As young people develop their moral awareness there are two extremes to avoid. One is when we wrap ourselves up in religion, refuse to engage with the world, and think that the solutions to the challenges of modern living are simply a matter of following Bible or Church teaching. This amounts to ignoring the world we live in when making moral decisions. The other extreme is when we engage in the world without any reference to God, the Word of God or the Church. This results in poorly grounded moral choices. Our Christian faith really demands we be engaged in the communities where we live, in our workplaces and our places of recreation. These are the places where we are faced with decisions about very practical matters of life. This is where we work out the relationship between Caesar and God.
Fr Gerard Kelly
