Living for Jesus and Justice

Not too long ago I was in San Francisco and popped in to catch up with friends who have been fleshing out an integral Christian spirituality in the Mission District for many years. Reclining on creaky wooden deckchairs in the backyard, our conversation turned to economics and the impact of Jesus’ words, the ‘red letters’ of scripture. I recall we got especially animated around the story of the Rich Young Ruler – and what message that important dialogue from Matthew’s gospel might offer us today.

Since returning I’ve been digging deeper into the relationship between theology and economics as part of a research fellowship at Durham University. At the heart of my work is the dilemma that faces all contemporary Jesus-followers:

How can we live an economically faithful life, when we’re so tangled up in the market-driven economy around us?  

The Sacred-Secular Divide

As human beings we have the ability to rationalise our most peculiar behaviours in order to live with our contradictions. One way we can do this is by separating the economy from the church.  Living this way, the economy is understood as our working, earning and shopping: a temporal plane of disposable goods. By contrast the church is our holy refuge, a place of retreat. It’s the classic sacred-secular divide

There is, of course, an argument that the separation of the economy and the church SHOULD be enforced.  After all, Jesus purging the money changers from the temple is one of his few acts recorded in all four gospels. Indeed, we need not go back as far as that to make a case for separation. Financial corruption in the church, via the sale of indulgences, was at the heart of the protest that ignited the Reformation and led to the establishing of Protest-antism. In our own times we react with nausea at the manipulations of Televangelists, accumulating personal fortunes by peddling a health and wealth gospel. We cringe too, having applauded Archbishop Welby for speaking out against high-interest lenders, to hear that the Church of England owned shares in these very companies. For all these reasons then, it’s understandable that we might want to erect defences between our worshipping communities and the profane economy around them.

Dual Citizens

Bishop Graham Cray argues that such a division is unacceptable because ‘Christians are dual citizens’.[i]  Living in the overlap of two worlds means bravely facing up to the daily challenge of how to deal with our dual loyalties in a coherent and integrated way. This struggle has both a personal and a collective dimension.

On the personal level it requires a commitment to deal with the problematic division between the spiritual self that we consider to be non-economic, and the physical self that needs to earn money and pay bills. In the collective sense we must come to see that our churches are not economy-free-zones.

The Old Testament, from the time of the tabernacle onwards, presents the Levitical system as the heart of Israel’s economy. The priests had the responsibility to ensure fairness in trading by enforcing standard weights and measures. The festival calendar provided a pattern through which the nation’s productivity was redistributed in a radically inclusive way.

In the post-resurrection world of the New Testament the economic demands of a faithful life continued. Members of the Early Church, culturally committed to the Torah tradition of economic justice, but liberated from the requirement to financially support the Levitical system, found a new way to integrate money and mission:  sharing.

A Sharing Community

Anyone who has observed young children at play in a nursery will have seen the tug of war that can transpire when two toddlers become fixated upon the same toy: “Mine” they cry at the tops of their voices! As responsible parents we try our best to guide our kids through this stage as quickly as possible with repeated encouragements to share. Yet how well do we as adults actually model sharing behaviour ourselves, in a world in which possession is nine tenths of the law?

In her book Economy of Grace theologian Kathryn Tanner describes the way God’s gifts are to be ‘realised by us’ communally rather than individually. Our churches, however small or large they may be, can be communities ‘dedicated to the well-being of all, without exception’.[ii] We might even say that churches ought to be communities within which individual possession is seriously challenged.

I’m not describing some religious form of communism; I’m simply pointing out that in Christ’s Kingdom classic economic theory (within which goods either belong to us or do not) is left looking like a two-dimensional attempt to represent three-dimensional reality. Rather, the Kingdom that the Rich Young Ruler was being invited into is a place in which what is mine is confronted by higher notions of what is ours. Think of the words spoken by the father figure in the parable of the prodigal son:

“Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.” (Luke 15:31 NKJV)

Any questions of individual ownership dissolve within such intimate relational proximity. As the prodigal discovered at great cost, his efforts to take what was previously ours (in his case the family inheritance) and reduce it to what is mine only resulted in poverty and loneliness. How different the story is when goods are allowed to freely circulate back and forth among us as we alternate between the roles of giver and receiver. The community becomes a common-wealth, in the broadest sense.

Giving Circles

One way my family and some of our friends have begun to work this all out is by forming a Giving Circle. For those who have never heard of Giving Circles, they are basically small groups of people who get together in order to pool some of their money into a common fund. Essentially, we take some of what was previously in a pot labelled mine and transfer it into a pot labelled ours. Our little group, like the thousands of others that exist around the world, regularly meets up to have conversations about the money in the pot, and how we might use it to bring about positive change in the world around us. In this sense Giving Circles exist entirely for the benefit of their non-members. In our case the banking and redistribution of our money is handled by a charity called Common Change, which was started about 15 years ago by Shane Claiborne and operates here in the UK.

Our choice to be part of a Giving Circle is a simple practice that on its own isn’t going to bring about an economic revolution. What is does however, is allow us to lean into a lost dimension of our Christian heritage. Slowly but steadily we can start to live a more integrated life, a life that I hope is more in tune with the economic pattern we find in Jesus’ ‘red letters’.


[i] Graham Cray, Disciples and Citizens (2007) p.22

[ii] Kathryn Tanner, Economy of Grace (2007) p.74

About The Author

Avatar photo
Chair of Trustees, Common Change UK

Matt Wilson wears several hats… he’s the chair of trustees of Common Change UK, a group that promotes generosity through group-based giving, he also runs a consultancy business that helps organisations enhance their social impact, and represents his community as a local councillor. Follow him on Twitter at @MWilsonFRSA

Related Posts