What Belongs to God

Have you ever heard the phrase “between a rock and a hard place”? It comes from The Odyssey, the epic of ancient Greece. In the story, the Greek hero Odysseus is trying to sail back to his homeland when his ship must pass between two terrible dangers: on the one side, a dangerous cliff, on which dwells the man-eating monster Scylla, and on the other side, a treacherous whirlpool, known as Charybdis. To be between a rock and a hard place is to be caught between two undesirable outcomes, or to be forced to choose between them.

In the Gospel today, we might say that Jesus is between a rock and a hard place. The Pharisees are plotting to trap him and they decide to do so around the question of political authority: they ask Jesus how Jews should relate to their Roman occupiers. It’s a question without an easy answer; in fact, it’s designed so that Jesus can only give an answer that will get him into trouble. To deny Caesar’s power would be to risk putting himself in danger with the Roman political authorities, perhaps even to the point of being arrested for sedition. On the other hand, to acknowledge Caesar’s authority too blithely would be to risk betraying his identity as the Jewish Messiah and the religious mission his Father had given to him.

Of course, Jesus escapes their trap, and in doing so he gives us an important teaching: “Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God.” Caesar, or any political authority, or politics in general, can make a lot of demands on us: they ask for our involvement, our decision making, and our allegiance. As Catholics, we have a responsibility to participate in political decisions, but never to the point of forgetting that we have a higher allegiance to God.

The Tribute Money (c. 1612) by Peter Paul Rubens

As you know, our city, state, and national elections are just a couple of weeks away. In fact, early voting begins tomorrow. As a pastor, to speak about political matters, especially in advance of an election, is to be caught between something of a rock and a hard place. If I do so too directly, or not in the right way, I risk running afoul of the law and perhaps more importantly overstepping the proper role I have to guide and teach you, but not to tell you what to do. However, to not speak at all about the elections would be to shirk the responsibility I have as your pastor to address the moral issues that impact our lives and to form you about how we should view them.

And so, while it may be uncomfortable to do so, and while I may risk saying something that upsets you or is misunderstood, I think this weekend’s Gospel presents just too plain of an opportunity to speak on some of what our political responsibilities are as Catholics. I’d like to do so in the lens of what I mentioned above: yes, political matters and the issues related to our citizenship have certain claims on us, but God has a higher claim. At times, we can forget that; in fact, I think today especially political matters often present a particular threat to understanding rightly who we are in the eyes of God and what we owe to him.

I realize most of you have already decided how you will vote, at least in some of the bigger races and issues; maybe some of you have already done so by absentee balloting. If that’s the case, or if you think it’s unlikely my words will be helpful, then think of these comments as not so much about this election, but rather about choices we make in general, whether in politics or in any other moral arena.

So how should we look at this election, and more broadly at political matters in general? Always in a way that ensures we don’t end up giving to Caesar something that is due to God. I think there are three ways – or, at least three – that our involvement in political matters can sometimes threaten what we owe to God.

1.    The first is when we fail to view political issues as moral issues, or don’t think about our political choices as also moral choices. To understand how we should vote, it’s not enough to study the different issues at stake, or the different political platforms of the candidates. We also need to form ourselves by understanding what our Church teaches. In their document Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, the bishops of the United States have outlined the values that should be foremost in our mind when we are considering our political choices. Those values are: the defense of human life, especially against the evils of abortion and euthanasia, which the bishops call “the preeminent threats to human life and dignity” in our day, but also genocide, torture, human cloning, and more; the promotion of peace and avoidance of war; the support of marriage and family life, including providing all workers with a just wage; freedom of religion and freedom of conscience; preferential concern for the poor and a commitment to economic justice; access to affordable health care for all persons; the rights of migrants; support for education, especially for Catholic parents to form their children according to their faith; promoting justice and non-violence, and combatting unjust discrimination; and global solidarity and care for the earth, as our common home. If you’ve never read the document, I encourage you to look it up and to consider how your own political views align with the priorities outlined by our bishops.

To weigh all of those different factors appropriately in order to actually make a decision in regard to a particular issue or candidate – that’s an individual responsibility left up to each of us, to our own prudential judgment and also to our conscience. By conscience, I don’t just mean our firmly held opinion or belief; rather, our conscience is our understanding of the teachings of our Church applied to the present reality and the issue at hand, especially about how we are to act. To rely upon our conscience also means we have to form our conscience, and to form it primarily by what our Church teaches, and not the voices of political pundits and secular commentators.

2.    A second way that our political involvement can obscure what we owe to God is when we feel forced into choosing something, or someone, that we think is wrong. Political decision making is often challenging, both for elected officials and for voters. We have to take our choices seriously, and wrestle with the issues we’re asked to vote upon, or the candidates we’re asked to choose. It’s not a morally acceptable option to not care, to be apathetic. But at the same time, sometimes it’s perfectly legitimate to make the choice of refusing to choose among bad options, especially after serious deliberation. Don’t get me wrong –sometimes we use the language of “Well, it’s just a matter of choosing the lesser of two evils.” If by that we mean that among these candidates or ballot issues or amendments, neither option is ideal, but that one is still good in itself, and better than the other, then that’s fine. But, if our conscience has determined that neither option is good or morally acceptable – indeed that both or all options are bad, evil – then we shouldn’t make a choice between them. It’s something of an unusual circumstance, but in such cases, to refuse to choose is actually the morally correct choice. Why? Because whether it’s in politics or any other area of our moral lives, a good outcome does not justify an evil means. In other words, we can never do evil for the sake of good, and that includes choosing a lesser evil – if it really is an evil –over a greater one.

3.    A third and final way that we can give to Caesar what really belongs to God is when we become so hyper-focused on politics and political matters that it dominates our worldview. We have created a religion out of politics in this country, and not only has it obscured our devotion to God, it’s tearing apart our social fabric. We need to get back to doing politics well, and that means putting it in its proper place: as important, with real consequences that we must wrestle with, but not as something that is going to define the fate of the world. Only God can do that, and he has done so, in the person of his Son, Jesus Christ. He alone is the Savior of the world, and if we don’t really believe that – and live out that belief daily – then we’re going to go astray in how we look at politics, because we’re going to be looking there for our salvation and our saviors. 

Friends, in a few weeks, we are going to celebrate the last Sunday of Ordinary Time, the Feast of Christ the King. In that feast we state our belief in Jesus as not just the King of heaven, but the King of earth as well. Indeed, we say that he is the King of the universe, and of all things within it, which includes our hearts, our minds, and our souls. Perhaps what we should really ask ourselves this election is not just how are we going to vote, but what do we believe, and who do we believe in. Our political choices are important, and we should take them seriously, but never so much so that they distract us from or substitute for belief in the One who rules over all.

May this Eucharist give us strength to focus ourselves in prayer and praise of God above all else, so that with his grace he might assist us to choose well in the affairs of this world. May God bless us all, and may he bless our country.