A
week ago Thursday I was in Capernaum, at the house of Simon Peter’s
Mother-in-Law (the doorway from which Jesus healed many). A few doors down from
that house is a Synagogue from the 3rd or 4th century.
Now,
when you go up the steps into the entrance of this Synagogues there is an
interesting feature—you’ll miss it if you’re not looking for it.
You
look down and see two holes, both filled in with modern concrete… well, they’re
the place where money was exchanged.
You
see, by then the 2nd Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed, so the
Synagogue had become the center of worship for Jewish people. And much like
churches today, that meant money needed to be collected for the maintenance and
ministry of the community… but much like the Temple, that money couldn’t be
Roman coins—because those often had images of emperors as gods, so the money
was traded in for Jewish coins without those graven images on them.
In
other words, you’d put your roman
coin in one hole and exchange it for a Jewish
coin from the other hole when you entered the Synagogue.
And
today, that’s my question: How do we
exchange Graven images for the Image of God?
Prayer
The
Pharisees show up in the temple
—the Pharisees are a group who go out of
their way to keep their people separated from non-Jews
—They
want to make sure Jews are different.
The
Herodians show up in the temple
—The Herodians are fierce Hellenizers
—they
want Judaism to shed it’s differences with other cultures and become just like
Rome or Greece.
They agree on nothing.
It’s
like Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Rand Paul of Kentucky
…
or the University of Oregon Ducks and the OSU Beavers,
Whatever
analogy you prefer—it’s like these two polar opposite groups ended up in the same
room together.
We
expect a conflict to erupt… but there appears to be one thing the Herodians and
Pharisees can agree on…
Jesus
is disruptive.
Jesus
is dangerous.
Jesus
isn’t playing the game
and
Jesus definitely isn’t playing it by
their rules.
So
they come at him, each from a different direction.
They
butter him up and then ask, “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor?”
If
Jesus says yes
the
Pharisees can say he sides with the Herodians and dismiss him as such. The
crowds will see him as a stooge of the empire, someone unwilling to stand up to
those who occupy their land.
Likewise,
if he says no
the Herodians can tattle on him to Herod
and do away with him as a rabble rouser who preaches insurrection.
So
Jesus makes sure the crowd knows he’s
not really in on this fight between the Herodians and the Pharisees.
He
begins “Let me see one of those coins.”
After
all, he doesn’t have such a coin in the temple—that’s a no-no, just as you
don’t bring graven images into the Synagogue you surely don’t bring them into
the Temple…
maybe
even Jesus has never owned such a coin—After all, I don’t think Jesus was known
for his hording of money.
He
answers in a way that satisfies the Herodians, and goes beyond the Pharisees…
sure coins belong to the image
they have on them…
but the image on us—the image of God—belongs to God.
Human
beings do not belong to Caesar… or his Empire… or to the coins themselves… no,
from the beginning we’ve belonged to God. We’re made in the image of God.
And
that brings me back to my question—How do we exchange Graven Images for the
Image of God?
How
do we take the broken, or at least incomplete, images we’ve made,
of
ourselves,
of
our neighbor,
of
our highest ideals,
How
do we drop them into that hole and exchange them for the Image of God?
My
answer in short is this, we see images for what they are and we become who we
are.
We
see images for what they In Isaiah we read that
Cyrus the Great of Persia has just broken the power of Babylon and freed all
the people from there—including the Jews who were in exile.
Now
one response to this would be to deify Cyrus, to make him a god—to turn him
into a graven image…
Instead
Isaiah makes an amazing theological move—he recognizes God’s actions behind the
scenes
—that
Cyrus rather than being a god, is called by God—anointed by God for his
particular task in history.
Isaiah
exchanges the coin of Cyrus’ conquest by recognizing that he is just a man—by
making a distinction between creature and creator.
Or
if you want to think in more Lutheran terms think of Luther’s explanation of
the 10 commandments—we ought to Love, be in awe of, and trust God above all
things—the creator alone is creator, all else is counterfeit coin.
We
become who we are. In
1st Thessalonians Paul praises the Thessalonians as imitators of
both Paul and of the Lord, that is imitators of Christ. They are made in that
image because of their joy in the face of persecution and their faithfulness…
these
two things point people to the Holy Spirit from whom their Joy comes, and the
Lord who is always faithful.
This
is, in fact, the meaning of the earliest place where we find the image of
God—Genesis 1, where we hear that God “created humankind in His image, in the
image of God he created them, males and females he created them.”
This
isn’t about us looking like God or God looking like us—that God stands upright,
has 10 fingers and toes and no prehensile tail.
No,
the point of the Image of God—the Tsella
of God—the point of humans, is that we are the marker on the earth pointing out who takes care of the
earth—pointing not to ourselves, but instead to God.
We
are images of God that point all of creation to God.
The
Thessalonians exchanged graven images for the Image of God when their being
—their
faith and their joy—pointed to God.
How
do we exchange Graven Images for the Image of God?
We look
at the images of Caesars of all sorts and see them for who they are,
just
another part of creation.
We
strive to be glass, so we ourselves are not seen, but instead God is seen
through us,
knowing
even that is a gift from God.
We
see images for what they are
and
we become who we are.
A+A
