Whose Image is This?
When I was a child growing up, I remember my father would always be the one rounding up all five boys up in the morning and getting us to go to Mass on time (the key words being “on time”). I would remember that he would ask us, as we dragged our feet and complained, “How many hours are there in a week? Can you not give God just one hour every week?”
Sometimes there’s a question, today, of whether or not a parent should “force” their children to go to Mass. I have to say, I am thankful that my parents did. Although I resisted my parents at times, I always knew that being Catholic and going to Mass was just as important as having to go to school, just as important as eating dinner together as a family every day and just as important as having to visit Grandpa and Grandma on Sundays. But I also think that it was helpful that once I was an adult, I had the freedom to choose for myself whether or not to go to Mass. I needed that freewill to choose to live my faith for myself as an adult. I truly cherish those first times I went to Mass alone as an adult.
I think nowadays, some parents are more hesitant, and there’s this growing trend that parents should allow their children to be free to choose their religion. And so some people object that we should not baptize infants but rather we should wait till they’re older and choose for themselves. But I want to make this point today: We do not baptize infants because they are choosing God. No, we baptize children because it is God who has first chosen them for Himself. Jesus said, “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain…” (John 15:16).
God always initiates the relationship with us. God approached Abram and promised he would be the father of a great people. God approached Moses through a burning bush. God approaches us. We only need to be open to him. We only need to leave a little room for God to approach us, a little room for God to approach our children.
In the first reading, God anoints the Persian King Cyrus, who was a pagan and not a Jew. He chooses Cyrus to be his instrument. As it said in the reading, he “open[ed] doors before him and [left] the gates unbarred.” Cyrus made room for God to approach his people. “For the sake of Jacob, my servant, of Israel, my chosen one, I have called you by your name, giving you a title, though you knew me not… It is I who arm you, though you know me not.”
God approaches us, chooses us, calls us each by name, giving us a title and arming us with strength. Is this not what happens at every baptism? When the priest baptizes a person, he calls out their name first: Theresa, John, or Augustin… I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. They are given a new title: they are now a child of God and they are armed with the Holy Spirit. All of this is done by God, as the Lord says, “though you know me not.”
So what does all of this have to do with the gospel today? Well once again we find the Pharisees plotting and trying to trap Jesus again. This time with the help of the Herodians, who, at that time, did not really get along with the Pharisees, but both groups felt so threatened that they joined forces to take down Jesus. So they ask him “Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?” Knowing that if he said he yes, he would be supporting the power of Rome over the chosen people and lose all credibility. But if he said no, the Herodians who were in league with the Romans, could then accuse Jesus of rebellion. Then Jesus tells them to show him “the coin that pays the census tax” and he asks them, “whose image is this and whose inscription?” And they reply, “Caesar’s” and then Jesus famously says, “Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.”
I really wished they included the following verse, because it says, “When they heard this they were amazed, and leaving him they went away.” Why were they amazed? What was so amazing about his answer?
Well in those days, the Roman coin had the image of Caesar on one side and on the other side the inscription most likely said “Caesar Augustus Tiberius, son of the Divine Augustus.”
So “repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar”, namely this coin with the image of Caesar on it. Now let me ask you… what belongs to God? What has his image on it?
If I was a first century Jew, immediately I would remember Genesis 1:27. “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them…”
My brothers and sister, you and I are made in the image of God. And our inscription, our title is not “son of the Divine Augustus” but “son of the living God” or “daughter of living God.” So when Jesus says “Repay… to God what belongs to God,” he is saying give yourself to God. Give your entire self! That everything you are and everything you have belongs to God! It all belongs to him!
From the very beginning of creation and through our Baptism, God has chosen us to belong to him. And although it’s good to give God one hour a week by coming to Mass, what Jesus asks for is more, is everything. He wants our entire being. He wants our heart and soul. He wants our entire lives. The question for us today is this: Am I, who bear the image of God, able to give to God my entire self? Or is there some part of me that I still hold back? God doesn’t hold back at all, he gives it all on the cross for us, and he gives his entire self on the altar in the Eucharist for us. Can we respond in kind? “Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.”
