Note well, you men who are yet to be born! Jesus was never willing to touch a coin with His hand. Those hands of His which molded the clay of the earth as a cure for blind eyes, those hands which touched the contaminated flesh of lepers and of the dead, those hands which clasped the body of Judas, so much more contaminated than clay, than leprosy, than putrefaction, those white pure healing hands which nothing could sully, never suffered themselves to be touched by one of those metal disks which carry in relief the profiles of the proprietors of the world. Jesus could mention money in His parables; He could see it in the hands of others, but touch it—no! To Him who scorned nothing, money was disgusting. It was repugnant to Him with a repugnance that was like horror. All His nature was in revolt at the thought of a contact with those filthy symbols of wealth. But one day even Jesus was constrained to look at a piece of money. They asked Him if it was permitted to the true Israelite to pay the tribute, and He answered at once, “Show me the tribute money.” They showed it to Him, but He would not take it. It was a Roman coin stamped with the hypocritical face of Augustus. But He wished to seem not to know whose face it was. He asked, “Whose is this image and superscription?” They answered, “Cæsar’s.” Then He threw into the faces of the wily interrogators the answer which silenced them, “Render therefore unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.” Give back that which is not yours, money does not belong to us. It is manufactured by the powerful for the needs of power. It is the property of kings and of the kingdom, of that other kingdom which is not ours. The king represents force and is the protector of wealth; but we have nothing to do with violence and reject riches. Our Kingdom has no potentates and has no rich men; the King of our Heaven does not coin money. Money is a means for the exchange of earthly goods, but we do not seek for earthly goods. What little is necessary for us, a little sunshine, a little air, a little water, a piece of bread, a cloak, will be given freely to us by God and by God’s friends. Tire yourselves out, you other people, all your lives to gather together a great pile of those round minted tokens. We have no use for them. For us they are definitely superfluous. Therefore we give them back; we give them back to him who has had them coined, to him who has had his portrait put on them, so that all should know that they are his.