Whose Face Is on It: Eikon, Caesar's Coin, and Cyrus

Pick up any coin from the cup holder in your car and it will tell you three things without being asked: whose face is on it, what it's worth, and who stands behind it. Nobody reads their coins. We spend them, count them, and drop them in a jar by the door. But every one of them was designed to make a small, quiet claim, pressed into metal so it would outlast the hand holding it.

This past Sunday, in the readings for Proper 24, Year A, somebody held up a coin like that in front of Jesus and asked him a trick question. Matthew 22:15-22 is the "render unto Caesar" passage, and it sits beside Isaiah 45:1-7, where a Persian emperor gets a title you would never expect. Both readings are about rulers, and underneath both of them is a question about who actually runs things, and what you owe to whom.

The trap in Matthew 22: is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor?

Two groups who normally can't stand each other come to Jesus together. The Pharisees resented Roman rule and the tax that came with it. The Herodians backed the family of Herod, who held power because Rome allowed it. They start with flattery, "Teacher, we know that you are sincere," and then spring the trap: "Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?"

The tax was the census tax, a head tax paid in Roman coin by every adult in Judea, and it was hated. When Rome first imposed it, a man named Judas the Galilean led a revolt over it; Luke mentions him in Acts 5:37. So the question is loaded on both ends. If Jesus says pay it, the crowd hears a man siding with the occupation. If he says don't, the Herodians have a witness to sedition by sundown.

Jesus says, "Show me the coin used for the tax." And they brought him a denarius. That sentence is easy to read right past, so notice who has the coin. Jesus doesn't. He has to ask for one. The men trying to trap him produce it right there in the temple courts, out of their own purses.

Eikon: whose image is on the coin?

Then Jesus asks, "Whose head is this, and whose title?"

Faithful Jews of that period kept images out of worship; the second commandment is plain about it. And here, inside the temple courts, the people testing Jesus are carrying an emperor's face with a claim to divinity around the rim.

They answer, "The emperor's." And Jesus says, "Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's."

Render unto Caesar: apodidomi and the half nobody asked for

Two things about that sentence. The first is the verb. "Give" is apodidōmi, which means to give back, to pay what is owed, to return something to its owner. The King James says "render." The coin already has a name on it. If Caesar stamped it, hand it back to him. That part is almost small.

The second is the half of the sentence nobody asked for. They wanted a ruling on the tax. He gave them that, and then he kept going: "and to God the things that are God's." Which raises the obvious question. If the coin belongs to whoever's image is stamped on it, what has God's image stamped on it?

Anyone in that crowd who knew the first page of their scriptures could answer. In the Greek version of Genesis, the one most Jews of that time and place would have heard, chapter one says God made humankind kat' eikona theou, in the image of God. It's the same word. So Jesus doesn't need to finish the thought out loud, and he doesn't. The coin goes back to Caesar because his face is on it. You go back to God because his is on you.

Caesar's face on the coin meant the coin was Caesar's. He could tax it, call it in, or melt it down. If God's image is stamped on a human being, the same logic says the whole person belongs to God: your hours, your attention, your loyalty, the things you love most. Caesar can have a silver coin, because it has his face on it. God asks for you, because you have his. Matthew says they were amazed, and they left him and went away. They came with a trap about money and walked off with a question about ownership that covered their whole lives.

Cyrus, the anointed emperor in Isaiah 45

Isaiah has his own emperor. "Thus says the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus." Cyrus was the king of Persia who conquered Babylon in 539 BC and let the exiles go home, a foreign king who as far as we know never worshiped the God of Israel. And Isaiah calls him "anointed," mashiach in Hebrew, Messiah. Cyrus is the only foreign ruler in the whole Hebrew Bible given that title.

Listen to how often God says some version of the same thing: "I call you by your name." "I surname you." "I arm you." And twice, almost like a refrain: "though you do not know me."

Here is something you can look up. Cyrus left his own account of taking Babylon on a clay cylinder that sits today in the British Museum, and in it he says Marduk, the chief god of Babylon, chose him and took him by the hand. Isaiah says the same events happened because the Lord of Israel took him by the right hand. Cyrus had his own theology about his success. Isaiah calmly says the emperor had the wrong god in mind, and it didn't matter.

Put the two readings side by side and you can see why they were chosen together. Tiberius claimed to be the son of a god and put the claim on his coins. Cyrus believed Marduk had chosen him. Both emperors were wrong about who was really in charge, and in both stories the ruler with all the visible power turns out to be smaller than he thinks. Psalm 96 says it outright: "As for all the gods of the nations, they are but idols; but it is the Lord who made the heavens."

Money behaves like a god

Most of us aren't tempted to worship a Roman emperor, but we carry plenty of things with a face and a title on them, and money is the one that most wants to tell us who we are. It promises security and asks for your attention first thing in the morning and last thing at night. And it hands down verdicts. A raise feels like approval. A layoff feels like a judgment on your worth, even when it was a spreadsheet decision made by someone who never learned your name. A bank balance can set the mood of an entire household for a week. Those are things gods do.

Jesus leaves the coins in circulation. The coin can buy groceries, pay the mortgage and the tax bill, and it should. What it can't do is tell you who you belong to. It was never stamped with that authority. And Isaiah adds the hopeful part: God called Cyrus by name before Cyrus knew it. You have been known by name longer than you've known it.

So sometime this week, take one coin or one bill out of your pocket and actually look at it. Read the face and read the words, and ask one honest question: what have I been letting this tell me about myself? Then give God something from the first of your week instead of the last of it, before the first email or before the bills are paid. You can hear the full episode of Monday to Sunday above.