Homily for October 19, 2008

Father Tom’s Homily
29th Sunday
October 19, 2008

In today’s gospel Jesus responds to his adversaries who were trying to entrap him with a controversial question about the payment of taxes to the Romans who were occupying their country.
Holding a Roman coin in his hands, Jesus says, “Render to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God.”

This was and continues to be a loaded statement, somewhat like another saying of Jesus, “You cannot serve two masters.” It’s about making a choice, a sometimes difficult and risky choice.
What belongs to God? The 24th psalm says, “To God belong the earth and all that it holds, the world and all who live in it.”
That doesn’t leave much for Caesar to own. But Caesar has his devious ways of dealing with it. The word “Caesar” is a way of referring to those who wield secular power, especially power by force.

In the case of the Roman Caesar in today’s gospel, Caesar simply declares himself a god.
Holding the Roman coin in his hand, Jesus asks his scheming adversaries, “Whose image and whose inscription are on this coin?” They reply, “Caesar’s.”
All Roman coins gave the image of the current emperor and his official title, “Caesar Augustus.” “Augustus” is Latin for “the August One,” which is a title for a god. As a god, Caesar lays claim to everything throughout his empire.
So one way of dealing with God’s claim to all creation is to claim equal status – to be called a god.

Another way of dealing with today’s gospel challenge is to narrow God’s realm to official church business.
In El Salvador, when Archbishop Romero spoke in opposition to the cruel treatment of the people, the generals who ran things, told him to mind his own business. And his business, they said, was only inside his church.
According to them, there is the split between the sanctuary and the street, between Sunday morning (which belongs to God) and the rest of the week (which belongs to the government, i.e. to Caesar).
It’s the arrangement that both Church and State have often felt comfortable with. Until prophets like Romero come along.

Let me mention a couple of other prophets who have understood and stood by Jesus’ very challenging statement about what belongs to God and to Caesar.
The first one that I shall mention is Gordon Zahn, an author, teacher and pacifist. During World War II, he was a conscientious objector, because he could not in conscience participate in any war. He was a Catholic

Conscientious Objectors were usually Quakers, Menonnites and the Amish. During World War II, many C.O.s were required to stay in special camps away from the rest of society. For the few Catholic C.O.s during WWII, there was Camp Warner in New Hampshire, established by the Catholic Worker Movement.
After the war Zahn found that the doors of Catholic colleges were closed to a controversial pacifist like him. After getting a PhD in sociology he taught a Loyola for a few years and then at the University of Massachusetts.

In 1963, after a thorough research of official records, he published a book German Catholics and Hitler’s Wars. It was an indictment of the German hierarchy for collaborating with the German Caesar.
While doing his research on this book, he found out about an obscure peasant who refused to serve in the German army. In 1964, Zahn published a companion piece to the book about the German Bishops. His book about this young C.O. was titled In Solitary Witness, the story of Franz Jagerstatter.

As a young man Franz had fathered an illegitimate daughter. After a few years he met Franziska. It appears that he became a religious person after he married her. They had three daughters. He served as the janitor at his parish church in a small village in Austria.
He was the only person in his village who was openly anti-Nazi. He publicly said that he would not fight in the war.

It was against the law for Austrians to refuse induction into the German army. The penalty was death.
The moment of decision came when he was called to service in 1943. Before taking his fateful stand, Franz sought the counsel of his parish priest and even the local bishop. They joined his wife, family and neighbors in trying to shake his dangerous resolution.
He said that for him it was a serious sin to serve the Nazi cause. So he was arrested and sent to prison to await his execution. While in prison he continued to hear appeals from the prison chaplain, his attorney, and even the military officers before whom he was tried, urging him to renounce his conscience and save his life.
After much soul searching, Franz felt that for him, obedience to Christ meant disobedience to the state. It was a conscious choice of Christ over Caesar.
Franz was beheaded on August 9, 1943, at the age of 36. Except for his family, he was considered to be a fool and was soon forgotten.

Zahn’s book about Jagerstatter, however, created a wide interest in his life and his courageous choice.
Last year, Pope Benedict authorized a decree declaring Franz a martyr. Next Sunday, October 26th, will be the first anniversary of his official beatification in a ceremony at St. Peter’s in Rome. The ceremony was attended by his 94 year-old widow, Franziska, and his four daughters.
Just weeks after Jagerstatter’s beatification by the pope, Gordon Zahn died.

Years earlier, Gordon Zahn’s work was finally recognized by his Church. He influenced the statements of the Catholic Church on conscientious objection, both in the peace chapter of one of the documents of Vatican II and in the 1983 pastoral letter of the U.S. bishops about War and Peace.

Blessed Franz Jagerstatter and Gordon Zahn are a couple of examples of prophetic witness to the choice set before us in today’s gospel. It is difficult to be comfortable with Jagerstatter because he illustrates a deeper meaning of Jesus’ words He is a disturbing figure because his clarity of vision challenges the sometimes too cozy relationship we may have with Caesar. He shows there is risk in following the teachings of Jesus and the martrys.