1 LOVE AND JUSTICE Lars Wilhelmsson Love without justice is a Christian impossibility, and can only be practiced by those who have divorced religion from life, who dismiss a concern for justice as politics and who fear social change much more than they fear God. 1 --Alan Paton The ship of the law cannot change the heart, but it can restrain the heartless until they change their mind and heart. 2 --Reinhold Niebuhr Systems by which the rich are made richer, and the poor poorer, should find no favor among people professing to fear God and hate covetousness. 3 Jesus told His prospective followers in no uncertain terms: --Lucretia Mott Any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be My disciple. The twelve apostles took His words to heart and did this literally! Simon and Andrew left their nets and followed him. James and John left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him. Matthew (Levi) got up and followed him, leaving behind his tax-collector s booth and work. Similarly, Jesus told the Rich Young Ruler to sell all his possessions, give the proceeds to the poor and then follow Him. And so Peter blurted out: We have left everything to follow you! Does this mean that Jesus expects all His followers to give up everything in order to follow him? After all, the apostles did it. And the rich young man was challenged to do it. But is this injunction a universal rule? Jesus did say that we should Store our treasure in heaven not on earth (Mt 6:19-21). Put devotion to God s rule and righteousness above material things (v. 33).
2 Beware of greed (Lk 12:15). Beware of the love of money (16:14). 6:24). Jesus therefore warned that it is impossible to serve God and money simultaneously (Mt Yet He did not tell all his followers to get rid of all their possessions. Joseph of Arimathea is described both as a rich man and as a disciple of Jesus who gave his tomb for Jesus burial (Mt 27:57-61; Mk 15:43-47; Lk 24:50-52). Riches and spirituality are evidently not incompatible. Zacchaeus, the wealthy tax-collector, promised both to pay back to people four times what he had taken, and to give half of his possessions to the poor. This still presumably meant that he kept the other half, apart from what he paid back to his victims. Yet Jesus said that salvation had been given him. When Jesus said that no one could be his disciple unless he both renounced all his possessions and hated his parents and other relatives, we shall need to understand both these verbs as dramatic figures of speech. We are not to hate our parents literally, nor we necessarily to renounce all our possessions literally. What we are called to is to put Jesus Christ first, above even our family and our property. THE OLD TESTAMENT ERA For centuries before Jesus, the Jewish people practiced almsgiving. Most of us think of alms as small donations to charity. Anyone on a tour of a cathedral have seen baskets on pedestals near the entrance marked Alms for the Poor. The impression is that an alm is pocket change, a tiny bit of surplus that you can spare for the poor. In Israel, almsgiving was a symbolic way of affirming the covenant that God made with Israel whose aim was partly for everyone in the community to be free from anxiety concerning daily survival. The Book of Deuteronomy states, There will... be no one in need among you because (God ) is sure to bless you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you as a possession to occupy, if you only will obey the Lord you God by diligently observing his entire commandment that I command you today (Dt 15:4-5). Remembrance is one of the essential commandments God gave to Israel. They were to remember the experience of slavery and how God acted in behalf of the Israelites. This meant that Israel would remember what it was like to be in need and to act in covenant with the needy:
3 Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land (v. 11). Even when the people had money members of the community would often barter and make direct use of their possessions. The farmers were to leave food in the fields for the poor to glean. Every seven years, debts were to be remitted, and slaves were to be freed. People gave alms then, not from their pocket change or surplus, but from the food, material or money they could have used to support their own households. All the members were joined together in solidarity. The plight of everyone was felt by each individual. Thus almsgiving was a symbolic commitment to the community. THE NEW TESTAMENT ERA Much of Israel s almsgiving was in the form of money only by the time of Jesus. To give alms was a practical way to help the poor. It was a common practice for people to give alms at the temple. In one area of the temple, they had collection plates built like big trumpets where people would place their alms in the larger open ends of the trumpets. Then the servants of the temple would collect the alms and give them to the poor. Thus almsgiving was a systemic way of redistributing wealth so that all could live in security. In New Testament times almsgiving was one of the three acts of righteousness (Mt. 6:1). The other two acts were prayer (Mt 6:5-15) and fasting (vv. 16-18). Therefore Jesus presumes that His followers will give alms: So whenever you give alms... (Mt 6:2; see also vv. 3-4). Just as Jesus does not exhort His followers to give alms, He assumes that we will do so as an expression of our identity as those who are loved of God. In this text, the word reward is probably a synonym for blessing. This means that those who give ostentatiously have limited their blessing to the acclamation that they receive from other people (vv. 2-3).. Whether an alm is money or something else, what is important to keep in mind is that it is an expression of mercy. The Lenten season reminds us that Jesus blood is the alm that reveals the depth of God s love to mankind. By giving alms we honor God by helping other people and thereby kindle the memory of God s mercies for us all. Jesus noticed and commented on the gift of a poor widow. (Mk 12: 42-43) and directed His servants to go out to seek the poor and the handicapped to bring them to share in the gospel banquet (Lk 14:13,21). In the early church there was special concern for the poor.
4 The church at Jerusalem shared generously to provide the needs of the poor (Lk 4:34-35). The church at Antioch warned of the coming famine and sent relief to the poor Christians in Jerusalem (Ac 11:29-30). When James and Peter and John expressed the unity of the church of Jerusalem with the Gentile mission of Paul and Barnabas, the one thing they urged was that they should always remember the poor, which, Paul says, he was eager to do (Gal 2:9-10). Paul was so eager to help the poor that he planned and worked for more than a year to encourage the churches of the four provinces to give most generously for a gift to the needy in the mother church back in Jerusalem. (1 Co 16:1-4; 2 Co 9:1-5) James and John in their epistles, show similar concern (Jas 2:5-6; 1 Jn 3:17). The gospel for the poor must be preached. But if it is preached in words alone, it will fail. Little children, John writes, let us not love in word or speech but in deed and in truth (1 Jn 3:18). Kind words alone are empty (Jas 2:15-16). If we are to do His will, we must follow Him who gave Himself: Though He was rich, rich beyond all comprehension, yet for our sake He became poor, so that by His poverty we might become rich (2 Co 8:9). This meant being often without a bed (Lk 9:58), without a home (Jn 1:11) and without a meal (Mk 6:31). It meant giving Himself in love, in sacrifice, even to the point of dying on a cross--a despicable death (Php 2:8). Are His followers above their Master? Or is their calling to identify with the poor, the needy, the vulnerable? THE CHURCH One of Christ s major antidotes to poverty was to establish the church. Poverty in part is a product of unjust economic relationships, whereas the church is a community dedicated to promoting just and caring relationships. The New Testament churches met the needs of the poor and worked to eradicate poverty among their members, not as an occasional program, but as part of their normal routine. And they did. Luke points out that the first Christian community in Jerusalem had everything in common, that no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, that they shared everything they had and gave to anyone as he had need (Ac 4:32). As a consequence there were no needy persons among them (v. 34).
5 Is Luke saying this communal life should be practiced by every church? Yes and no! Yes, in the sense that the early Spirit-filled believers so loved and cared for one another that they eliminated poverty within their fellowship. But no in that he is not advocating the common ownership of goods. Unlike the Essene groups, especially in their central community at Qumran, where this was obligatory with every new member entering the order handing over his property, the Christians selling and sharing were neither universal nor compulsory. This is clear from the fact that some believers still had houses in which they met. The sin of Ananias and Sapphira was not that they were selfish to withhold some of their property, but that they were deceitful to pretend they had given it all. Peter said to Ananias: Didn t it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn t the money at your disposal? (Ac 5:4) The Bible affirms that people, including Christians, have a right to property at the same time that it commands and encourages voluntary giving. While both the example and the teaching of the early church challenge us to renounce materialism with its greed, covetousness and luxurious lifestyle and to care sacrificially for the poor, they do not establish the case that all Christians must actually become poor. And the rich man in the parable of Jesus found himself in hell not because of his wealth but because of selfish, indulgent, hard heart which made him neglect Lazarus, the beggar at his gate who was starving (Lk 16:19-26). However, this does not mean that it is possible for affluent Christians to stay rich, in the sense of not making any changes in one s economic lifestyle. A life of extravagance is a violation of caring for the poor. Either we keep our mammon or God. We must always choose between the two. We can t have it both ways. Consider Paul s instruction to Timothy regarding rich people: Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life ( 1 Ti 5:17-19) Just as the church cannot lightly tolerate sin among its members, so also it cannot tolerate poverty within itself. And just as Christians spearhead the battle against sin in the world, so must we spearhead the battle against poverty. It s not either/or but both/and.