All of that gives us a God's eye view of how to make Israel, America -- the world -- great. Apparently, according to the divine order, it's not by making the rich richer. To repeat: unlike Donald Trump, Jesus doesn't begin by enlisting the services of his country's great landlords, its generals, or its bankers. (As a poor peasant himself, the carpenter from Nazareth didn't even have that option!) Instead, he starts from below, where all truly effective social change must start.
All such reflections give direction to those attempting to follow the Master from Capernaum today. Our readings call us to join Pope Francis and other critical thinkers in rejecting all forms of trickle-down theory. As the pope reminds us, history and common sense lead to that rejection.
Today's Gospel supplies a more profound reason for doing so: trickle-down is not the way of the Jesus' God whose universe is not run like a business, but is a gift system. The world itself is an expression of God's generosity to all of us. And something is drastically wrong when workers and their children go hungry, when people are forced into prostitution to make ends meet, and when beggars cannot find work.
Something is also profoundly out-of-order when would-be followers of Jesus support politicians convinced that the way to make a country great is by giving even more wealth to the obscenely rich, while forcing austerity measures on the poor.
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