Jesus’ words in this Matthew text invite us to think about and talk about money, about taxes, about responsibilities to the state, about how we make political and economic choices, about devotion to God, about living our faith.
In closing, I’d like to share this quote from Elizabeth Warren, who is running for the Senate in Massachusetts:
“There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: you moved the goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for . . . You built a factory and it turned into something terrific . . .? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is to take a hunk of that and pay it forward for the next kid who comes along.” (Quoted in The Christian Century)
We are all part of the social contract. Jesus is not suggesting we retreat from the social and political spheres of our lives, but that we let our faith inform the decisions we make in these arenas of our lives. I like Warren’s challenge to pay it forward to the next kid who comes along. Because the underlying assumption of the faith that brings us here is that “The whole earth is God’s. The world belongs to God and everything in it!”
