Last month in midtown Manhattan, time stood still – literally. After the US debt surpassed $10 trillion, the marquee-sized debt clock in Times Square, which has kept a running tally of the U.S. national debt for nearly 20 years, ran out of digits. Time magazine said, “For a nation already struggling with a bleak economic reality, it was a less-than-reassuring display” With the global slide in share prices this week, it has perhaps become a sign of how the entire world is struggling with the new economic reality. Something more than a change of President in two weeks time is going to be needed. We have got to learn to live and work together more collaboratively and today’s gospel story may give us some clues. Last week I was in Jordan with Church leaders addressing a different kind of crisis. The slow but progressive haemorrhaging of the indigenous Church. They are leaving the Middle East due to attacks by Islamists from Sudan to Iraq, from Afghanistan to Egypt. To flee or to emigrate has always been a natural response to economic necessity as much as religious oppression. And in the light of the last couple of weeks, if you work in the City, maybe you have felt like fleeing also. You may not have thought of emigrating to Australia but perhaps the thought of a simpler, slower lifestyle in the countryside, working on the land or with animals instead of people, is rather appealing.