Jesus tells us to sell our stuff and give alms. And none of us listens. Not because we love money, but we want control.
In a world of ownership
Proper 14C | Luke 12:32-40
If I were to name the two things that are most likely to get a rise out of us, it would probably be these:
- Jesus telling us to sell our stuff and give all our money to the needy.
- And Jesus telling us we need to have our junk together; like…yesterday. Because stuff’s gonna happen.
These two things get us going like nothing else. And they’re both present in this gospel. So…you know…we’re all probably a little…nervous.
These two things—the money talk and the urgency talk—also go together in a particular way, but they occupy different parts of our psyche. Mostly because we want money and economics to occupy a completely different part of our thinking from, say, being a good person. We want money to be independent from goodness.
Or perhaps that money can be a vehicle for being a good person. So, like, if I give to a worthy cause, for instance, I am expressing my goodness through the medium of money.
This, of course, is a convenient abstraction.
I read a tweet this week that went like this:
I met a woman outside the store crying, she had lost $200, so I gave her $40 from the $200 I found. When God blesses you, you must bless others!!!
The humor of this joke depends on our self-awareness. Not just the self-awareness of the person in the joke who totally misses who she is to the situation. [Yeah, it is funny that she doesn’t realize she’s got the person’s two hundred bucks.] But the joke also depends on our willingness to acknowledge that losing and finding money makes the idea of “ours” go totally bonkers.
Making money a vehicle for goodness without acknowledging the many ways we also use it as a vehicle for evil makes us oblivious to both. Because money and striving to be good are not separate, mutually-exclusive domains. They’re stuck together, no matter what.
And economics is never neutral. Because it is inseparable from how we wield power.
So now let’s back up a second.
We remember that a while back (Luke 9 and 10) Jesus sent all of his disciples out into the world to do his work. And they did! But then they seemed to get a little full of themselves and things started to get a little funky. And Jesus reoriented them to forge neighborly relationships with different people.
So a few weeks ago, we had the parable of the Good Samaritan. Which expands our vision of who is my neighbor.
Two Sundays ago, we were at the beginning of chapter 11 in Luke. The disciples ask Jesus how to pray—like John the Baptizer taught his disciples. And Jesus responds by giving them the Lord’s Prayer, which famously includes the desire for all people to be fed and debts to be canceled, like in the Jubilee.
What is notable about what then happens between the beginning of chapter 11 and the middle of 12 is this:
- Jesus goes to dinner with some religious elites and shames them for how they use their money and influence to erode the dignity of everyone else.
- Then Jesus warns his followers of the twin evils of deception and hypocrisy by the powerful.
- And he preaches urgency in correcting our own sense of power, wealth, status, in relationship to other people.
This is what we walk into when we hear Jesus say:
“Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
-Luke 12:32-33
Possession is the Problem.
Because possession is the root of power. We have it; they want it. Which can easily flip and we’re left wanting it. Or wanting to protect it.
And how do we react to losing possession (control) of anything we want to keep? We fight. And justify hatred. Even murder. To protect what is ours.
It is so fundamental to the human condition. We’ve spent thousands of years “defending what’s ours”.
Which is why the teaching three thousand years ago was as radical then as it is today: All of this stuff that we possess. This isn’t ours. It’s God’s. We possess nothing.
This is ultimately why we can’t give our way to goodness. It’s impossible. Even if we individually could figure out how to give more than we ever took, like it’s possible to be in the net positive on this, it wouldn’t be enough. And even if all of us here could reverse the nature of time and space and all be net positive, it wouldn’t be enough.
And even if every Christian on earth could somehow through magic and grace give more than they ever received, that still wouldn’t be enough to justify stealing ownership of the world from God.
Even if we’re doing it for God’s sake.
What if we took this more seriously?
This part of Scripture, from the middle of Luke 12 shows up this week in our lectionary cycle. We use the Revised Common Lectionary. Year A is mostly Matthew, Year B is mostly Mark and John, and Year C is mostly Luke. So this gospel shows up around this time every three years. This week’s readings are designated for Proper 14.
Now imagine hearing this gospel three years from now. And hearing those words:
“Sell your possessions, and give alms.”
And each of us looked around and recognized that most of what we see is less than three years old. Has come in since the last time we heard this. Because when we heard this command today, we got rid of our possessions. So they could stop controlling us.
What if we heard this message and chose to take it seriously? What would that look like?
This opens up a whole new can of worms. And a lot of them are distracting. We’d obsess about what is the “right” way to sell our stuff and what percentage of stuff is sufficient. We’d find ways to evaluate each other for not doing enough or for taking it too literally.
Then we’d likely move on and find ourselves in 2025 thinking about 2022 and noticing how little had changed.
There isn’t a “right” answer here. But there is a command to act. With urgency. Like our lives depend on it.
It’s like praying.
We’re like the disciples asking to be taught how to pray and Jesus says what to pray for. Justice. Equality. Life. Heaven on Earth. Jubilee. The Kin-dom come.
There isn’t a right process for selling our stuff and giving away our wealth. What there is is an urgency in action; in actually doing it.
It would be easy for me to fall back on churchy platitudes and talk about being a little more generous. Or to pray for a truly equal community just magically taking root in our neighborhood. But none of that actually fits this teaching.
Jesus is showing his followers how power has corrupted their world, their leaders, and their community. How unequal it all is. He shows how the wealthy exploit the poor — not just stealing their money, but their dignity. And the hypocrisy in their professed love for God while despising their neighbor.
He shows them how broken things are and he tells them not to be bound by this game.
If money is power, then giving away your money means they can no longer control you.
Give the power away. And do it today.
That’s the message.
And there isn’t a “right” way. There isn’t a specific thing for the church to do, either. But we are being called to remove the shackles that bind us. The lust for power. Control. Possession.
It may mean we give away half the stuff in our closets or bank accounts. It may also mean giving up that feeling of being a good person for donating to the Swope or Public Radio. It’s probably also a bit of both.
The point is that seeing injustice makes us desire to change things. And Jesus reveals how unjust our economic thinking is so that we’ll change our economy. Not just our intentions or our personal actions, but our actual, material lives. Getting rid of the material things that make up our lives that keep other people hungry.
Because it is all related. And injustice is present in this world. The Spirit is revealing it in our community through access to decent housing, schools, food insecurity, poverty, health disparities.
And we might bicker about the best way to deal with all of the things, but we are to do something. Doing nothing is disobeying Jesus. Allowing dysfunction and division to prevent us from doing something is disobeying Jesus.
The Big One
With climate change, we’re witnessing injustice at a global scale. Nations full of people are watching as their homelands are becoming completely uninhabitable over the coming decades.
People, who don’t want to leave their home countries, are facing the prospect of leaving them behind.
As it stands today, we don’t have systems to deal with any climate refugees. Quite literally: there is no climate refugee designation under international law. But in just the next three decades, we are likely to see millions of people displaced because their countries are underwater, their once-arid land is now desert, or the heat index makes it too dangerous to even go outside for weeks or months at a time.
And we already know the desire to “defend ours” makes existing refugee crises challenging. Imagine when the global refugee population goes up by ten million. Without addressing the climate refugee loophole!
But we can do something about it! We can include climate refugees in international accords, prepare for the community impact of migratory patterns away from the equator, and begin the social work of redeveloping our communities for the dramatic change that is predicted in one generation.
There is much to do now while we can.
This is how we get right with God. Seeing how unjust things are today. And then moving ourselves to make material change in our world. At the macro and micro levels.
Helping the hungry to eat. Getting shelter to those experiencing homelessness. Or providing healthcare for the one without. Clean clothes. Therapy. Food. Rehab. Another chance. A new tomorrow.
Resurrection.