29th SUNDAY (A) 16 October 2011

I suspect that through the centuries there has been more anxiety over the events in today’s gospel than over many aspects of Jesus’ teaching.  The point was a matter of great dispute at the time, and it has continued to be so.  We need to remember the original context: the chief priests and the Pharisees were trying to trap Jesus, by setting up a problem where whichever answer he gave he would give offense to some people.  If he said it was lawful to pay taxes to Caesar he would upset many of his own people who believed that the Roman authorities were illegal occupiers of the land.  If he said that taxes should not be paid he would find himself in conflict with the Roman authorities, and so open to charges of sedition.  As always, Jesus’ response is masterful.  He doesn’t answer the question directly, but asks the religious leaders to show him a coin.  It would seem that he didn’t have one of these coins on him – perhaps he didn’t carry them.  But the religious leaders were able to produce one!  Why were they carrying the coins that they so much despised?  Jesus has caught them out in their scheme to trap him.

But he goes on to give an answer when he sees the coin.  Whose head is on it?  Ceasar’s.  Then give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.  This is the statement that has rung down through Christian history as a way of working out the relationship between faith and civics.  This saying distinguishes Christianity from some other religions who believe that there should be no difference between the law of God and law of the state.  This is not the understanding of Christianity.  One of the very important consequences of the Christian understanding is that it promotes religious freedom.  I am sure that we are all aware that there are places in the world where people who do not belong to the state religion are denied the right to worship.  Sometimes they are denied the opportunity to work and they live in fear of persecution. 

However, we should not imagine that this has been an easy thing to work out in practice.  At times the church has struggled to get the balance right between church and state.  It is only in relatively recent times that we have appreciated the importance of religious freedom – not just the religious freedom we demand for Christians living in non-Christian countries, but also the religious freedom given to people of other religions in countries that have traditionally been majority Christian.

This is just one area where the practical consequences of Jesus’ saying are worked out.  Another area is how the church and individual believers engage with the state and their fellow citizens.  There was a long period of history where the church had sufficient power to allow it to rule the state by its influence.  In fact the bishop would crown the king.  But these days are long gone.  The modern state in countries like ours is thoroughly secular; this is the way we were set up from the beginning.  Our constitution, like that of say the United States, ensures both that people are free to worship God according to their own religious traditions, and that the state is free from religious interference.  This is the modern practical working out of Jesus’ saying in today’s gospel.

The challenge for each of us is to work out what Jesus’ saying means for us in our own situation.  How do we make it real in our lives?  How might it shape our imagination as to how we can live simultaneously as good believers and good members of our society?  Let me offer a few thoughts.  The first and most important is that precisely as believers we should be engaged in civic life.  Fidelity to the gospel is not a call to withdraw from the world.  In fact the opposite is the case.  However, fidelity to the gospel shapes the way we engage in civic life.  The command to render to God what belongs to God reminds us that God’s plan for humanity is primary.  This is what shapes our decisions, our actions, and our engagement with society.  In its broadest outlines it should also be what shapes society.  To use the language the church has developed to speak about this, we can say that this involves the search for justice and for the authentic and integral development of humanity.  This surely is the aim of any society.  Of course, within the society there will be different views as to what constitutes the good of humanity and how this can be achieved.

This leads me to another point.  Given the diversity within our society it is important that we foster genuine dialogue between people of differing views.  I believe that dialogue is presupposed in Jesus’ saying about rendering to God and to Caesar.  It will mean being ready to meet the other and to listen to them, as well as being ready to be witnesses to our own faith.

Like many sayings of Jesus, this one gives us guidance for life.  But it is up to each of us to translate this saying into concrete action in our own life and our own context.  But remember: God is with us to help us do this.

Fr. Gerard Kelly

25th SUNDAY(A) 18 September

On most occasions when people talk about the gospel we have heard today they say that they have difficulty with it. The images in the parable are things everyone easily identifies with: work, unemployment, wages, and the urgency to get a job finished on time. But it is what happens at the end, when the wages are being distributed, that upsets people. Their immediate reaction is that the situation is unjust. We shouldn’t underestimate just how uncomfortable the parable can make us.

The scene opens in the market square where the unemployed would gather each morning and hope that someone would come along and hire them for the day. If they were lucky, and the harvest was big, they might even get work for a few days or a few weeks. We can imagine that they would have gone to the vineyard happy and eager to work and earn their wage. Many of these people knew they were hardly likely to get the good jobs, so they were happy for whatever might come their way. As for the landowner, it seems that he had grapes that needed to be picked in a hurry; if they weren’t picked that day they would become too ripe to yield good quality fruit or wine. This is why he keeps returning to the market place to get more workers. Those hired late in the day were obviously the ones who were not at all keen on work, but just turned up later in the day on the off-chance that there may be some small jobs available for them.

The parable takes a twist when it comes to paying the workers. As I said, this is the part that upsets the listeners, and prompts us to ask if the landowner was being fair. He starts with the last arrivals, who have probably only worked for about an hour, and gives them what he had agreed to, namely a full day’s wage. The workers who started early in the morning grumble when they only receive the same wage – the wage, by the way, that they had agreed to. The reply of the landowner to their complaints makes the point of the parable very clear: “Are you envious because I am generous?”

Jesus is teaching those who listen to him about God. He wants to purify their image of God. The point he wants to make is that to welcome the God who comes is to open yourself for a big surprise. They are about to learn that the way they have thought about God is not necessarily the way God is. They had probably been only too aware of God’s justice, now they were about to learn of God’s mercy and generosity. The Prophet Isaiah, who we heard in the first reading, alerted us to the surprise that comes when God is encountered: “my thoughts are not your thoughts; my ways are not your ways”, he says. This is the shock that the parable delivered to those listening to Jesus, and that it still delivers to us. God is like the landowner who seeks out the poorest and the weakest and gives them an equal place in the kingdom. The parable is not about fairness; it is about mercy and generosity.

That is why there is a reminder here that people are drawn into the kingdom because of God’s graciousness. It is not just those whose lives appear to be untroubled or without failures who are drawn into the embrace of God. God is like the landowner who actually goes out to find those who no one else would welcome, and he offers them the opportunity to participate. This is important for the disciples of Jesus to hear – and he addresses the parable to them. Perhaps he wants to warn them not to become too arrogant about their position. They should remember that in the kingdom the first will be last and the last first. All disciples of Jesus need to be ready to welcome even the late-comer into the realm of God.

What does the parable say to the church today? It calls on us all to be witnesses to the mercy of God revealed in the parable. The biggest danger a society like ours faces is that it becomes complacent and thinks that all is well. We are a very prosperous people, with a high standard of living – and yes, all does seem to be well. One effect of this is that people end up putting all their energies into maintaining what they have – keeping it safe. Ultimately, this happens at the expense of other people. The result is a selfish society, where there is no room for the poor or those who are different. Often the poorest people are not even noticed or they are labelled in such a way that we become comfortable ignoring them. In today’s gospel, these are the people that God notices. So we, as the church, should remind society that the salvation of the human community is built on generosity – the generosity of God in the People of God.

In this way we give authentic witness to the Gospel Jesus inaugurated. Our God is the creator of the human community, and he sustains it through his mercy. To know God is to be in communion with God and with each other. The church thus gives witness to an image of God that is far bigger than what many in the society have of him. By our own life, perhaps more than by our words, we give witness to the generosity of God, and hence to what God has planned for the whole of humanity.

Fr. Gerard Kelly