“Whose is this image and superscription?”
What’s it all about? Can it be that we are defined, controlled and governed
by money? Does everything comes down to money? “Money makes the world
go round, of that we all are sure”, as sings the chorus in Cabaret?
Is the cabaret of life, old chum, simply the cash nexus as Thomas Carlyle
first suggested and Karl Marx famously claimed? And if so, what does that
make us?
Of
course we are all affected by money or the lack thereof. What will be
the consequence, for instance, of changing the time of service last week
from 9:30 to 10:30 to accommodate the Remembrance Day Service at the
Cenotaph? Even though that was done for reasons of Christian charity and
outreach to the community, that is to say, for reasons belonging to our
spiritual purpose and mission, such things like that or the weather, as
every country priest knows, can affect the cash flow and the budget
overall. It simply illustrates what happens when commitment to the Church
is reduced to the principle of “pay-as-you-go”, to what is basically
a consumer service mentality. And, of course, such things also result in
the exercise of a kind of economic power over the clergy. It comes down to
questions about power.
Money, it is proverbially and scripturally said, is “the root of all
evil”. Why? Because money is power. The misuse of money is the abuse
of power. Money is twisted around from a medium of exchange to a form of
domination and control. There is, at once, the use of money to dominate and
manipulate others. But there is, as well, the fact that money comes to
dominate us.
It
causes us to forget who we are. Nowhere, perhaps, is this more prevalent
than today. Whether we are rich or poor, employed or unemployed, pensioned
or unpensioned, we are under a constant barrage of images that seek to
persuade us that we are merely economic beings, that our worth and the
meaning of our lives is to be measured materially and financially. This is
not only destructive of human personality and the human community but as
such it is destructive of the forms of honest and meaningful exchange so
necessary to the welfare of souls and communities. Their end, our end,
“is destruction, whose god is their belly”.
Money
comes to possess us because we allow it to define the space in which we live
out our lives. Means become ends which they cannot be. Economic ends must
always fail us for the simple reason that our lives and the worth of our
lives cannot be reduced to an economic quantity. When we are defined
economically, then we are but “bellies”, as it were, consumers, and,
no doubt, “bellyachers” as well. We are seduced into thinking that
everything, including religion, must be a consumer product, a marketable
commodity. The evil of money lies precisely in making us forget who we are.
In
the face of this kind of forgetting, Jesus would recall us to ourselves. In
the New Testament surprisingly, no one talks as much about money as Jesus
and there is nothing that Jesus talks quite as much about as money. He
knows us only too well, our weaknesses and our temptations. “Where your
treasure is, there will your heart be also”. Consequently, “it is
easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man
to enter the kingdom of heaven”. And in today’s Gospel, “Show me the
tribute-money”, Jesus demands of the Pharisees, who sought to entangle
him in his talk over an issue about money and taxes.
“Whose is this image and superscription?”,
he asks them in response about the coin. It bears the image of Caesar, the
Roman Emperor, the highest power on earth, humanly speaking, at that time.
For money is, inescapably, the concrete symbol of worldly power. And,
however much it may affect us, the phrase “render unto Caesar the things
that are Caesar’s” is a true statement which reflects the political
order to which economic matters are subordinate. Yet, money is utterly
unable to be the image of who we are in the truth of our being. It cannot
be the image of us. Money cannot capture who we essentially are. If we
think that it can, then we both forget and delude ourselves. We give money
a power over ourselves. The question “whose is this image and
superscription” recalls us to ourselves and to God.
The
coin may bear the image of Caesar and thus symbolise his worldly power, but
as Jesus will say to Caesar’s man in Jerusalem, “thou couldest have no
power at all against me, except it were given thee from above”. Even
the power of Caesar ultimately derives from and belongs to God.
The
image we bear is something greater. It cannot be captured on a coin. We
are not made in the image of money but in the image of God. We have been
stamped with the sign of the cross at our baptism. “Our citizenship is
in heaven” and our economic life must be subordinate not only to
political life but to the spiritual reality of our God-created and
God-redeemed humanity. The real worth of our being is to be found in that
higher and eternal relation of exchange - the exchange of love - transacted
by Jesus Christ on the cross “for us and for our salvation”. It is
to be realised in lives of sacrifice - the widow’s mite, the giving without
counting the cost, for “with God all things are possible”, even the
salvation of the rich.
If
the love of money constrains us, then we defraud ourselves with what is less
than the whole worth and true measure of our being. Paul would remind us
that the love of Christ must constrain us “because we are convinced that
one has died for all; therefore all have died. And he died for all that
those who live might live no longer for themselves but for him who died for
their sake and was raised”. Such is the infinite exchange of love and
such is that infinite exchange in us. God becomes man that he might give
himself for us and that his life might live in us. It is without price. It
is priceless because it is beyond human calculation. It costs too much. It
is the infinite value of the heart-blood of Jesus.
Against the idols of economic determinism and technological exuberance, we
are reminded of our identity with God in Christ. We are made in the image
of God and stamped with the cross of Christ. The love of God must be what
shall constrain us, compel us and define us; anything less makes us less
than ourselves. Here in this place we find the necessary counter to all the
forces in our day that would constrain us to what is less than ourselves.
Next
Sunday at Confirmation those being confirmed will receive the strengthening
and renewing grace of the Holy Spirit to be defined by the objective grace
of God precisely against all the temptations and idols of our world and
day. They will be a reminder to us of who we are and what we are called to
be. For such a service will recall us both individually and as a parish to
the strong objectivity of the Word of God and the serene objectivity of the
Sacraments which are given to define and enliven us. It will recall us to
the dignity and the integrity of our spiritual heritage and life together in
the body of Christ.
Here
in this service of the Holy Communion we are recalled to the love which is
poured out for us. It is poured out so that we might be reconstituted in
the image of the one who has made us and redeemed us. We are God’s. His
love is written over us, to be sure, that is the great and real
“superscription”, but it is also to be written in us, in lives of
sacrifice and service, in lives of prayer and praise, in lives consecrated
by Word and Sacrament. It is about who we are. The year runs out to recall
us to the one whose grace and mercy defines us. Whose image and
superscription are we?
