Sunday, October 16, 2005

Sermon: “In God We Trust”

Scripture: Matthew 22: 15-22

 

Reverend Larry Gerber 

 

There’s a problem with some Wisconsin state quarters causing people to take a close look at their coins.  We should do the same.

Twenty-five cents.  Big deal.

If you have any quarters in your pocket or change purse right now, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out how much they are worth. Whether you call it a quarter, two bits or a 25-cent piece, each one is worth 25 cents. In some places, five of them will still get you a cup of coffee, 10 of them a mocha latte, maybe.

But there is a slight chance that you might have a quarter worth as much as $1,500.

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.

Thus 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.

Things have been going along fine, but in October 2004, when Wisconsin’s coin was put into circulation, coin collectors across America sat up and took notice.

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. Normally the quality-control procedures at the mint weed a lot of those out, but in the case of the Wisconsin money, some error coins got by, and they have one of two kinds of blunders.

The state side of the perfect quarters 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, however, there is an “extra leaf low,”  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. The version of the mistake the collectors have dubbed “extra leaf high” is much the same, except that the shadow “leaf” is not peeled quite as far from the ear.

Anyway, because only a few of these mint errors made it into circulation, collectors are eager to get their hands on them. So if you find one in your piggy bank, you might get anywhere from $150 to $1,500 for it.
 Regardless of mint errors, etc., we still have the words “In God We Trust” on all of our coins. Every coin has a reminder as to Who is to be trusted, mint errors and all.Our New Testament reading puts before us today the incident where some influential men who were opposed to Jesus tried to set him up for big public embarrassment and destroy his credibility.

In front of a crowd — perhaps equivalent to asking him on live TV — they asked him whether it was lawful to pay taxes to the emperor. Their devious idea 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 likely view him as sympathetic to Rome, and thus turn away from him. For Jesus, it was — they thought — a lose-lose situation.

Unfortunately for them, they had no plan when Jesus turned their question on its head, and that’s exactly what he did. Calling for his challengers to produce a coin of the realm, Jesus asked them whose head was imprinted on it. After the challengers gave the obvious answer that the image was that of 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.”

Jesus was telling his audience that day about a kind of mint error that they could make with their money. In fact, he turned the whole incident into a teachable moment in which he reminded them that they should be as attentive to their responsibilities toward God as they were to their obligations as subjects of the empire.

Since we are followers of Jesus today, it is therefore worth asking what sort of mint errors we make with our money and the things we possess.

One way to frame our answer to Jesus’ show-me-a-coin question is that it is not our likeness that appears on our money. In the ultimate sense, which is the sense that Jesus’ question was really about, whatever we have is not really ours. All things come from God. Forgetting that is a mint error.

Being raised on the farm, I identify with this story:  it illustrates how easy it is to deny that what we have comes from God. A prosperous farmer was miserly in what he gave 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, Reverend, but you should have seen what a mess this place was when God was running it by himself!”

Can’t you sympathize with that farmer? 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 work ethic and a college education than it does with a theological idea.

 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 to us 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 our world, and we make a mint error when we think that we do not owe God the coin of his realm, which includes such things as vision, risk and hope and results in our commitment, gratitude and generosity.Many of you have been generous with your outpouring of aid to those struck by tsunami, Katrina, and Rita. You did not ask who these people were: rich or poor, white or black, good people or bad. You gave out of the generosity of your heart, and your purse or billfold. Your trust in God led you to do the humane thing. You give generously to the church every Sunday, trusting that the gift will be used to maintain the facilities, cover the costs of operation, and benefit others through our mission programs. You trust in God, and you trust in the leadership of the church. You give, because you can, and you choose to.

 An Old Testament story gives us a healthy perspective on that. The last several chapters of 1 Chronicles contain the record of King David’s preparations to turn the leadership of the kingdom of Israel over to his son, Solomon. The last two chapters include David’s instructions to the people to help Solomon with the building of a permanent temple to house the worship of God.

Up to this time, the center of Israel’s religious life had been the tabernacle, the portable tent which the children of Israel had carried with them during the 40 years of wilderness wanderings following the exodus from Egypt. Once David had consolidated the kingdom of Israel and had established his capital at Jerusalem, he had decided to build a glorious and permanent structure to replace the tabernacle. But then God forbade David to do this, but had told David that the son who succeeded him to the throne would be the one to build it.

David therefore did the next best thing. He gathered all of the materials needed to do the job. He contracted with skilled craftsmen to serve his son. And he donated not only income from the royal treasury, but also huge sums from his personal fortune as well.

Finally, he challenged the people themselves to offer not only their skills and talents but also their offerings to the task that lay ahead. The people responded in both ways generously.

Chapter 29 contains the prayer of thanksgiving David prayed after the people joyfully made their commitments. It is a very humble prayer to be prayed by a king and in it he cautions his subjects to avoid a couple of mint errors.

For one thing, unlike other kings in the surrounding nations, David ascribed to God the attributes that were normally used to speak of the monarch. He said, “Yours, O LORD, are the greatness, the power, the glory, the victory, and the majesty; for all that is in the heavens and on the earth is yours; yours is the kingdom, O LORD, and you are exalted as head above all” (v. 11).

The second notable thing was that David acknowledged that ultimately, the people had God and not the king to thank for everything they had. He said, “But who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able to make this freewill offering? For all things come from you, and of your own have we given you” (v. 14).

To use current church terminology, David’s prayer referred to stewardship, the recognition that, as Psalm 24 puts it, “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it”: therefore we are both users and custodians of it. My first “sermon” as a young man of 16, came from Aesops Fables: the story of a fox who had eaten a goose. A bone had become lodged in its throat. He offered a reward to anyone who would dislodge the bone from his throat. A swan came along, and with her graceful, long neck, was able to reach into the throat of the fox, and dislodge the bone. When she asked for her reward, the fox replied that she should be thankful that he did not bite her head off, that should be reward enough.Who do you trust in, and why? Jesus said that we should give unto Caesar that which belongs to Caesar , and give unto God that which belongs to God. We should also know the difference.

 When I was a Senior in college, I had the opportunity to pastor 4 poor country churches, in the foothills of the Ozark Mountains, in northeast Arkansas. At one of those churches, there was a 64 year woman and her 92 year old father, who lived together. They lived on a monthly government check of $50. The first $5 went to the church. The 92 year old man chopped wood for cooking and fuel. They pretty much ate off the land: polk salat and mustard greens, a small garden for potatoes, and other veggies. On occasion they would invite me for a meal. Those were the richest and best meals of the time. It came from their heart with no embarrassment. No apologies for not having meat, but gratitude for all that God had given them. In God they trusted. Can we do any less?

`````````````````````````Sources:
“Hidden treasure in your pocket change?” TheOmahaChannel.com, March 2, 2005, theomahachannel.com.

McGeachy, Daniel Patrick. Traveling Light. Nashville, Abingdon Press, 1975, 65.

“U.S. Mint error coins.” The Coin Site, 2001, coinsite.com.