Whose Face Is on It?

Hold out your hand.

Now picture a coin in it. Small. Cool. A little worn at the edges.

Turn it over. There is a face on one side, and a name pressed around the rim.

That is where today’s Gospel begins (Matthew 22:15–21).

Some men came to Jesus with a trap disguised as a question. Is it right to pay the tax to Rome, or not? Say yes, and the crowd might turn on him. Say no, and Rome might.

Jesus did not step into it. He simply asked for a coin. Someone handed him one.

He asked whose face and whose name were stamped on it.

“Caesar’s,” they said.

Then he said, “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” (Matthew 22:21)

That ended the trap. The coin carries Caesar’s face, so it can go back to Caesar. Pay what is fair. Be honest about it. Jesus never told his listeners to scorn the world they lived in.

But I keep turning the question over, the way you turn a coin.

If a thing belongs to whoever’s face is on it, what belongs to God?

Go back to the very first chapter of the Bible. “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:27)

In his own image. Not stamped on metal. Stamped on us.

Not only your face. Your mind. Your will. Your power to love another person on purpose. The Church teaches that every single person carries this image. Everyone. No exceptions.

So the coin question is the easy one. The harder, kinder question is about us.

You are not a coin. You were never Caesar’s. You were never your boss’s, or your inbox’s, or the busy list’s either.

Today’s first reading, from Isaiah, makes the same point another way. God speaks about a foreign king named Cyrus, a man who did not know him, and says, “I call you by your name.” (Isaiah 45:4)

Think about that. If God knew the name of a king who had never heard of him, he knows yours.

Some days it feels like everyone wants a piece of you. Work. Bills. Phones. The to-do list. Try the coin question on them. Whose face is on this? Where is my time really going?

Not to feel guilty. Just to notice.

Tonight, hold out your hand again. Leave it empty. Then say quietly, “I am yours.”

What would change in your week if you remembered whose image you carry?