JESUS’ LOGIC
Jesus was already an adult when Antipas put into circulation the coins struck in Tiberias. Undoubtedly the monetary system was supposedly a sign of progress in the development of Galilee, but didn’t achieve promoting a more just and equitable society. Actually the reverse is true.
The rich of the cities could now work better at their businesses. The monetary system allowed them to «accumulate» coins of gold and silver that supplied them with security, honor, and power. That’s why they called that treasury «mammon», money «that gives security».
Meanwhile, the farmers could hardly get along with some coins of bronze or copper, of little value. It was impossible to accumulate «mammon» in a village. They only had enough to subsist on as they interchanged their modest products among each other.
As almost always happens, progress gave more power to the rich and ruined the poor a little more. Thus it wasn’t possible to welcome God’s reign and God’s justice. Jesus doesn’t keep silent: «No one can serve two masters, since he will be loyal to one and despise the other… You can’t serve both God and Money (mammon)». You have to choose. There’s no other way.
Jesus’ logic is crushing. If one lives subjected by Money, thinking only in accumulating goods, he can’t serve that God who wants a more just and dignified life for all, beginning with the least.
In order to serve God, it’s not enough to be a part of the chosen people or give God worship in the temple. It’s necessary to keep oneself free before Money and to listen to God’s call to work for a more human world.
Something is lacking in the Christianity of the rich countries when we are capable of running around growing our welfare more and more without feeling ourselves questioned by Jesus’ message and the suffering of the poor of the world. Something is lacking when we try to live what’s impossible: the worship of God and the worship of Well-being.
Something is going wrong in Jesus’ Church when, instead of crying out with our voice and our life that it’s not possible to be faithful to God and to worship wealth, we contribute to putting to sleep our consciences by developing a bourgeois and tranquilizing religion.
José Antonio Pagola
Translator: Fr. Jay VonHandorf
