Pip: There's a sermon on Candle in a Cave this week that opens with Elizabeth Gilbert, winds through Oliver Cromwell melting down saints for loose change, and lands on Thomas Merton standing on a Louisville street corner having a revelation. As cold opens go, the sermon itself has a pretty good one.
Mara: Fr. John's writing this week centers on what sainthood actually means — who the saints were as people, and what that humanness is supposed to tell us about ourselves. Let's start with that question of saints, pedestals, and what we're missing when we put people too high up on them.
Saints, Sinners, and the Pedestals We Build
Pip: The sermon sets up a tension that's easy to miss: we honor the saints, but the way we honor them might be the thing that makes them useless to us. If they're flawless icons, they can't actually show us anything about how to live.
Mara: The post draws on Thomas Merton to make this concrete. After a moment of unexpected clarity walking through Louisville in 1958, Merton wrote in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander: "I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun."
Pip: So the upshot is: the monk who spent years treating religious life as separate from ordinary humanity looked at strangers on a street corner and saw something luminous in them. That's not a small pivot.
Mara: And the sermon grounds that in the saints' own testimony. St. Francis de Sales is remembered for gentleness, but had a wicked temper. St. Thérèse of Lisieux admits to getting irritated by a fellow sister's strange noises. St. Teresa of Avila writes in her autobiography's preface, "My life has been so wretched that I have not found a saint among those who were converted to God in whom I can find comfort."
Pip: Saints, essentially, filing complaints about their own canonization.
Mara: The point the sermon makes is that their humanness is the encouraging part — not the obstacle. If holiness was attainable for people with real flaws and real struggles, it remains attainable. The sermon puts it directly: "Their humanness tells us that such a life, such a soul, such faith — even in all its brokenness and sinfulness — is attainable, if we are willing, through God's grace, to reach for it."
Mara: And then the practical frame: if you want to be a good writer, you write. If you want to be good at sports, you do the work. Holiness, the sermon argues, runs on the same logic — practice, consistency, cooperation with grace.
Pip: Merton never made official sainthood — the sermon is candid about that, listing his beer, his girlfriend, his talent for irritating people. But he's described as one of the most influential religious figures of the twentieth century. The argument is that the category matters less than the direction of travel.
Mara: Which circles back to the 1 John reading underneath the whole sermon: "We are God's children now." Not eventually. The grace is available in the present tense, and the invitation is to live as though that's actually true.
Pip: The Cromwell anecdote is worth a mention — when England faced a silver shortage, his committee found silver only in cathedral statues of saints. Cromwell's solution: melt them down and put them into circulation. The sermon uses it to bracket both extremes, abolishing the saints entirely on one end, uncritical veneration on the other.
Mara: And the closing image pulls everything together — if we could see one another the way Merton saw those strangers in Louisville, we might find something the sermon calls wonderful. "We are all walking around shining like the sun."
Pip: The through-line this week is a pretty old question dressed in new examples — what do we actually see when we look at each other?
Mara: Merton's answer was that the seeing itself changes when you stop insisting on separateness. Worth sitting with until next time.
In her memoir, Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert writes, “Saint Anthony said, in his solitude, he sometimes encountered devils who looked like angels, and other times he found angels who looked like devils. When asked how he could tell the difference, the saint said that you can only tell which is which by the way you feel after the creature has left your company.”
I believe that is true of angels and demons, and of people, too. Some people resemble angels but turn out to be quite nasty, and others look like demons but are, in fact, the kindest people.
The Church has always held certain individuals in high esteem. We call them Saints, with a capital “S.” Saint Matthew, Saint Peter, Saint Mary Magdalene, and so forth. However, there have been times when sects within the Church turned against this practice. For example, when Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans gained control of Parliament in England, they abolished everything—Easter, Christmas, Pentecost, and the veneration of saints—which put an end to the holy-day we celebrate today. How far did they take it?
There’s a story, perhaps somewhat embellished, about Cromwell when he was Protector of England: the British Empire faced a currency shortage. Representatives searched the nation carefully, hoping to find silver to meet the emergency. After one month, the committee returned with its report. “We have searched the Empire in vain for silver. To our dismay, we found none anywhere except in the cathedrals, where the statues of the saints are made of choice silver.”
To this, Oliver Cromwell eloquently replied, “Let’s melt down the saints and put them into circulation.”
I would say they went quite a bit too far, but I also know we can go too far in the other direction—even while they’re still alive.
Take, for example, St. Francis of Assisi. It is reported that crowds followed him, “from place to place hanging on his lips; church bells rang at his approach; processions of clergy and people advanced to meet him with music and singing; they brought the sick to him to bless and heal, and kissed the very ground on which he trod, and even sought to cut away pieces of his tunic.” (Source) Francis did all he could to stop the practice, yet it continued.
Extremes in both directions, but there is a more subtle mistake we can make, which is placing them on such a high pedestal that we come to believe they were without fault. Put another way, we forget they were human.
One of my favorites these days—St. Francis de Sales. He is remembered as the gentle, gracious, patient bishop, but he had a wicked temper. St. Thérèse of Lisieux, “The Little Flower,” is so highly revered for her faith and piety, yet she says she would get distracted and irritated by the sister next to her who made weird noises. We can place them on those high pedestals, but they are quick to tell us they don’t belong there. St. Teresa of Avila writes in the preface to her autobiography, “My life has been so wretched that I have not found a saint among those who were converted to God in whom I can find comfort.”
They become so big and holy in our eyes that we come to believe we could never attain such status, such holiness. However, seeing and understanding their humanness should inspire us. Their humanness tells us that such a life, such a soul, such faith—even in all its brokenness and sinfulness—is attainable, if we are willing, through God’s grace, to reach for it.
Hear again what St. John said to us this morning, “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are… Beloved, we are God’s children now.”
A few weeks ago we said, “The Christian life is not about making ourselves into someone God might someday love. It is about allowing God’s love to reveal more fully the image He placed within us from the beginning.” How do we accomplish this? By living into the fact that “we are God’s children… now.” Not some day in the future when we’re dead and gone, but now. We are God’s children now, which means God’s grace is available to us now, in all its fullness, if we will cooperate with that grace and allow it to transform us. How does that work?
Think of something you enjoy doing. It might even be something you’re good at, and you say, “I want to be even better.” What do you do? If you want to be a good writer, you write. If you want to be a good artist, you paint, draw, etc. If you want to be good at sports, you do the work. If you want to be holy and righteous, you practice holiness and righteousness. As we saw, those we consider the greatest Saints had to practice their faith. And if you will work with the same intensity and consistency in holiness and righteousness as you do in your art, sports, writing, etc., you will make progress. How do I know that?
The Trappist monk Thomas Merton will likely never be a “S” saint. He had a few issues along the way: a girlfriend, an acquired taste for beer, not necessarily always fond of the other monks, a certain disregard for the rules, and a way of getting under many people’s skin. Even so, he is perhaps one of the most influential religious figures of the 20th century.
Early in his life as a monk, he began to see the life of the religious as separate from the rest of humanity. Was it spiritual pride or a lack of understanding of our common life? I don’t know, but I do know that on March 18, 1958, while walking around Louisville, Kentucky, something happened that changed his perspective.
The following day, the Feast of St. Joseph, he recorded the experience in his journal. At the “corner of 4th and Walnut, I suddenly realized that I loved all the people and that none of them were, or could be, totally alien to me. As if waking from a dream–the dream of separateness, of the ‘special’ vocation to be different. My vocation does not really make me different from the rest of men or put me in a special category except artificially, juridically. I am still a member of the human race–and what more glorious destiny is there for man, since the Word was made flesh and became, too, a member of the Human Race! Thank God! Thank God! I am only another member of the human race, like all the rest of them. I have the immense joy of being a man! As if the sorrows of our condition could really matter, once we begin to realize who and what we are–as if we could ever begin to realize it on earth.”
Years later, when he reflected on that day, he expanded on the experience. In Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, he writes, “I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.”
If you will work with the same intensity and consistency in holiness and righteousness as you do in your art, sports, writing, etc., you will make progress. I know this because a) you are God’s children now, and b) you are walking around shining like the sun. You have been given the grace to continue becoming the saint God is calling you to be.
Perhaps we ought to look at ourselves and one another a little differently.
We know our shortcomings. We know our failures. We know the parts of ourselves that aren’t particularly saintly.
But God knows those things, too. And still, St. John tells us we are God’s children now.
We are not yet what we shall become. There is still work to be done, sins to overcome, virtues to cultivate, and grace to receive.
But perhaps if we could see one another and ourselves as Merton saw those people on a Louisville street corner, we would discover something wonderful.
We are all walking around shining like the sun.
Let us pray: Litany of the Saints
Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy on us.
Christ hear us, Christ graciously hear us.
God the Father, have mercy on us.
God the Son, have mercy on us.
God the Holy Spirit, have mercy on us.
Holy Trinity, have mercy on us.
Holy Mary, pray for us. St. Michael, pray for us. St. Gabriel, pray for us. St. Raphael, pray for us. All you holy angels and archangels, pray for us.
St. John the Baptist, pray for us. St. Joseph, pray for us. All you holy Patriarchs and prophets, pray for us.
St. Peter, pray for us. St. Paul, pray for us. St. Andrew, pray for us. St. James, pray for us. St. John, pray for us. St. Mary Magdalen, pray for us. All you holy apostles and evangelists, pray for us. All you holy martyrs, pray for us.
All you men and women, Saints of God, make intercession for us. Be merciful, spare us, O Lord!
Lord, be merciful, graciously hear us, O Lord!
From all evil, O Lord, deliver us. From all sin, O Lord, deliver us. From anger and hatred, O Lord, deliver us.
Through your death and resurrection, O Lord, deliver us.
In the day of judgment, O Lord, hear us.
That you would forgive us and all those we love, O Lord, hear us.
That you would grant peace and unity to all, O Lord, hear us.
That you would give rest to those who have died, O Lord, hear us.
That you would lift up our minds to heavenly desires, O Lord, hear us.
Son of God, O Lord, hear us.
Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, Spare us, O Lord.
Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, Graciously hear us, O Lord.
Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, Have mercy on us.
This is not the official release, but BIRDY is now available on Amazon and will be coming to other outlets.
The book release party is December 10th, and you’ll get a small discount if you buy then; if you’d like a copy before then, you can buy the paperback, Kindle, or AI-generated audiobook edition. Click the image below to learn more.
Some boys learn to fly without ever leaving the ground.
Louisiana, 1976. Eleven-year-old Adam Ellerby has just lost his father, and the world he once understood has become a place of questions without answers. His little brother, Skeeter, needs someone to look after him. His mother is struggling with troubles of her own. And Adam, who has never been quite like other boys, is beginning to discover how much growing up can hurt.
But summer has a way of surprising even the loneliest of boys.
There are railroad tracks that seem to lead everywhere, a Granddaddy with more wisdom than words, and friendships that aren’t always what they appear. Somewhere in the midst of it all, Adam Ellerby becomes Birdy, and an ordinary Louisiana summer becomes a season he will never forget. Birdy is a tender, sometimes funny, and deeply human story about grief, belonging, and the difficult business of growing up.
And about discovering that sometimes, one more minute can make all the difference.
Pip: If you have ever added a completed task to a to-do list just so you could cross it off, this episode is going to feel uncomfortably personal.
Mara: Fr. John's recent writing at Candle in a Cave takes that small, relatable habit and uses it to open up something much larger — what faithfulness actually looks like when the reward never arrives.
Pip: Let's start with the sermon that frames all of it.
Love Is Not a Checkbox
Mara: The sermon opens during St. Matthew's annual pledge campaign — but the real question it's asking is whether love is the kind of thing you can ever finish.
Pip: The setup is the to-do list, and the first exhibit is not a productivity guru. It's the Grinch: "Four o'clock, wallow in self-pity; four-thirty, stare into the abyss; five o'clock, solve world hunger, tell no one; five-thirty, jazzercize; six-thirty, dinner with me — I can't cancel that again; seven o'clock, wrestle with my self-loathing."
Mara: Which is a genuinely funny way to arrive at a serious point — that we are people who need completion, who need the satisfaction of the check mark.
Pip: And then Jesus shows up and says the greatest commandment is love, which, as the sermon notes, nobody has ever put on a to-do list. The quip writes itself, and to the sermon's credit, it doesn't write it.
Mara: Instead it turns to Moses. At a second Meribah, forty years after the first, God tells Moses to speak to the rock. Moses strikes it instead. Water flows anyway, but the disobedience costs him entry into the Promised Land. The sermon puts it plainly: "Because you did not believe in me, to uphold me as holy in the eyes of the people of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land that I have given them."
Pip: That is a hard verdict for a man who parted a sea and endured forty years of complaints.
Mara: But Moses stays. He leads the people to the border, climbs Mount Nebo, sees the land, and dies there. Paul's letter to the Thessalonians gives the sermon its language for what that means: "So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us."
Pip: Faithfulness as love-in-action even when the outcome is withheld. That reframe is doing real work.
Mara: It's also where the pledge campaign enters honestly. The sermon names three founders of St. Matthew's — Captain Hassler, Judge Steen, and Mrs. Pay — who stood on their own Mount Nebo and gave toward a church they would never sit in. A pledge, the sermon argues, is the same gesture: committing to parishioners you will never meet.
Pip: So the ask isn't really about a dollar amount. It's about whether love is something you practice past the point of personal payoff.
Mara: Exactly — and the sermon closes on that note. "We can never check it off the to-do list." The tithe is mentioned, the practicalities of pledge cards and online giving are covered, but the frame holds: faithfulness is not measured by how much of the Promised Land you get to see, but by how faithfully you help others get there.
Pip: Which is, quietly, a much more demanding standard than a percentage.
Mara: The through-line here is completion — what we finish, what we don't, and whether that's even the right measure.
Pip: Moses never crossed love off the list. Neither, apparently, did the founders of St. Matthew's. Maybe that's the point — some things stay on the list because they're supposed to.
If one topic is guaranteed to make Episcopalians suddenly develop selective hearing, it’s the Church’s financial support. That said, it’s that time of year. Today we begin our annual pledge campaign at St. Matthew’s. But before anyone starts checking their wallet or looking for the nearest exit, I hope you’ll give me the next fifteen minutes or so. I won’t be talking about money and pledges. And I will be talking about money and pledges. It begins with the to-do list and the need many of us have to finish things.
For me, one of the greatest to-do lists doesn’t come from Elon Musk or George Washington. Instead, it comes from The Grinch: “Four o’clock, wallow in self-pity; four-thirty, stare into the abyss; five o’clock, solve world hunger, tell no one; five-thirty, jazzercize; six-thirty, dinner with me – I can’t cancel that again; seven o’clock, wrestle with my self-loathing… I’m booked. Of course, if I bump the loathing to nine, I could still be done in time to lay in bed, stare at the ceiling and slip slowly into madness. But what would I wear?!”
I am a fan of the to-do list. Just ask Gina. I put it on our weekly shared work calendar, and all week long these little reminders pop up for me and annoy her. And I’ve learned that I’m not the only one who, if I accomplish a particularly large task that wasn’t on the to-do list, will add it just so I can mark it off.
That list will include everything from writing the Sunday sermon to reading particular articles. However, there is one thing I’ve never considered putting on the list, and it stems from what Jesus said this morning: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” I have never put “love” on my to-do list, but maybe I should. Then, once I’ve felt like I’ve loved enough, I could check it off the list. Right?
You’ll remember from a few weeks back that we talked about Meribah and Massah—the oasis where the Israelites expected to find water, but there was none. Today, in our reading from the Old Testament, forty years have passed, and we are at another Meribah—another place of quarreling. As before, the people quarrel with Moses for bringing them into the wilderness because there is no water. In Exodus, God told Moses to take his staff and strike the rock. He did, and water flowed. At this different Meribah, the Lord says to Moses, “Take the staff, and assemble the congregation, you and Aaron your brother, and tell the rock before their eyes to yield its water.” Notice the difference—forty years ago, Moses was to strike the rock; today Moses is to speak to the rock. However, instead of speaking to the rock, “Moses lifted up his hand and struck the rock with his staff twice, and water came out abundantly.” It may seem minor, but it was disobedience. It made it appear as though Moses brought the water instead of God; therefore, God said to Moses, “Because you did not believe in me, to uphold me as holy in the eyes of the people of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land that I have given them.”
Moses, the one who has been faithful to the Lord all these years—went down to Egypt, confronted Pharaoh, parted the Red Sea, brought the Ten Commandments down off the mountain, put up with this obstinate people for all these years—was denied entry into the Promised Land because he struck the rock instead of speaking to it. He would plead with the Lord to allow him to enter, but the Lord’s response was hard: “Enough from you; do not speak to me of this matter again.”
A few months later, we come to what we read today: “‘Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, which is opposite Jericho, and the Lord showed him the whole land.’ Then Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there in the land of Moab, at the Lord’s command.”
After all Moses went through, I think many would have walked away the moment the Lord said they would not be allowed to enter. But for Moses, something else was at work within. Paul spoke of it very clearly in his letter to the Thessalonians that we read this morning: “So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.” Paul said, in effect, ‘So deeply do we love you that, whatever it costs us, we will remain faithful to you.’ Through his actions, Moses remained with the people to his very end and said the exact same thing, not only to the people but also to God.
Jesus said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” Despite the outcome, Moses remained faithful, and faithfulness is loving God and neighbor through action. How so? Because love isn’t simply something we feel. It is something we choose and practice.
Moses never checked “love” off his to-do list; although he couldn’t enter the Promised Land, he led others to it and was allowed to see it.
Faithfulness—love—is not measured by how much of the Promised Land we get to see, but by how faithfully we help others get there.
I wonder if you recognize the names Captain J.J.S. Hassler, James W. Steen, and Mrs. Zeila A. Pay? Gaynell Gettel wrote, “Without the perseverance and fortitude of a small handful of faithful and devoted Episcopalians, St. Matthew’s would never have survived. Conditions were most difficult in the earliest years—members were few, they had no church home, visitations by a clergyman were infrequent, and economic conditions were depressed.” However, among those few members, there were “three who seem to be the most outstanding and can be considered ‘Founders’”—Captain Hassler, Judge Steen, and Mrs. Pay.
These three “Founders” of our church stood on their own Mount Nebo and could see a version of the Promised Land in St. Matthew’s that they could never enter, but it is the place where you and I sit today. In their faithfulness, they loved God and neighbor, even the neighbors they would never meet.
What is a pledge drive? A pledge drive is about seeing the church’s current circumstances and financial needs. It is about making a prayerful commitment to support the church financially. It is about being faithful to the church’s current needs, but… a pledge drive is also about standing on our own Mount Nebo and peering into a land and a church we will never enter, seeing parishioners, neighbors that we will never meet, and saying to them what Paul said to the Thessalonians, “So deeply do we love you that, whatever it costs us, we will remain faithful to you.”
Over the course of the next couple of weeks, you will receive a few emails from me about your pledge. I promise not to blow up your email inbox, but I ask you to consider the information and then prayerfully make your financial pledge to St. Matthew’s now and to the St. Matthew’s you see from Mount Nebo. As we’ve done the last couple of years, you can pledge online; pick up a pledge card here; or, if you prefer, we will send you a pledge card.
How much should you pledge? The Biblical tithe is 10%. “Yes, Father John, that’s the correct answer, but how much should I pledge?” Well, that’s the prayerful part. I don’t pretend to know your circumstances or resources. You do, and if you’ll ask, the Lord will help you to make the right decision. I will say this, though: it is not a matter of giving $1 or $10,000. It is a matter of being faithful with what God has trusted you with.
Jesus did not say the greatest commandment is to build a temple or start a new program to pay the light bill or salaries. Jesus said the greatest commandment is something completely immeasurable—the greatest commandment is to love. We can never check it off the to-do list.
We say with the Psalmist, “May the graciousness of the Lord our God be upon us; prosper the work of our hands; prosper our handiwork.”
Let us pray: All generous God, You poured Yourself out in creation, gave Yourself completely in Christ’s Death on the Cross, and continue to give Yourself through the gift of Your Holy Spirit to us. Give us generous hearts so that, in response to Your Love, our lives may overflow in thanksgiving and generosity, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Pip: If you have ever wondered whether a snowplow could double as a theological argument, Fr. John has an answer for you — and it leads somewhere genuinely worth going.
Mara: This episode follows one extended sermon from Candle in a Cave, working through the question of whose image we carry — and what happens when the world starts stamping its own version over it.
Pip: Caesar's coin, a damaged statue in Santiago, and a bird that cannot take off without wind. Let's start with the coin.
Whose Image Do You Actually Wear
Mara: The sermon opens with the familiar trap question put to Jesus — pay taxes to Rome, yes or no — and the answer that sidesteps the snare entirely. The real weight, though, lands on the second half of Jesus's reply, the half he leaves implied.
Pip: The setup for that implication is a direct citation from Genesis, and it lands like a key turning in a lock. Here it is: "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them."
Mara: So the upshot is this — the coin belongs to Caesar because it bears Caesar's image; you belong to God because you bear God's image. The logic is clean, and St. Hilary of Poitiers makes it explicit: "give therefore your money to Caesar, but preserve a conscience void of offense for God."
Pip: But here is the complication the sermon presses on. When a Roman emperor died, the mint started stamping new coins with the new face. The image changed. And the same drift, the sermon argues, happens to us — not that God's image leaves, but that the world layers its own stamp over it.
Mara: The illustration that makes this concrete is a damaged statue in the church of San Fiz of Solovio in Santiago, Spain — a figure that might be the Apostle John, but whose left hand is missing and whose identifying object is gone. A hundred percent positive identification was not possible.
Pip: Which is a quietly devastating image for what the sermon is actually asking: can the people around you still read whose you are?
Mara: And the sermon's answer to distortion is not the lecture everyone expects — more confession, more prayer, more Bible reading. Instead it reaches for St. Francis de Sales and a bird Aristotle called the apode, a creature with legs too weak to launch itself back into the air. The wind has to do it.
Pip: Grace as weather. You do not manufacture the lift; you open your wings.
Mara: The closing line the sermon returns to is from First John: "We love because he first loved us." The image of God may blur, the sermon says, but God's recognition of us does not fail — which is the exact reversal of the opening joke, where God genuinely could not pick Shirley out of a lineup.
Pip: Shirley worked very hard to become unrecognizable. The sermon's invitation runs the other direction entirely.
Mara: Not to make ourselves worthy before approaching, but to bring the distorted image — scars, world-stamps, and all — and open to the grace that has not stopped moving.
Mara: The coin, the statue, the apode — three images for the same question: what does it take to stay recognizable to the one who made you?
Pip: Apparently less effort than Shirley put in, and more willingness to let the wind do the work. More next time.
A woman named Shirley had a heart attack and was taken to the hospital.
While on the operating table, she had a near-death experience. She saw God and asked, “Is this it?” God said, “No, you have another 30 to 40 years to live.”
Upon her recovery, she decided to stay in the hospital and have collagen shots, cheek implants, a facelift, liposuction, and a bit of augmentation. After getting out, she dyed her hair and got a tattoo. She figured that since she had another 30 to 40 years, she might as well make the most of it.
Walking out of the gym where she was whipping the rest of herself into shape, she was hit by a snowplow and died.
Arriving before God, she said, “I thought you said I had another 30 to 40 years?”
God replied, “Shirley! I’m sorry, but I didn’t recognize you!”
The Pharisees and Herodians didn’t typically associate with one another, but in today’s gospel reading we see them team up to trap Jesus.
They first gush out some false praise, then ask their question: “Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?”
Jesus, knowing their hearts, recognizes the question as a trick. If he answers, “Yes, it is lawful to pay taxes to the emperor,” he will appear to side with the occupying government. If he says, “No,” then they can turn him over to the Romans for sedition. So he asked for a coin that would have been used to pay the tax, but instead of answering their question, he asked, “Whose head is this, and whose title?” They answered, “The emperor’s.” In response, Jesus says, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”
It is a brilliant response. Give the government what is legally the government’s; give God what is legally God’s. The first part is clear—the coin bears Caesar’s image and represents Caesar’s authority; therefore, give Caesar what is properly owed him. The second part is implied.
Jesus does not specifically cite Genesis, but it is there. Genesis (1:26-27) states,
“Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”
As the coin, stamped with the Emperor’s image, is under the emperor’s authority, so you, made in the image of God, are under God’s authority. St. Hilary of Poitiers writes, “It behooves us also to render unto God the things that are His, namely, body, soul, and will. For Caesar’s coin is in the gold, in which His image was portrayed, that is, God’s coin, on which the Divine image is stamped; give therefore your money to Caesar, but preserve a conscience void of offense for God.”
We understand this and try to be obedient to this calling, but along the way, something happens.
When the question is asked about the coin, “Whose head is this and whose title?” Another answer could have been given: “Well, it depends on the day.” Why? Because when an emperor died, the empire began minting coins with the new emperor’s image. So, although the coin remains the emperor’s, it is stamped to represent the current political regime, and the same thing can happen to us.
The image of God we were created in never leaves us, but it can become distorted and reminted by the world around us. Like the Emperor’s coin, it can depend on the day, or even the time of day.
Come Sunday morning, the image we present may reflect forgiveness and kindness, but come Sunday night, with Monday looming, that image may show uncharitable ambition or pride. In the mornings, when we are with family and children, we may show joy and patience, but as soon as we get behind the wheel of the car, we bring on anger and impatience. What image do you present? Well, it depends on the day. Over time, the image of God remains, but it can become distorted beneath everything else that the world stamps upon it.
Over the last couple of weeks, I had the opportunity to serve in the church of San Fiz of Solovio in Santiago, Spain. It is a church that has been built, destroyed, built again, destroyed again, and so on. The altars, retables, statues, and most everything about it has been replaced, moved, or simply lost. So, to pass the time, I set out to track down who some of the Saints represented were. The Virgin Mary is fairly straightforward, but others are much harder to identify.
To properly identify a statue, you need to discover the symbols it is adorned with, the color of its garments, and even its placement in the church. For example, a statue of the Apostle John was easy to identify: youthful, with red hair, holding a book, and a pulpit shaped like an eagle, which always symbolizes John. However, there was a much older statue of a youthful person with what could have possibly been red hair, but his left hand was missing, and although the right hand was present, the object he held was missing. The colors of its garments match those of many other statues of the Apostle John, but in the end, a 100% positive identification of the image was not possible.
I am made in the image of God. You are made in the image of God. Question: Like the Emperor’s coin, is that image still recognizable, or has the world stamped you with its own image, distorting God’s image? Like an old statue in a much older church, have parts of the image of God been lost behind this world’s concerns and other life events?
If we are honest with ourselves, we will all say the image of God within us has become distorted or blurred. We may even think that parts have gone missing—broken off and lost forever. But honestly, that is just the devil whispering despair in your ear, for that image of God is still present, although distorted.
So how do we clear away the distortions and reveal those parts that appear to be missing?
Everybody says, “Now here’s where Father John gives us a great lecture. He will proceed to tell us why we should go to confession, pray more earnestly, and read our Bibles more devoutly.” Well, sure you could do those things and you probably should, but that’s not the answer.
I’ve been working my way through St. Francis de Sales’ Treatise on the Love of God, and in one chapter he refers to a certain bird Aristotle calls apodes: “because having extremely short legs, and feeble feet, they use them no more than if they had none.” People believed that if an apode ever landed on the ground, it could not take flight again and would die unless the wind blew. Then it could stretch out its wings and be lifted into the air again.
Using this example, Francis tells us that God’s grace, His love, is like the wind, a wind that is constantly blowing, and that we are like those apodes, unable to take flight on our own. To take flight, to enter into God’s grace, we must stretch out our wings; that is, we must participate in God’s grace and be open to Him.
When the image of God becomes distorted, we believe we must “whip ourselves into shape” so that God will love us, but that is backward. What did St. John tell us? “We love because he first loved us.” (1 John 4:19) When the image of God is distorted, we must open to God—the wind of grace is already blowing. God is not waiting for you to get your act together before his grace works in your life. No. God’s grace is already reaching toward you. He invites you to open your wings, to open yourself to the love that has been there all along.
Our reflection of God’s image may become clouded, but God’s love for us does not diminish. We may fail to recognize God’s presence within ourselves and others, but God never fails to recognize us.
Jesus asked them to bring him a coin, to look upon its image, and to recognize whose it was. Perhaps He invites us to bring our lives before Him as well.
Not because we have already made ourselves worthy. Not because we have successfully removed every imperfection. Not because we have finally become the people we ought to be. But simply because we belong to Him.
We come with our failings, our fears, our scars, and all the ways the world has tried to stamp its image on us.
And we open ourselves to the grace that God has never stopped offering.
The Christian life is not about making ourselves into someone God might someday love. It is about allowing God’s love to reveal more fully the image He placed within us from the beginning.
“We love because He first loved us.”
Let us pray: Pour forth, we beseech Thee, O Lord, Thy grace into our hearts; that we, to whom the incarnation of Christ, Thy Son, was made known by the message of an angel, may by His Passion and Cross be brought to the glory of His Resurrection, through the same Christ Our Lord. Amen.
Well, the day was a busy one. I got up, had some breakfast, packed the bags, and headed down to the church. After a full day, including the mass at 4 p.m., I came back to the Casa to discover that there were no taxis available in all of Santiago. Two and a half kilometers later, I arrived at the train station after a nice, slow walk. Along the way, I stopped at a pastry shop and picked up something for breakfast in the morning. Three hours on the train, and I am now at my hotel in Madrid. The Casa Anglicana had a nice little bathroom that was about two and a half by six feet, maybe. The hot water tank in my room held two gallons, so each morning was a mad dash to beat the hot water before it ran out. Arriving at the Crowne Plaza Madrid Airport Hotel, I may have drained their hot water tank. It was really nice. I do believe it’s time for some sleep.
For those who are interested, here is a link to the book that I put together while I was here. I will tell you that the information is very interesting. The pictures are as good as I could take. And the layout—well, it’s a little wanting. It’s really difficult to publish books with pictures on Amazon. Anyhow, if it’s something you are interested in, you can go to Amazon and purchase a copy. Or, if you drop me a note, I will be more than happy to send you a free PDF version of it. The history of that one little church and all of the churches in Santiago is actually quite fascinating.
