Economic Justice and God’s Banquet Table

Image: Altar Mosaic of Hen and Chickens, Church of Dominus Flevit, Mount of Olives, Jerusalem.

Second Sunday in Lent, Year C
16 March 2025

Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18
Psalm 27
Philippians 3:17-4:1
Luke 13:31-35

At last Tuesday’s Being With session, during our check-in with each other when each of us tells the group what the heart of our week has been, a participant asked a question that remained with me for the rest of the week. The questioner related to the political turmoil we are experiencing, the difficulty to extract oneself from it, and the issues dominating our thoughts. The question was something like this: If Jesus instructed his followers to turn the other cheek (Matthew 5), what then about retaliatory tariffs?
It is our practice to share with each other but not to comment, and feeling some righteous anger myself, I was thankful I was not expected to answer the question. However, the question accompanied me all week.

It is a valid question. While we may instinctively want to say, “Jesus was not speaking to the mess we find ourselves in today,” to suggest that the Sermon on the Mount is not applicable in this situation would suggest that Jesus’s words were spoken for another time and place and thus should have no bearing on the lives of his followers today. This is understandable since it is the response we usually give to Jesus’s demand for non-violence. We don’t consider it practical.
Yet we also know that the teachings of Jesus are counter-intuitive to our lives, as is the life of Jesus, for we may kill for a cause but would not necessarily die for a cause. Yet Jesus chose not to kill but to die.

That the Sermon on the Mount contains instructions that are counter-intuitive is not a surprise because being counter-intuitive is precisely the point God makes in Isaiah 55 (a reading we will hear next Sunday),
⁸For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
nor are your ways my ways, (…).
⁹For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.

So, if the question is valid, my first response would be this: Retaliation allows others to set the terms of the interaction. Retaliation is reactive and not generally a response given after much reflection. In this way retaliation has no agency. Even though retaliation may give me some satisfaction, a reactive response is not usually a display of control. Yet self-control is among the fruits of the Spirit St Paul lists in Galatians 3. The others are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, and gentleness.
Now, if Canadian tariffs are not set in order to inflict damage and are not simply reactive, but are contemplated as the kind of language another government may understand, then I would argue that this is not retaliation in the sense that Jesus speaks of as the response of our reptilian brain. Rather, it then would be a response that maintains agency. It’s primary purpose is not to hurt but to restore relations to what they were just a few months ago.

Despite this assessment, I want us to hold this question for it is not simply a technical question about the observance of the commands of Jesus but it asks about the identity of the followers of Jesus. In light of the Gospel, in light of Jesus’s life, death and resurrection, in light of the ministry of Jesus, what should be the witness of the followers of Jesus?

In Philippians three St Paul speaks of people who live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Paul does not say that they speak against the cross but that they live as enemies of the cross. These are members of the body of Christ and we can assume that they did not wake up one day and decided to be enemies of the cross of Christ but that this enmity occurred over time and perhaps unbeknownst to them. Through a series of seemingly benign decisions, small compromises, and almost indistinct changes in their habits of perception and action, they became, over time, enemies of the cross. New Testament scholar Stephen Fowl says that this phenomenon seems worthy of reflection since Lent is precisely the time to become a friend of the cross or to deepen an already existing friendship.¹

We know little about the people Paul speaks about. Their most telling characteristic appears to be that their minds are set on earthly things. Which is why our preoccupation with the tariff war and our resulting anger is a problem, it preoccupies us and leaves little room for heavenly things. By heavenly things I don’t mean the Sweet By-And-By, or a denial of the embodied world and its goodness, but what we pray in the Lord’s Prayer when we pray, “your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” That is, we know that God’s will is done in heaven and as those who love God, we seek to do God’s will on earth.
Paul follows his lament over the ways of these siblings in Christ with the affirmation that our citizenship is in heaven. Fowl says that this is not about rejecting the places we currently inhabit, rather, the discomfort and yearning of knowing that our citizenship is in heaven seeks to keep me attentive. Such attentiveness is the only way of avoiding that slow, subtle, slide from being a friend to being an enemy of the cross. It is the cross that provides markers for determining a faithful path through the world if only we will attend to them. This is important because those things that might lead us to become enemies of the cross never appear to us as evil, false, or ugly. Only things that appear good, true, and beautiful are things that can lead us astray.²

And so you can see that not only do I think that the question about tariffs and the other cheek is valid but that our reading from Philippians helps us discern a path forward.

The instinctive thing for us to do is to affirm the existing order, that is the order before tariffs came into effect. But as followers of Jesus we may also ask whether the previous world of multi-lateral trade agreements is representative of God’s justice. And we may wonder whether any doubling down on economic development is the will of God.
A point at hand is the building of more pipelines that everyone now seems committed to. It certainly would spur economic development, especially in a time of crisis. But do the short term benefits outweigh the long term consequences? A friend in Texas told me that they are now anticipating tornadoes in March. Psalm 24 proclaims that The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it. And just last week Jesus reminded us that we do not live by bread alone.

Another issue is globalization. It is something we have come to take for granted and we are reminded daily of intricately connected supply chains which depend on it. But as backwards as it may sound, I always thought that my mother had a point when she lamented that people had traveled the world but did not know their own backyard, and that we should eat produce when it is in season and that no one needs strawberries in December (unlike you live where strawberries grow in December). The point of this is not to breed ignorance toward the world and its people but to live lives that are committed to places and communities, and that respect natural limitations (limitations capitalism seeks to transcend). Not long ago our prime minister made announcements about one or more plants in Eastern Canada, either manufacturing electric cars or batteries for electric cars. Both announcements included massive subsidies and concessions by federal and provincial governments. It is not that these plants would not provide well paying jobs but that in a global economy corporations have little commitment to a place and to people. Globalization usually means a race to the bottom: Capital will go where wages are low, unions are weak, resources and infrastructure exist, taxes are reduced, where regulation is lax, and where an attractive environment for management exists.³ The working conditions of Foxconn workers⁴ may have improved or they have just disappeared from the news. But one can argue that they and others like them did and do not benefit from globalization.

And so, while we want to regain what we had, namely a trusted and reliable partner for mutual economic benefit, we should be aware that the economy we have created and continue to create is pretty much focused on earthly things. If there is a longing for heavenly things, I am not sure where we should look. I say this as someone who benefits from our current economic model.

God has a different vision for the world than simply going back to what we had three months ago or to more resource extraction to save today but imperiling tomorrow.
For God even the least of these matter, which includes all of creation. Think of the increasing pace at which species become extinct. In Romans St Paul speaks of the groaning of creation. In the passage from Isaiah we referenced earlier about God’s thoughts and our thoughts, we learn that basic human needs are not commodified. Hear, everyone who thirsts; come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. (Isaiah 55:1)

The theologian Bill Cavanaugh compares the universalism of globalization with the universalism of the Eucharist, or the Lord’s Supper, quoting St Paul, If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together with it. (1 Cor 12:26) Near the end of his paper he quotes from a homily given on the 13^th of February 1977 by Father Rutilio Grande of El Salvador in the village of Apopa.
The Lord gave us … a material world for all, without borders … ‘I’ll buy half of El Salvador. Look at all my money. That’ll give me the right to it.’ …. No! That’s denying God! There is no ‘right’ against the masses of the people! A material world for all, then, without borders, without frontiers. A common table, with broad linens, a table for everybody, like this Eucharist. A chair for everybody. And a table setting for everybody. Christ had good reasons to talk about his kingdom as a meal. He talked about meals a lot. And he celebrated one the night before his supreme sacrifice … And he said that this was the great memorial of the redemption: a table shared in brotherhood, where all have their position and place … This is the love of a communion of sisters and brothers that smashes and casts to the earth every sort of barrier and prejudice and that one day will overcome hatred itself.⁵
Less than a month later, Rutilio Grande was gunned down by a government-sponsored death squad.

The question about retaliation is a question about our identity as followers of Jesus. And our identity is determined by the story of Christ’s sacrifice that brought about the salvation of the whole world, that God knows no partiality, and that at God’s table there is room for all.

Amen.