Matthew 22:15-22
October 16, 2005
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
I have twenty-five cents. We call it a quarter, two bits or a 25-cent piece, each is worth 25 cents. In some places, six of them will still get you a cup of coffee. But there is a slight chance that you might have a quarter worth as much as $1500.
The new quarters being issued these days are part of the “50 State Quarters” program. Beginning in January 1999, the United States Mint has, every 10 weeks, released a new quarter celebrating one of the 50 states, and they have been doing so in the order that the states were admitted to the Union.
The first quarter that was issued honored the state of Delaware, and the final coin in the series, to be stamped in August 2008 will celebrate Hawaii. The state of California quarter with John Muir, Yosemite’s Half Dome and the California condor with a wing-span of nine feet was minted at the beginning of this year.
Things have been going along fine, but in October 2004, when the Wisconsin coin was put into circulation, coin collectors sat up and took noticed. The reason? Mint errors. Every time the mint produces a new quarter for a new state, it makes about 500 million of them, and sometimes mistakes are made.
The state side of the perfect Wisconsin quarter has the head of a cow, a wheel of cheese and an ear of corn bursting forth from the husk. On one of the error coins, there is a little mark on one side of the corn ear that appears to be an additional husk leaf half peeled off the ear. They called this “extra leaf low.” Then there’s another error, collectors have called, “extra leaf high” where the shadow “leaf” is not peeled quite as far from the ear. Go ahead and take out your quarters to see if you might have the $1500 Wisconsin quarter!
Caesar Mint
In our Scripture lesson for this morning, we see some influential men, Pharisees and Herodians, who were opposed to Jesus. They were trying to set him up for some big public embarrassment to destroy his credibility.
They asked him whether it was lawful to pay taxes to the emperor. Their devious question was that if Jesus argued against the tax, they could accuse him to the Roman governor of urging rebellion against Rome. On the other hand, if he endorsed the tax, the common people who hated their Roman overlords would see him as sympathetic to Rome, and thus turn away from him. These Pharisees and Herodians thought their question would be a “lose/lose situation” for Jesus
What happened is that Jesus turns their question on its head—he flipped the coin to land on the head side. Calling for his challengers to produce a coin being used at that time, Jesus asked them whose head was imprinted on it. It wasn’t George Washington; it was Tiberius Caesar, the Roman emperor. Jesus instructed them to “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”
When the people saw their money with the emperor’s image on it, they thought that money was important. Each time a new emperor took the throne; he would have the currency of his predecessor destroyed and mint new ones with his image on them. The minting of one’s likeness was an act of sovereignty. The inscription under Caesar’s image said, “majestic son of the majestic god and high priest.” Worthless metal is stamped with Caesar’s image, making it something special.
Jesus was telling these influential leaders and the people gathered to hear him that they were making a minting error if they thought their responsibilities toward the empire were more important than those with God.
Our Image
When we take out our coins and paper money, we almost act like our images are on them. Since we worked hard making money, we make a minting error when we believe that what we have belongs to us.
There’s an old story about a prosperous farmer who gave very little to his church. So his minister went to visit him in hopes of getting him to increase his giving. The minister pointed out to him that the Lord had given him a fertile piece of land and had blessed him with sunshine and rain so that his crops would grow. The preacher added, “You know, this farm and everything you have is really on loan to you from God. You should be more grateful.”
The farmer replied, “I don’t mean to complain, Pastor, but you should have seen what a mess this place was when God was running it by himself!” We sympathize with the farmer, don’t we?
Theologically, the preacher was right that everything we possess comes from God, but we tend to believe that our prosperity has more to do with our own work ethic and our achievements than what God have done.
There is a natural sense of pride we feel when we have accomplished something that makes us reluctant to share the credit, perhaps even with God. But to say that all things come from God is to acknowledge that behind everything is God. Without his grace, blessings and mercy, we literally could not exist. He is, in the ultimate sense, the king of the world, and we make a mint error when we think that the images on our coins and bills have our faces on them. Even our money belongs to God.
Talk about Money
Religious sociologist, Robert Wuthnow points out that Americans have a taboo against talking about money. In his book, God and Mammon in America, he reports that very few ever discuss personal finances with people outside their immediate family.
In the course of a year, “82% said they had never or hardly ever discussed their income, 89% said they had not discussed their family budget, 76% said this about their major purchases, 75% said they had not discussed worries they might have had about money, and 92% said the same about their giving to charities.”
In contrast, Jesus was never afraid to talk about money. So today, we are not going to be afraid to talk about money too. If we don’t talk about the way we understand our money, we tend to make a minting error.
Jesus was concerned about the proper use of money which is when he said that it was okay to pay taxes to the government as long as you also gave God what God deserved. We should always be clear that our job is to “use money and love people,” not the reverse, which would be to “love money and use people.” We are tempted to love money and to take advantage of people so that we can get more money. God wants us to always use money for good things, including helping other people.
Psalm 24 says, “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it.” We are to be both users and custodians of this world. The word “stewardship” comes from an old English expression, “sty ward,” that meant “keeper of the pigs.” Eventually it came to refer to anyone who had responsibility for the estates or properties of another. As stewards, we are the caretakers of God’s world. We don’t own it but it’s only on loan to us for awhile before we return it all back to God.
In the church, we often use the word, “stewardship” to refer to how much money we give to the church’s budget, and that is part of it—indeed the part that we’re focusing on today—but the biblical sense of stewardship is larger than that. It involves how we use everything God has provided for us, including our planet and environment, our talents, our time, our ability to think and to feel and even our lives themselves. And it is based in gratitude for God’s gifts. It would be a minting error to think any less.
Minted in Christ
We all know that pigs have a bad rap! We see them as dirty rolling in mud when they are actually very clean. We think that they are dumb when they are quite intelligent. We read about that time when Jesus exorcised the demons from this man and they all went into the pigs and drowned in the sea.
But to be stewards, we are to take care of pigs. We are all pigs for us to take care of. In Genesis 1:26 and 27, we read, “God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness. So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”
If we are to give ourselves like the way we are called to give of our coins and bills, we are minted in the image of God. Our lives are not stamped with the head of George Washington or Tiberius Caesar; we are stamped with the image of God on us. To see ourselves as anything less is to make a minting error.
In Psalm 8, we read,
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars that you have established;
what are human beings that you are mindful of them,
mortals that you care for them?
Yet you have made them a little lower than God,
and crowned them with glory and honor.
You have given them dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under their feet,
all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field,
the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea,
whatever passes along the paths of the seas.
O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
We might say that when God created each one of us, we were all perfect. There’s no “extra leaf low” or “extra leaf high” imperfections. But in our natural sense of pride that we feel in our accomplishments or our love for money at the expense of others or our loyalties to government more than our citizenship in God’s kingdom, we have become mint errors.
And unlike coin collectors who find these minting errors netting big dollars for minting mistakes, we are devalued until God’s love for his creation was so great that he sent his son, Jesus Christ to exchange our mint errors for new money that is valued and appreciated in the sight of God. We are worth more than just 2-bits!
The emperor took worthless metal and stamped it with his image to make it special but only God can stamp us with his own image, making us valuable human beings. Jesus taught us to give the coin to the emperor because it is his image on it. But when it comes to giving to God, we give ourselves because you and I are created with God’s image on us!
Serving Up Good Wine
This past week, you received the 2006 Canvass materials on the theme of “serving up good wine.” After a very busy but a wonderful celebrative 125th Anniversary weekend, we might think that we have exhausted all of our energies. This is far from the truth!
When Jesus, his mother, and the disciples were at Cana in Galilee for a wedding, the celebration ran out of wine. After his mother told Jesus of this, he had the servants fill up six large jars each that can hold between 20-30 gallons with plain water. When the chief waiter came to taste this water in these huge jars, he discovered that the water has changed to the best wine he has ever tasted. The guests were impressed that the hosts would save the best for last.
We may still be a bit tired from our anniversary weekend, but the best is still to come! God has stamped us with his own image. We used to have all of these errors in our lives, but through God’s grace and Christ’s love, Jesus Christ the Perfecter of the faith has now made us more valuable than ever before.
When you consider making your pledge, your tithe or gift to the church, I pray that you will see that you are no longer mint errors but minted in the image of God, called to be stewards of God’s creation and world, and to give everything of who we are because everything that we have comes from God.
Let us pray.
Precious God, you have created us in your own image, in your own image you have created us. Show us to give all that we have and all that we are to you as our dedication and faithfulness to your plan for our lives and for our world. As we consider our financial support for your mission through this church, we pray that we give generously and sacrificially because there’s much that we are called to do to advance your kingdom on earth. In Christ, we are no longer minting errors, we pray. Amen.