God's Coins

God’s Coins

Matthew 22:15-22

Rev. Dr. Wilfredo Baez

10/19/14

I’d like for you to reach into your pocket or purse and take out a coin.  Does everyone have a coin?  If you don’t have a coin please raise your hand.  Will anyone with an extra coin give these people a coin?  Now look at the coin? Whose image is on it?  Whose currency is it?  Who does it belong to?  

(Approach someone in the congregation.)  Whose coin are you holding?  Is it your coin?  Can I have it?  (Take the coin).  Thank you.  Now it’s mine!

But if I was to destroy this coin, who would I be accountable to for destroying it?  It belongs to the United States of America.  It is American currency.

Now take that same money.  Look it at.  Look at the image on it.  I want you to imagine that image being removed, fading and disappearing.  What are you left with?  You are left with a blank coin.  Whose coin is it?  Is it yours?  Can I have it?  Sure, why not!

In Jesus’ day everyday money was changed by the money changers to Temple currency.  Temple currency was very valuable. There was no image of God on the Temple currency because it was unlawful to make images of God. I mean, what does God look like?  Any image we come up with is going to be inaccurate and we’d probably spend centuries arguing about which is the best one.  

This blank coin, by the way, is very valuable.  It is heavenly currency.

The Pharisees weren’t too happy with Jesus.  He kept challenging their authority, proving them wrong and embarrassing them.  So they sent their disciples and Herodians with the intent of trapping him to say something that would get him in trouble with the Priests or the Romans.  

They asked him, “Teacher, we know that you are sincere.  You teach the way of God in all truthfulness.  You show deference to no one.  You are fair and impartial towards people.  Given that, tell us what you think.  Is it the religiously right thing to do to pay taxes to the emperor?   

Now, Jesus wasn’t stupid.  He responded, “You hypocrites!  Why are you testing me?  Show me the coin used for the tax” They brought him the coin.  “Whose head is on the coin, and whose title” he asked?  “Why the emperor’s” they said.  “Okay” said Jesus, “Give the Emperor what belongs to the Emperor and give to God what belongs to God.”

Whose image were you made in?  I was made in the image of God.  Who else here was made in the image of God?  If I am made in the image of God, what do I look like?

The images on coins are stamped onto them while the metal is hot and soft.  Then the images are hardened and take permanent form.  The form has an identity and it belongs to its maker.

What about us?  Before we are born we are made in the image of God.  We are blank coins.  But then, even as we are conceived, are in our mother’s womb and are being born, an image is being impressed upon us.   And that image continues to press down on us through infancy, childhood adolescence and into adulthood.  Our personalities are being formed.  

I became a Baez, morphed out of a Baez sperm and a Byrne egg.  And I became more and more of a Baez as I was raised in a Baez home with a Baez-Byrne religion, attended Baez-Byrne schools and lived in Baez-Byrne ways.  There were high times and low times as I became the image raised on the coin of my personality.

My schools further formed the image on my coin.  My ethnicities, nationality, education, professions and religious affiliations all shaped the image on my coin.  I was a child of my parents and a product of my schools, faith communities, neighborhoods and society.  There was a natural me that was being pushed, pulled, prodded and molded onto the coin of my personality.

I grew up to be a counselor, a psychologist, a husband, a Buddhist, a Yogi, a Christian, a father, a pastor and teacher and community leader.  I had to fit myself into each of these roles.  Who was I and what did I belong to?

Who are you and what do you belong to?  You have developed into a personality just the way I have.  You have felt the pressure of your familial, cultural and societal imprint upon you; good and bad experiences molding you into who you are.

But before you and I belong to the world and to its institutions we belong to God.  We are children of God.  We are heirs of the domain of God.  It’s not like we are God’s property.  It’s not like we are God’s slaves or God’s servants.  Relationship with God is not hierarchal. 

We belong to God but God belongs to us.  We belong to one another.  We are perpetually related to God and to one another.  We are separate individuals but we are One.  This is our spiritual identity.  Creator and creature belong to one another.  We are in essence One.

We are made in God’s image, every one of us.   

Do you want to know what God looks like?  Look in a mirror.  Now put the mirror down and look around you.  All of us together, in whatever state or condition we are in; that is what God looks like.   Do you want to know what God sounds like?  Record your voice.  Now give the microphone to everyone else.  That’s what God sound like.  What does God eat?  Steak and potatoes, brown rice and red beans, chicken curry, black eyed peas and ham hocks, corn-beef and cabbage, spaghetti and meatballs and green eggs and ham . . .Do you know what God feels?  Sad, happy; bored, excited; hungry, full; thirsty, quenched; tired, awake; searching, content; afraid, brave; deflated, elated; sick, healed; angry, forgiving; and despite what may appear on the surface loving and wanting the best that life has to offer for everyone.

 

When I look at his coin I see my image on it and I see your image on it?  What happens when one of these coins is lost?  What does God do?  God searches for it until God finds it!  And God celebrates when it is found!  What do when we lose the coin of a friend or a brother or sister in Christ?  We value that coin and we seek to recover it and when we have it in hand we celebrate!

Every coin is valuable in God’s treasury.  You and I are valuable.  Every person, every color, every culture, every language, every sexual orientation, every identity, every class, healthy or unhealthy, rich or poor, responsible or irresponsible is treasured.  Everyone is redeemable.  No matter what’s you’ve done or what’s been done to you God loves you as much as God loves anyone.