"Show me the coin! Come on, show it to me!"

They hesitate; they’re stunned.

"Come on, show it to me!"

Their confidence, their arrogance, turns to confusion as they shoot unsure glances back and forth. They hadn’t expected this aggressive response. I mean, they had crafted the perfect trap; they had rehearsed it, talked it through over and over. There was no way out. Finally, they would expose this renegade charlatan to the public humiliation he deserved.

He had embarrassed them, belittled them, challenged them, insulted them. These Pharisees had been willing to join forces with the Herodians, whom they despised, whom they viewed as puppets of Rome. They hated the Herodians, but it was worth joining forces even with them to publicly humiliate this Jesus.

And they had come up with the perfect question: "Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?" Ha! Let’s see you find your way out of that one, mister prophet man, mister rabbi man! Ha! There is no way out! If you say, "Pay the tax," the people, whose spirit is crushed by the oppressive Roman taxes, will hate you. If you say, "Don’t pay it," you’ll be advocating a tax rebellion, and the Romans will crush you. Ha!

They had been so confident, so sure, that when they went up to him, they had said all this sucking-up stuff about him being sincere and teaching the way of God and all that stuff. Just setting him up, knowing that they had him, that there was no way out. They had fantasized about him answering, "Pay it," or, "Don’t pay it," or just standing there, looking like a deer in the headlights. Every option was delicious.

But no one had expected him to say, "Show me the coin!" He was supposed to be on his heels. Why was he on his toes? They exchange nervous glances. Finally, not knowing what else to do, someone digs out a coin and shows it to him.

He looks at it. Of course, it has Caesar’s picture stamped on it. Jews should not have been handling such. The second of the Ten Commandments forbids worshipping graven images, and this coin is stamped with the image of Caesar, who claimed to be a god. Jewish coins might have a little decoration, but never a picture.

"Whose head is this and whose title?" he asks.

They’ve got a bad feeling about were this is going, but they feel trapped. What else could they say? "The emperor’s — Caesar’s."

And then he gives them that amazing, puzzling two part answer. First: "Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s." Here is what he can make [flip and catch a coin]: coins.

"But give to God the things that are God’s." "But give to God the things that are God’s."

"Oh my God," they think, as they feel the trap close around them. They know their Scripture. The familiar creation passage from Genesis slaps them in the face: "Male and female he created them; God created them in his own image." God doesn’t mint coins; God mints human beings. God made them. They bear the image of God, and so Jesus has just given them an answer that not only eludes their trap, but traps them. "Give to Caesar that which belongs to him (and now we’re not even sure what does belong to him), and give to God your very self."

Two thousand years later, that brilliant, enigmatic answer that amazed the Pharisees and sent them packing still amazes me. What are we to do with our money? "Give to Caesar that which belongs to Caesar, and to God that which belongs to God." I find that I am never through understanding that answer. In one breath it both belittles the importance of money — little bits of metal or scraps of paper bearing the image of a person — and exalts the importance of you and me — created in the image of the Creator of the Universe. Give to the world its bits of tin or scraps of paper bearing the image of a person; give to God something infinitely valuable: you. Created in the image of God.

I’m not through understanding Jesus’ answer, but I’m pretty sure it asks us another question: what do we do with our money? Do we handle our money in such a way that we are giving our precious selves, made in the image of God, to God? Or, are we giving ourselves to the images of power and control and wealth and privilege that are stamped on our bits of tin, printed on our slips of paper? What does how we handle our money say about whether we are giving ourselves to God?

Today is the National Observance of Children’s Sabbath. I’ve always found that teaching children about moral and ethical issues is especially perplexing, and illuminating, because children just won’t buy all the rationalization and interpretation and intellectualization that we adults so often use to provide a smoke screen for our behavior. So on this National Children’s Sabbath, I think its fair to ask, "What does how we handle our money teach our children about what we are willing to give to God?" You know, we can talk the best game in the world, but the problem with children is that they watch what we do.

So, what do we do? First, let ‘s look at what we do as a society, a country. And since we are talking to children, let’s talk about children. Imagine a wealthy family with five young children. The parents say that they love all of their children very much. Four have plenty to eat and warm beds to sleep in. The fifth child is often hungry and lives in a cold room. Sometimes she has to sleep on the streets, or in a shelter, or in foster care. The four other children get regular medical care and routine check-ups, but the fifth child doesn’t, and she is plagued by chronic infections. The four other children get stimulating pre-school experiences, but the fifth child gets unsafe and overcrowded child care. The four children go to good, well-equipped schools. The fifth child’s school is crumbling; her teachers are underpaid, and the PTA can’t afford to buy computers for the lab.

Who is this fifth child? She’s more likely to be White than Black or Latino. She’s more likely to live in a working family than to be on welfare, and is more likely to live in a suburb or rural area than the inner city. She is more likely to die in infancy, have no regular source of health care, have too little food, score lower in math and reading, be expelled from school, and drop out of high school. She is only half as likely to finish college as her four siblings.

If you knew a family like that, a family that had five children and treated four so well, but treated the fifth child like that, what would you think about what that family teaches it’s children about God by how it handles its money? Of course, we are that family. This is the story of the American family, where one child in five lives in poverty.

What do we as individuals teach our children by how we handle our money? Today begins our stewardship campaign. Next week, you’ll get a letter with a commitment card. I really do not want to guilt you into giving money. I know some of you will never believe that, but I really do not want your motivation to be guilt. As your pastor, however, I call you to think about what you would be teaching our children if they all knew everything you did with your money.

I don’t want your motivation to be guilt. I’m not concerned with fund-raising — that’s the vestry’s job. Here’s my job: for your soul’s sake, I encourage you to contemplate, not just when you’re filling out a pledge card, but in your whole life, this answer: "Give to Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and to God that which is God’s," and this question: "In whose image were you made?"