The Life That Belongs to God
A Reflection for the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time — Year A
The question put to Jesus in today’s Gospel is designed to leave him with no safe answer. If he approves the payment of Roman taxation, he risks appearing to endorse an occupying power. If he rejects it, he exposes himself to an accusation of rebellion. His questioners have already decided how they intend to use his words.
Jesus asks to see the coin. By drawing attention to the emperor’s image, he acknowledges the practical claims of civil authority. Yet his answer opens a question far greater than the one they have asked: what belongs to God?
Read in the light of humanity’s creation in God’s image, the encounter becomes deeply personal. The coin carries the likeness of an emperor; the human person bears the image of the Creator. Our obligations to society are real, but no earthly authority can claim the whole of us. Our conscience, our worship and our deepest allegiance belong to God.
Isaiah places political power within this wider horizon. Cyrus, a ruler who does not know Israel’s God, nevertheless becomes an instrument of God’s purpose for his people. God’s freedom exceeds the boundaries within which we expect him to act. Even the powerful remain dependent upon a providence they may neither recognise nor understand.
This calls for humility in our judgements. God’s work cannot be confined to familiar institutions or to people who share our convictions. Equally, no ruler, nation or political cause can take God’s place.
The psalm carries this recognition into worship. All peoples are summoned to acknowledge the Creator, whose authority extends across the earth and whose judgement is just. To give God glory is to recognise the truth about him and, consequently, the truth about ourselves. We have received life as a gift, and we are responsible for how we live it.
St Bernard of Clairvaux expresses the foundation of this relationship with characteristic directness: “the reason for loving God is God Himself”.¹ God deserves our love before we calculate what faith might secure for us. Prayer begins to mature when our attention turns towards God himself, beyond our desire for reassurance or success.
Within the Cistercian tradition, this turning is practised through the ordinary demands of each day. Prayer, work, community and hospitality expose the competing claims upon the heart. A person may profess devotion to God while remaining governed by resentment, the desire for approval, attachment to possessions or the need to control.
The same struggle belongs to lay life. Family responsibilities, employment and public duties continually ask us to discern what faithfulness requires. Belonging to God should make us more attentive to those responsibilities, more honest in fulfilling them and more willing to defend the dignity of others.
Yet such discernment requires us to remain open to being challenged. We can approach Scripture looking only for confirmation of what we already believe, just as the questioners in today’s Gospel approach Jesus with their minds already made up.
Michael Casey writes: “In all our lectio divina we must be prepared to be surprised.”² To listen to God’s Word is to allow it to question our assumptions and expose the loyalties we might prefer to leave unexamined. Scripture is not simply something we interpret; it is also the place where we allow our own lives to be examined in the light of Christ.
Paul’s thanksgiving for the Thessalonians shows what this belonging looks like when it takes root. He recognises faith through its activity, love through its costly service, and hope through its perseverance in Christ. The Gospel has reached them through the power of the Holy Spirit and is becoming visible in the character of their lives.
Here is a searching measure of Christian witness. Does prayer make us more dependable? Does faith deepen our patience? Does hope enable us to remain generous when circumstances offer little encouragement?
There is also something deeply personal at stake. If we belong to God, then discovering who we truly are cannot be separated from our relationship with him.
Thomas Merton writes: “For me to be a saint means to be myself.”³ He is speaking of the person whose deepest identity is grounded in God, beneath the self we construct for recognition or protection. Holiness is not the creation of a more impressive version of ourselves. It is the gradual discovery, through grace, of the person God calls us to become.
Christ himself reveals the fullness of a human life offered to the Father. In his love, obedience and self-giving, we discover what our own belonging can become. He calls us to bring every part of life into that relationship: our decisions, our work, our use of money, our exercise of authority and our care for those who depend upon us.
The question remaining after the coin has been returned is therefore one we must each answer:
How shall this life, bearing God’s image, be given back to him?