Image

Proper 24 A 2014
http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Pentecost/AProp24_RCL.html


Today’s Gospel has been stretched in a hundred different ways.

Some have used it as some sort of parable for the separation of church and state. Pay your taxes when asked, let the government, whatever government, get what it asks for, obey the law, go to war if drafted. God and the things of God belong somewhere else than in this world, somewhere unearthly and “spiritual”, meaning misty and insubstantial and not affecting business as usual.

Others say that Jesus is setting a trap for those who tried to trap him. Everything belongs to God, and nothing really belongs to the emperor, no more than anything belongs to any man.

But I wonder if there is yet more depth to this parable. I wonder if the mystery that Jesus wants us to dive into is the mystery of “image.”

We are made in the image and likeness of God. The word Jesus uses is “ikon”, the same word used by Orthodox Christians for their sacred images “written” and displayed for veneration, “windows into heaven.”

Any sacred image, any “ikon”, is meant to remind us of the unspeakable glory of the image of God in all creation and in the human person.

If we saw one another as we truly are, I believe we would be blinded by the light of glory blazing forth from each one of us.

So, what image do you see in this coin, asks Jesus? Who has stamped his own image on this coin, this bit of creation? The emperor? Does he think that this coin reflects his glory?

And what are you doing with this coin? Are you using it to carry out the emperor’s business? Are you using it to serve the God who has no image, no name that we can speak? Are we stamping our own business, our own agenda, over business and commerce and especially on human lives, lives made in the image of God?

Do we stamp over the image of God in human lives with the image of indifference and violence and exploitation? The beginning of any Christian action in the world is deep awe of the image of God in the other. Do we allow that image of God to be stamped with cruel or indifferent images, images that say “national interest” or “border integrity” or any other slogan, on the hidden glory of the image of God on human lives?

Do we allow the image of God in ourselves, our true selves, to be stamped with imperial images? Do we allow the divine which is the image of God in ourselves to be stamped with anything, anything less than “property of the living God”? Do we allow denigration, discrimination, indifference, marginalization, racism, anxiety, interiorized abuse, materialism to obscure the divine image?

The Christian journey is to become fully who we most truly are. Christian living is living in awe and reverence of the divine image within ourselves and in all those around us.

A modern parable presents a man who asks an old monk, “How do I get over the habit of judging people?”

The monk replied, “When I was your age, I was wondering where would be the best place to go and pray. Well, I asked Jesus that question. His answer was ‘Why don’t you go into the heart of my Father?’ So I did. I went into the heart of the Father, and all these years that’s where I’ve prayed. Now I see everyone as my own child. How can I judge anyone?”*

So now, whose image is on this coin?


*from Tales Of A Magic Monastery, by Theophane the Monk. Crossroad Publishing Company, 1981.