The Pharisees in today’s gospel were hoisted by their own petard. They thought they had concocted the perfect trap for Jesus, but things didn’t turn out as they had planned. As so often in his ministry, Jesus took their question and turned everything upside down, trying to get people to think outside the box, to realize that God’s ways are not the ways of the world. When his questioners that day heard him say, “Give..to God the things that are God’s,” “they were amazed; and they left and went away.” I hope that was a wake-up call for them, that they went away pondering “the things that are God’s.”

I think that is the call for us today, to discover all the things that are God’s in our lives. After all, from the time we were about two years old and started grabbing toys and shouting “Mine! Mine!” we have been under the illusion that everything we can grab and hold onto is mine. My house, my car, my job, my garden, my library, my boat, my golf clubs, my clothes, my jewelry, my collections of treasures, my computer, my telephone, my friends, my community, my church, my priest, my parents, my spouse, my children, my life—my, my, my what-have-you. Any or all of those “my’s” can become idols for us, claiming our time and attention, our energy and resources, veiling our eyes from the reality of the things that are God’s.

When we are consumed with the “my’s” in our lives, we lose sight of the Source of All, without whom there would be no “my’s.” God, the Creator “of all that is, seen and unseen,” who breathes in us the Breath of Life, who surrounds and upholds us throughout our lives with his steadfast love and mercy, who blesses us with every good and perfect gift yearns for us, each of us and all of us. God waits for us with open arms to recognize the insufficiency of our “my’s,” to surrender all of our “my’s,” especially ourselves, body, mind, and spirit, to his gracious love, to accept the wholeness, the holiness he has prepared for us.