Tuesday in the Ninth Week of Ordinary Time, June 1, 2021

Mark 12:13-17

Some Pharisees and Herodians were sent to Jesus to ensnare him in his speech. They came and said to him, “Teacher, we know that you are a truthful man and that you are not concerned with anyone’s opinion. You do not regard a person’s status but teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not? Should we pay or should we not pay?” Knowing their hypocrisy he said to them, “Why are you testing me? Bring me a denarius to look at.” They brought one to him and he said to them, “Whose image and inscription is this?” They replied to him, “Caesar’s.” So Jesus said to them, “Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.” They were utterly amazed at him.

“Some Pharisees and Herodians were sent to Jesus.”  These men, who had no official status in Judah or Galilee but who were members of certain groups in opposition to each other, were “sent” by the high priests to trap the Lord Jesus in his speech so that he might be accused either as a lawbreaker or as someone who could not possibly be the Messiah because he paid the tax to Caesar.  It is a clever trap that must have taken time to arrange, to get just the right people together for it.

“Teacher, we know that you are a truthful man and that you are not concerned with anyone’s opinion.”  This statement is indeed true of Jesus, but it is uttered in bad faith and so it merits them nothing.  But just as this was true of Jesus Christ, so it ought to be true of his followers throughout time.  We ought to customarily ignore the opinions of others when they are offered us without our solicitation.  We should ask the opinions of a few wise and experienced persons, especially those of our Faith, but even those we must weigh carefully.  “You do not regard a person’s status but teach the way of God in accordance with the truth.”  This, again, is true of Jesus Christ, for he who is Almighty God would hardly pay heed to the infinitesimal and arbitrary degrees of difference in status between human beings.  The Lord’s followers must act in the same way, teaching the truth regardless, and not concealing some potentially unpopular portion of it.

“Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not? Should we pay or should we not pay?”  This is a political question, not a religious one.  The Herodians and Pharisees resort to this kind of question because they have seen that Jesus is a preacher, disdaining to comment on the politics of the day as though the subject were beneath him.  The Lord sees the question, though, as a religious one: We owe all that we are to God; do we owe anything at all to the political system that governs us?  With his answer, “Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God”, the Lord seems to favor political stability when it can be purchased by nothing more than money or goods, but that is all.  Political stability — as long as the government does not attempt to control the souls of the people — allows for the spread of the Gospel more expeditiously than political instability. 

“They were utterly amazed at him.”  The verb could also be translated as “flabbergasted” or “breathless with astonishment”.  The Lord’s utter refusal to be drawn into sectarian politics and to steadfastly see everything in terms of God left them standing and staring.  He simply did not speak their language.  This demonstrates their godlessness.  In fact, the Greek word usually translated as “hypocrisy” is used in the Septuagint to translate a Hebrew word that means “godlessness”.  It does not mean “hypocrisy” in the modern sense.  The Lord, then, recognized the godlessness of these Herodians and Pharisees and gave them an answer they could not comprehend because God meant nothing to them.  How vastly different the world looks to the person who is conscious of God and “meditates on his Law day and night” (Psalm 1, 2).