A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. When Jesus and his disciples met in Galilee, Jesus said to them, the son of man is going to be delivered into the hands of men who will put him to death, and he will be raised up on the third day. At these words, Jesus' disciples were overwhelmed with grief. When they entered Capernaum, the collectors of the temple tax approached Peter and said to him, does your master not pay the temple tax? Peter replied, of course, he does.
Then Jesus, on entering the house, asked, without giving him time to speak, what is your opinion, Simon? Do the kings of the world take tax or toll from their sons or from foreigners? When Simon replied from foreigners, Jesus observed, then their sons are exempt. But for fear of disedifying them, go to the lake, throw in a line, and take out the first fish that you catch. Open its mouth, and you will discover there a coin worth twice the temple tax.
Take it and give it to them for you and for me. And this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen. This is our most intriguing incident in our lord's life.
You don't hear much about it. It isn't one of the stupendous miracles, but there's a great deal here by implication. The first thing I'd like to observe about it is the fidelity with which Jesus practiced his Jewish religion, that is the externals of religion. As I've said many times, that can be a a very severe obstacle to honest to God religion. You know, it's so easy to lose yourself in the wrappings of the package and forget what's in it.
Anyway, that's the first thing that's clear here in this Capernaum. Incidentally, there Capernaum, as you know, was a large and very active city, and there's been a good bit of excavation work up there. It's up in the Northwest corner of the lake, as you all know. Anyway, our blessed lord was very faithful in going to the temple. Not the temple in Jerusalem, but the synagogue.
There's only one temple. That was down in Jerusalem, you know. Today, is no temple. Keep that in mind. In all the Jewish religion, is no temple, there is no active priesthood, and there is no sacrifice.
Hasn't been since the day of Titus, about forty four AD. Anyway, that's the first thing to see here, that our blessed Lord was meticulous about external observance. Meticulous. As he says, don't does the son have to pay tax to his father as the king? What does that make Jesus?
So there you have another that's one of the strong points here, that Jesus is saying, look. I there's no reason for me paying paying the tax. You the king does not pay tax from his own son. But our blessed lord says, in order not to dissatisfy, well, we will pay the tax. And then Peter has to go fishing, and he catches a fish.
And he brings back the coin. Now here there's a great deal here for us. After yesterday's I preached four times yesterday on the holy Eucharist, And I quoted somewhat Vatican two, which I've been doing every time I get a chance and will continue to do. It is the official teaching of the Catholic church. There were some who were quite annoyed that I stressed doctrine so much.
They said I ought to be talking more about Jesus Christ. Well, I thought I was talking about Jesus Christ, but I guess I wasn't. I don't know. After all, this text from Saint John is the words of our lord. The point, though, is this.
You see, what I they they were young people. What I what came through very clearly was this, the doctrine doesn't matter. It's what you feel with your religion. They said what the the main thing is the word. I said, what's the word?
Where do you get it? So that you see, the Catholic church, the one matter who has been pope, and we've had some dillies, not every pope has been a saint. After all, Peter wasn't a saint in beginning. But there's one thing that the that the holy see of Rome, the Catholic church, has been very, very careful about is dogma, truth, truth. The Catholic church has been very, very compassionate towards sin and the sinner.
Very, very compassionate. All of these tales and many of them are totally exaggerated under the Inquisition. Notice, it wasn't penalizing sinners. It was trying to preserve truth. And even non Catholic historians realize that and are today stressing it.
Because once you lose the once you lose your hold on truth, you have lost any hope of finding it. And then what follows from that? Action should follow thought. The way you live, the way you worship God should be based not on how you feel about it. That depends so much on your breakfast or or whether you had your dye gel with you.
It depends on whether or not you have the truth of god. How can you otherwise want to worship what you don't know to be the truth? You you see, remember, everything I'm saying now is quite foreign to many people's way of thinking today because they say this there as I as I read just recently, the only thing about truth is that there there is no truth. Now what do you think of that? So today, as one friend of mine said, the the whole problem of life is epistemological, meaning that it has to do with knowledge and with certitude.
What do you know? What is the truth? How do you know the truth? How do you get it? There's no question of how god's son got it.
But how do we get it? You talk about Jesus Christ. How do I what do I know about Jesus Christ? How do I come into contact with him? See, by reading the book.
He didn't write a book at all. Secondly, he didn't tell anybody to write a book. Third, he didn't give them the data to write a book. He didn't say, look, I'm gonna put this all on a tape recorder, and then after I've risen from the dead, then you can put it into it'll be about seventy five years later, but then you can put it into writing. There is nothing like that.
Nothing at all. Not even remotely like it. There is not the slightest bit of evidence that our blessed lord wrote a single word, much less a book or much or or much less dictated a book to anybody as it would have been commonly practiced. And so we come to this here our blessed lord is teaching us. He's going to the synagogue.
He's going there and, as he says, there is no reason for me to pay the tax because the king does not take the tax from his son. What's your conclusion there? What does he tell? He is teaching his disciples. Another word for teaching is docents in Latin, which becomes doctrine in English.
And remember, this is not an easy path. There's nothing easy in pursuing truth. Nothing. Plenty of people have put their heads on the chopping block for it. Think of Thomas More right off, John Fisher.
And remember, John Fisher was the only bishop in the English hierarchy who didn't take the oath. Only one. The rest of them took it. So you can't always go by the by the vote of the committee. And so our blessed Lord's actions are tremendously important.
How he held things together, and this is the problem, to hold our religious life together, not to go to the extremes in any direction because if you do, you've lost your orientation. So that when you come down to this problem of worship, the first thing you want to know is your worship authentic. Is your worship authentic? This god you're talking about, what is it? Who is it?
How is it? How do you know? What is the validity of your thinking about it? Where did you get those thoughts that you have about god? These are valid questions, and we better come to an answer.
Now where do you get the answer? Is everybody in this whole world supposed to be a a person who can devote their entire life to researching of books, to going around picking up pragmatic and empirical evidence, to sifting it all, to debating it, to arguing, to coming to some conclusions? Is that what people can do? A man with a family, a woman with her family, often holding down another job? Are they prepared to do all this research?
I've just been reading the stories of Singer, Isaac Singer, marvelous stories. Of course, you've read them, some of them. They appeared in the New York and now they're collected. But there's one statement that said, To be a Jew is to do nothing but being a Jew. And that's very close to the truth.
To be a Christian is to be a full time Christian. It's not an easy thing, but it's not impossible. Our blessed Lord came to give us the truth. I am the way, the truth, and the life. Well, if we can't get ahold of it, it's no good to us.
Not worth it not worth it. Tinkers, damn. That's the word now, that's d a m n. This our blessed lord came to give us the truth. Not just just for the first century AD, which the century takes its name from him, notice, but in the twentieth and everything in between.
And what follow? Maybe tomorrow we'll have another day, who knows? Or the next year or the next century or the next 10 centuries. Who knows? But men and women, as long as they are in this life, need the truth.
And Christ said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. He said that. So where do you find it? The answer in his living voice, the church. In the name of the father, the son, and holy spirit, amen.