If our faith tradition asserts that “everything belongs to God”—and that we bear the likeness and image of God, then isn’t Caesar’s realm—the government—included in all that which belongs to God? Caesar’s realm, our human institution of government, is a subset of that which belongs to God.
If everything belongs to God, if our whole lives belong to God, what does it mean, then, to give to God what is God’s and also to render to Caesar what is Caesar’s?
I think we begin by acknowledging our lives are messy and complex. Just as the Pharisees were caught carrying a coin with a blasphemous image on it, a coin they would use to pay their taxes–just being citizens makes us complicit in society’s blasphemies. For example, one can hardly buy a pair of shoes and not have exploited someone’s labor in a far off country. We thrill to the latest techno gadget and responsibly try to recycle the old one, which again, is inevitably shipped somewhere where the very poor earn a living taking it apart, only to seriously jeopardize their health with the toxicity of the waste they handle or throw into the nearby river or dump. We factory farm the food we eat subjecting animals to incredible cruelty, a practice outlawed in other nations.
The point is this: our righteousness is not pure. We all have our moral blind spots. But we also have our passions and our abilities; our better angels who drive us to care about particular causes and respond to particular needs. Last night a number of our members and friends were at the Loaves and Fishes dinner in Watsonville, helping raise money for the food pantry and lunchtime feeding program that Loaves and Fishes offers. Others were at the Siena House fundraiser, helping raise funds for a home that shelters single women who are pregnant and lacking a support system. It takes all of us—and our individual passions and commitments to make a difference in the world—to bring the Kingdom of God just a little bit closer to being realized.
