The first lesson every politician learns is to address the issue that is most important to the people. Without a doubt — and on a global scale — that issue is easily identifiable. Retreading a slogan popular in the early nineties that James Carville gave to Bill Clinton, “It’s the economy, stupid!”

What is everyone’s focus in this dawn of the second decade of the twenty-first century is not new. It was a pivotal concern for Jesus’ first century audience as well. In today’s gospel text Jesus offers his listeners a lesson in economics. But it is the unique economy of this thing he called “the Kingdom” that Jesus presents. And a Kingdom economy is based on something more than a burgeoning GNP. According to this week’s parable, a positive “bottom line” in the Kingdom economy is determined by a…