When Jesus asks the Pharisees and Herodians to show him a Roman coin and gives them an answer to their challenging trick question about paying taxes to the emperor, his words are brilliant. But the true brilliance of this answer lies in its deeper implication.  If the coin is made in the image of Caesar, what is made in God’s image?  Just as all that reflects Caesar’s image belongs to Caesar, all that is stamped with God’s image is God’s.  Everything we are and everything we have belongs to God.  Money represents the things of this world, so give them up and focus instead on giving back all that God has given you.

Where are our hearts, really?  When we give our hearts to God it shows in the nature of our relationships –the love we show to our families, our co-workers and neighbors – loving even the stranger, even loving our enemies.

When we give our minds to God, we keep our minds open, we engage with God in prayer, and are always in conversation with God, through the lenses of love.

And when we give our souls to God, we faithfully and prayerfully consider what would God have us do, and letting that be our guide.

Jesus so brilliantly invited us to see the question in a new way.  It’s not about giving all to Caesar and none to God.  And it’s not about giving all to God and none to Caesar.  What’s important for us is the question ~ where are our priorities as we live out our lives, living in this world but not of this world?   Here’s a story that describes an example of setting priorities of heart, mind and soul, and faithfully living out this balance...

“An ordinary woman once lived in a small town near Modesto, California.  She wasn’t famous, powerful or influential.  She was the kind of person we’d call a good neighbor.  She was friendly, liked by her neighbors, and was good to her family.  When the United States entered the Second World War, she supported our government.  Then California Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren signed an order requiring all U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry to be interned in relocation camps.

“Many of this woman’s neighbors were Japanese Americans.  She knew them and loved them as her friends.  She went to Sacramento and lobbied the legislators.  She wrote to the President to try to stop the camps and the government confiscation of Japanese property.  She could not move the powerful and famous.  She was a lone nobody.  So this lone woman bought all the Japanese farms and homes in her town for a dollar each and watched her friends being taken away.  When the camps were closed, when the Japanese who survived had no homes left, when their lands were stolen by our government, this woman’s neighbors were lucky.  She gave her friends and neighbors back their homes and land so that they might live.”

When you hold a coin in your hand, a dollar bill between your fingers, do you stop to think about your priorities?  Do you feel, in your heart and your mind and your soul, where your true allegiance lies?  We live in a culture of Caesars. We need to be realistic enough to give to Caesar what is Caesar's.  But we do not owe Caesar our hearts, our minds, our souls.(2)  Let’s give to God what is God's.

(1)  Rita Nakashima Brock, “The courage to Choose/The Commitment to be Chosen,” in And Blessed is She:  Sermons by Women.

(2)  Patrick Brennan, “What is God’s,” http://www.csec.org/csec/sermon/brennan_3711.htm