"Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God." This response by Jesus to the question put to him by those who were intent on trapping him has become a common saying. It is used to show a separation between Church and State, as well as to express the presumed separation between the spiritual from the corporal. It is also used as an exhortation for responsible participation in public/state responsibilities. However we tend to use it, there is always a danger involved. One would conclude that Jesus himself sanctioned such separations, that Jesus did see the importance of separating the Church from the State, the corporal from the spiritual. However, I would think that this is far from what Jesus had in mind. His detractors, those who wanted to trap him, wanted him to fall into this same trap. "There's nothing that absolutely belongs to Caesar that doesn't belong to God," Jesus tells them, "just as there is nothing that we have or do that is absolutely ours (other than our sins)." Whatever I give back to Caesar I do because God enables me to do it. Actually God wants me, as a responsible child of God, to do it. I am God's. It is me- in my entirety, both body and spirit, that belongs to God. Giving back to God what belongs to God means, therefore, that I give myself back to God. Not only a part of me, not only my soul, but me in my entirety. And that includes what I think, say, or do. Giving back to Caesar is part of what I do. Giving back to Caesar is part of giving back to God.