Even more to the point, according to Isaiah, the joy of those liberated from Babylon was like the ecstasy of rebels dividing spoils after The Revolution -- when the wealth of their oppressors was finally redistributed to those who had worked so long producing that wealth in exchange for nothing but "rod and yoke."
In other words, the reading from Isaiah refers to a time of plenty and of wealth redistribution -- always the dream of the poor and dispossessed -- a dream, Pope Francis reminds us, that is also the Dream of God.
It was a dream shared by Jesus. He called his revolutionary vision the "Kingdom of God." In today's reading from Matthew, we see the working man from Nazareth recruiting those who would help organize the poor around that concept. Matthew presents Jesus as selecting comrades like himself -- from the working class. His initial selections are the poor illiterate fishermen Simon, Andrew, James and John. They would accompany him and learn from him as he confronted his culture's rich elite -- the temple priests, rich landlords (again the temple priests), and collaborators with Roman occupation forces.
Reza Aslan tells us that Jesus did all of this in a context of extreme economic inequality. Aslan writes of "the chasm between the starving and indebted poor toiling in the countryside and the wealthy provincial class ruling in Jerusalem . . . ." He describes a Jesus who as a tekton (a Greek word meaning Jack of all trades) worked daily rebuilding the opulent city of Sepphoris, the capital of Galilee, an hour's walk from his village of Nazareth. "Six days a week," Aslan writes, "from sunup to sundown, Jesus would have toiled in the royal city, building palatial houses for the Jewish aristocracy during the day, returning to his crumbling mud-brick home at night. He would have witnessed for himself the rapidly expanding divide between the absurdly rich and the indebted poor."
No doubt that experience sensitized Jesus to the plight of those who shared his social location. Like others he knew, Jesus was convinced that the situation was unsustainable. As Aslan puts it, "There was a feeling particularly among the peasants and pious poor, that the present order was coming to an end, that a new and divinely inspired order was about to reveal itself. The Kingdom of God was at hand. Everyone was talking about it."
Jesus made it the point of his work as a community organizer par excellence to focus on the advent of God's kingdom. In today's Gospel, Matthew says, "Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people."
And in proclaiming and working for the kingdom, Jesus did not shy away from statements that might be seen as engendering class conflict. "Blessed are you poor," he said, "for yours is the Kingdom of God" (LK 6:20). "Woe to you rich, you have had your reward" (LK 6:24). "How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God" (MT 19: 16-24). "Sell everything you have and give it to the poor" (MK 10:21). All of these statements show consciousness of class struggle.
So what are we to do about income inequalities? In 1998, a UN Development Report called for a tax of 4% on the world's richest 225 people. The report said that such a tax (6% less than the traditional tithe) would provide enough resources to feed, clothe, house, cure and educate the entire Third World.
To the wealthy, such taxation is unthinkable. As a result, 30,000 children die of absolutely preventable starvation each day.
In the eyes of Pope Francis -- in the eyes of Jesus, I'm sure -- tolerating such needless deaths is sinful and runs entirely contrary to any pretensions of those identifying themselves as "pro-life."
No, Mr. Brooks, we can't ignore the connections between extreme wealth and abysmal poverty. Wealth must somehow be redistributed. We have the word of Oxfam and the UN on that. We have the word of Pope Francis and of Jesus too.
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