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Holy Week resources and reflections

Joining the tax collectors

Jill DuffieldJesus called a tax collector to be one of his disciples. Jesus included an IRS agent among his closest friends. I understand that a tax collector in Jesus’ day was different than an IRS employee in ours, but still, Jesus said to a much-maligned bureaucrat, “Follow me.” Matthew’s co-workers gathered around, too, and such company did not raise Jesus’ approval rating. Then, as now, government officials were not well-liked.

A recent Gallup poll reported that 83 percent of respondents disapproved of how Congress was handling its job. In 2015, the Pew Research Center reported, “The public’s trust in the federal government continues to be at historically low levels. Only 19 percent of Americans today say they can trust the government in Washington to do what is right ‘just about always’ (3 percent) or ‘most of the time’ (16 percent).”

This dim view of political life is not unique to the United States. A 2015 poll conducted in the United Kingdom reported that only 1 percent of children ages 8 to 15 wanted to be politicians when they grew up.

Perhaps this sentiment isn’t surprising given the tenor of recent elections. Who wants to sign up to be scrutinized, criticized and even demonized? Who wants a career where mediocrity is assumed, inefficiency mocked and pay less than stellar?

The problem, however, in shying away from politics and public service, is that policy matters. The laws we pass, the funds we allocate (or not) and the regulations and rules we so often deride are of critical importance to our collective quality of life, especially to the most vulnerable.

Those of us not making minimum wage have the luxury of perhaps not knowing what that current federally set wage is, let alone how one might make a living on it. (It is $7.25, by the way.) We who may not have been arrested can be ignorant of court costs, fines and the woeful shortage of public defenders, but there are many for whom these laws, policies and rules are a matter of life and death.

We want doctors who are licensed. We want bridges that don’t collapse. We assume water is potable and schools have qualified teachers. And yet we, not unlike those Pharisees, wonder why anyone would want to eat with tax collectors, let alone be one.

Public policy matters, especially to the most vulnerable in our society. And if we aren’t engaged in politics, public service and government, then our communities will suffer.

I just read a jarring and important book by Marc Lamont Hill, “Nobody: Casualties of America’s War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond.” Hill writes, “The very notion of the public has become disposable. As the current criminal-justice process shows, no longer is there a collective interest in affirming the value of the public good … we have entered a moment in which all things public have been demonized within our social imagination: public schools, public assistance, public transportation, public housing, public options and public defenders. In place of a rich democratic conception of ‘the public’ is a market-driven logic that privileges economic efficiency and individual success over collective justice.”

Where is our commitment to the public good? Do we calculate the value of legislation for the whole or just for ourselves and those most like us?

The Confession of 1967 reads, “God’s reconciliation in Jesus Christ is the ground of peace, justice, and freedom among nations which all powers of government are called to service and defend.” The Second Helvetic Confession states, “Magistracy of every kind is instituted by God himself for the peace and tranquility of the human race, and thus should have the chief place in the world.” As the study edition of our Book of Confessions notes, “Political leaders (not preachers!) ‘should have the chief place in the world’ because they have a God-ordained responsibility to ‘secure peace and tranquility,’ ‘exercise judgment by judging uprightly,’ ‘protect widows, orphans and the afflicted.’”

Given our Reformed understanding of “the magistracy” and “the magistrate,” we must participate in public life, not demonize it. We are called to take our seat at the table with Jesus, the tax collectors, the sinners and the vulnerable, not stand on the edges and scoff with the Pharisees.

Grace and peace,
Jill

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