<p><em>It is difficult not to get caught up in the toxic politics of our times. Conversations seem to move so quickly from innocuous to offensive. In todays gospel (and todays reflection) Jesus sidesteps controversy by inviting us to do our own discernment. Jesus refuses to be a substitute for the listeners (and our own) consciences instead inviting us to invest in our own integrity.</em></p><p><strong>October 22 2023: Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A</strong></p><p>Isaiah 45:1 4-6</p><p>Psalm 96:1 3 4-5 7-10</p><p>1 Thessalonians 1:1-5b</p><p>Matthew 22:15-21</p><div><div class=titan__email-divider>&nbsp;</div></div><h3><strong>The Political and the Personal<br></strong></h3><p><em>A reflection by Marianna Seggerman</em></p><p>Religion and politics. God and the state. What a heady combination! But first: it is my belief that God works through everyone whether they realize it or not or whether the god (or gods) they perceive are different than the One we know and adore. One of my relatives is a better Christian than Imeasured against the priorities of Jesusand the last time she stepped foot inside a Catholic Church was her wedding which her parents wouldnt pay for unless she had it in a church! Like everyone (I hope) I have known people in my life I would call saintly. For me one was a severely handicapped girl later young woman who had a progressive disease which claimed her life in her mid-twentiesand her mother who despite multiple addictions and a lifetime of genteel poverty was able to nurture and provide support to many a lost soulmost notably me. They are buried side-by-side in a churchyard of an Episcopal church they rarely if ever attended. God called them both to be extraordinary and they responded magnificently.</p><p>I dont know what all Cyrus did to warrant such a glowing description in Isaiahs prophetic message. It must have set him apart from all the other leaders of warring nations in the region. As I heard the writer and comedian Sacha Baron Cohen say recently You always have a choice. In the eyes of the biblical writer Cyrus chose well. That even though he no doubt worshippedand made his subjects worshipthe very gods elsewhere in the Bible the Israelites are condemned for worshipping. As an aside I have believed for quite a while that the politicians who are most successful at moving the Middle East closer to peace are those with a background in Biblical studiesthinking of a former Sunday School teacher now one year short of the century mark. Reading through the Bible with all those battle scenes makes you realize just how timeless the hostilitiesand the alliancesare.</p><p>We come to the second reading from Pauls letter to a devout community in Thessalonica. So many of the faith communities Paul founded visited and wrote to would in a matter of a few centuries become part of the Orthodox version of Christianity. Paul spread the good news of Jesus throughout Asia Minor and into southeastern Europe but never made it to what was then Gaul or the Iberian Peninsula. So why did Rome become the center of the Catholic Church? The 3 years of Jesuss ministry occurred many miles away in Judea. The answer is quite simpleand political. For all its free-wheeling morality and gods on every cornermany with mandatory observancesRome was the most important city in the Western world in the centuries following the birth of Jesus: like New York City has been for the last hundred yearsor Paris in the previous two centuries (with possible competition from London). Ironically long after the Roman Empire had shattered into fragments the city state that was Rome held on to political power precisely because the Catholic Church was based there.</p><p>Commentaries on the passage in the Second Reading state that in fact it was a pep talk to a faith community like so many of the other early Christian communities beleaguered and under attack. Taken out of context and without the historic and political baggage what is left? The simple faith of the community. Perhaps that is all that really matters in the end.</p><p>So we come to the Gospel. Jesus presents himself as an early advocate for the separation of church and state. Its not that Jesus is oblivious to the realities of the world: when large crowds gathered to hear him preach Jesus made sure they were fed. Rather Jesus refuses to get caught up in the political rhetoric of his time. That just wasnt as important as the spiritual and material needs of the people to whom he preached. I have often pondered what Jesus was like as a personWhat was his personality was like? What was it like to be in Jesus presence? Only having stories told decades after his death we may never really know. But if the gospels are at all in touch with historical reality Jesus was if nothing else intentionalhe knew what he was doing and why. Here Jesus deftly sidesteps a huge source of contention: taxes and tax collection. The historical collaboration between some Jewish tax collectors and the Romans may have been akin to the Vichy government in World War II Occupied France with the Nazis: turning their heads to moral atrocities for the sake of personal enrichment. That being said the costs of visible opposition were probably extremely harsh. Jesus refuses to take sidesrefusing to do the work of discernment for the crowd and instead challenging the listeners to follow their own consciences. Its not that Jesus denies political struggles exist but in the end they matter than ones authenticity in the sight of God.</p><div><div class=titan__email-divider>&nbsp;</div><div class=titan__email-divider><img src='https://www.dignityusa.org/sites/default/files/seggerman_0.png'></div></div><div class=mobile-full><div class=mobile-full><em><strong>Marianne Seggerman</strong> joined the chapter of Dignity New Haven around 30 years ago. That chapter is no longer alas but she continues to attend the biannual conference. In her day job she is a computer programmer living (and for the moment working) in Westport Connecticut. She is in a long-term relationship with a person raised Jewish who converted to the Mormon faith.</em></div><div class=mobile-full><em></em></div></div><p style=text-align:center><a class=btn btn-primary href=https://dignityusa.app.neoncrm.com/np/clients/dignityusa/subscribe.jsp?subscription=8>Subscribe to Breath of the Spirit</a></p>