I remember asking a dutiful, reasonably intelligent citizen once, what she owed the government. What obligations she had just by being a member of this collective enterprise called the United States of America.
I was surprised by her answer: “Nothing.”
“Nothing,” I asked in astonishment? “Nothing,” came back the retort.
Now such an attitude I associate with people who dump their McShake container out their car window as they drive along. This is the attitude of folks who jump the line at the post office or the DMV. This is the lack of shared responsibility passed along to their children who disrupt the class, talking incessantly over the others trying to hear what another student is saying. “Nothing” owed to much of anyone except that person’s sense of their own importance. Me first and if anyone else survives, it’s mere coincidence.
In Jesus’ time, the government in Rome was a far-off irritant. It only held meaning when it’s dictates were served by its locally corrupt administrators, the tax collectors and money changers at the temple who got wealthy at the people’s expense through grift and thievery.
My dad certainly had no love for the taxman. He would resort to any dodge to shave off what he owed the IRS each year. Some deductions were, let’s say, shady. At least questionable. Fortunately, his tax preparer Paul was straight arrow and kept him out of trouble.
I do remember one issue he had with the California State Franchise Tax Board. It was over a miscalculation on his part of his employees’ withholding tax payments for one year.
I had been helping out at the office and had taken over the bookkeeping after my mom had died. The issue at hand was several years old and apparently, the tax folks had finally gotten around to catching it. It was an underpayment of 600 or 700 dollars.
In the scheme of things, considering the size of his business, this was chump change. So, when we got the letter dunning him for the amount plus penalties and interest, I was prepared to send in a check when I paid the bills.
Dad would not hear of it. “These people are going to rob me blind. We’re certainly not paying this extortion.” End of discussion.
Next month we got another dunning letter with more interest due and higher penalties. Again, it went in the round, circular file on the floor.
Finally, we got a really stern letter threatening to take the company’s business license and promising firing squads and other odious action to collect this, now some $1,200 obligation. To no avail I argued that we just weren’t going to win this one.
While Dad would not relent, he did agree for us to go down to the Franchise Tax office in downtown Long Beach. Just finding a parking place took forever. When we made it up to the second or third floor office, there was a big waiting line. We took a number and sat down with the other disgruntled souls. My big mistake was a failure to bring a book.
We were finally called to the window. Dad, in usual form was irate. Waving this letter around, he demanded that they cancel this bill and all the extra charges. The lady at the window must have been a saint. Patiently she went through her file, explaining where the misunderstanding must have occurred. Dad would hear none of it. She continued in a low, soft voice attempting to clarify the matter in his mind and mollify his anger.
We finally left with the matter unresolved, but had in hand a page containing the further enforcement actions the state would be obliged to take. The threat was dire. So dire that the next day Dad caved in. Mumbling, he agreed for me to write the check. “And be sure and send it registered mail so these ‘blankety-blank’ crooks get it.”
In our God-given wisdom we are given the ability to order our common life. “Governments are instituted among men to secure these rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Opposed to the Roman Empire, the authority for the political order of this republic is not Caesar but the people. Though the current incumbent at the White House believes he has both Caesar’s power and authority. November 3rd we’ll see. But I digress.
The question poised by those trying to entrap Jesus and turn the populace against him concerned taxes and Caesar. “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the empower, or not. Unctuous, ringing their hands these obsequious authorities in great concern – oh so very great concern –pressed their question.
Now, if Jesus answered, it was lawful and proper to pay the dreaded taxes he would have alienated the tax-hating crowd that pressed in ever closer to hear his answer. If he answered, “No,” he would have been hauled off for trial in Rome or worse.
“Show me the coin used for the tax. Whose face is on it?” You know the rest. “Give to the emperor what is the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”
So, send in that check to the Franchise Tax Board.
In a democracy, as it reflets our desire to support the common good, that all might flourish and exercise their freedoms and God-given talents – to that degree, the ability to order our common life is a gift of God. Exercised hopefully through the concern we have for one another.
Unfortunately, this ideal has been far from reality in practice. Honored in the breech. But from time to time, it has kept us from the law of the jungle where the meanest, sociopathic SOBs with the most guns prey on the rest of us. Sometimes the center has held.
But we have experienced periods of ruthless failure. Ask our First Nations people. Ask the Black citizens at the lynching trees of this land. Ask the poor working stiff as the tax code is jiggered to keep him or her impoverished while enabling astronomical wealth for the one per cent at the very top. Ask the Chinese who built our railroads in the 1860s, or the Japanese stripped of their dignity and possessions solely over lies spread by a bigoted general in California at the inception of WW II. Lies acquiesced to by none other than FDR. Ask these folks.
Yet, it has been through our government, fueled by citizen power that from time to time we have addressed these gross injustices. Yes, in many cases, through halfhearted amends. But still a long way to go. Yet the effort bends towards justice, bends towards the fashioning of the Beloved Community of Dr. King. In that it does, I believe it has the blessings of heaven.
So, though I often vehemently disagree with the use of my tax dollars – endless wars, the persecution of the president’s imagined enemies, the denial of impending climate catastrophe, the jiggering of the tax code to give birth to more millionaires and billionaires – yes, this year again, I figured my tax obligation.
As George Orwell is reputed to have said, “The rich will rob you blind but first they will arrange the laws so what they do is not illegal.” And when the tool of theft is the government, hold on to your wallet!” Robert Reich is right, what counts is who makes the rules.
One example. Just one.
After the runaway speculation that gave us the Great Depression, Congress created rules that separated investment banking from commercial banking. This prohibited banks from using your deposits to speculate in wild, unsecured investments. With that and FDR’s Banking Act of 1933, the government reopened the banks and created the Federal Deposit Insurance program guaranteeing banking customers that their deposits were safe. Safer than “under the mattress,” as FDR put it. Your bank will no longer be a casino.
To buttress these protections, Congress under the leadership of Senator Elizabeth Warren set up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. All over the howls of the uber rich and their political puppets. Over all the scare-mongering she made it work and headed it up. Trump and his oligarchs have by now virtually gutted it. Let the good times roll. For the top one percent that is.
The Dodd-Frank legislation was enacted to address the 2008 mini–Great Depression. The banks hired armies of lobbyists and arm-twisters to prevent this legislation form being enacted. Having failed that, JPMorgan “spent more money lobbying against Dodd-Frank than any other Wall Street firm — creating exceptions, exemptions, and loopholes that effectively allowed it to do much of what it was doing before the crisis…more money than any other bank to water it down.”[1]
I remember my wife asking her mother, who had been a banker, and was raised in a family of bankers who had owned the main bank of San Jacinto, California, where she had grown up – asked her mother if banks could ever fail like they did in the Great Depression.
Her mother’s answer was an unequivocal, “No – there are now rules.” No more. Not so many.
Forcing our government to serve the needs of all the people is a never-ending job. Eternal vigilance is the price to preserve this democracy. It’s like housekeeping — never done.
I close with the sentiments expressed in a letter by Thomas Jefferson to a friend, Richard Price in 1789. (ME 7:7253).[2]
“”Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government…whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.”
This November 3rd, if things are so far wrong to have gotten our attention, it will our God-given duty to “set them to rights.” Just paying one’s taxes and policing one’s litter is insufficient. Not if all are to enjoy the benefits of our common life together. Yes, go vote. Then go the extra mile to the “Glory of God and the good of your neighbor.
Amen.
[1] Robert Reich, The System: Who Rigged it, How We Fix It) New York: Alfred A Knopf, 2020), 60.
[2] The citation “ME 7:253” refers to a specific volume and page number in the Lipscomb and Bergh edition of The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (Monticello Edition). [1]
The exact text found at Volume 7, Page 253
October 18, 2026
Pentecost 21, Proper 24
“Which is Which – Caesar’s, God’s?”
The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Isaiah 45:1-7; Psalm 96:1-13
1 Thessalonians 1:1-10; Matthew 22:15-22
