Grow in grace

A Reflection for Tuesday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time

Find today’s readings here.

Long before the reign of social media, we faithful were warned “not to be led into the error of the unprincipled and to fall from your own stability.” (2 Pt 3:17) This timely advice comes from the first or second century, by way of Peter’s second epistle. Mark’s Gospel today also alludes to the pitfalls of listening to the “unprincipled” in our midst when reporting that “some Pharisees and Herodians were sent to Jesus to ensnare him in his speech.”

We face a lot of disinformation and challenges to our Christian principles in our digital age, don’t we? We sometimes fall down virtual rabbit holes and start to buy into the mean-spirited words of modern-day Caesars over the eternal words of Jesus. The folks who revel in online arguing like nothing more than to shout us down, to try to convert us to their unprincipled creed of money-worship and selfishness. They try to prove us wrong, or at least naïve, for standing up for the Gospel. It’s hard to “grow in grace,” as Peter advises, when we’re under attack.

But perhaps our minds can rest easy, because the choice presented to Jesus of honoring God or Caesar is as false today as it was then. Those of us blessed to live in a democracy have the privilege of practicing our faith while also supporting the civic goals of a pluralistic society. We pay our taxes in the (sometimes futile) hope that our money will improve and sustain the common good. We worship as we choose in the certainty that we are free to follow God’s will for us. It’s not government or God, but government and God: we are called to love God and our neighbor. Against injustice, we can protest and pray. In this way we “repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.”

The need to set and observe our priorities as believers is as old as the Bible. “A thousand years in your sight are as yesterday,” says the psalmist (Ps 90:4), noting fatalistically that God grants us a lifetime of maybe 70 or 80 years. While we are alive for our brief moment, however, our work remains the same: to grow in grace, to guard against ensnarement, to follow the way of God, to stand for justice, to give all we’ve got, to love with open hearts. And maybe now to silence our phones.

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