Coins and Crown Tickets

 10-18-20

Grace to you and peace from God our creator and our lord and savior Jesus the Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Nine years ago this fall, I visited the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island for the first time. After trekking all the way to Battery Park in New York City, waiting in line to get tickets, waiting in line to get on the ferry, waiting in line to get off the ferry, waiting in line to get through security…. It was only much later that it became clear – coming from the New Jersey side would have been much faster – there were almost no lines on that side!

In the famous great hall on Ellis Island is a stairway called the Stairs of Separation, which is divided into three sections – going to New Jersey, going to New York, and going to be detailed, maybe quarantined after failing the infamous health check.  I was surprised to learn that only steerage passengers arriving in the United States were subjected to the health check. Those with the money to upgrade to second class could skip over Ellis Island entirely!

Surely, over a hundred years later, things of this nature no longer happen… right? Imagine my surprise to learn that, at the Statue of Liberty, the purchase of the pricey Crown Tickets (to go all the way up to the top) allowed you to skip the rest of the line waiting to go through security at the statue and go right to the front.  Apparently no matter what era you live in – money talks.

Israel was a nation under the thumb of the oppressive and expansive Roman Empire… So, it was a matter of course that the Romans used their currency to remind the Jewish people who was boss. Currency that had the faces of Roman emperors on them, emperors who the Romans considered to also be gods. If you recall, this is in direct opposition to two dearly held beliefs of the Jewish faith – you shall have no other gods, and you shall make no grave images… (Remember that one from a few weeks ago?). But in order to function in society as a Roman occupied area, using these blasphemous Roman coins were compulsory.

In response, Jewish leaders found themselves in one of a few different factions with varying degrees of complicity or resistance to the Roman Empire. Of the two that are named in our text today, one is familiar to us - the Pharisees – the religious leaders with no love for Rome but tended to keep their heads down to retain their positions. We don’t know a lot about the other group – the Herodians -  except that they supported Herod, the ruler appointed by far-away Rome. Different groups with different perspectives, brought together by their mutual dislike of Jesus. As the saying goes, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

This encounter happens almost immediately after Jesus told that really difficult parable last week …. The Pharisees were quickly catching on that Jesus was talking about them, and saying things that would upset the delicate balance of survival. They had to figure out how to get rid of Jesus, and they decided to try to trick him into making a fatal mistake.

Together, these two groups devised a question with NO RIGHT ANSWER. “Is it lawful to pay taxes?” If Jesus says yes, then he would be validating the Roman oppression, which would probably anger his supporters and go against his message. But if he says NOT to paying, he could be in deep trouble with the Romans.

But Jesus was on to them. He had them bring in a coin, which they did- one with the emperor’s face imprinted on it… which is hilarious because they are currently having this little chat IN THE TEMPLE…. And Roman currency of any kind was banned from being used IN THE TEMPLE, for the reasons that I mentioned before. The Roman money needed to be changed… or exchanged… for the acceptable temple-approved coins… which could ONLY happen in one place: the temple. And we all know what tends to happen then there is a monopoly, or when a commodity is in high demand. Exchange rates are high, hurting the poor and most vulnerable worshipers… which sets the stage for Jesus flipping tables and running these money changer out of the temple in just a few chapters. 

Jesus sees straight through their load of baloney. We are filled with glee when Jesus retorts: “You hypocrites, Give to the empire what belongs to the empire….” But are a bit dismayed when he follows it up with - “And give to God what is God’s.” Just what does belong to the empire? And what does belong to God?

A better question to ask might be, what DOES NOT belong to God? Nothing. Because everything we have and everything we are belongs to God.

But we live in a world where we cannot seem to escape the Empire and all that comes with it. By empire here I am not referring to the Roman empire, but from the forces in the world that govern our lives and our time, the machinations that trap us in systems of oppression and oppressing one another. Wherever we go, we can’t escape being part of the system, or being on some level complicit in the empire and all that it represents.

Every time I hand over a bill with George Washington or Andrew Jackson on it, I am participating in this system. The coffee I love some much at Starbucks was probably harvested by people not being paid a living wage. The inexpensive dress I want to buy was almost certainly made in a sweatshop in Bangladesh or Honduras.

Like a coin bears the image and title of the Empire, WE bear the IMAGE of GOD, and bear the title of “beloved child of God,” when we were marked on our foreheads with the cross of Christ when we were baptized. I bear the image of God, and you bear the image of God, and both you and I are worthy of love and respect, and deserve being treated as such.

When we forget that we bear the image of God, we forget our humanity. We forget that all of us belong to God, and we must treat one another – AND OURSELVES – accordingly. When one of us who bears the image of God is not free, none of us, are. THAT is our work, as the image bearers of God - to free the oppressed, to believe the stories of the harassed, and to work for justice for ALL of God’s family.

What I do with my money matters, and it sends a signal to the rest of the world what my values are. It is my hope that at least most of the time I am using this money – God’s money – for things that align with God’s Kingdom rather than the Empire of the world.

As Pastor Meta Herrick Carlson writes in a poem about playing bills in her book “Ordinary Blessings:” “Each… payment [is] …. A testament to comfort and control, values and grit, need and greed, and inherent responsibility to ourselves, the vulnerable, future generations, and all of creation. May we consume with care, pay what is right, challenge power with justice until everyone can pay with dignity.”

There sure are a lot of little things we can do so that God’s money can do some good through our hands. We can buy fair trade coffee and chocolate, especially with the big holiday Reforma-ahem-Halloween coming up. We can purchase clothes second hand from local thrift stores where the profits benefit others. We can hold back on unnecessary purchases and instead donate to good causes we are passionate about. We can even learn to balance our budgets and so that we are able to be generous tithers to this congregation and all its missions. We can give the Empire back all the bad stuff it has given us, and instead give back to God what belongs to God: Everything. Our money, our possessions, our time, ourselves.

Nothing is too much or too little. We are enough. We belong to God. Thanks be to God. Amen.