Penny For Your Thoughts

Did you ever have a coin collection? My brother did, and I did to a lesser degree. His was thorough; he had a head start. My efforts were hit and miss. I remember having one of the not super-rare issues of the steel pennies of 1943. There were other needs for copper in the war years. In all the years before, and for decades after the war pennies had a whole lot of copper, not like now where it is just a copper plating. At some point, a solid copper penny was costing more than a penny to produce.

I remember learning to look for a little letter below the year’s date. This indicated the U.S. mint that produced the coin. If it was plain, with no letter, it was from the Philadelphia Mint. Coins with an “S” were minted in San Francisco, those with a “D” in Denver. You rarely see the “wheat pennies” in circulation now, with the “tails” side of the penny depicting graceful heads of wheat in the design. After that, the Lincoln Memorial replaced the wheat.  Did you ever look in the center of the Memorial image and see the tiny depiction of the Lincoln statue in the center? Now, on the “tails” side, there is a shield with “E Pluribus Unum” at the top—"Out of Many, One.” What a concept!  That’s my two cents worth on pennies.

What has been consistent on all iterations of penny designs? It is the profile of Abe on the “heads” side of course. If there have been suggestions of changing that, I guess they were turned away. In this country, the depiction of a president or other figure on coin or bill is a gesture of respect and honor for the place that figure has in American history. This commemoration for a notable figure of the past is very different from what was going on in ancient Rome with the placement of the emperor’s image on a coin. To put the emperor’s image in circulation in the trading system was to let it be known in every part of the vast empire who was the one of ultimate authority and power. Later Caesars cultivated well the concept of the divinity of the emperor. He was a god. His deity was to be acknowledged symbolically in various ways. There was trouble for those who refused. 

In our Sunday gospel story, there is a subtle treatment of the themes of idolatry and oblation. Idolatry, because the Pharisees wanted to trap Jesus between the Roman demand to give Caesar his due, and the monotheistic Jewish zealots’ demand that the faithful should not cooperate with Rome.  Oblation, self-offering is perhaps implicit in Jesus’ insistence that something is owed to God. 

The Pharisees put Jesus in the hot seat on a question about Roman taxes. If Jesus says it is wrong to pay taxes he could be in trouble with the authorities of the state. If he says, it is good to pay taxes he could be seen by extreme zealots to be a Roman sympathizer, and therefore be in danger. When the Pharisees ask Jesus whether it is lawful to pay taxes to the emperor or not, this is how it goes:

But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the coin used for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius. Then he said to them, “Whose head is this, and whose title?” 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.” When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.

They are playing word games and power games with Jesus, but Jesus is not playing games. He knows there is but one true power. He knows we owe all to God, that is, we owe ourselves, our full lives. The emperor’s head and inscription shown on the coin might mean to Romans that Caesar is a god, but to Jesus, it means the human worldly system will make demands. What is Caesar’s give to Caesar; what is God’s give to God. This is an enigmatic injunction. I might not be on track with the text in my sense of this, but I cannot be the only one who has suggested what follows.

Jesus could be saying, the image of the emperor on the coin, means the coin belongs to him: give it to him. That is the human contract you have with Rome in this earthly system. What belongs to God is what bears the image of God; that would be you. Give yourself, your whole self to the Creator. You owe to God what is God’s. That is the divine covenant you have with the Creator of all. The image on the coin means nothing to the citizen of heaven. There is no idolatry taken up in using it within the worldly realm of Rome. You bear the image of the creator. To keep yourself from God is to claim to be your own. To ignore the image of the deity God stamped upon you, even to make a god of yourself.

When I finish writing this, I am going to go to the St. Francis website, click on the donate button, and donate my October commitment. That is my monthly ceremony: a way of giving myself to God by supporting God’s work through the parish mission and ministry. Money is meaningful, money is a powerful symbol. Giving allows me to have a sane and healthy relationship with money. Giving secures the health of my spirituality; honestly, it secures the health of my relationship with God. 

You know, I guess I am fine with paying taxes because I believe in funding the things I need but can’t bring about or afford all by myself. It’s a human, flawed, worldly system; it’s a community thing. What really excites me is giving to God through the church. It is among the major ways I enliven my relationship with God. I give to the people (through taxes) the things that belong to the people, but I am thrilled to give to God, what is truly mine to give. When I give, it is not a payoff. I let the gift represent myself, a being with God’s image stamped on it. I will tell you, (it is more than two cents worth, honest Abe) when you give yourself to God in this way, you are really giving back to God what belongs to God in the first place.