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Luke 3:7-14: What should toll booth operators do to 'get to heaven'?

After John answers questions from the crowd about what one should do to be saved from the coming wrath (v.7), tax collectors who are part of this crowd say in essence, “yes, we all know that: everybody who is saved will give food and clothes to those in need. But what specifically should WE, saved tax collectors, do when we make this public confession through this baptism that we have come here to make today?”[4]

Verse 13, “Don’t collect any more than you are required to,” John tells them. Now this sounds easy but let’s take a little look at the way things ran back then. It was not all that different from the way things are run today. These tax collectors were probably Jewish toll booth operators working for the Romans. Their job was to collect tolls and they made their money from surcharges applied to the tolls. The Romans used an early franchise system of sorts to collect these taxes.[5] They pseudo-privatized their toll booths. Much like fast food restaurants, big chain stores, and other corporations today; they used a franchise-style system. Judean business people would buy a toll booth franchise or a number of toll booth franchises (such as in the case of Zacchaeus; Luke 19); they would collect the money to cover the fees from their clients and everything else they made after they paid their overhead was profit. This is similar to the way many or most chain stores, franchises, fundraising catalogues, contemporary manufacturers and most businesses in general are run today. They collect what they are required to for head office or whomever and/or to cover the cost of inventory already paid for and then the rest, after expenses, goes to profit.  But John says to them, ‘don’t collect any more than you are required to [by the head office].” Don’t make a profit this way, the free laissez-faire capitalist way, charging what the market can bear in order to make a profit. Well, who would want to be a tax collector then?! Can you imagine if the Baptist told the franchise owners or others today that they are not to make a significant profit off their customers, that they are only allowed to charge what they are legally or otherwise required to charge, what would they do? ... Well, just maybe John, Luke, or even Jesus IS saying just that… I love looking at Luke in the Advent season. Luke is a revolutionary text. Luke's is a gospel to the poor. Luke is the social justice gospel.

Luke’s not so subtle condemnation of this 1st century expression of a market economy that made the rich richer and the poor poorer is as radical then as it would be now if we applied the gospel to our own society today.[6] Anyone who drives in this city knows that the parking meters all collect different amounts of money for an hour or an half hour: a dollar fifty here, $3 there; $8 for a parkade here, twenty dollars for a parkade there. And grocery stores owned by the same person, the same corporation, the same company – you buy the same product at a different outlet and it is a totally different price simply because they know they can get more money from you at that location. This is Adam Smith and Ayn Rand's version of capitalism; this is the free market.[7] But what John is saying to the owners of the Roman tax franchises in the first century is seemingly quite the opposite; he says, “don’t collect any more than you are required to.” And this I think is what Luke is telling us today: poor people in the Kingdom of God should have the same access to life as wealthy people, so do your part, “don’t collect any more than you are required to;” don’t make a profit at the expense of others. I love looking at Luke in Advent. Luke’s is a revolutionary text. Luke’s is a social justice gospel. Luke's Gospel, as Miranda and John Wesley remind us, is good news, gospel for the poor.[8]

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