Reflection on the holy Gospel reading (St. Matthew 17:22-27) for the third Sunday after the Feast of Dormition of the Theotokos
Of the four
Evangelists, only Matthew preserves this quiet and modest scene; the tax
collectors, the question about kings and tribute, and the coin from the fish (v.24-27).
Coins had long been the language of Matthew's identity. His hands processed
daily the tribute of a subject people, marking his neighbours as debtors even
as his occupation rendered him, in their eyes, a sinner. The words “tax
collector” and “sinner” were paired so frequently that they had become almost
synonymous (St. Matthew 9:9-11).
The taxation
imagery itself is not unique to Matthew. The question concerning the coin
bearing Caesar’s image appears in all three Synoptic Gospels. St. Luke gives us
Zacchaeus and the parable of Publican, narratives that reveal the repentance and
conversion of tax collectors. Matthew’s account at Capernaum concerns something
different. It takes the distinctions familiar to every collector of tribute,
between those who belong and those who are liable, and transforms them into a
revelation of divine sonship.
Christ asks whether
kings “take customs
or taxes, from their sons or from strangers?” to which Peter
answers, "from strangers" (v.25,26). For the rest of the Twelve the exchange may initially have appeared no
more than a question of legal obligation. For Matthew, however, this was the
language of a life he had once lived. His former occupation
revolved around precisely these distinctions of tribute, liability, and
exemption. He had spent years on the far side of that division, not as one of
the exempted, but as one employed to collect from others and treated as
something of a stranger himself for doing it.
This distinction, between the child of the
house and the stranger at its threshold, is one that the New Testament
repeatedly re-examines in the light of God's mercy.
The stranger is not
merely to be tolerated. Sacramentally, he is Christ Himself- “I was a stranger and
you took Me in” (St Matthew 25:35). St. Paul speaks of Gentiles as those who were once "strangers
to the covenants of promise," but now are "fellow citizens with
the saints and members of the household of God" (Ephesians 2:12,19).
Stephen applies the language of the resident alien to Israel’s own sojourn in
Egypt, describing the people of the covenant as “resident aliens in a
country belonging to others” (Acts 7:6). St. Peter turns this imagery upon
the Church itself, addressing believers as “aliens and exiles” in the
present world (1 Peter 2:11). Before the Christian presumes to adjudicate the
stranger’s belonging or worth, the apostolic exhortation asks him to remember
that he too lives before God as a pilgrim sustained by mercy.
The single leper
who returns to give thanks is a Samaritan, whom Christ calls “this foreigner”
(St. Luke 17:18), not to exclude him but to expose the ingratitude of the nine
presumed insiders. The Canaanite woman, though apparently outside the household
of Israel, displays a faith that perseveres until even the imagery of household
bread becomes an occasion of grace.
The Apostle who, at
Capernaum, distinguished naturally between sons and outsiders is eventually
taught that God is gathering outsiders into His household. Standing in the
house of Cornelius, he confesses -“You yourselves know that
it is improper for a Jew to associate with or to visit an outsider, but God has
shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean.” (Acts 10:28). Any
manner of speaking about outsiders that breeds suspicion, contempt, or the
withholding of ordinary mercy must therefore be weighed against the language of
the Gospel.
The witness of Scripture therefore challenges every tendency of fallen humanity to divide the world into those who belong and those who do not. We draw boundaries of kinship, class, nation, culture, community, and then imagine that God regards these boundaries as we do. Yet the boundary Christ addresses at Capernaum is filial rather than territorial, and the wider movement of the Gospel is to bring those once regarded as strangers into the household of God.
Human distinctions may order our common life, but no border, association, community, or human institution is granted the authority to decide who bears the image of God or who is worthy of compassion, dignity, and welcome.
To meet the debt, Christ sends Peter to the sea. The coin is not drawn from a treasury or counted out from the abundance of a household. It is found in the mouth of an ordinary fish. The Creator summons His creation to provide what human obligation demands. Yet even here Christ does not pay only for Himself. He tells Peter, "and give it to them for you and Me" (v.27). The Son's provision embraces His disciple. Christ does not abolish the tax or dispute its legitimacy. Rather, He bears a burden from which He is entitled to be free. In doing so, He establishes a pattern for the life of His Church.
The ecclesial calling is not merely to welcome the stranger, but, when love requires it, to share in the cost that welcome entails. The household of God is enlarged not by words alone, but by bearing one another's burdens in imitation of the Son who freely assumed an obligation that was not His own.
A coin may seem an unlikely vessel for revelation, yet few men would have understood its language better than Matthew. A Rabbi had once passed his booth and said only, "Follow me." Matthew rose, left the ledger and the income of a lifetime lying on the counter, and went. It was not a change of employment but a change of allegiance, a decision made in a single afternoon as to whose coin he would spend the rest of his life serving.
That same evening, he threw open his house to tax collectors and sinners (St. Matthew 9:10), the only society that had ever fully received him, so that they too might sit at table with the Man who had called him. The former collector did not leave his old companions behind as evidence of a life he wished to forget. He brought them within hearing of mercy. The Kingdom proclaimed by Christ does not merely pardon sinners while leaving them at the threshold. It brings strangers into the household and seats them among the children.
Indeed, Matthew’s
entire Gospel bears the marks of this redeemed vision. It begins with Gentile women gathered into the genealogy of the Messiah. It records foreign Magi
kneeling before the infant King while Jerusalem remains troubled. It honours
the faith of a Roman centurion and a Canaanite mother. Finally, it ends with
the risen Christ sending His Apostles beyond the boundaries of Israel to make
disciples of all nations.
The hand that had
once tallied the tribute of strangers recorded for all generations, that day at
Capernaum when, beneath the clink of a temple due and the improbable gleam of a
coin drawn from the mouth of a fish, the Lord quietly disclosed the mystery of
His Kingdom. The Son bore the debt of those counted as strangers, that
strangers might enter His Father's house and be received as sons.
In Christ,
Rincy
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