Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2026: 26, Tuesday 2 June 2026

Christ Pantocrator … a fragment from a 13th century mural in a museum in Iraklion in Crete … where do we see the face of Christ? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Since the 50-day season of Easter came to an end with the Day of Pentecost or Whit Sunday (24 May 2026), we have returned to Ordinary Time once again. This week began with Trinity Sunday (31 May 2026) and the Feast of the Presentation (transferred this year from 31 May to 1 June yesterday), but the liturgical colours once return today to the Green of Ordinary Time today (2 June 2026). Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:

1, reading today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

The denarius with the image of Caesar represented a day’s labour … Roman coins in a private collection in Callan, Co Kilkenny (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Mark 12: 13-17 (NSRVA):

13 Then they sent to him some Pharisees and some Herodians to trap him in what he said. 14 And they came and said to him, ‘Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality, but teach the way of God in accordance with truth. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not? 15 Should we pay them, or should we not?’ But knowing their hypocrisy, he said to them, ‘Why are you putting me to the test? Bring me a denarius and let me see it.’ 16 And they brought one. Then he said to them, ‘Whose head is this, and whose title?’ They answered, ‘The emperor’s.’ 17 Jesus said to them, ‘Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’ And they were utterly amazed at him.

Christ the Pantocrator depicted in church domes in Rethymnon, Panormos and Iraklion in Crete (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Today’s Reflections:

This morning’s Gospel reading (Mark 12: 13-17 ) challenges us to ask where we see the face of God. When Christ asks whose face is on the coin presented to him, he may also be challenging us to consider where we too see the face of God, or which gods we see and fashion te replace the one and true God.

This account is set in the Temple in Jerusalem in Holy Week, on the day after Christ has overturned the tables of the moneychangers.

The moneychangers were in the Temple because Roman coins had images, such as the image of Caesar, who called himself ‘lord’ and ‘divine’ when those titles truly belong to God alone, and ‘priest’ when that title challenges the ritual purity of the Temple. Today's analogiy might be finding Donald Trump's image on a $250 banknote, realising how he has posted memes of himself in role of Christ and made golden statues of himself, and then asking whether it was appropriate or acceptable such a $250 banknote on the collection plate in a church on Sunday morning.

Images like those were forbidden in the Temple, and so coins had to be changed outside by the moneychangers. In the Temple, Christ is challenged by both the Pharisees and the Herodians, the people who supported Herod, the Roman puppet king.

The question they put to him was one of great debates at the time: should religious and pious Jews pay taxes to Rome?

Jewish opinion was divided on this question. But the question put to Christ is also loaded with presuppositions, with built-in fallacies and false dichotomies, like the sort of question all lawyers know not to ask in court: ‘When did you stop beating your wife?’

The question allows only one of two answers, ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. But it is only a question about law. It does not ask, for example, whether it is moral to pay those taxes, or, indeed, whether it is folly not to pay those taxes.

If Christ answers ‘Yes’, those who are hostile to Roman rule are going to turn against him. But if he says ‘No’, he risks arrest for inciting rebellion.

The coin they present is a denarius, a day’s pay for workers and Roman troops. It is the ‘D’ that gives us the ‘D’ in the old formulaic £SD for British coinages. The denarius was a silver coin and the most common Roman coin of the time, and it is mentioned in the Bible more often than any other coin.

Having looked at the head on the denarius, Christ then looks at the inscription.

The obverse of the denarius of Tiberius carries an image of Tiberius with a laurel crown and lettering around it that proclaims ‘Tiberius Caesar, the Divine Augustus, Son of Augustus’ (Ti Caesar Divi Avg F Avgvstvs).

The reverse side depicts a seated woman as Pax. This was Livia Drusilia, the mother of Tiberius. She died in AD 29 and was later deified by her grandson Claudius with the title Diva Augusta. On the coin, Diva Augusta holds a palm branch and an inverted spear in her hands, and the inscription on this side refers to Tiberius as Pontif[ex] Maxim[us] or the ‘High Priest’ of Rome.

Christ does not even get around to flipping over the coin to read the inscription referring to Caesar as the High Priest. But both inscriptions are affronts to people who worship the one true God. This coin should never have been in the hands of anyone who has entered the Temple.

Yet, when Christ asks his inquisitors to produce a denarius in the Temple, they do so immediately. In other words, they themselves have already carried an image of Caesar and Diva Augusta, with those blasphemous inscriptions, into the Temple.

It is the Passover, and Jerusalem is filled with pilgrims who have arrived to remember and celebrate God’s liberation of their ancestors from slavery under foreign rulers.

At Passover, parallels might have been drawn between Tiberius and Pharaoh. Tiberius was a tyrant in his own right. He was Roman Emperor from AD 14 to AD 37, and spent most of the latter years of his reign in the Villa Jovis on the island of Capri.

While he was in Capri, rumours abounded about his lifestyle. There were lurid tales and graphic depictions of sexual perversion, capricious cruelty, and most of all his paranoia. Those who challenged his power or divinity were often thrown off the cliffs at the Villa Jovis onto the rocks below and into the sea.

If Christ says paying taxes to Caesar is wrong, he risks provoking immediate arrest by the Romans. If he says paying taxes to Rome is right, those who question him are ready to accuse him of betraying their faith and beliefs as the people recall their liberation from slavery and oppression.

But Christ trips up those who question him by showing that they are bearing proclamations of Caesar’s lordship and high priesthood into the very Temple of the very God they claim to be serving with ritual purity.

The obvious questions here are not about what is lawful, or even what is moral or wise, but: who is the divine son, and who is the great high priest?

Christ has won the argument. He has unmasked his critics; there is no need for any further argument, there is no need to say anything more; there is no need to answer the question.

Yet, he answers the question anyway: ‘Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’

So what in this world is God’s?

When it comes to any worldly power that demands to be our lord – whether it is a US president, a figurehead, or a flag that ought to be a sacred symbol but has been abused for political and racist purposes by the far-right up and down this land – the exclusive claims of some nation-state nationalism or some self-obsessed head of state demanding unquestioning loyalty, these are places reserved for the Lord God alone.

And if we seek to see the face of God, we should not be looking at the faces of the despots and rulers of the world who stir up fanaticism, or at ill-gotten accumulated wealth.

We simply need to look for the face of Christ. And we meet Christ face-to-face both in word and sacrament, and when we truly love God and love one another.

Beneath the Villa Jovis in Capri, where the Emperor Tiberius threw his enemies off the cliff-top into the sea (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Tuesday 2 June 2026):

A new edition of Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), was published last week, in time for the USPG conference in the High Leigh, Hertfordshire, which opens today (2 June) and continues until Thursday (4 June). The theme this week, from 31 May to 6 June 2026 (pp 6-7) is ‘Peacebuilding in the Gulf’. This theme was introduced on Sunday with a reflection from Saint Christopher’s Cathedral in Bahrain.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Tuesday 2 June 2026) invites us to pray:

Lord God, we thank you for your grace as the USPG Annual Conference takes place at High Leigh this week. May all taking part be guided by your Spirit as we reflect on the theme of the Church as an agent of peace.

The Collect of the Day:

Almighty and everlasting God,
you have given us your servants grace,
by the confession of a true faith,
to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity
and in the power of the divine majesty to worship the Unity:
keep us steadfast in this faith,
that we may evermore be defended from all adversities;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post Communion Prayer:

Gracious God, lover of all,
in this sacrament
we are one family in Christ your Son,
one in the sharing of his body and blood
and one in the communion of his Spirit:
help us to grow in love for one another
and come to the full maturity of the Body of Christ.
We make our prayer through your Son our Saviour.

Additional Collect:

Holy God,
faithful and unchanging:
enlarge our minds with the knowledge of your truth,
and draw us more deeply into the mystery of your love,
that we may truly worship you,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

An icon of Christ the Great High Priest, in a shop window in Thessaloniki (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

‘Give … to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s’

Christ Pantocrator … a fragment from a 13th century mural in a museum in Crete … where do we see the face of Christ? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Sunday 18 October 2020

The 19th Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XIX); Saint Luke the Evangelist

9.30 a.m.: The Parish Eucharist (Holy Communion 2), Castletown Church, Kilcornan

11.30 a.m.: Morning Prayer (Morning Prayer 2), Holy Trinity Church, Rathkeale

The Readings: Exodus 33: 12-23; Psalm 99; Matthew 22: 15-22.

There is a link to the readings HERE.

The denarius with the image of Caesar represented a day’s labour … Roman coins in a private collection in Callan, Co Kilkenny (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

May I speak to you in the name of God, + Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen

This morning’s readings challenge us to ask where we see the face of God. In the Gospel story, when Christ asks whose face is on the coin presented to him, he may also be challenging us to consider where we too see the face of God.

In the first reading, Moses asks to see the glory of God (Exodus 33: 18), but is told ‘you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live’ (Exodus 33: 20). The Psalmist urges us to tremble and bow down before God (Psalm 99). In the epistle reading for today, Saint Paul reminds his readers they have turned away from idols to ‘serve a living and true God’ (I Thessalonians 1: 9).

The Gospel story is set in the Temple in Jerusalem in Holy Week, on the day after Christ has overturned the tables of the money-changers.

The money-changers were in the Temple because Roman coins had images, such as the image of Caesar, who called himself ‘lord’ and ‘divine’ when those titles truly belong to God alone, and ‘priest’ when that title challenges the ritual purity of the Temple. Images like those were forbidden in the Temple, and so coins had to be changed outside by the money-changers.

In the Temple, Christ is challenged by both the Pharisees and the Herodians, the people who supported Herod, the Roman puppet king.

The question they put to him was one of great debates at the time: should religious and pious Jews pay taxes to Rome?

Jewish opinion was divided on this question. But the question put to Christ is also loaded with presuppositions, with built-in fallacies and false dichotomies, like the sort of question all lawyers know not to ask in court: ‘When did you stop beating your wife?’

The question allows only one of two answers, Yes or No. But it is only a question about law. It does not ask, for example, whether it is moral to pay those taxes, or whether it is folly not to pay those taxes.

If Christ answers Yes, those who are hostile to Roman rule are going to turn against him. But if he says No, he risks arrest for inciting rebellion.

The coin they present is a denarius, a day’s pay for workers and Roman troops. This silver coin was the most common Roman coin of the time, and it is mentioned in the Bible more often than any other coin.

Having looked at the head on the denarius, Christ then looks at the inscription.

The obverse of the denarius of Tiberius carries an image of Tiberius with a laurel crown and lettering around it that proclaims ‘Tiberius Caesar, the Divine Augustus, Son of Augustus’ (Ti Caesar Divi Avg F Avgvstvs).

The reverse side depicts a seated woman as Pax. This was Livia Drusilia, the mother of Tiberius. She died in AD 29 and was later deified by her grandson Claudius with the title Diva Augusta. On the coin, she holds a palm branch and an inverted spear in her hands, and the inscription on this side refers to Tiberius as Pontif[ex] Maxim[us] or the ‘High Priest’ of Rome.

Christ does not even get around to flipping over the coin to read the inscription referring to Caesar as the High Priest. But both inscriptions are affronts to people who worship the one true God. This coin should never have been in the hands of anyone in the Temple.

Yet, when Christ asks his inquisitors to produce a denarius in the Temple, they do so immediately. In other words, they themselves have already carried an image of Caesar and Diva Augusta, with those blasphemous inscriptions, into the Temple.

It is the Passover, and Jerusalem is filled with pilgrims who have arrived to remember and celebrate God’s liberation of their ancestors from slavery under foreign rulers.

At Passover, parallels might have been drawn between Tiberius and Pharaoh. Tiberius was a tyrant in his own right. He was Roman Emperor from AD 14 to AD 37, and spent most of the latter years of his reign in the Villa Jovis on the island of Capri.

While he was in Capri, rumours abounded about his lifestyle. There were lurid tales and graphic depictions of sexual perversion, capricious cruelty, and most of all his paranoia. Those who challenged his power or divinity were often thrown off the cliffs at the Villa Jovis onto the rocks below and into the sea.

If Christ says paying taxes to Caesar is wrong, he risks provoking immediate arrest by the Romans. If he says paying taxes to Rome is right, those who question him are ready to accuse him of betraying their faith and beliefs as the people recall their liberation from slavery and oppression.

But Christ trips up those who question him by showing that they are bearing proclamations of Caesar’s lordship and high priesthood into the very Temple of the very God they claim to be serving with ritual purity.

The obvious questions here are not about what is lawful, or even what is moral or wise, but: who is the divine son, and who is the great high priest?

Christ has won the argument. He has unmasked his critics; there is no need for any further argument, there is no need to say anything more; there is no need to answer the question.

Yet, he answers the question anyway: ‘Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’

So what in this world is God’s?

The psalm describes God as Lord of all peoples, of all the earth: ‘The Lord is king … he is high above all peoples’ (Psalm 99: 1-2) Everything belongs to God.

When it comes to any worldly power that demands to be our lord, whether it is a figurehead, or flag, the exclusive claims of some nation-state nationalism or some self-obsessed head of state demanding unquestioning loyalty, these are places reserved for the Lord God alone.

And if we seek to see the face of God, we should not be looking at the faces of the despots and rulers of the world who stir up fanaticism, or at ill-gotten accumulated wealth.

We simply need to look for the face of Christ. And we meet Christ face-to-face both in word and sacrament, and when we truly love God and love one another.

And so, may all we think, say and do be to the praise, honour and glory of God, + Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

Beneath the Villa Jovis in Capri, where the Emperor Tiberius threw his enemies off the cliff-top into the sea (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Matthew 22: 15-22 (NRSVA):

15 Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said. 16 So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, ‘Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality. 17 Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?’ 18 But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, ‘Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? 19 Show me the coin used for the tax.’ And they brought him a denarius. 20 Then he said to them, ‘Whose head is this, and whose title?’ 21 They answered, ‘The emperor’s.’ Then he said to them, ‘Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’ 22 When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.

‘Study for the Calf of Saint Luke’ by Graham Sutherland in the recent ‘Consequence of War’ exhibition in Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Liturgical Colour: Green (Ordinary Time, Year A).

The Collect of the Day (Trinity XIX):

O God, without you we are not able to please you;
Mercifully grant that your Holy Spirit
may in all things direct and rule our hearts;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

The Collect (Saint Luke):

Almighty God,
you called Luke the physician,
whose praise is in the gospel,
to be an evangelist and physician of the soul:
By the grace of the Spirit
and through the wholesome medicine of the gospel,
give your Church the same love and power to heal;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Post Communion Prayer (Trinity XIX):

Holy and blessed God,
you feed us with the body and blood of your Son
and fill us with your Holy Spirit.
May we honour you,
not only with our lips but in lives dedicated
to the service of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Post-Communion Prayer (Saint Luke):

Living God,
may we who have shared these holy mysteries
enjoy health of body and mind
and witness faithfully to your gospel,
in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Christ depicted in the dome of the Church of Panaghia Dexia in Thessaloniki (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Hymns:

10, All my hope on God is founded
509, Your kingdom come, O God!

Saint Luke the Physician and Evangelist … a stained-glass window in Saint Michael’s Church, Tipperary (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

Material from the Book of Common Prayer is copyright © 2004, Representative Body of the Church of Ireland.

This sermon was prepared for services in Castletown and Rathkeale on 18 October 2020, but due to Covid-19 restrictions was delivered at a celebration of the Eucharist in the Rectory, Askeaton, Co Limerick

The walls of the synagogue in Córdoba are decorated in Mudéjar style, with Biblical quotations, including verses from Psalm 99 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Matthew 22: 15-22, rendering to Caesar, and rendering to God

The denarius with the image of Caesar represented a day’s labour ... Roman coins in a private collection in Callan, Co Kilkenny (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Patrick Comerford

Church of Ireland Theological Institute,

11 October 2014

Introduction:

In our Bible studies each Wednesday morning in our tutorial group, we are looking at the Lectionary readings for Sunday week.

Sunday week [19 October 2014], is the Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity [Proper 24]. The readings in the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL) for that Sunday are:

Exodus 33: 12-23; Psalm 99; I Thessalonians 1: 1-10; Matthew 22: 15-22.

Matthew 22: 15-22

15 Τότε πορευθέντες οἱ Φαρισαῖοι συμβούλιον ἔλαβον ὅπως αὐτὸν παγιδεύσωσιν ἐν λόγῳ. 16 καὶ ἀποστέλλουσιν αὐτῷ τοὺς μαθητὰς αὐτῶν μετὰ τῶν Ἡρῳδιανῶν λέγοντες, Διδάσκαλε, οἴδαμεν ὅτι ἀληθὴς εἶ καὶ τὴν ὁδὸν τοῦ θεοῦ ἐν ἀληθείᾳ διδάσκεις, καὶ οὐ μέλει σοι περὶ οὐδενός, οὐ γὰρ βλέπεις εἰς πρόσωπον ἀνθρώπων. 17 εἰπὲ οὖν ἡμῖν τί σοι δοκεῖ: ἔξεστιν δοῦναι κῆνσον Καίσαρι ἢ οὔ; 18 γνοὺς δὲ ὁ Ἰησοῦς τὴν πονηρίαν αὐτῶν εἶπεν, Τί με πειράζετε,ὑποκριταί; 19 ἐπιδείξατέ μοι τὸ νόμισμα τοῦ κήνσου. οἱ δὲ προσήνεγκαν αὐτῷ δηνάριον. 20 καὶ λέγει αὐτοῖς, Τίνος ἡ εἰκὼν αὕτη καὶ ἡ ἐπιγραφή; 21 λέγουσιν αὐτῷ, Καίσαρος. τότε λέγει αὐτοῖς, Ἀπόδοτε οὖν τὰ Καίσαρος Καίσαρι καὶ τὰ τοῦ θεοῦ τῷ θεῷ. 22καὶ ἀκούσαντες ἐθαύμασαν, καὶ ἀφέντες αὐτὸν ἀπῆλθαν.

Translation (NRSV):

15 Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said.16 So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, ‘Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality. 17 Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?’ 18 But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, ‘Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? 19 Show me the coin used for the tax.’ And they brought him a denarius. 20 Then he said to them, ‘Whose head is this, and whose title?’ 21 They answered, ‘The emperor’s.’ Then he said to them, ‘Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’ 22 When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.

Putting the Gospel reading in context:

It is possible to imagine a build-up to the Gospel reading in the themes we can find in the other readings, the Old Testament, Psalm and Epistle.

Exodus 33: 12-23

In the verses immediately before this reading 7-11, we are told that “the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend” (verse 11).

Moses, who has found favour in the sight of God (verses 13, 16, 17) asks to see the glory of God (verse 18). God promises him “goodness” (verse 19) and grace (“gracious”), but God says Moses cannot see the face of God: “you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live” (verse 20).

The people have already seen the golden calf and bowed down before it as an idol. But for many ancient peoples, to see a god’s face was to invite death.

Even so, God grants Moses more knowledge than that he gives to others: he will see his “back” (verse 23) but not his face.

Psalm 99

Psalm 99 is a hymn of praise to God as king. The endings of verses 3, 5 and 9 may be a refrain, said or sung by worshippers as they “extol” (verse 9) God.

God, on his throne above the “cherubim” (verse 1, the half-human, half-animal creatures thought to hover above the altar in the Temple), is to be praised by “all the peoples” (verse 2). “His holy mountain” (verse 9) is no longer Mount Sinai but Mount Zion, the hill on which Jerusalem stands. But still God speaks to the people “out of a pillar of cloud” (verse 9), so they cannot see his face.

I Thessalonians 1: 1-10

Saint Paul preaching in Thessaloniki ... a fresco in the Cathedral Church of Saint Gregory Palamas (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

This introduction to the first letter to the Church in Thessaloniki includes greetings of grace and peace from Saint Paul and his two companions, Silvanus (Silas) and Timothy.

The Church members in Thessaloniki have become “imitators” (verse 6) of Saint Paul and of Christ, being joyful in spite of persecution. They have become examples for the other believers to imitate throughout Macedonia and Achaia (verse 7).

People know how they have turned their faces from idols to God and now worship and serve the “living and true God” (verse 9).

Matthew 22: 15-22

It is Holy Week, the week between Palm Sunday and Good Friday. The Gospel reading is set in the courtyards of the Temple in Jerusalem (Matthew 21: 23), the day after Christ has overturned the tables of the moneychangers.

The moneychangers were in the Temple because the coins in use in the Roman Empire included images, such as the image of Caesar, who called himself “lord” and “divine” when those titles truly belong to God alone, and “priest” when that title challenges the ritual purity and claims of the Temple. Images like those on the coin are forbidden in the Temple of the God who forbids such images.

Christ is teaching in the Temple, where the religious and civic leaders of Jewish society, the priests and the elders, have challenged him about the authority for his words and his deeds, his teaching and his action.

He declines to answer the question, as I was pointing out on Wednesday of last week in a sermon here in the chapel. Then he tells the Parable of the Wedding Feast, which was the Gospel reading for last Sunday [5 October 2014].

Now Christ is confronted by two further sectors of Jewish society, the followers of the Pharisees (verse 15) and the Herodians (verse 16), the people who supported Herod, the Roman puppet king, and his successors. They too are united in their plot to entrap Christ, and while they appear to speak to him with respect, they speak with irony.

The question they put to him is the subject of great debate in Jewish circles at the time: should religious and loyal Jews pay the annual poll tax to Rome? (verse 17).

Jewish opinion was divided on this question, and the Zealots among them claimed that God’s people should not be subject to pagan Gentiles.

But, like last week’s question about the baptism of John the Baptist, this is a loaded question. This is yet another question loaded with presuppositions, with built-in fallacies and false dichotomies. Last week I gave the well-known example of the sort of question all lawyers know not ask: “When did you stop beating your wife?”

The question put to Christ in the Temple this morning only allows one of two answers, Yes or No. But it is only a question about law. It does not ask, for example, whether it is moral to pay those taxes, or whether it is folly not to pay those taxes.

It is entrapment and it is fallacious. If Christ answers Yes, the Zealots and other Jews hostile to Roman rule are going to turn against him. On the other hand, if he says No, he risks being arrested for inciting rebellion against Rome.

Christ sees through the plot that is being set for him and the intended malice. He describes his interrogators as “hypocrites” (verse 18) for pretending to respect him but intending to discredit him.

A silver denarius with images of Tiberius Caesar and his mother Diva Augusta

The coin they bring to Christ is a denarius (verse 19). The denarius was a silver coin and the most common Roman coin of the time. It is mentioned in the Bible more often than any other coin, and it is sometimes known as the “penny” of the Bible because the King James Version uses that word for it.

The denarius was a day’s pay for workers and Roman troops. In the parable of the labourers in the vineyard (Matthew 20: 1-16), we see that a denarius was the ordinary payment for a day’s labour (see Matthew 20: 2, 9, 10, 13).

There are other well-known examples of the denarius as common currency in the New Testament:

“But a Samaritan while travelling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend’.” (Luke 10: 33-35).

When he looked and saw a large crowd coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. Philip answered him, “Six months’ wages [200 denarii] would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.” (John 6: 5-7)

But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?” (He said this, not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) (John 12: 4-6)

Having looked at the head on the denarius he is given, Christ then looks at the inscription. In the parallel accounts (Mark 12: 13-17; Luke 20: 20-26), he asks: “Whose head is this, and whose title?” (Mark 12: 16), or “Whose head and whose title does it bear?” (Luke 20: 24).

The denarius of Augustus bore on its obverse a head or bust of the emperor crowned with a laurel wreath and with the inscription: Caesar Augustus, Divi Filius, Pater Patriae, “Caesar Augustus, Son of God, Father of His Country.”

On the reverse was a depiction of the imperial princes, Gaius and Lucius, the adopted sons of Augustus, each with a spear in his hand, with a background of crossed spears, a star representing heavenly sanction, an image of the stipulum or ladle used by Roman priests in their libations, and the litius of the augurate, and the added inscription Principes Iuventutis (“the first among the young”).

The coin handed to Christ in the Temple is most likely the denarius of Tiberius, which on its obverse has the inscription Ti Caesar Divi Avg F Avgvstvs (Tiberius Caesar Divi Augusti Filius Augustus, “Tiberius Caesar, Son of the Divine Augustus, Augustus”), inscribed around an image of Tiberius with a laurel crown.

The reverse side depicts a seated woman as Pax. This was Livia Drusilia, wife of Augustus and mother of Tiberius; she died in AD 29 and was later deified by her grandson Claudius with the title Diva Augusta, and women were to invoke her name in their sacred oaths. On the coin, she holds a palm branch in her left hand and an inverted spear in her right hand, and the inscription on this side refers to Tiberius as Pontif Maxim (Pontifex Maximus), or “High Priest” of the Roman State).

Christ does not even get around to flipping over the coin to read the inscription on the reverse side referring to Tiberius Caesar as the High Priest. But both inscriptions are affronts to monotheistic Jews, and so the coin should not have been in the hands of anyone in the Temple.

Yet, when Christ asks them to produce a denarius in that setting, they do so immediately. In other words, they themselves have already carried an image of Caesar and Diva Augusta, and blasphemous inscription, into the Temple of the Lord God.

Until that moment when the coin is placed in Christ’s hand, he is caught in the horns of a dilemma. It is the Passover season, and Jerusalem is flooded with hundreds or thousands of pilgrims who have arrived to remember and celebrate God’s liberation of their ancestors from slavery under foreign rulers.

Beneath the Villa Jovis in Capri, where the Emperor Tiberius threw his enemies off the cliff-top into the sea (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

At Passover, parallels might have been drawn between Tiberius and Pharaoh. Tiberius Claudius Nero, or Tiberius Julius Caesar, was a tyrant in his own right. He was Roman Emperor from AD 14 to AD 37. He spent most of the latter years of his reign in the Villa Jovis on the island of Capri, where Tiberius spent much of his final years, leaving control of the empire in the hands of the prefect Lucius Aelius Sejanus.

While Tiberius was in Capri, rumours abounded as to what exactly he was doing there. Suetonius and Tacitus record lurid tales of sexual perversity, including graphic depictions of child molestation, and cruelty, and most of all his paranoia. Those who questioned or challenged his power and divinity were often thrown off the cliffs at the Villa Jovis onto the rocks below and into the sea.

If Christ says paying taxes to Caesar is wrong, he risks provoking immediate action against him by the Romans. If he says paying taxes to Rome is right, those who question him are ready to accuse him of betraying the memory and tradition, faith and beliefs of the people as they recall their liberation from slavery and oppression.

But Christ trips those who are sent to question him by showing that they are bearing proclamations of Caesar’s lordship and high priesthood into the very Temple of the God they claim to be serving with ritual purity.

The obvious questions here are not about what is lawful, or even what is moral or wise, but: who is the divine son, and who is the great high priest?

Christ has won the argument. He has unmasked his critics. There is no need for any further argument, there is no need to say anything more, there is no need to answer the question.

Yet, having won the argument, he answers the question anyway. What he says would have meaning for any Pharisee present. He says: “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (verse 21).

The word Christ uses in his answer, ἀπόδοτε, is translated as “render” (KJV; RSV: “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s”), “give back” (NIV) or simply “give” (NRSV, verse 21). But the verb ἀποδίδωμι (apodidomi) can mean to give back, restore or repay. It can mean to deliver, to give away for one’s own profit what is one’s own, to sell, to pay off, or to discharge what is due. It can refer to a debt, wages, tribute, taxes, or produce due.

Of course, to the Jews of that time, as to us now, all we have is given to us by God, and we owe everything to him.

So what in this world is God’s?

The alternative, paired Old Testament reading for this Sunday (Isaiah 45: 1-7) is helpful here. God addresses King Cyrus of Persia, who is a gentile but nevertheless “anointed” and called by the God of Israel (verse 1). It is not only the people of Israel who are God’s, but all to whom God gives life and breath.

God tells this gentile king, that he is providing help “though you do not know me … so that they may know, from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is no one besides me; I am the Lord, and there is no other. I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe; I the Lord do all these things” (Isaiah 45: 4-7). East or west, light or dark, in all circumstances, God is God, and there is none other.

Our psalm for this Sunday describes God similarly as Lord of all peoples, of all the earth: “The Lord is king … he is high above all peoples” (Psalm 99: 1-2).

Or, as Psalm 24:1 puts it: “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it.”

As far as any of this relates to the question Christ was asked in the Temple, everything belongs to God, who is the rightful Lord of the earth and all that is in it, the world and all people in it.

When it comes to any worldly power that competes and makes demands to be our lord, whether it’s a figurehead, a flag, or the exclusive claims of some nation-state nationalism, this is a place reserved exclusively for the Lord God.

The coin’s inscriptions, with their claims about Caesar’s divinity and high priesthood, and the idolatrous images of one who claimed divinity and his mother who is about to be deified , turn this from a debate about paying a poll tax to an occupying foreign power to an unmasking of the duplicitous thinking of those who challenge Christ’s authority in the Temple, in his teaching and in his table-turning, his words and deeds, while at the same time compromising their own claims to ritual purity within the bounds of the Temple.

Next: Matthew 25: 14-30.

Collect:

Almighty and everlasting God:
Increase in us your gift of faith
that, forsaking what lies behind,
we may run the way of your commandments
and win the crown of everlasting joy;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Post Communion Prayer:

All praise and thanks, O Christ,
for this sacred banquet,
in which by faith we receive you,
the memory of your passion is renewed,
our lives are filled with grace,
and a pledge of future glory given,
to feast at that table where you reign
with all your saints for ever.

Canon Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism, Liturgy and Church History, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute. These notes were prepared for a Bible study with part-time MTh students in a tutorial group on 11 October 2014.

‘Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s’

The denarius with the image of Caesar represented a day’s labour ... Roman coins in a private collection in Callan, Co Kilkenny (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Patrick Comerford

Church of Ireland Theological Institute,

8 October 2014

Introduction:

In our Bible studies each Wednesday morning in our tutorial group, we are looking at the Lectionary readings for the Sunday after next.

The Sunday after next, or Sunday week [19 October 2014], is the Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity [Proper 24]. The readings in the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL) for that Sunday are:

Exodus 33: 12-23; Psalm 99; I Thessalonians 1: 1-10; Matthew 22: 15-22.

Matthew 22: 15-22

15 Τότε πορευθέντες οἱ Φαρισαῖοι συμβούλιον ἔλαβον ὅπως αὐτὸν παγιδεύσωσιν ἐν λόγῳ. 16 καὶ ἀποστέλλουσιν αὐτῷ τοὺς μαθητὰς αὐτῶν μετὰ τῶν Ἡρῳδιανῶν λέγοντες, Διδάσκαλε, οἴδαμεν ὅτι ἀληθὴς εἶ καὶ τὴν ὁδὸν τοῦ θεοῦ ἐν ἀληθείᾳ διδάσκεις, καὶ οὐ μέλει σοι περὶ οὐδενός, οὐ γὰρ βλέπεις εἰς πρόσωπον ἀνθρώπων. 17 εἰπὲ οὖν ἡμῖν τί σοι δοκεῖ: ἔξεστιν δοῦναι κῆνσον Καίσαρι ἢ οὔ; 18 γνοὺς δὲ ὁ Ἰησοῦς τὴν πονηρίαν αὐτῶν εἶπεν, Τί με πειράζετε,ὑποκριταί; 19 ἐπιδείξατέ μοι τὸ νόμισμα τοῦ κήνσου. οἱ δὲ προσήνεγκαν αὐτῷ δηνάριον. 20 καὶ λέγει αὐτοῖς, Τίνος ἡ εἰκὼν αὕτη καὶ ἡ ἐπιγραφή; 21 λέγουσιν αὐτῷ, Καίσαρος. τότε λέγει αὐτοῖς, Ἀπόδοτε οὖν τὰ Καίσαρος Καίσαρι καὶ τὰ τοῦ θεοῦ τῷ θεῷ. 22καὶ ἀκούσαντες ἐθαύμασαν, καὶ ἀφέντες αὐτὸν ἀπῆλθαν.

Translation (NRSV):

15 Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said.16 So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, ‘Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality. 17 Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?’ 18 But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, ‘Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? 19 Show me the coin used for the tax.’ And they brought him a denarius. 20 Then he said to them, ‘Whose head is this, and whose title?’ 21 They answered, ‘The emperor’s.’ Then he said to them, ‘Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’ 22 When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.

Putting the Gospel reading in context:

It is possible to imagine a build-up to the Gospel reading in the themes we can find in the other readings, the Old Testament, Psalm and Epistle.

Exodus 33: 12-23

In the verses immediately before this reading 7-11, we are told that “the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend” (verse 11).

Moses, who has found favour in the sight of God (verses 13, 16, 17) asks to see the glory of God (verse 18). God promises him “goodness” (verse 19) and grace (“gracious”), but God says Moses cannot see the face of God: “you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live” (verse 20).

The people have already seen the golden calf and bowed down before it as an idol. But for many ancient peoples, to see a god’s face was to invite death.

Even so, God grants Moses more knowledge than that he gives to others: he will see his “back” (verse 23) but not his face.

Psalm 99

Psalm 99 is a hymn of praise to God as king. The endings of verses 3, 5 and 9 may be a refrain, said or sung by worshippers as they “extol” (verse 9) God.

God, on his throne above the “cherubim” (verse 1, the half-human, half-animal creatures thought to hover above the altar in the Temple), is to be praised by “all the peoples” (verse 2). “His holy mountain” (verse 9) is no longer Mount Sinai but Mount Zion, the hill on which Jerusalem stands. But still God speaks to the people “out of a pillar of cloud” (verse 9), so they cannot see his face.

I Thessalonians 1: 1-10

Saint Paul preaching in Thessaloniki ... a fresco in the Cathedral Church of Saint Gregory Palamas (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

This introduction to the first letter to the Church in Thessaloniki includes greetings of grace and peace from Saint Paul and his two companions, Silvanus (Silas) and Timothy.

The Church members in Thessaloniki have become “imitators” (verse 6) of Saint Paul and of Christ, being joyful in spite of persecution. They have become examples for the other believers to imitate throughout Macedonia and Achaia (verse 7).

People know how they have turned their faces from idols to God and now worship and serve the “living and true God” (verse 9).

Matthew 22: 15-22

It is Holy Week, the week between Palm Sunday and Good Friday. The Gospel reading is set in the courtyards of the Temple in Jerusalem (Matthew 21: 23), the day after Christ has overturned the tables of the moneychangers.

The moneychangers were in the Temple because the coins in use in the Roman Empire included images, such as the image of Caesar, who called himself “lord” and “divine” when those titles truly belong to God alone, and “priest” when that title challenges the ritual purity and claims of the Temple. Images like those on the coin are forbidden in the Temple of the God who forbids such images.

Christ is teaching in the Temple, where the religious and civic leaders of Jewish society, the priests and the elders, have challenged him about the authority for his words and his deeds, his teaching and his action.

He declines to answer the question, as you will remember from last week’s sermon here in the chapel. Then he tells the parable of the Wedding Feast, which we looked at in this tutorial group last Wednesday morning.

Now Christ is confronted by two further sectors of Jewish society, the followers of the Pharisees (verse 15) and the Herodians (verse 16), the people who supported Herod, the Roman puppet king, and his successors. They too are united in their plot to entrap Christ, and while they appear to speak to him with respect, they speak with irony.

The question they put to him is the subject of great debate in Jewish circles at the time: should religious and loyal Jews pay the annual poll tax to Rome? (verse 17).

Jewish opinion was divided on this question, and the Zealots among them claimed that God’s people should not be subject to pagan Gentiles.

But, like last week’s question about the baptism of John the Baptist, this is a loaded question. This is yet another question loaded with presuppositions, with built-in fallacies and false dichotomies. Last week I gave the well-known example of the sort of question all lawyers know not ask: “When did you stop beating your wife?”

The question put to Christ in the Temple this morning only allows one of two answers, Yes or No. But it is only a question about law. It does not ask, for example, whether it is moral to pay those taxes, or whether it is folly not to pay those taxes.

It is entrapment and it is fallacious. If Christ answers Yes, the Zealots and other Jews hostile to Roman rule are going to turn against him. On the other hand, if he says No, he risks being arrested for inciting rebellion against Rome.

Christ sees through the plot that is being set for him and the intended malice. He describes his interrogators as “hypocrites” (verse 18) for pretending to respect him but intending to discredit him.

A silver denarius with images of Tiberius Caesar and his mother Diva Augusta

The coin they bring to Christ is a denarius (verse 19). The denarius was a silver coin and the most common Roman coin of the time. It is mentioned in the Bible more often than any other coin, and it is sometimes known as the “penny” of the Bible because the King James Version uses that word for it.

The denarius was a day’s pay for workers and Roman troops. In the parable of the labourers in the vineyard (Matthew 20: 1-16), we see that a denarius was the ordinary payment for a day’s labour (see Matthew 20: 2, 9, 10, 13).

There are other well-known examples of the denarius as common currency in the New Testament:

“But a Samaritan while travelling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend’.” (Luke 10: 33-35).

When he looked and saw a large crowd coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. Philip answered him, “Six months’ wages [200 denarii] would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.” (John 6: 5-7)

But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?” (He said this, not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) (John 12: 4-6)

Having looked at the head on the denarius he is given, Christ then looks at the inscription. In the parallel accounts (Mark 12: 13-17; Luke 20: 20-26), he asks: “Whose head is this, and whose title?” (Mark 12: 16), or “Whose head and whose title does it bear?” (Luke 20: 24).

The denarius of Augustus bore on its obverse a head or bust of the emperor crowned with a laurel wreath and with the inscription: Caesar Augustus, Divi Filius, Pater Patriae, “Caesar Augustus, Son of God, Father of His Country.”

On the reverse was a depiction of the imperial princes, Gaius and Lucius, the adopted sons of Augustus, each with a spear in his hand, with a background of crossed spears, a star representing heavenly sanction, an image of the stipulum or ladle used by Roman priests in their libations, and the litius of the augurate, and the added inscription Principes Iuventutis (“the first among the young”).

The coin handed to Christ in the Temple is most likely the denarius of Tiberius, which on its obverse has the inscription Ti Caesar Divi Avg F Avgvstvs (Tiberius Caesar Divi Augusti Filius Augustus, “Tiberius Caesar, Son of the Divine Augustus, Augustus”), inscribed around an image of Tiberius with a laurel crown.

The reverse side depicts a seated woman as Pax. This was Livia Drusilia, wife of Augustus and mother of Tiberius; she died in AD 29 and was later deified by her grandson Claudius with the title Diva Augusta, and women were to invoke her name in their sacred oaths. On the coin, she holds a palm branch in her left hand and an inverted spear in her right hand, and the inscription on this side refers to Tiberius as Pontif Maxim (Pontifex Maximus), or “High Priest” of the Roman State).

Christ does not even get around to flipping over the coin to read the inscription on the reverse side referring to Tiberius Caesar as the High Priest. But both inscriptions are affronts to monotheistic Jews, and so the coin should not have been in the hands of anyone in the Temple.

Yet, when Christ asks them to produce a denarius in that setting, they do so immediately. In other words, they themselves have already carried an image of Caesar and Diva Augusta, and blasphemous inscription, into the Temple of the Lord God.

Until that moment when the coin is placed in Christ’s hand, he is caught in the horns of a dilemma. It is the Passover season, and Jerusalem is flooded with hundreds or thousands of pilgrims who have arrived to remember and celebrate God’s liberation of their ancestors from slavery under foreign rulers.

Beneath the Villa Jovis in Capri, where the Emperor Tiberius threw his enemies off the cliff-top into the sea (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

At Passover, parallels might have been drawn between Tiberius and Pharaoh. Tiberius Claudius Nero, or Tiberius Julius Caesar, was a tyrant in his own right. He was Roman Emperor from AD 14 to AD 37. He spent most of the latter years of his reign in the Villa Jovis on the island of Capri., where Tiberius spent much of his final years, leaving control of the empire in the hands of the prefect Lucius Aelius Sejanus.

While Tiberius was in Capri, rumours abounded as to what exactly he was doing there. Suetonius and Tacitus record lurid tales of sexual perversity, including graphic depictions of child molestation, and cruelty, and most of all his paranoia. Those who questioned or challenged his power and divinity were often thrown off the cliffs at the Villa Jovis onto the rocks below and into the sea.

If Christ says paying taxes to Caesar is wrong, he risks provoking immediate action against him by the Romans. If he says paying taxes to Rome is right, those who question him are ready to accuse him of betraying the memory and tradition, faith and beliefs of the people as they recall their liberation from slavery and oppression.

But Christ trips those who are sent to question him by showing that they are bearing proclamations of Caesar’s lordship and high priesthood into the very Temple of the God they claim to be serving with ritual purity.

The obvious questions here are not about what is lawful, or even what is moral or wise, but: who is the divine son, and who is the great high priest?

Christ has won the argument. He has unmasked his critics. There is no need for any further argument, there is no need to say anything more, there is no need to answer the question.

Yet, having won the argument, he answers the question anyway. What he says would have meaning for any Pharisee present. He says: “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (verse 21).

The word Christ uses in his answer, ἀπόδοτε, is translated as “render” (KJV; RSV: “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s”), “give back” (NIV) or simply “give” (NRSV, verse 21). But the verb ἀποδίδωμι (apodidomi) can mean to give back, restore or repay. It can mean to deliver, to give away for one’s own profit what is one’s own, to sell, to pay off, or to discharge what is due. It can refer to a debt, wages, tribute, taxes, or produce due.

Of course, to the Jews of that time, as to us now, all we have is given to us by God, and we owe everything to him.

So what in this world is God’s?

The alternative, paired Old Testament reading for this Sunday (Isaiah 45: 1-7) is helpful here. God addresses King Cyrus of Persia, who is a gentile but nevertheless “anointed” and called by the God of Israel (verse 1). It is not only the people of Israel who are God’s, but all to whom God gives life and breath.

God tells this gentile king, that he is providing help “though you do not know me … so that they may know, from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is no one besides me; I am the Lord, and there is no other. I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe; I the Lord do all these things” (Isaiah 45: 4-7). East or west, light or dark, in all circumstances, God is God, and there is none other.

Our psalm for this Sunday describes God similarly as Lord of all peoples, of all the earth: “The Lord is king … he is high above all peoples” (Psalm 99: 1-2).

Or, as Psalm 24:1 puts it: “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it.”

As far as any of this relates to the question Christ was asked in the Temple, everything belongs to God, who is the rightful Lord of the earth and all that is in it, the world and all people in it.

When it comes to any worldly power that competes and makes demands to be our lord, whether it’s a figurehead, a flag, or the exclusive claims of some nation-state nationalism, this is a place reserved exclusively for the Lord God.

The coin’s inscriptions, with their claims about Caesar’s divinity and high priesthood, and the idolatrous images of one who claimed divinity and his mother who is about to be deified , turn this from a debate about paying a poll tax to an occupying foreign power to an unmasking of the duplicitous thinking of those who challenge Christ’s authority in the Temple, in his teaching and in his table-turning, his words and deeds, while at the same time compromising their own claims to ritual purity within the bounds of the Temple.

Next: Matthew 22: 34-46.

Collect:

Almighty and everlasting God:
Increase in us your gift of faith
that, forsaking what lies behind,
we may run the way of your commandments
and win the crown of everlasting joy;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Post Communion Prayer:

All praise and thanks, O Christ,
for this sacred banquet,
in which by faith we receive you,
the memory of your passion is renewed,
our lives are filled with grace,
and a pledge of future glory given,
to feast at that table where you reign
with all your saints for ever.

Canon Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism, Liturgy and Church History, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute. These notes were prepared for a Bible study with MTh students in a tutorial group on 8 October 2014.

Four cathedrals and a missed opportunity for mission in Italy

Everyone wants to squeeze into the Piazzetta in Capri town, which is crowded by day and by night (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Patrick Comerford

The Piazzetta, in the heart of Capri town, is crowded by day and by night, with available space packed. The square buzzes with life, as the café tables fill what is officially known as Piazza Umberto I, and tourists crane their necks, hoping to catch a glimpse of preening glitterati and glamorous celebrities who can afford to holiday here while day trippers return to the resorts before evening falls.

I Faraglioni ... Capri’s striking offshore rock stacks that soar out of the sea (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Everyone who comes to Capri wants to see I Faraglioni, the striking offshore rock stacks that soar out of the sea, and the Blue Grotto or Grotta Azzurra. Others want to see the Villa San Michelle, the home of Sweden’s best-known writer Axel Munthe, the site of the Villa Jovis, the luxurious home of the decadent Emperor Tiberius, and the Giardini di Augusto, once owned by the German industrialist Krupp. And some come to see the villa that inspired Gracie Fields lived as she sang On the Isle of Capri.

Everyone who comes to Capri seems to end up in the Piazzetta, enjoying the blue sea below or simple “people watching.”

The best views of the square – and of other people – are from the top of the flight of steps leading up to Santo Stefano, Capri’s former cathedral, built in the square in the 17th century, on the site of a sixth century Benedictine monastery. The church was built in Capri’s flamboyant baroque style, with small cupolas, vaulted ceilings and molded chapels. The cathedral clock tower and the archbishop’s palace nearby are now used as the Municipio or town hall.

Around the corner from the square, the façade of Santo Stefano is squeezed into a narrow side street. Inside, the inlaid marble floor surrounding the main altar includes fragments from the Villa Jovis, and the treasures include a silver statue of San Costanzo, the island’s patron.

But few tourists get to see inside the former cathedral. Outside, a sign warns people against sitting on the steps, and the church opens in the evening only. By then, the last day-trippers have caught the hydrofoils and ferries back to Sorrento and Naples, leaving behind only the rich and the famous who can afford the high prices of Capri’s hotels.

Peace and calm in the gardens of the Villa San Michele (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

It seems the church in Capri is missing a great opportunity for welcome and mission. Instead, we communed with nature in the gardens of the Villa San Michele, and said our prayers in the chapel in a small cemetery in Anacapri on the corner of Via Cimitero and Via Caproscuro.

The grave of Major John Hamill from Co Antrim in Anacapri (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

In a quiet corner of the Cimitero acattolico di Capri – literally “the non-Catholic Cemetery of Capri” – we came across the grave of Major John Hamill from Co Antrim, who was killed on 4 October 1808 while fighting with the British garrison resisting Napoleon’s invasion of Capri. The first plaque was placed on his grave by his kinsman, John Hamill, on 3 October 1831, and the grave was restored in 1914, after an appeal in The Irish Times, by the military historian and philanthropist Sir Lees Knowles, who was also involved in the Guinness Housing Trust.

Ravello’s pair of pulpits

Ravello is known for its beautiful views of the coast below (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

If we were disappointed by the closed doors of Santo Stefano, we found warmer and heartier welcomes in three other cathedrals during our week in the Sorrento and Amalfi area: the cathedrals in Ravello, Amalfi and Sorrento.

Tiny Ravello (population 2,500) is known for its beautiful views of the coast below, for the Ravello Festival and for the Villa Rufolo, built in 1270, and its gardens. Boccaccio mentions the villa in his Decameron and it inspired Wagner’s stage design for his opera Parsifal (1880).

Preparing the cathedral in Ravello for a wedding (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

But visitors often miss out on Ravello’s much older Duomo or cathedral on the other side of the square, built in 1080. The entrance to the cathedral has two bronze doors depicting 54 scenes of the life and Passion of Christ. These bronze doors are one of only two dozen pairs of bronze doors in Italy.

Although the cathedral was being prepared that afternoon for a wedding, we were welcomed inside, entering through the museum on side street on the north side of the cathedral.

The ‘Gospel Pulpit’ in Ravello is supported by six roaring lions (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Inside, the cathedral’s richly ornamented interior is a riot of sculpted white marble, which holds a third century sarcophagus, marble slabs decorated with mosaics, and the skull of Saint Barbara. Behind the altar, there is a vial that is said to hold the blood of Saint Pantaleone, the town’s patron saint, and a fragment of the Saint Thomas placed in the side of the Risen Christ.

But the gems in the cathedral are the two 13th century, decorated, marble pulpits in the central nave, adorned with glittering mosaics: the Gospel Pulpit on the right of the central nave, and the Epistle Pulpit on the left.

The ‘Epistle Pulpit’ in Ravello tells the story of Jonah and the Whale (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

The Gospel Pulpit, dating from 1272, displays dragons and birds on spiral columns, supported by six roaring lions, and the heraldic arms of the Rufolo family who built the Villa Rufolo, with profiles of family members above the doors of the pulpit. The Epistle Pulpit depicts the story of Jonah and the Whale.

Wedding bells in Amalfi

Behind Amalfi’s lively seafront is an attractive small town with narrow alleyways and hidden courtyards (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Earlier that day, down on the coast below Ravello, we visited Amalfi, once an independent Byzantine republic, then from 839 to 1135, one of Italy’s four great maritime republics with a fleet to rival the naval powers of Pisa, Genoa and Venice. Later, it was the Knights of Saint John were founded here. Today it has a lively seafront but it is an attractive small town, with narrow alleyways, hidden courtyards and a population of 5,500 – before the tourists and day-trippers arrive in the morning, or once they have left in the evening.

Amalfi also claims to be the home of Flavio Gioia, an imaginary 14th century mariner and inventor who never existed but who, nevertheless, is said to have perfected the compass and to have determined the direction of true north.

The Cloister of Paradise is enclosed by rows and colonnades of Moorish-style, white, slender, interlaced columns (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

A few steps north of the statue of Flavio Gioia on the seafront, the town’s main square, Piazza Duomo, is dominated by Amalfi’s Duomo or cathedral which stands over the town centre at the top of a steep flight of steps.

At the top of the steps, this cathedral also has an impressive pair of bronze doors, dating from 1066, but originally from Constantinople.

But the cathedral in Amalfi is, in fact, a pair of cathedrals: the Duomo di Sant’Adrea (Cathedral of Saint Andrew) and the older Duomo del Crocifisso (Cathedral of the Crucifixion). Beside the paired cathedrals is the Chiostro del Paradiso or Cloister of Paradise, and below the crypt with relics of the Apostle Andrew.

Once again, although the cathedral was preparing for a wedding, I was welcomed and allowed to enter through the Cloister of Paradise. This was once ancient cemetery of the nobility of Amalfi, and is enclosed by rows and colonnades of 120 Moorish-style, white, slender, interlaced columns erected in 1266.

The cathedral dates from 596, but the original cathedral now serves as a museum. The newer cathedral, built in 1100, was originally in Romanesque style, concealed by the sumptuous baroque reordering of the 18th century.

The shrine of Saint Andrew in the crypt in Amalfi’s cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

In the crypt below, the cathedral claims its greatest relic – the head and bones of Saint Andrew, the first Apostle. During the Fourth Crusade in 1204, the head and bones were removed from a church in Constantinople by the papal envoy, Cardinal Pietro Capuano, and were buried in the crypt in Amalfi in 1208.

To this day, a crystal phial is placed on top of the sepulcher on some days in the church calendar for the past 750 years, and a dense liquid is collected. But similar sepulchers and similar miracles are claimed in Rome and in Patras in Greece. The “miracle of the phial” overshadows the other treasures of the crypt, including statues by Michelangelo and Bernini.

The atrium in Amalfi is built of striped marble and stone in a mixture of Spanish baroque, Moorish-Arabesque and Italian Gothic styles (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

As the wedding was about to begin, I stepped out into the extravagant atrium, built of striped marble and stone in a mixture of Spanish baroque, Moorish-Arabesque and Italian Gothic styles, with open interlaced arches. Below me spread the delights of Amalfi as the clock in the campanile above chimed mid-day. The bride had arrived to applause from tourists and shopkeepers and was climbing the 62 steps covered with a long red carpet to.

Sorrento’s cathedral and cloisters

The cathedral in Sorrento is used by local Anglicans on Sunday afternoons (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

The fourth cathedral we visited was the Cattedrale dei Santi Filippo e Giacomo (Cathedral of Saint Philip and Saint James) in Sorrento (16,500 people). It is used at 5 p.m. on Sunday afternoons by the local Anglican community, which is linked with Saint Mark’s Church in Naples, as well as Bari and Capri.

Although it was the height of summer, the parish was between incumbents, the parish website was down, and there was no Anglican service that afternoon. But we were not disappointed.

The Nativity scene inside the main doors of Sorrento’s cathedral is on display all year (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Yet again, this cathedral, which stands halfway along the Corso Italia in the heart of the town, has 12th century doors from Constantinople. It was first built in the 11th century was rebuilt in the Romanesque style in the 15th century, and has a marble altar, pulpit and throne dating from the 16th century. It seems as it is forever Christmas in this cathedral, for the large presepio just inside the main doors is on display all year.

The Franciscan Cloisters, beside the Villa Comunale in Sorrento (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Away from the buzz of Piazza Tasso and tourist attractions of the Marina Grande and Marina Piccola, once again we found peace and quiet the shady gardens of the Villa Comunale and the 13th century cloisters next door to the Franciscan church, shortly before yet another wedding ceremony began.

Offering a warm welcome

The closed doors and the cold reception at Santo Stephano in Capri reminded me of a similar experience many years ago in Santorini, where I was stunned into silence as I watched a priest brush tourists off the steps of the church as they watched the setting sun. He had missed an opportunity for mission once again. With a little imagination, he could have affirmed their joy in God’s creation, and invited them in to pray and see the church once the sun had set.

Both experiences were in sharp contrast to the open doors we experienced in other three small towns, and with the liturgical and cultural vitality we experienced later this summer in Christchurch Cathedral, Dublin, and Saint Canice’s Cathedral, Kilkenny.

In those two Irish cathedrals, the dean and the community know visitors are neither a nuisance nor an easy source of income through entry charges. Cathedrals and their liturgical and cultural life are at the heart of the ministry and the mission of the church; otherwise, they are in danger of being irrelevant to the life of the world around us.

A secret garden with a decorative majolica wall in the courtyard of the Casa Grande Correale, the 18th century Correale Mansion, in Sorrento (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Canon Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism, Liturgy and Church History, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute. This essay and these photographs were first published in October 2013 in the Church Review (Dublin and Glendalough) and the Diocesan Magazine (Cashel, Ferns and Ossory).

‘Capri makes you forget everything,’ but is it true ‘it’s best not to linger’?

Small boats and a tiny stretch of beach at Marina Grande, the main port of Capri (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Patrick Comerford

’twas on the Isle of Capri that I found her
Beneath the shade of an old walnut tree
Oh, I can still see the flow’rs bloomin’ round her
Where we met on the Isle of Capri

She was as sweet as a rose at the dawning
But somehow fate hadn’t meant her for me
And though I sailed with the tide in the morning
Still my heart’s on the Isle of Capri

Summertime was nearly over
Blue Italian sky above
I said “Lady, I’m a rover,
Can you spare a sweet word o’love?”

She whispered softly “It’s best not to linger”
And then as I kissed her hand I could see
She wore a lovely meatball on her finger
’twas goodbye at the Villa Capri

Summertime was nearly over
Blue Italian sky above
I said “Lady, I’m a rover,
Can you spare a fine word o’love?”

She whispered softly “It’s best not to linger”
And then as I kissed her hand I could see
She wore a plain golden ring on her finger
’twas goodbye on the Isle of Capri
’twas goodbye on the Isle of Capri
’twas goodbye on the Isle of Capri

The villa where Gracie Fields once lived at the Marina Piccola in Capri (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Frank Sinatra’s recording of this popular song in 1958 came as mass tourism was about to explode in post-war northern Europe. But his lyrics are much cruder than the version recorded in 1934 by Dame Gracie Fields, who had a villa on the island:

’Twas on the Isle of Capri that he found her
Beneath the shade of an old walnut tree
Oh, I can still see the flowers blooming ’round her
Where they met on the Isle of Capri

She was as sweet as a rose at the dawning
But somehow fate hadn’t meant it to be
And though he sailed with the tide in the morning
Still his heart’s in the Isle of Capri

Summertime was nearly over
Blue Italian sky above
He said, lady, I’m a rover
Can you spare a sweet word of love
She whispered softly, it’s best not to linger
And then as he kissed her hand he could see
She wore a plain golden ring on her finger
’Twas good-bye on the Isle of Capri

Somewhere far away, over Naples Bay
I heard a quaint lover’s story
It’s magic thrill holds a spell on me still
It’s a story old, that’s been sadly told
Down by the shore in the moonlight
How love began for a girl and a man

’Twas on the Isle of Capri that he found her
Beneath the shade of an old walnut tree
Ha-ha-ha-hahhhhhh, ha-ha-ha-hah
Where they met on the Isle of Capri

She was as sweet as a rose at the dawning
But somehow fate hadn’t meant it to be
Ha-ha-ha-hahhhhhh, ha-ha-ha-hah
Still his heart’s in the Isle of Capri

Summertime was nearly over
Blue Italian sky above
He said, lady, I’m a rover
Can you spare a sweet word of love
Ha-ha-ha-hah, ha-ha-hah, ha-ha-hah-hah
Ha-ha-ha-hah, ha-ha-hah, ha-ha-hahhh
She wore a plain golden ring on her finger
’Twas good-bye on the Isle of Capri.

Of course, “a plain golden ring” is more delicate than Sinatra’s “lovely meatball.”

It is still high summer, so I can hardly sing “Summertime was nearly over.” But with the “Blue Italian sky above” on Monday [8 July 2013], I sailed from Sorrento to the isle of Capri in the Bay of Naples.

There are white cliffs, hidden grottos and caves, and blue water all along the coasts of Capri (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Capri is am enchanted isle, with its white cliffs, grottos and caves hidden in the deep blue sea, and the villages of Capri and Anacapri hanging on perilously to the edges of cliffs and rocks.

There is no place in the Bay of Naples that is more sought after, and none that is more glamorous. This tiny island is swamped by day trippers in these summer months, with ferries and hydrofoils from Sorrento, Naples, Positano and Amalfi, taking anywhere from 20 to 80 minutes to reach the island and arriving seemingly every two to three minutes.

In less than half an hour, we had arrived from Sorrento at Marina Grande, the island’s main port, but instead of heading straight into the island’s towns, Capri and Anacapri, we began our day with a boat tour around the island’s rocky coastline, with grotto after grotto interspersing a series of perpendicular cliffs.

Beneath the Villa Jovis, where the Emperor Tiberius threw his enemies off the cliff-top into the sea (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

We headed around the Punta del Capo, beneath the site of Villa Jovis, the eastern summit of the island, where the Emperor Tiberius lived a life of debauchery and, according to Suetonius and Tacitus, he threw his enemies off the cliff-top to certain death in the sea below.

Capri has been inhabited since early times. The Greek geographer Strabo, Capri was once part of the mainland, and in the Aeneid, Virgil says Capri was populated by the Greek people of Teleboi who came from the Ionian Islands.

Tacitus records twelve imperial Roman villas in Capri. The soon-to-be Emperor Augustus swopped the neighbouring island of Ischia to the north with the Greek residents of Capri in 29 BC, and made his new Sea Palace his main residence on the island. He built temples, villas and aqueducts, and planted gardens so he could enjoy his private paradise.

Tiberius, his successor, built a series of villas at Capri, including the Villa Jovis, one of the best-preserved Roman villas in Italy. In 27 AD, the Emperor Tiberius moved permanently to Capri, running the Empire from there instead of Rome until his death then years later.

After the Western Roman Empire collapsed, Capri became subject to Naples, and in the centuries that followed it was regularly attacked and spoiled by pirates. In 866, the Emperor Louis II gave the island to Amalfi. A century later, Pope John XV gave the island its first bishop in 987. But the pirate raids continued and reached their peak in the mid-16th century when Barbarossa and Turqut Reis captured the island in 1535 and 1553 for the Ottoman Turks.

The rocks of I Farglioni have come to symbolise Capri (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

We soon came to I Farglioni, passing under the 60 metre long tunnel in the middle arch in the rock stacks that soar to a height of almost 110 metres and that have become symbolic of Capri.

As we passed by Marina Piccola, a lagoon-like harbour, we were pointed to the villa where Gracie Fields lived after falling in love with Capri and deciding to linger a little longer on the isle. She spent a fortnight on Capri with John Flanagan and Augustus John after reading Norman Douglas’s hedonistic novel South Wind, and declared: “I knew that that if only one small blade of grass on this gentle, wonderful, place could belong to me, I would be happy.”

Her wish came true in 1933 when she bought a ramshackle house for £11,000. A year later, she recorded The Isle of Capri in 1934. But Mussolini’s Fascist dictatorship was its height, and mass tourism did not develop until the 1950s, at the same time as Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby and other recording artists were making their own versions of her pre-war hit.

At the Green Grotto or Grotta Verde, the water was still that distinctive blue of Capri. We sailed on around Punta Carena, the south-westerly tip of the island with its lighthouse and along the western coast of Punta dell’Arcera and the Blue Grotto (Grotta Azzurra). There little boats were jostling with one another to take tourists two-by-two or alone into the Blue Grotto.

Small boats jostle with one another to take tourists into the Blue Grotto (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

This is the most visited place on Capri’s coastline. The modern fascination with Capri began with the book, the Discovery of the Blue Grotto on the Isle of Capri, in which the German painter and writer August Kopisch describes his stay on Capri in 1826 and his discovery or rediscovery of the Blue Grotto.

By the late 19th century, Capri was a popular resort for European artists, writers and celebrities.

The grave of John Hamill in a hidden corner in the cemetery in Anacapri (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Back at Marina Grande, we were taken by minibuses to Anacapri, where, in a small corner in the cemetery behind the bus station we found the grave of Major John Hamill from Co Antrim, who was killed on Capri in 1808 while fighting against Napoleon’s invasion of Capri. Napoleon captured Capri in 1806, but his troops were quickly dislodged by British forces, and the naval base on Capri became Britain’s “Second Gibraltar” until the French recaptured Capri in 1808. It returned to the Bourbon Kingdom of Naples in 1815 after Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo.

In the gardens of the Villa San Michele on the edges of Anacapri (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

From the cemetery we strolled on to the Villa San Michele, built by the Swedish doctor and author Axel Munthe (1857-1949), who lived there in the last century and made it the setting for his bestseller The Story of San Michele (1929).

The villa is now owned by the Swedish government and is used as a cultural centre and museum. We whiled away the rest of the morning here over coffee before returning to Capri for lunch.

Forgetting everything in the Augustus Gardens on the edges of Capri town (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

After lunch we also visited Friedrich Alfred Krupp’s Giardini di Augusto (Augustus Gardens), overlooking the rocks of I Farglioni. Lenin was a guest of Maxim Gorky in 1910 in his house near the Giardini di Augusto. There, it is said, he remarked: “Capri makes you forget everything” – an expression that may well have provided the inspiration for Somerset Maugham’s 1945 short story The Lotus Eater.
By late afternoon, there was time for a short walk on one of the two small pieces of sand on the shore line at Marina Grande. But ’Twas good-bye on the Isle of Capri, for the ferries were leaving for Sorrento, and there was no option to remain and spend the evening Down by the shore in the moonlight, nor was there time to find out whether “Capri makes you forget everything.”

In the evening, we had dinner in Ma che Bonte, the restaurant and pizzeria in Seiano below the Moon Valley Hotel, looking out across the Bay of Naples and at the pink, orange and purple streaks left in the sky after the sun had set.

Saying farewell to Capri (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)