Gospel & Reflection
Gospel & Reflection for the Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time.
Matthew 22:15‐21
The Pharisees went away to work out between them how to trap Jesus in what he said. And they sent their disciples to him, together with the Herodians, to say, ‘Master, we know that you are an honest man and teach the way of God in an honest way, and that you are not afraid of anyone, because a man’s rank means nothing to you. Tell us your opinion, then. Is it permissible to pay taxes to Caesar or not?’ But Jesus was aware of their malice and replied, ‘You hypocrites! Why do you set this trap for me? Let me see the money you pay the tax with.’ They handed him a denarius, and he said, ‘Whose head is this? Whose name?’ ‘Caesar’s’ they replied. He then said to them, ‘Very well, give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar – and to God what belongs to God.’
Reflection
Friends, we live in an image-obsessed society.
People feel a very real pressure to invest more into how they look rather than who they are, what they have to say, or what they can do. We are conditioned to think that if we do not look a certain way, or wear the right brand of clothing, we will not be liked or taken seriously. And so, we spend hours fixating over our pictures. We adjust the image, filtering and photoshopping it, altering our natural selves into a digital identity we hope the world will find more attractive.
This modern fascination with perfecting our appearance – smoothing away the wrinkles, eliminating blemishes, adding more hair to one’s head, hiding our imperfections – reveals a deeper, universal ache of the human condition. We are desperately searching for self-acceptance. We want to be comfortable with the person we see in the mirror. But in wanting to stamp our own identity onto the world, we continually fall into the trap of looking the way others want us to look. The exhausting search to be comfortable in our own skin continues.
But as our Gospel reminds us, ‘image’ has always been a source of human discontent – but it has also been a bridge to ultimate truth.
In the Gospel, the Pharisees and Herodians lay a clever political trap for Jesus. They ask a question designed to ensnare Him regardless of how He answers: “Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?” If He says yes, they can brand Him a traitor to His own people, a supporter of the brutal Roman occupation. If He says no, they can label Him a dangerous political rebel. But Jesus recognizes their malice and completely shifts the ground beneath their feet. he asks for a coin and then asks a disarmingly simple question: “Whose face is this…?”
That single word, ‘face’ is a dreadful translation. The original word was ‘image’ “Whose image is this”. The word ‘image’ has a razor-sharp, theological edge. It cut right through the nonsense of the trap set for Jesus that day, and it speaks directly to us now. When the scriptures were translated into Greek, the word used for ‘image’ was ‘eikōn’ and ‘eikōn’ is a word used with great care and purpose throughout the scriptures. The very first time it was used was in the Book of Genesis describing the dawn of creation where, “God created man in the image (the ‘eikōn’) of himself; in the image of God, he created him.”
Therefore, when Jesus looks at that little coin, He sees the face of Caesar embossed on it. It signified Caesar’s limited, earthly authority. Jesus grants him that minor, passing reality: “Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar.” But when He tells us to “Give to God what belongs to God,” Jesus is reminding us of a much grander truth. Humanity, you, and I, we are God’s living image in this world.
We are not stamped onto cheap metal, we are stamped on the world. We have been molded in the eternal eikōn of God, and we have been entrusted with His work. He chose to exercise His wise and loving rule through us. We are called then to reflect His wisdom in our decisions, His justice in the ways we treat others, His mercy toward the weak, and His love in every relationship. This is what we were created for. Caesar got his little bit of silver; God has given us our very life and being.
Therefore, on this World Mission Sunday, our common vocation is to be living icons, living images, living witnesses of God. Through our everyday lives, others should catch a clear glimpse of Him. The coin Jesus held belonged to Caesar because it carried his physical likeness. We belong to God because we carry His divine likeness into a world that desperately needs to be reminded of Him. Our mission is simply to let His image shine in and through us.
So, let us not be fixated or doubtful about how we look. We are beautiful as we are precisely because we are made in the image of a God who is perfect and who loves us. Let us leave the photoshopping behind. Our only focus should be that through who we are, and all that we do, the world may see the face and love of God. When they see that, they will see just how beautiful we really are.
Fr. Richard
