Be Generous to the Poor | Generosity E4
Update: 2024-12-06
Share
Description
Changing our relationship with money is one of the first and most important steps of living as followers of Jesus. In this episode, John Mark explores Jesus' teachings on generosity to the poor. He challenges us to reexamine our preference for accumulation and offers practical ways to share our resources with those in need.
Key Scripture Passage: Luke 12v13-34
This podcast and its episodes are paid for by The Circle, our community of monthly givers. Special thanks for this episode goes to: Pam from Thornton, Colorado; Jeremy from Lancaster, Pennsylvania; Courtney from Fayetteville, Arkansas; Kevin from Richardson, Texas; and Joshua from Huntington Beach, California. Thank you all so much!
If you’d like to pay it forward and contribute toward future resources, you can learn more at practicingtheway.org/give.
Comments
Top Podcasts
The Best New Comedy Podcast Right Now – June 2024The Best News Podcast Right Now – June 2024The Best New Business Podcast Right Now – June 2024The Best New Sports Podcast Right Now – June 2024The Best New True Crime Podcast Right Now – June 2024The Best New Joe Rogan Experience Podcast Right Now – June 20The Best New Dan Bongino Show Podcast Right Now – June 20The Best New Mark Levin Podcast – June 2024
In Channel
Download from Google Play
Download from App Store
United States00:00
00:00
1.0x
0.5x
0.8x
1.0x
1.25x
1.5x
2.0x
3.0x
Sleep Timer
Off
End of Episode
5 Minutes
10 Minutes
15 Minutes
30 Minutes
45 Minutes
60 Minutes
120 Minutes
Transcript
00:00:00
[MUSIC PLAYING]
00:00:03
Welcome to the John Mark Coma Teachings podcast.
00:00:06
I'm Straun Coleman, your host and part of the teaching team here at Practicing the Way.
00:00:11
Each week on this podcast, we share a teaching from John Mark or other trusted voices in the formation space.
00:00:18
And it's great to have you with us.
00:00:21
Today, we finish our series on generosity by exploring Jesus' teaching on giving to the poor.
00:00:27
It was so radical in its time that it turned the Roman Kingdom upside down and changed civilization forever.
00:00:36
Now, you and I are invited into that same story.
00:00:41
As you listen, you may like to gently ask yourself the question, who are the poor and needy in my life in world today?
00:00:50
Here's John Mark.
00:00:50
Good morning.
00:00:55
Great to see you.
00:00:57
Please turn in your Bibles to Luke 12.
00:01:01
As we come to the end of our four-week generosity practice, some of you are saying, thank God.
00:01:08
Last week of me telling you to give money away.
00:01:10
Next week, the Enneagram 7 fondue stories return, OK?
00:01:15
Good things are in your future.
00:01:16
But it is such a joy to be with you.
00:01:20
Once you arrive on Luke 12, and if you don't have a Bible, there should be one in the seat in front of you.
00:01:25
So I would invite you to pull that out and open and read along as we work through the text.
00:01:30
But once you arrive at Luke 12, please stand with me for the reading of Scripture.
00:01:37
Our text for today is Luke 12 from verse 13.
00:01:44
Let me just give you one short moment to pause and send to yourself, in God, to turn in your heart,
00:01:55
to look at God, looking at you in love, and to open your heart to whatever God has for you today.
00:02:05
Come,
00:02:19
Holy Spirit.
00:02:21
Luke 12, verse 13.
00:02:25
"Someone in the crowd said to him, 'Rabbi, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.'" Jesus replied, "Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?"
00:02:39
And then he said to them, "Watch out.
00:02:41
Be on your guard against all kinds of greed.
00:02:45
Life does not consist in an abundance of possessions."
00:02:49
And he told them this parable, "The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest."
00:02:56
He thought to himself, "What shall I do?
00:02:58
I have no place to store my crops."
00:03:01
Then he said, "This is what I'll do.
00:03:03
I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones.
00:03:07
And there I will store my surplus grain, and I'll say to myself, you have plenty of grain laid out for many years.
00:03:15
Take like life easy, eat, drink, and be merry."
00:03:21
But God said to him, "You fool.
00:03:24
This very night your life will be demanded from you.
00:03:28
Then you will get what you have prepared for yourself."
00:03:33
This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves, but is not rich towards God.
00:03:41
Take a seat.
00:03:49
I have a good friend who works in finance.
00:03:53
And when he graduated from college, his goal straight up was to become the richest person on Earth, like you do.
00:04:01
And immediately, he started to do really well in his career and make a lot of money.
00:04:08
At the time, we were not friends at the time.
00:04:10
I'm not friends with people like that.
00:04:13
But he was a nominal Christian who would go to church here there, and he gave a little bit of it away, but not all that much.
00:04:20
Mostly, he was just keyed in on his career.
00:04:22
But another buddy of his called him up who was also in finance and said, "Hey, I'll just call my friend Tom.
00:04:29
It's not his real name, but for his sake, let's call him Tom."
00:04:32
Hey, Tom, how much of your money do you give away?
00:04:35
And Tom was, like, first off, a little shocked that you would dare ask me a question like that and put off by it.
00:04:42
And he said, then his friend goes, "Do you even tithe?"
00:04:48
And he said, "Yeah, I tithe."
00:04:49
And he said he didn't tithe.
00:04:50
He gave maybe around 7%.
00:04:53
And then his friend said, "Well, I know how much money you make, and I make less money than you, but I give way more of it away.
00:05:01
I want you to come with me to this event."
00:05:03
And so his friend brings me along to this small, kind of, invite only event that's for high net worth Christians, which is a gracious way of saying rich Christians.
00:05:13
And it's a really beautiful work.
00:05:16
I've been there before as a speaker, not as a guest.
00:05:21
But they don't do any fun raising.
00:05:24
They just bring together Christians that have a lot of money, and they do everything they can to inspire them to what they call radical generosity, to give those resources away to kingdom initiatives.
00:05:35
And part of their philosophy of ministry is they tell real stories with real people, and they believe that modern Christians have misread Matthew chapter 5,
00:05:45
and Jesus' language about when you give, don't let your right hand know what your left hand is doing to mean, never talk about, don't ask, don't tell, when it comes to money.
00:05:54
And they actually think that's a gross misreading of the text.
00:05:57
So they tell real stories.
00:05:58
So my friend gets there, and first person gets up, and talks about how they reverse tithe.
00:06:05
They live on 10% of their income.
00:06:07
They give 90% away.
00:06:09
Then, and he's just like bug-eyed, right?
00:06:12
Then another person gets up who started a company that's done really well, and talks about how they live by what most people call lifestyle cap.
00:06:20
So they set a very modest salary.
00:06:23
I remember hearing it, and it was basically what I made as a pastor, kind of modest middle class salary, and every penny over that line, they give away to kingdom initiatives.
00:06:33
Now, my friend had never heard anything like this before.
00:06:37
Had no idea that there were really serious Christians of means that were working all of this stuff out.
00:06:45
And this moment changed his life.
00:06:48
Coming home from that, he and his wife changed their relationship to money, and that in turn had this cascade effect upon their whole life.
00:06:56
They started a foundation.
00:06:58
Now, many, many years later, they live on 20% and give 80% away, and they are some of the most joyful people I have ever known.
00:07:09
Now, I am well aware that for the vast majority of us in the room, living on 20% of our income is not a realistic option, especially in LA.
00:07:22
Many of us are just trying to make rent by the end of the week.
00:07:26
I get that.
00:07:27
I tell you that story, not because it's all that applicable to most of you, though it is for some of you.
00:07:33
But because it's a great example of someone refusing to live a "normal life."
00:07:39
It's the great temptation, particular in a country like America, to just kind of Christianize your American life, just to put a little Jesus' spin on what is otherwise not really that different from your neighbors.
00:07:53
But there are people who really take seriously Jesus' teachings on all sorts of issues, and in particular this one of money and generosity, and think with creativity,
00:08:05
and with a really kind of a daring plumb, but how to work this into daily life, or in Jesus' language, how to put it into practice.
00:08:16
We are coming to the end of our generosity practice, and there is no possible way to distill all of Jesus' teachings on money and generosity down into four weeks.
00:08:27
But our best attempt was just to trace out the following four themes that very clearly emerge when you read Jesus.
00:08:36
One, there is more joy in giving than in receiving.
00:08:40
Two, watch out for greed, three, all we have belongs to God, and four, be generous to the poor.
00:08:50
Up on the docket for this morning is our final fame, Jesus called not just to be generous, but more specifically to share our resources with the poor.
00:09:00
All through the Library of Scripture, if you are new to the Bible, we read again and again of what Pope Francis famously called the preferential option for the poor, which is just a way of saying that when you read Scripture,
00:09:12
you quickly get the impression that it's almost like God has a biased or a soft place in his heart, at least, if not much more, for those in need.
00:09:23
There are roughly 500 verses in the Bible on faith and another 500 on prayer and around 2,000 on God's heart for the poor.
00:09:34
And we see this heart on display in the person of Jesus and the teachings of Jesus.
00:09:39
Let's work through this one example here in Luke 12.
00:09:42
Again, take a look at verse 13.
00:09:45
"Someone in the crowd said to him, 'Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me, so some kind of family squabble over wealth.'" Jesus replied,
00:09:55
"Man, I don't even know exactly what the Greek word there is, but I just like that," he said that.
00:10:00
It's kind of cool.
00:10:01
"Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?
00:10:05
Do I look like a judge?
00:10:06
Do I look like a lawyer?
00:10:08
Two siblings here are fighting over the family inheritance, and Jesus just will not get sucked in."
00:10:14
Then he said to them, 14, "Watch out beyond your guard against all kinds of greed."
00:10:20
We covered this text a few weeks ago.
00:10:22
"Life does not consist in an abundance of possessions."
00:10:25
That's not what it's about.
00:10:27
Notice again, Jesus has such a different vision of where happiness is to be found than most of us do today, 16.
00:10:37
And then he told them, "This parable, the ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest, a really good year that year, really good return on his investments."
00:10:47
He thought to himself, "Okay, what shall I do?
00:10:49
I have no place to store my crops."
00:10:52
Then he said, "Okay, this is what I'll do.
00:10:53
I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my surplus grain, and I'll say to myself, you have plenty of grain laid up for many years.
00:11:05
Take life easy, eat, drink, and be married."
00:11:09
That last line can be translated, "Live it up, eat, drink, and enjoy yourself."
00:11:14
Or, "You've got it made and can now retire.
00:11:18
Take it easy and have the time of your life."
00:11:20
Now, this line, you likely recognize it, at least in the NIVs translation, because it was a well-known saying from the philosopher Epicurius and the Epicurians.
00:11:31
It was the life philosophy of pagans, not the people of God.
00:11:36
That's what Jesus is saying here.
00:11:38
But, 20, God said to him, "You fool, this very night your life will be demanded from you."
00:11:46
That's ambiguous language, but your life is coming to an end.
00:11:49
Then who will get what you are prepared for yourself?
00:11:53
This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves, but is not rich toward God.
00:12:01
Now, this story sounds a bit scary or even harsh to our modern ears.
00:12:08
A little backstory to make sense of it.
00:12:11
Most people in Jesus' day were poor tenant farmers, and a very small number were wealthy landowners.
00:12:22
There was a merchant class.
00:12:23
In fact, a few of Jesus' disciples were fishermen, and we often hear in sermons they were poor.
00:12:28
They were not.
00:12:28
They were running a prosperous fishing business.
00:12:31
They were doing well.
00:12:32
But the middle class of Jesus world was very small.
00:12:36
You basically had poor farmers and a tiny number of rich landowners.
00:12:41
It was also an agrarian economy, which unlike our modern economic system of capitalism or whatever you want to call it, which has whatever we think about it generated more wealth than in any other era and human history.
00:12:54
Our world wealth is a bit more of a social construct.
00:12:58
I am paid in numbers that I see on an email that go into a website that is called a bank.
00:13:06
I'm not paid in sheep and asparagus for my services.
00:13:10
Wealth today is less of a zero-sum game because it is based often on arbitrary social validation.
00:13:18
If you start a company and it's the next Facebook and you sell it for a billion dollars or whatever, you're not stealing that money from the poor per se.
00:13:28
That's kind of made up money.
00:13:30
That culture said we think it's worth this, so we'll pay this for it.
00:13:33
But in an agrarian economy, wealth is more limited because it's based on physical commodities, like land and animals and crops,
00:13:44
and there's only so much land in particular to go around.
00:13:48
This man is a wealthy landowner, but instead of sharing his excess with the poor, and we'll talk about this in a few minutes, but there was no government wealth redistribution in this era of history.
00:14:00
That all comes hundreds of years later based on Christian influence, nothing at all.
00:14:06
There was a social obligation and written into the Torah.
00:14:09
This man is a Torah-observant Jew.
00:14:10
There was an actual, like, levitical code if you're familiar with the laws of Gleanians, where this man was called to share that excess with all of the poor tenant farmers around him.
00:14:20
But instead of sharing all that excess with the poor, he builds bigger barns.
00:14:26
And what is Jesus called this man?
00:14:30
A fool.
00:14:31
The irony is, this guy is living the American dream.
00:14:35
Literally, two Harvard Business School graduates wrote a great book called "God in Money."
00:14:42
It's worth your time if you're interested.
00:14:44
At one point, they rewrite this parable from the modern world.
00:14:48
Some of you business majors will enjoy this.
00:14:50
The stock options belonging to a manager vested after a major run-up in share price.
00:14:55
And he thought to himself, "What shall I do if I already have enough save to send my kids to college?
00:15:01
My house is paid off, and I already maxed out my 401k every year."
00:15:05
And he said, "I will do this.
00:15:06
I will open an investment account and create a passive income portfolio.
00:15:11
And I'll exercise my options and put the money there.
00:15:14
And I will say to my soul, soul, you have a big enough portfolio to be financially independent.
00:15:21
Retire early plans and vacations, play golf."
00:15:24
They're soul.
00:15:26
The reason that some of you are laughing and others if you are not.
00:15:32
Just to clarify, because you're right now starting to do the math and you're realizing, wait, that's my dream.
00:15:40
That's actually my life right now.
00:15:42
There are people, many people in this room certainly in our city and country whose life goal is exactly this.
00:15:50
Make as much money as you can, retire early and live it up.
00:15:55
The villain in Jesus' story is our culture's hero.
00:16:00
Yet to Jesus, he is a fool.
00:16:05
Then look down at verse 22.
00:16:09
Then Jesus said, "Do his disciples.
00:16:11
We're going to keep reading."
00:16:13
This is, again, the longest teaching of Jesus we have in Luke on money.
00:16:16
"Therefore I tell you," you know the cheesy preacher pond, whenever you read it, "Therefore ask yourself what it's there for."
00:16:23
Meaning this next part is all following that parable.
00:16:26
"In light of all that, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear.
00:16:34
For life is more than food and the body more than clothes.
00:16:37
Consider the ravens.
00:16:39
They do not so or reap.
00:16:40
They have no storeroom or barn or bank account or investment portfolio.
00:16:45
Yet God feeds them.
00:16:46
And how much more valuable are you than birds?
00:16:50
Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life, rhetorical question?
00:16:56
None of us.
00:16:56
In fact, we know the science now.
00:16:58
You're actually shortening your life.
00:17:00
Since you cannot do, and I love Jesus' sense of humor, this very little thing, you know, add a little life, why do you worry about the rest?
00:17:09
Consider how the wild flowers grow.
00:17:11
I just love Jesus here.
00:17:12
It's like this little hippie moment, hippie moment, you know, looking at the birds, looking at the wild flowers.
00:17:18
They do not labor or spend.
00:17:19
Yet I tell you not even Solomon and all his splendor was dressed like one of these.
00:17:25
If that is how God closed the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, how much more will he close you, you of little faith?
00:17:36
And do not set your heart on what you will eat or drink.
00:17:41
Don't worry about it.
00:17:42
For the pagan world runs after all such things.
00:17:48
And your Father knows that you need them.
00:17:50
But seek His kingdom.
00:17:52
And these things will be given to you as well.
00:17:56
You know, it's interesting, and we tend to assume that the motivation behind wealth accumulation is greed.
00:18:05
And for a lot of people it is.
00:18:07
But for a lot of people, especially those that grew up in a scarcity mindset or in actual scarcity, it's fear.
00:18:16
Fear of not having enough, fear being poor like our parents, fear of losing it all, fear of looming disaster.
00:18:25
What does Jesus say?
00:18:27
Do not worry.
00:18:28
Your Father will care for you.
00:18:31
He's saying again, back to week one, have a healthy eye and abundance mindset, not a scarcity mindset.
00:18:38
You have a Father provider, you're a Son, you're a daughter, you have all you need.
00:18:43
Do not chase after money like the pagans, people who are not in God, but seek the kingdom first and foremost.
00:18:53
Then he says again, verse 32, "Do not be afraid, little flock.
00:19:00
For your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom.
00:19:04
God is not a stingy investor.
00:19:06
He is a loving Father who wants to give to you and bless you.
00:19:10
So we can do this."
00:19:11
33.
00:19:12
And remember the chiasm?
00:19:13
This is the middle.
00:19:15
This is the main point of Luke 12.
00:19:17
Sell your possessions and give to the poor.
00:19:21
Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out debit accounts that will not go empty.
00:19:27
A treasure in heaven, I added that just to clarify.
00:19:31
A treasure in heaven that will never fail where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.
00:19:37
Do you see here how Jesus ties his call to be generous to the poor, which we'll cover in a minute, to his view of time and of what theologians would call the age to come.
00:19:49
Jesus teachings on generosity will never make sense to you unless you think about your life in general and your finances in particular,
00:20:00
not in light of a human lifespan, but in light of eternity.
00:20:05
In light of eternity, giving is not loss, it's gain.
00:20:10
And that will do a number on your brain if you let that sink in.
00:20:15
It's closer to an investment.
00:20:17
As Randy Alcorn put it, "We store up eternal treasure in the coming age by giving away temporary treasures in the present age."
00:20:29
Last week, I put a little bit of money into an investment, kind of backstory there.
00:20:34
There was a little bit of a feeling of pain as I sent that wire away because it was about the same amount as a motorcycle.
00:20:42
And I really want a motorcycle.
00:20:44
But yes, there was a little bit of pain, but I did not lose that money.
00:20:51
I put, oh, I may lose that money, but I haven't lost it yet.
00:20:55
I put that money where it can theoretically accrue compound interest over time because there are longer-term dreams and desires and even at some level,
00:21:07
calling in my heart that are stronger than my desire to rip around the mountains and motorcycle.
00:21:12
In a similar way, when you give, you are investing in the kingdom of God.
00:21:18
You are putting your money where it can grow over time and in the one and only place where it can last forever.
00:21:27
In the upside down kingdom of Jesus, what we give away, we actually keep.
00:21:33
In fact, we often receive it back with compound interest.
00:21:37
And what we keep, we lose.
00:21:39
Even if we keep it to our death, we lose it all, every penny of it.
00:21:44
So give it away, Jesus says, 434, where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
00:21:54
We covered the sacred law of the universe early on that our heart follows our money.
00:21:58
And when we spend our money on things that do not last, which is basically everything, our hearts are racked by these primal energies of either fear or greed.
00:22:08
But Jesus has a very clear solution.
00:22:11
Be generous to the poor.
00:22:14
Interesting.
00:22:15
This is actually the second time Jesus has offered this command in Luke's gospel alone, which is key.
00:22:21
Ancient writings were all hand copied.
00:22:24
Writing is about economy.
00:22:25
It's about real estate.
00:22:27
Every word is expensive.
00:22:28
And so if an author, also, this is hundreds and hundreds of years before modern punctuation.
00:22:34
In fact, if you see an ancient Greek manuscript, not only are there not periods and quotation marks and the exclamation points, there's not even spaces between words.
00:22:42
Everything is just compressed for economy.
00:22:45
So if an author really wanted to emphasize a point, they could not like in a book today, bold it or italicize it or put it in all caps or put an exclamation point there,
00:22:57
they would repeat it.
00:22:58
In an oral culture, hearing most of this out loud in one sitting, your ear would peak up.
00:23:03
Wait a minute.
00:23:04
He already said that.
00:23:05
He's saying it again, this must be really important.
00:23:10
Just one chapter before Jesus said, now then you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish.
00:23:16
But inside, in mind, he's speaking by the way to the most religious people in his day, inside, you are full of greed and wickedness.
00:23:24
You foolish people, same as the rich man in the parable, did not the one who made the outside make the inside also.
00:23:31
But now, as for what is inside, you meaning for this warped greed in your heart, how do I get it out?
00:23:37
What do I do with this in my heart?
00:23:39
It's in all of us at some level.
00:23:40
And if you don't think it's in you, then you are likely in denial.
00:23:44
What do I do with it?
00:23:46
Be generous to the poor and everything will be clean for you.
00:23:52
We'll clean your heart out.
00:23:53
It'll set you free.
00:23:54
It'll fill you with joy.
00:23:55
Meaning the closest we get to a silver bullet for greed and for fear around finances is this, give it away,
00:24:07
in particular, to the poor.
00:24:10
It comes as no surprise that Jesus' first followers did exactly this.
00:24:15
In Acts chapter 2, the first story we have of the early church, this is the first paragraph in the first story about the early church.
00:24:25
We read this, "All the believers were together and had everything in common."
00:24:31
They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.
00:24:36
Now, little Bible aside here, Luke and Acts were both written by the same author.
00:24:41
Luke is named after the author, the gospel of Luke.
00:24:45
Acts is not named after him, but all scholars agree that Luke Acts are a two-volume set.
00:24:51
In fact, in some versions of the Bible, they put them together.
00:24:53
Luke and Acts.
00:24:54
And there's all sorts of literary kind of mapping one on to the other.
00:25:00
Did you see Luke repeat Jesus' line in Acts 2?
00:25:05
Luke 12, "Sell your possessions and give to the poor."
00:25:10
Acts 2, they sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.
00:25:17
This is Luke's reign.
00:25:18
Look, they did it right away, early on.
00:25:22
One of the first steps they did it.
00:25:24
And it wasn't a one-time event, but a way of life.
00:25:27
In the following passage, we read this, Acts 4, "All the believers were one in heart and mind.
00:25:34
No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own."
00:25:38
Do you see the stewardship language there?
00:25:41
But they shared everything they had.
00:25:43
With great power, the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.
00:25:49
And God's grace was so powerfully at work in them that, wait, you're ready for this, because you may be expecting there was a revival.
00:25:57
There were signs and wonders.
00:25:59
There were miracles.
00:26:00
God's grace was so powerfully at work in them that, here's the testimony, all that there were no needy persons among them.
00:26:09
That was the sign of God's grace at work.
00:26:12
From time to time, those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales, and put it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.
00:26:23
This was the model used by the church for centuries, where those who had extra would come to church on Sunday, and they would put the money into a pot that was stewarded by the leaders of the church who would then take it to anyone in the church in need.
00:26:37
Now, just to name it for a moment, these two passages and a few others, and this practice makes a lot of modern Western Christians nervous,
00:26:48
in particular some of those that were kind of well aware and living through the Cold War, because it looks suspiciously like communism.
00:26:56
In fact, militant atheists that he was, Karl Marx's famous line from each accordion to his ability to each accordion to his need was based on Acts chapter 2, it was his interpretation of that line.
00:27:08
But whatever your political persuasions are, that's certainly not mine.
00:27:12
This is not communism.
00:27:14
Willie Jennings, the Africana studies professor from Yale Divinity School, calls it holy communalism.
00:27:20
Distinguishes between holy communalism and unholy communism by saying it was spirit-empowered, not human-organized, it was voluntary, not compulsory,
00:27:30
it was periodic, not permanent, it was need-based, not equity-based, and there was private ownership with wealth freely given not common ownership with wealth taken away.
00:27:41
But still, even if you soften the blow a bit like that, with a nice quote from a Yale professor, still there was a major emphasis on equality.
00:27:52
In fact, our language of equality comes from the New Testament.
00:27:56
Here's Paul working all this out with the church in Corinth.
00:27:59
Our desire, and remember that we read this passage before, he's raising money for famine relief in another city in Jerusalem.
00:28:07
Our desire is not that others might be relieved, well, you are a hard-pressed, but that there might be equality.
00:28:15
At the present time, your plenty, meaning you have more than you need, will supply what they need, they don't have enough, so that in turn, their plenty will supply what you need.
00:28:25
The goal is equality.
00:28:28
What a fascinating line, the goal is equality.
00:28:30
As it is written, and here is reaching back to the book of Exodus and the story of mana and the desert and God's provision, the one who gathered much did not have too little and the one who gathered little did not have too little,
00:28:43
much did not have too little.
00:28:45
My point is, the early church was wildly generous to the poor.
00:28:51
Tim Keller called it financial promiscuity.
00:28:54
He said this, the early church was strikingly different from the culture around it in this way.
00:29:01
The pagan society was stingy with its money and promiscuous with its body, that sounds a lot like L.A.
00:29:07
A pagan gave nobody their money, and practically everybody their body.
00:29:12
And the Christians came along and gave practically nobody their body, and they gave practically everybody their money.
00:29:20
How good is that?
00:29:21
In fact, one of the main, some of you are not laughing again.
00:29:25
It's just a little food for thought.
00:29:29
In fact, one of the main criticisms from pagan Romans was that the church's generosity put the Greco-Roman world to shame.
00:29:37
Julian the apostate, whose emperor and the fourth century said, and this is from a letter, it is disgraceful that the impious Galileans, that's his name for Christians,
00:29:48
support his slur for Christians, support not only their own poor, but ours as well.
00:29:55
All men see our people lack aid from us.
00:29:59
It's hard to imagine now because of the impact of Jesus on the world, but read Tom Holland or any historian, there was no moral value in the Roman world for the rich to share with the poor.
00:30:13
None, no philanthropy, not even like a secularized philant, none, absolutely none at all.
00:30:19
Nor were there any social services from the government or tax-based wealth redistribution.
00:30:25
Almost all of that work was done by the church.
00:30:28
Early on, churches and monasteries became sprawling centers of social justice for lack of a better term.
00:30:37
St.
00:30:37
Basil, the Bishop of Caesarea in the fourth century, founded what was arguably the first hospital, which grew into a small town that his followers started to call the Faciliad.
00:30:48
It had a hotel for travelers and a hospice care for the Dine and a leper colony and a daily feeding program and fixed our prayer, and it did not take long at all for this model to spread all over the world.
00:31:01
Here St.
00:31:02
Basil himself, the bread which you do not use is the bread of the hungry.
00:31:08
The garment hanging in your wardrobe is the garment of him who is naked.
00:31:13
The shoes that you do not wear are the shoes of the one who is barefoot.
00:31:18
The money that you keep locked away is the money of the poor.
00:31:24
The acts of charity you do not perform are so many injustices that you commit.
00:31:31
He's voicing an idea that you read a lot of the church fathers and mothers, very prevalent idea in the early centuries of the church that wealth kept for yourself beyond a certain level was actually stolen from the poor.
00:31:47
Again, agrarian economy, no government, social services, etc.
00:31:52
But still, they took Jesus teachings really seriously.
00:31:56
One of the central practices of early Christians was almsgiving, which we don't really use that word anymore, but it was basically generosity to the poor where you would give often not only your money,
00:32:08
but food or actual resources and often time and relationship as well.
00:32:13
The did decay, one of the earliest Christian writings we have, so likely predates the writing of the book of Revelation, says this, let your alms sweat in your hands until you know whom you should give to.
00:32:28
In the early church, as I said, people regularly bring offerings not only of money, but even of extra food to the weekly church meal for those who were in need to take the food home.
00:32:39
The Lord's Supper itself was an act of social justice.
00:32:43
Now, because so much of this work has been taken over by our governments, it's easy for us to forget this is a core part of our call as followers of Jesus.
00:32:56
Now, of course, this raises all sorts of difficult to answer questions, but how to practice almsgiving today, how to put this into practice in a city like LA in a time and place like our own.
00:33:11
The poor are often invisible to us because those of us who are middle class and up just live these isolated lives because of the hurry of life where we're just driving down the freeway trying to get the next thing because of lifestyle enclaves where most of us live in zip codes with people in a like similar tax bracket.
00:33:30
And it's hard to know exactly what to do with the scale of the modern nation's state, the size of most of our churches, the cost of living in a place like LA, how it's all tied to politics,
00:33:42
and you know, it's important for you to make sure that you're thinking Christian like a Christian before you're thinking like an American.
00:33:50
You know, Christians agree on a lot of core things and disagree on a lot of stuff in case you have not yet to figure that out.
00:33:56
And this is one area where we disagree.
00:33:59
Serious followers of Jesus disagree about how to best do this.
00:34:04
So in particular, how to best do this in a modern democratic nation state.
00:34:09
So some on the more socialist side, believe the best vehicle is for the government to mandate wealth redistribution, via taxation, and social programming.
00:34:17
Others of a more libertarian persuasion believe that work would be better done by churches and nonprofits and small scale communities.
00:34:25
And a lot of Christians fall in the kind of moderate middle or haven't really even thought that much about it yet.
00:34:30
But just to clarify, genuine Christians disagree on the how, but not on the what.
00:34:37
So the debate in the church is over whether this should happen best to the government or on profit or churches.
00:34:44
The debate is not over whether or not this should happen.
00:34:47
The debate is not over whether or not we have a responsibility before God to participate in the love of the Trinity flowing through our bank accounts to those that do not have enough.
00:35:00
All serious followers of Jesus follow this call to be generous to the poor.
00:35:05
And whatever your political persuasion, whatever your economic reality, whether you are the one in need or the one with extra, and however confused you are about it in particular week like this week,
00:35:18
don't let paralysis stop your heart.
00:35:22
Surely you can do something even if it's really small.
00:35:27
You could make a small donation to this community which is doing so much good work in the city or to a church partner like the Salvation Army down the street or a nonprofit that's serving the poor here in LA or anywhere around the world.
00:35:40
Or you can volunteer if you don't have that to give our church cooks dinner every Thursday night at the Salvation Army.
00:35:47
You can go serve and sit down and share a meal and be family with people who may live very differently than you.
00:35:54
Or you can just find who in your circle is in need.
00:35:58
Did you see?
00:35:59
And this, by the way, is very important.
00:36:02
I think this is a key insight here that in Luke's writing, a synonym for, quote, the poor is his phrase, "Anyone who had need."
00:36:11
Often when we hear language and scripture about the poor, we immediately imagine those living in abject poverty in another country or in our own country we often think of those living on the streets,
00:36:26
which then, of course, raises all sorts of questions about addiction and mental illness and demonization and trauma and globalization and all sorts of questions start to come up.
00:36:36
And they're good questions, but they're just not easy to answer.
00:36:39
But a much easier question to answer that tends to present itself much more clearly is who do you know that has a need?
00:36:50
That need could be dramatic.
00:36:52
It could be someone does not have a roof over their head.
00:36:55
Or it could just be they need help to pay some medical bills right now.
00:37:00
Or send their kid to youth camp or find transportation to get to their new job.
00:37:06
Who do you know in this church, in your community, in your circle of life?
00:37:11
And what do you have to give?
00:37:14
Even if it's very small, even if it's 20 bucks or you don't have that, but you can make some extra rice and soup dinner,
00:37:24
whatever it is, and invite people to your table.
00:37:27
No matter how small it is, a sacred law of the kingdom is that God can do a lot with a little.
00:37:37
Our five bread loaves to quote the overused story, go far beyond what we could ever dream.
00:37:44
Jesus teachings on generosity are not just for the rich.
00:37:48
They are for all of his followers, very few of Jesus listeners were rich, and yet he said a ton about this.
00:37:56
So give what you have, not what you don't have.
00:38:00
And remember that those you give to are not the objects of your pity, you are in no way superior, but your brothers and your sisters, your family were kin in Jesus.
00:38:11
Our goal, and this is a whole other sermon, but is not just to give our resources to those in need, but to create a new kind of family,
00:38:22
not based on tax bracket, or zip code, but based on discipleship to Jesus and on love.
00:38:29
It's to blur the lines between giver and receiver, between those who have extra and those that don't have enough.
00:38:36
You may have extra resources to give them, but they likely, and this is where our Catholic brothers and sisters are so far ahead of us in their thinking, they likely have far more to give to you.
00:38:47
Our goal is to create a community where it could be said, as it was said in Acts 2, there is no needy person among them.
00:38:57
Just however small, follow the gentle stirring of the spirit in your heart.
00:39:04
Don't I plead with you.
00:39:06
Don't build bigger barns, be generous to the poor.
00:39:11
Now before we end, a few things.
00:39:14
For our final week, the exercise is very simple.
00:39:17
It's just to like, I don't think we can really improve on Jesus' command, be generous to the poor.
00:39:23
It's just to give to someone you know or not in need.
00:39:27
You can give through vintage or through a local nonprofit or partner like the Salvation Army, you can give internationally through any number of organizations.
00:39:37
A great place to start is just through something like child sponsorship, which is your doubling God's heart for the poor with God's heart for the Fatherless, or you can buy someone's groceries or a Venmo of friend who's dealing with medical bills or on leave,
00:39:51
or you can just give an anonymous cash gift to someone you know whatever it is.
00:39:56
And just again, the spirit will likely spark creativity in your imagination.
00:40:00
And if you don't know what to do, just pray and ask God to direct your steps and fill your heart with his ideation.
00:40:07
Our final reach exercise is to give not just your money, but your time as well.
00:40:13
Best way to do that is likely through the Salvation Army.
00:40:15
Just show up and you can make a donation and then roll your sleeves up, cook dinner, be friends, have a meal.
00:40:22
But the idea is where you see a need rather than what most of us do, feel bad for a moment and then just turn Taylor Swift back on and keep going down the road.
00:40:32
When you see a need, even if what you have is very small, do what you can to meet it.
00:40:37
Secondly, this called a generosity in general and to be generous in particular to the poor raises all sorts of questions that I have not even started to touch on over the last few weeks.
00:40:50
How much do we give away?
00:40:51
And to whom?
00:40:52
And how does the church work with the poor or work with what God's put in our heart?
00:40:56
And what's the best way to do all of this?
00:40:58
And how do you do it if you barely have enough to make ends meet?
00:41:01
And how do you do it if you have way more than you need?
00:41:03
And this will look wildly different for different types of people in the room.
00:41:08
To that end, we do have like a little bonus session that's a video film and the guide that looks at all of these questions and we will make sure in this week's email, there's a link in your guide and we'll make sure in this week's email that we send that out.
00:41:21
It's about 15 minutes long.
00:41:22
You can watch it and we go through a bunch of best strategies for how to incorporate this into your daily life that are applicable to a wide range of different types of people.
00:41:33
Finally, I would say this, whatever you do, don't do this alone.
00:41:38
One of the great tragedies of our era is what the psychologist Shira Boss called the Money Taboo, which is an unwritten social contract inside and outside the church of basically don't ask,
00:41:51
don't tell when it comes to money and generosity.
00:41:55
Communities of close friends may go on vacation together, they may share their trauma with each other, they may lament their parents with each other and every detail of their parents,
00:42:05
every single mistake, yet never talk about how much money they make or how much of what they give or do not give it away.
00:42:13
This is a huge problem because money is both a major source of temptation and a major source of anxiety and angst for most people.
00:42:22
To not talk about it in community is to play right into the evil one's hands.
00:42:27
We need to normalize healthy, transparent conversations with people that we trust, very important, qualifier there, about money.
00:42:37
For many years, again, we've just moved to LA about a year ago and we were 20 years in our last community and it takes a long time to build this kind of community but we have this amazing community of people that we would do a weekly Sabbath meal with and live by a simple rule of life with and every year a few of us would get together and we'd do our budgets together and we'd look over each other budgets and speak into it and then one or two of the guys that I was quite close with and these were very trusted friends over many years.
00:43:06
We had a little rule in place where any purchase other than just like monthly budget stuff over a thousand dollars we would talk about before we would make it.
00:43:14
It wasn't like a authoritarian but it was like you need to talk about that and it's so funny whenever I just am passing might mention that you should see how freaked out Christians get.
00:43:24
That's a cult, that's legalism, that's dangerous and I'm like I'm pretty sure it's just like basic Christian living and it did nothing but enrich my soul but that money taboo is so deep in us that often we think it's Christian when it's just American and it's not Christian at all.
00:43:44
We need each other to follow the teachings of Jesus well in this area and in every area but for now just as the saying goes do the next right thing.
00:43:57
Generosity is one of the first steps that we take in the living in the kingdom.
00:44:03
Often we think it's one of the last steps so this is for people that are like really rich or really mature.
00:44:09
No.
00:44:09
It's one of the first and most important steps we take to living in a new reality with God.
00:44:16
In the gospels when people hear the gospel of the kingdom for the first time from John the baptizer they ask what do we do?
00:44:22
All right holy cow this is like a whole new way of life.
00:44:25
What do we do?
00:44:26
And did you ever like pay close attention to John's answer?
00:44:30
He gives three practices.
00:44:32
One, anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, anyone who has food should do the same.
00:44:39
This is first practice coming out of the like hearing the gospel and wanting to say yes.
00:44:43
Then he says to tax collectors don't collect any more than you are required to.
00:44:48
Then he says to soldiers don't exhort money and don't accuse people falsely be content with your pay.
00:44:55
Notice all three examples of first steps all of them have to do with money.
00:45:01
Changing our relationship to money is one of the first and most important steps we take into kingdom living.
00:45:08
What is the next step for you?
00:45:10
It's likely not to live on 20% agree income.
00:45:15
That may be the next step for you but it's likely much much much smaller.
00:45:23
Whether it is a tiny, what about Bob baby step or a leap of faith just take it in faith and watch your heart grow.
00:45:33
Martin Luther said every disciple of Jesus must go through not one but three conversions, a conversion of the heart, a conversion of the mind and what do you call the conversion of the purse or the pocketbook.
00:45:47
I'm praying that these weeks together as you seriously just marinate your mind and your heart and your life in Jesus' sayings about money and generosity that it is a kind of third conversion for you and for me.
00:46:05
And remember this, remember back to week one, this is about joy, not guilt, not shame, not religious moral,
00:46:17
whatever duty, joy.
00:46:20
It is, quote, happier to give than to receive.
00:46:25
And all of this is motivated by love, quote, we love him because what he first loved us and quote,
00:46:35
we give our money away because Jesus gave his life away for you and for me.
00:46:42
We give away our wealth to the poor because Jesus gave up the wealth of heaven for the poverty of the human condition.
00:46:51
And we do all this joyfully because our true happiness is certainly not in money and possessions, nor is it even in a practice like generosity.
00:47:03
It is in a person who, quote, loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
00:47:13
Let's stand together and pray.
00:47:16
There is such a beautiful simplicity to the message of simply giving to the poor.
00:47:29
Because there are always those in need, there are always those suffering poverty.
00:47:35
And as we've learned over the course of this series, there is always something to give.
00:47:39
So all I want to do in this reflection moment after this teaching is to just take half a minute to ask the Holy Spirit to impress upon our hearts and minds.
00:47:51
The specific poor and need that God wants us to give to today.
00:47:56
So take a few deep breaths with me, slowly in and out.
00:48:05
Become aware of God's presence.
00:48:10
And let's ask him, God, who should I give to today?
00:48:18
I'll close with them in.
00:48:26
[Music]
00:48:52
[Music]
00:49:04
This podcast is from practicing the way.
00:49:07
We develop resources to help churches and small groups apprentice in the way of Jesus.
00:49:12
And all we make is completely free because it's already been paid for by this circle.
00:49:17
A community of monthly givers who partner with us to see spiritual formation integrated into the church at large.
00:49:25
Special thanks for today's episode goes to Pam from Thornton, Colorado, Jeremy from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Courtney from Fayetteville, Arkansas, Kevin from Richardson,
00:49:36
Texas, and Joshua from Huntington Beach, California.
00:49:39
Thank you all very much.
00:49:41
To join the circle or to learn more about running a practice in your church or community, visit practicingtheway.org.
00:49:49
Until next time, may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
00:50:00
[BLANK_AUDIO]
00:50:10
