“…If you wish fully to realize yourselves, beware above all of everything that isolates, that refuses to accept and that divides.  Each along your own line, let your thought and action be ‘universal’…And tomorrow, maybe, you will find that all opposition has disappeared and you can ‘love one another.’ ”

Teilhard De Chardin (unpublished 20 March 1942, Peking)[i]

On what basis do we consider truth?  This is a question that has been raised across time and history, and the speculations have been as diverse as they have been numerous.  Pilate even asked Jesus, “What is truth?” before condemning him to death.  Is truth strictly measured in terms of what can be proven or demonstrated?  Science tends to adopt this notion of truth many times.  Is truth something that comes down on the side of ‘correctness’ as opposed to falsity?  And, if that is the case, what is the criteria that one uses to determine whether something is correct or false?

Today, in our world, we find unfortunately many instances where opinion itself is taken for truth.  There is even a sliding scale of ‘truthfulness’ associated with popularity and agreement.  Truth is often measured in terms of how we think about something, i.e., what value we accord something.  This is a way of determining truth based upon a ‘status’ or even ‘class.’  The word ‘truth’ has in some sense become obsolete.  However, if we do not so quickly answer a question of whether or not something is true, but ‘sit with’ the sense of what truth ‘is,’ we may stumble upon ways of seeing and being that are new and even refreshing.

Jesus is put in a position to ‘speak to truth’ by the Pharisees and Herodians in today’s gospel (Mk 12:13-17), when they pose the question of whether or not it is ‘lawful to pay a census tax to Caesar.   The ‘set up’ of Jesus by his ensnarers is reminiscent of what we see and hear daily in our contemporary world.  The relevance is painfully stinging:

“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.

In other words, the plot is to give Jesus all his self-proclaimed ‘credentials’ and then throw something at him that he cannot possibly answer without coming down on one of two sides, with the result being that opposition will reign in either scenario.  It’s a trap.  Sound familiar?

The nondual nature of Jesus here, as throughout the Gospels, affords him the opportunity to ask his questioners to provide something in support of their question.  In this case, it is a denarius (coin) which has Caesar’s image inscribed upon it.  When given the coin, Jesus does not identify anything about it but rather asks the crowd to describe the coin…

“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.

The man whom they have acclaimed as having no regard for a person’s opinion or status is now showing to them the ‘image’ of what it is they are asking him about.  Whose image is on the coinage?  It is the image of the political order of the time.  Many times we have interpreted this scripture as the basis for the separation of church and state, but I’m convinced that Jesus is saying something that goes far beyond any separation or segregation of political and spiritual life.  It seems to hinge upon the sense of ‘belonging.’  When Jesus instructs them to repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God, are we certain that he is talking about the denarius (coin)?   What if he is talking about us?

Whether we realize it or not, we are ultimately tied to that or to Whom we belong.  This means that we allow our opinions about ourselves, others, and our world determine that which we consider to be ‘true.’  And then we tie ourselves to that ‘truth,’ so much so that it can be said that we belong to it.  So, that we pay tribute to it in the ways that we feel duty and obligation dictates.  In line with our tendencies, we also fall prey to the ‘bandwagon’ effect wherein a growing agreement about a certain opinion seems to ground the ‘truth’ more certainly, with the correlative effect being that whomever is not on the bandwagon for this truth is against us, thus making their belonging to the group a prohibition.  Those who don’t belong are not of the same status and the separation and segregation – indeed exclusion – continues to grow.  Truth becomes a matter of who is ‘in’ and who is ‘out.’

So, what is Jesus saying should be paid to God?  Precisely that which belongs to God.  And the ‘that’ is of the most unique and precious nature – it is our very self!  And what is the image that we bear as creations of God?  Nothing less than the image of the Loving Creator!  If this is the case, then what ‘part’ of our self can be left out?  What sphere of our lives would be exempt from that image of God that bears the stamp of our divine belonging – the political, the economic, the environmental, the social, the religious?  Could anything about our lives possibly escape that indestructible loving image of God in whom we are created and maintained in every breath?

Can we see truth as not any ‘thing’ at all but indeed a way of living within the loving community of precious creatures called to be fully human by virtue of the divine image which we all bear?  Then a notion of truth as correct or false or who is ‘in’ and who is ‘out’ can begin to fade.  Truth then can be seen not so much as something that we ‘own’ but something that we belong to and actively participate in.  Truth becomes a way of knowing that we belong to God and a way of directing our energy of love toward the fullness of belonging by giving ourselves to God, which, as the Body of Christ, means to give ourselves to each other.

When we start from the unique (not private) and precious gift of personhood that we have been given in God’s own image, then all else can flow, everything can be included.  Isolation can fall.  Then what gets ‘paid’ or ‘rendered,’ is done so  through the transformative fanning Fire of Christ embodied within and emanating from each one of us and all of us together – belonging to God by belonging to each other.   This is perhaps the flaming truth of newness that Peter tells us (2 Pt 3:12-15a, 17-18) of:

Beloved:  Wait for and hasten the coming of the day of God,
because of which the heavens will be dissolved in flames
and the elements melted by fire.
But according to his promise we await new heavens and a new earth

[i] Pierre Teilhard De Chardin, “Universalization and Union” in Activation of Energy, (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: 1971), p. 95.  Teilhard wrote this essay in 1943 in the face of what by all appearances seemed to be the devastation of the world in the midst of World War II, intending to give constructive re-direction to the violent energies of the planet that were erupting in destruction.

Peace,

Thomas