Homily for 29^th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2008

Today is World Mission Sunday throughout the Catholic world. We pray for missionaries but also that we become more aware of our own mission. On this day as well St Therese of Lisieux's parents Zelie and Louis Martin, are to be beatified. As you know St Therese is the patron of the mission.

Last Sundays Mass at Mapleton was the first for a couple of years. It was wonderful to see the good numbers of people who came along. Hopefully we will do it again in the not too distant future.

It has often been said that our Eucharist is incomplete while there are still people going hungry in our world! The word “hungry” implies not just hunger for physical food but also all the hungers, physical and spiritual, that exist in people's lives. This Mass today is our particular Sunday celebration the we hope nourishes and sustains us. But it also calls us to embrace the needs of the whole world as Christ did on the cross. It is but a foretaste of the heavenly banquet to which all nations are invited and where every tear will be wiped away. There is an intimate connection between every Eucharist and the hunger of the world. Jesus choice of bread and wine makes it impossible to get away from it. Our reverence for Christ in the Eucharist cannot be separated from our reverence for one another. It is the whole Body of Christ we reverence, Head and members.

The question asked by the Pharisees disciples in the Gospel today is a good one. It has been asked throughout history. Should one pay taxes to a government that is unjust, immoral, or that exploits people? That was a real question for Jews in Jesus time. But the Pharisees and Herodians were not really interested in an answer. They came to trap him on where his allegiance lay. If he said “No, you should not pay the tax”, he would be arrested by the Roman authorities. If he said “Yes, you should pay,” he would be attacked by his own people as a collaborator of the occupying power.

They already had their answer. They had a coin with an image of the emperor's head on it. They had already sold themselves out to the Romans. They were part of the problem. They, too, were oppressors of the people. Jesus, on the other hand, had no coin at all. He was living what he preached. When asked by people what they should do to enter eternal life his reply was always the same, keep the commandments and "If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me" (Matthew 19:21).

His reply to their question, as we heard, was, "Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's." Give to the emperor what carries the emperor's image and give to God what carries God's image. Who and what carries God's image? What then to we give to God? Not statues or pictures on a wall. We are to give God our lives, we who are created in the image and likeness of God. That is the tax we must pay. That was the tax Christ paid on the cross. It is easy to kid ourselves that we are loving God and all the while treating our neighbour with contempt. You cannot have one without the other.

This Gospel story is not about keeping the sacred and secular apart. That has been the agenda of much politics over the centuries that have misused this text. Rather, all that is good is God's. Our worship of God is never complete while there are unjust structures, wars and hunger. So the present economic troubles around the world remind us once again how human weakness and greed can subvert the desire for progress and development. The institutions of the economy then become instruments of oppression of the poor of the world.

May our Eucharist today embrace the needs of all the world. Like St Therese of Lisieux we too can be missionaries.

Fr Graham