Readings - http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/101611.cfm
As I’ve said here many times, the Readings each Sunday during Ordinary Time give us a theme from our day-to-day lives and then invite us to see God’s Presence or God’s Good News to us in this aspect of our day-to-day existence.
And the theme this week is rather obvious – our relationship with Authority, with the “powers that be” in this world.
And yet, each time we hear these Readings we, again hear them differently, and they present to us new insights, new promises and new challenges.
Take for instance the first Reading today.
We hear from the Prophet Isaiah reference to what happened when the Persians under their King Cyrus liberated the Israelites from Babylon: The Israelites were allowed to go home. And not only that: they were allowed to go home and worship their own God again, in peace. And not even only that: When the Israelites asked the Persians for help to pay for the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem, the Persians “opened up their check-book” and asked in a sense “how much?”
The Persians were the ancestors to the Iranians of today. Today we Americans think of the Iranians generally in negative terms. We think of them as supporters of terrorists, as religious fanatics, intolerant of others. Yet, back in the day – and this any Iranian proudly would tell us this – the Persians were probably the most enlightened Empire of their time: Sure they did ask the various peoples of their empire for tribute (a sort of “subscription fee” to belong to the Empire) and “membership” wasn’t exactly voluntary. But in return for accepting being “members” of the Persian empire, they were given peace, given access to the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of all the other peoples in the Empire and they were largely left alone.
How many people saw the movie ‘300' of some years ago? That movie was about how the Greeks, led by the Spartans fought-off and eventually defeated the Persians (though perhaps not in that battle in which 300 Spartan Greeks faced and held-off for three days a Persian army of hundreds of thousands at the Pass at Thermopolae, where eventually all 300 Spartans died in defense of their homeland). We understand and sympathize with the Greeks perhaps because we have more in common with them. But at the time the Persians simply didn’t understand why the Greeks were so stubborn, why they could not see the benefit of becoming part of their huge multi-ethnic, multi-cultural empire.
And indeed, in Biblical history, the Israelites remembered the Persians as the best of the Empires that dominated them. The Egyptians had enslaved them. The Assyrians destroyed the Northern Kingdom of Israel from which the 10 tribes that were part of that Northern Kingdom never, ever returned. The Babylonians destroyed the remaining Southern Kingdom of Judah, destroyed Jerusalem and the temple. And dragged the survivors back to Babylon as slaves. It was actually the Persians who liberated the Israelites from Babylon and allowed them to come back to Jerusalem. And ironically, in the closing books of the Old Testament just before the arrival of Jesus, during the time of the Maccabees, the Israelites were fighting the Greeks (who had eventually conquered the Persian Empire) for their independence.
Again, as surprising as it may be – though not to an Iranian – the Persians were remembered by the subject peoples of their empire as being a “good” Empire.
So accepting all the complaints about Iran’s current Islamic regime, about its support of terrorism, human rights violations, still let us remember that the history that their children learn and become proud of is that of a civilization that in its day was actually very enlightened and arguably _kind_ when compared to the empires that preceeded the Persians and even succeeded them.
Very good ...
Now the Gospel Reading of today is one that probably adults here know. Jesus gives the famous response to a very dangerous and almost certainly loaded question of whether it is right to pay taxes to the Romans with “Render onto Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”
But even here, each time we come to this passage, we may hear it a little differently.
In recent years, I had been struck by the Herodians’ “laying it on thick” in their introduction to the question, for we hear them say:
"Teacher, we know that you are a truthful man
and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth.
And you are not concerned with anyone's opinion,
for you do not regard a person's status..."
Before they spring the trap:
“Tell us, then, what is your opinion:
Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?"
Lawful? Indeed. The question was set-up in a manner in which no matter what Jesus would say, he could be destroyed. If he told them not to pay the tax, they would “applaud him” and then as soon as possible denounce Jesus to the Romans as a revolutionary. On the other hand, if Jesus responded by simply saying “pay the tax,” then the Herodians and Pharisees would denounce Jesus to the people at the time as a “collaborator.” So this was a tricky and _probably_ a malicious question....
However, it did occur to me this time, that it was _possible_ that at least on the part of the Herodians (and perhaps even the Pharisees, who were “experts in the law” after all) that the question was at least in part sincere.
Why do I say this? Because similar questions have come-up in recent decades in our time. What do I mean.
Well the most famous time where the question of collaboration with a presumed enemy occurred was in France during World War II. Among the French Civil Authorities of that time, there was a real question of what to do. They all did feel themselves to be patriots. But they did lose the War and the legitimate government of France did surrender to the Germans and an accomodation was worked out between the defeated French government and the victorious Germans. What to do? Reject the “armistice” made by the French with regard to the Germans. But half the country was occupied and in both occupied and unoccupied France, life had to go on. The power had to work, the water had to flow, food and basic commerce had to continue. And it was the responsibility of the local (French) authorities for this to continue to occur. As a result complete opposition to the occupying Germans was impossible and arguably immoral.
On the other side of conflict, the Germans also faced dilemmas. Today, we roundly condemn the German SS as having been self-evidently evil. But this was not nearly as clear to young patriotic Germans in the 1930s. The SS were ‘the elite forces’ of their country. It was like joining the Green Barets or the Rangers. It was only when the war started that it became clear that the SS were expected to perform tasks hardly commensurate to their “elite” status – burning entire villages and slaughtering civilians, most prominently the Jews. And today we know that even within the SS there was resistance to such orders. It wasn’t open. Open resistance to military orders was a capital offense in every army (including the American and British armies) at the time. However, faced with immoral orders such as these, it has been documented, fairly large numbers of SS soldiers started to feign illness. “I’m sorry boss, I’m too sick to shoot people today.”
And in the aftermath of Vietnam, the U.S. bishops have also gone on record in their 1983 pastoral letter The Challenge of Peace, postulating a soldier’s right to _selective conscientious objection_ (a concept utterly unheard of in any army fighting World War II), so that a soldier or pilot today would have the right to say: “Sorry sir, I will not follow your orders to carpet bomb (or drop/launch a nuclear weapon on) the city ...”
So the question of the Herodians in particular could have been at least partly sincere, in effect asking Jesus: “What would you do in our position? The Romans are here. We can’t drive them out. So are we supposed to completely not cooperate with them to the detriment of our own people? Or do we give in, at least partially for the sake of the people?”
Jesus’ response is even more general and is at the foundation in fact of the concept of conscientious objection – that there are some things that can not be compelled, that some things truly belong to God.
So today we find ourselves challenged in several ways. First, we’re asked to look perhaps at the Persians (ancestors of today’s Iranians) and even the Herodians in the Gospel passage kinder than perhaps we would have before. And second, we’re asked perhaps to look more deeply into the questions of morality in public life and in our relationship to authority. We’re asked to relate to authority wisely. And that can be a true challenge for us all.
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