HOMILY FOR 29th SUNDAY, IN ORDINARY TIME

THEME: Paying God’s tax
Fr. Uchenna Onyejiwa

Beloved friends, today’s Gospel reading gives us an insight into the Igbo proverb that says: it is only a tree that keeps standing when it hears it is about to be cut down. Trees, as we know, do not possess the locomotive ability and the instinct of self-preservation like animals, the qualities that enable them to either fly to safety or fight for survival in the face of threat or danger. To bypass such natural security, men apply treachery in their dealings with their fellow men, and that is why it is good to be wary of flattery lest you are caught off guard; for the easiest way to do a man in is to disarm him and nothing disarms a man very easily than flattery. This is exactly what the Pharisees and the Herodians displayed today, they first of all showered Jesus with praises before thrusting their dagger; their hook was well-baited before they threw it to the master. But the master was smarter, He sent it back to them in the most stupefying manner, calling them hypocrites.

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It might interest you to know that these two groups of people are the most unlikely to come together for a common purpose because they hardly agree. But because Jesus posed a common threat to their religious positions and political dominance respectively, they decided to join forces to take him out, (my enemy’s enemy is my friend). The entire gimmick was about the payment of tax, and they wanted to know if it was right or wrong to pay taxes to Caesar. This gave Jesus the wonderful opportunity to give us a very powerful lesson on our civic and spiritual responsibilities. The coin with which the taxes were paid bore the image of Caesar and as such, it belongs to him and should be returned to him. On the other hand, man bears the image of God in his soul and must strive to ensure it goes back to God. Unfortunately, this reply of Jesus has often been misinterpreted by many people who know little or nothing about the Bible as justification for a life of hypocrisy. It is absolute balderdash.

Jesus is saying that if the government should rightly make demands of taxes from its citizens for the services rendered to them (security and other basic amenities), it means that we are even more obliged to pay our taxes to God for his graciousness, benevolence and the gift of life. This means that the Pharisees, the Herodians and Caesar must pay taxes to God because their entire lives belong to God. How much does it take to maintain just one organ of the body when it begins to malfunction? But God takes care of all these organs of our bodies without charging us a dime. Honestly, we owe God a lot and none of us can pay for his life. That is why God’s tax demands that we spend our lives in service to Him and humanity, the very thing the Pharisees and the Herodians have always neglected; instead, they work for the satisfaction of their evil and selfish desires. Needless to say that our generation has become worse than the Pharisees and Herodians of Jesus’ time.

The message of the first reading is just a confirmation of the assertion that we all belong to God. Even Cyrus, a pagan king, could not resist His mission, we are all like tools in his hand. So, my dear friends, we don’t just belong to God, we have also been chosen by Him, just like the Thessalonians in today’s second reading, to enlighten the rest of the world about the need and importance of paying God’s tax of love, of mercy, of forgiveness, justice and of righteousness. No one who faithfully pays all these God’s taxes can at the same time fail to be a good and responsible citizen, and until we begin to pay these taxes as we should, peace will continue to elude our planet because the wars we are witnessing these days are purely external manifestations of our neglect of God’s taxes. May these words find a home in our hearts and drive us to work for peace in our war-stricken world. Peace be with you and happy Sunday. (First reading, Is 45:1, 4-6; second reading, 1 Thes 1:1-5; gospel, Mt 22:15-21).

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