In
1986, having been married to me only one year,
my wife was casting about for an interesting
birthday present. She wandered into a coin shop
and found a case of coins from antiquity. She
already knew me well enough to know that I would
be fascinated by them. The owner didn't know
much about the coins, only that they were from
Rome, and he was pretty sure that one of them
dated from the time of Christ. That's the one my
wife bought.
She was absolutely right about my reaction to
this gift—I fell in love with this coin the
minute I saw it. I couldn't believe that I was
holding something so old in my hands.
It is a brass dupondius, struck about 17 BC when
Augustus was emperor of Rome. A dupondius was
not a particularly valuable coin, something like
five dollars in today's currency. It is unlikely
but possible that someone who held this coin met
Jesus or heard rumors of his marvelous teachings
in the exotic land of Galilee.
Sometimes I stare at this coin, wishing that my
gaze could draw out its story.
On the day when this coin was created, the
engraver struck a blank circle of metal with a
punch. Each coin was punched individually, which
is why some ancient coins are off-center.
Afterward, a man inspected the coin, then put it
with others to be introduced into circulation.
This much of the coin's story can be reasonably
assumed, but from this point forward my
imagination is all I can offer.
People carried this coin around in pockets or
small leather bags. They bought things with it.
What or even who was purchased with this
dupondius is unknown. We can't know if it was
used for good or for evil. If it lasted 20 years
in circulation, then it was being used when
Jesus was a small boy. That's something I like
to think about.
And then the coin was lost. It slipped out of
someone's hand or fell off a wagon, and it
landed on the ground and was covered over by
dirt or debris. Perhaps, for a while at least,
the coin might have been found if someone had
scuffed through the dirt or chanced upon it, but
each passing year made that less likely. The
trees deposited a layer of leaves each fall, and
the earth heaped on soil from storms and floods.
The coin sunk deeper until it was too deep to be
found by anyone simply passing by.
The Christian church was born. The Roman empire
swelled to its greatest size, and its edges were
eaten away by barbarians until even Rome was
sacked. The Catholic Church came to dominate the
Western world. Ideas about Jesus became
theology, theology became doctrine, and doctrine
became dogma. An age of intellectual darkness
fell over humanity.
And still my ancient coin lay buried in the
earth.
The Renaissance and Reformation came and went,
marking the coming and going of the Western
world's adolescence. The age of enlightenment
rose, followed by the birth of science and the
advent of the modern, industrial age.
And then one day someone chanced along—I like to
imagine an archaeologist wearing a pith
helmet—stuck a spade into the earth, and found
this coin. He or she dusted it off and
experienced the thrill of a valuable discovery.
The coin changed hands here and there, then
ended up in a shop in Fort Worth, Texas, in
1986.
From this point forward, the coin and I share a
history. Since 1986 the coin has been in a small
box in which I keep a few things of value. This
box has been with me as my wife and I moved from
place to place and brought three daughters into
the world.
In May of this year I was showing my daughters
the contents of my little box of treasures. They
passed the coin among themselves while I told
them how Jeanene bought it for me in the little
shop in Fort Worth. Their interest was keen but
brief. They handed back the coin, and I
impulsively put it in my pocket instead of back
in the box.
I carried the dupondius around with me for a few
days along with some actual 21st-century
coinage. When I wanted to buy something, there
was the Roman coin along with the quarters,
dimes and nickels.
I thought the coin might appreciate hanging out
with money again, for old times' sake. But soon,
fearful that the coin might be lost a second
time, I put it on the table beside my bed. I see
this coin each night before I go to sleep. If
only this dupondius could talk. When I hold it
in my hand, my desire to know the details of its
story becomes a deep longing. I want to know
everything about the life of this coin. I want
to know who carried it and what he or she bought
with it. I want to know where it lay for all of
those centuries. I want to know how it ended up
in Fort Worth.
I hate knowing that the story is lost because I
love stories and want to know them all. I want
to know what happened to the water on Mars. I
want to know what the northern coast of India
looked like before the sliding plates of the
earth forced it into Eurasia, throwing up the
Himalayas. I want to know the story behind every
redwood tree. I want to know what was happening
during the 200,000 lost years of homo sapiens
prehistory. Most of the generations of humanity
lived in those days.
I want to know what it is like to be my wife and
to experience the world with her mind and
through her eyes. I want to know how my
daughter, who has a medical condition that
robbed her of her depth perception, manages to
catch a softball.
But I can't know these things. I don't even know
my own story. Layers of living have slowly
pushed my memories deeper into my unconscious
mind, like a coin sinking into the earth. Most
of my own story is lost, swallowed up by my
dreams and personal myths.
So I'm left staring at my coin, looking at Mars
in the night sky, poring over maps of Pangaea,
laying my hands on the bark of a redwood,
rubbing my thumb over the ancient spear point I
found last year, listening to my wife and gazing
into her lovely brown eyes, getting hit with a
softball while playing catch with my daughter
because I am trying to catch it with one eye
closed, and looking into a mirror saying, "Who
are you, stranger?"
I cannot accept the idea that our sacred stories
are as easily lost as the story of my ancient
coin. Someone needs to know these stories,
someone who can watch them and remember them and
appreciate them with a depth of love that could
come only from the Creator.
I believe in God in part because I like thinking
of God watching over our stories. My worship and
devotion is a meager gift, offered in the
possibility and hope that someone out there
knows our stories, loves them and keeps them
safe for us in a place called eternity.
Gordon Atkinson is pastor of Covenant Baptist
Church in San Antonio, Texas and has his own
outstanding website
www.reallivepreacher.com. We are most
grateful to Gordon for his permission to
reproduce his essays
here.
Copyright
2007 CHRISTIAN CENTURY. Reproduced by permission from
the June 10 2007 issue of the CHRISTIAN CENTURY.
Subscriptions: from $49/year from P.O. Box 378, Mt.
Morris, IL 61054. 1-800-208-4097. Visit the
Christian Century website.
