The Pharisees come to Jesus with a trap.
“Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?”
It sounds like one of those questions where somebody says, “I’m only asking,” while clearly not only asking.
They have worked this out carefully.
If Jesus says, “Do not pay,” they can report Him to the Romans.
If He says, “Pay,” they can tell the crowd that He is siding with the occupying power.
They are delighted with themselves.
This is going to be good.
Jesus asks for the coin used to pay the tax.
“Whose image is this, and whose inscription?”
“Caesar’s.”
And then: “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”
And suddenly their clever little trap has become a catechism lesson.
The coin has Caesar’s image on it.
Fine.
Give Caesar his coin.
He seems very attached to it.
But there is another question hanging in the air: Whose image is on you?
The answer comes from Genesis.
The human person is made in the image of God.
The coin bears Caesar’s image. You bear God’s.
Which means Caesar can have the coin. He cannot have you.
That is where this Gospel becomes much bigger than a discussion about taxation.
Jesus is not saying: “Here is religion over here, and here is the rest of life over there. Please try not to let them meet.”
Civil authority has a proper place.
Catholics should obey just laws, pay what is due, contribute to society and work for the common good.
Christianity does not require us to become strangely evasive whenever HMRC writes to us.
But Caesar has limits.
The State is not God.
No government is God.
No political party is God.
No Prime Minister, President or King is God.
Some of them may occasionally require reminding.
And so may we.
The first reading makes exactly that point.
God speaks about Cyrus, King of Persia.
Cyrus is powerful. He has armies. He has territory.
He has people who probably become very nervous when he enters the room.
And yet God says, in effect: “I am using you.”
Cyrus may think he is moving history.
God says: “No. You are moving where I permit.”
That is a useful corrective to political grandeur.
Governments come and go. Flags change. Borders move.
Prime Ministers arrive with great excitement and eventually appear in documentaries.
Presidents give speeches. Kings have jubilees. Then history moves on.
God does not.
Cyrus has authority.
Caesar has authority.
But they are both creatures.
That is why Catholics can respect government without worshipping it.
We can obey authority without pretending authority is infallible.
And sometimes a Christian has to say:
“I cannot give Caesar what belongs to God.”
If the State commands something evil, legality does not turn evil into good.
Parliament can pass a law. Parliament cannot rewrite reality.
You cannot vote truth out of existence by a comfortable majority.
Human dignity does not come from government.
Life does not become valuable because a committee says so.
Marriage does not become whatever society finds most convenient this decade.
The State has real authority.
It just does not have divine authority.
And that is because the human person carries an older inscription.
God’s.
But before we become too enthusiastic about limiting Caesar, Jesus quietly turns the whole thing back on us.
Because we rather enjoy saying: “The government cannot tell me I belong to them.” Quite right.
Then we sometimes continue: “Because I belong entirely to myself.”
And Christ says: “No. That was not the other option.”
The coin belongs to Caesar.
You belong to God.
Which means we cannot spend all morning defending ourselves from an overreaching State and then spend the afternoon behaving as if we ourselves are the Supreme Court of the universe.
“My body is mine.”
“My time is mine.”
“My money is mine.”
“My decision.”
“My truth.”
At some point God may reasonably clear His throat.
Because Christianity does not teach that Caesar owns you.
But neither does Christianity teach that you created yourself. God did.
And therefore the question becomes very concrete: What belongs to God?
My worship belongs to God. My conscience belongs to God.
My body and soul belong to God. My Sunday belongs to God.
My moral life belongs to God.
My gifts, my work, my money, my relationships, my future — all received.
None self-created.
That sounds demanding until we remember who God is.
Belonging to God is not like belonging to the tax office.
God does not look at us and say: “Excellent. Another asset.”
He created us for Himself because He is our good.
A violin does not become free by announcing that it has rejected the oppressive expectations of music.
It becomes firewood.
A compass does not become more liberated by refusing to point north.
It becomes useless.
And the human person does not become free by pretending there is no Creator.
Freedom is not the power to become whatever we invent.
Freedom is the power to become what God made us to be.
Saint Paul says to the Thessalonians that the Gospel came to them “not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit.”
That is Catholic Christianity.
Grace is not God giving us encouraging information.
Grace changes us.
It gives us power to live differently.
To live in the world without worshipping it.
To care about politics without making politics a religion.
To respect authority without assuming that whatever authority says must therefore be true.
To vote without imagining that the Kingdom of Heaven will be announced at ten o’clock on election night.
Politics matters.
But it is not salvation.
And Catholics can go wrong in both directions.
Some become so absorbed in politics that every conversation eventually becomes political.
Others go to the opposite extreme and say: “I do not bother with any of that.”
But Christians do live in society.
We should care about justice.
We should care about the poor.
We should care about law.
We should care about whether human life is protected.
We should care about whether truth is being honoured.
We should care about the common good.
We just should not confuse any earthly arrangement with the Kingdom of God.
Because no government can forgive your sins.
No political party can give you sanctifying grace.
No manifesto contains the words of eternal life.
No election result raises the dead.
Christ does.
And that is why the Mass is such a wonderful weekly correction.
For six days we live in a world shouting:
“This matters!”
“No, this matters!”
“Breaking news!”
“Urgent!”
“Historic!”
And then we come here.
And suddenly: “I believe in one God.” Ah. One. Not several.
Not God plus Caesar.
Not God plus my preferred party.
Not God plus my own opinion.
One God.
Then we hear His Word.
We offer the Sacrifice of Christ.
And in the Holy Eucharist we receive not a policy, not a programme, but Jesus Christ Himself.
Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity.
And then, wonderfully, Mass does not keep us here.
It sends us back.
Back to work. Back to family life. Back to society.
Back to paying taxes.
Unfortunately.
But now the order should be clearer.
Give Caesar what is Caesar’s.
Give your neighbour justice.
Give your work honesty.
Give your country good citizenship.
But give God what belongs to God.
And what belongs to God?
Look at the coin.
Then look in the mirror.
You do.
