Purses that do not wear out: attitudes to money in the early Christian communities - Luke 12.32-40

Empty purses for the kingdom!
The summer and early autumn months provide a great opportunity for getting to grips with the gospel for the year. And this year, as it’s Luke, we are challenged once again with his core themes of the importance of the kingdom, the urgency of repentance and the problem of possessions. And today, it’s the latter two that are in the foreground – the problem of possessions and the urgency of repentance. And the lectionary is unremitting, which means really that it’s Luke who’s unremitting, because it was the problem of possessions last week, when we had the story of the rich fool. That story ended with a comment on the rich fool, whose self assurance is challenged when God says to him that “this very night your life is being demanded of you”:- the comment goes, “so it is with those who store up treasures for themselves, but are not rich towards God.” Well, the notion of what our treasure is, is precisely where we start today: “sell your possessions”, says Jesus, “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.” The theme of treasure is back! This time, however, we have got, not an anti-type, indicating the wrong sort of treasuring, as per the rich fool who stored up goodies in barns, but this week we have a proto-type, a model to which we are to aspire, namely, ‘purses that do not wear out’, which are an unfailing treasure in heaven!......

As I think we have noted on previous occasions, behind the story of the gospels and the letters of Paul, we have two distinct dispositions for discipleship represented among the earliest Christians, that begin in the Judaism of the day and translate themselves into early Christianity. These are first, the Hebrew and Aramaic-speaking, mostly rural Jews, who are the forebears of the Jewish Christian Jerusalem Church, which was made up of primarily Galilean Jews who became followers of Jesus and retained their Jewish identity and practices – people like Peter, John, James and Silas. These are one early Christian disposition that grew out of Judaism. Then there were the Greek-speaking, more urbanised Jews, who offered easy access into Judaism for Gentile enquirers (especially the so-called ‘godfearers’), who thereby paved the way, particularly within the Greek-speaking synagogues of the diaspora, for Gentiles to hear the Christian message and become believers, and this took place especially in the context of Paul’s missions within Asia Minor (modern day Turkey). This was the other early Christian disposition of Gentile Christianity. So what we have are two distinct strands of Christian tradition from very early on.

Now, the reason I am rehearsing this, is that these traditions, (of the Jewish Christian Jerusalem Church and the Gentile Christian communities emerging in Asia Minor), each had, very broadly, a distinctive and different position on possessions. And here I am borrowing from the work of Michael Goulder, especially in his excellent book, ‘A Tale of Two Missions’ (which is only 190 pages long and a great read). He notes that at the beginning of Luke Ch.8, where the writer talks about the male apostles going about with three named women, the women of the mission party, Mary, Joanna and Susanna, are described as “providing for them out of their means”. Goulder interprets this to mean that they were providing i.e. buying essentials and cooking food, for a band of about twenty people over perhaps a two year period – and we might imagine the Sainsbury’s of the day would have been very pleased to see them coming: twenty people for two years creates a sizeable bill! We thus have an emerging picture of communal living, which we know also involved a common purse – of which Judas was the keeper according to John’s gospel, and from which he allegedly stole. Anyway, in the Acts, this theme of a common purse and corporate provision and community meals developed further. Acts 2 v.44ff tells us, “And all who believed were together and had all things in common; and they sold their possessions and goods and distributed them to all, as any had need. And day by day attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they shared food with rejoicing and generosity of heart.” Later in Acts, Luke tells us that Barnabas sold his farm in Cyprus and donated the money to the church – the pooling of resources was taken for granted, we infer – and we remember that for all their good intentions, Ananias and Sapphira were not so generous and paid a heavy price.
The point is that this was the very early tradition among probably poorer believers, and it developed at a time when the urgency of the kingdom and the call to follow Jesus were so pressing and all consuming, that believers held nothing back: they sold everything, pooled everything, and rejoiced in doing so. They believed that the community could support itself through mutual commitment, especially in the short time before the Lord would return and reward his faithful with a life beyond imagining; when money and possessions would be even more relative than they were already. This was the tradition of the Jerusalem Church, and we see it writ large in Luke’s account in the Acts, and we see it in his stories of the gospel, not least the stories about money, possessions and riches specifically, and how they can prevent or obstruct entry into the kingdom of God. We are reading about it today!

On the other side, however, there was a different tradition which we find in Paul’s churches, where he enjoins people to go on working and earning in order to raise the wherewithal to subsist, to pay for the developing Gentile mission and indeed to support other Christians who are poorer and struggling – which was of course the saints in Jerusalem who were, not surprisingly, running out of cash! We probably remember Paul saying, “those who don’t work, let them not eat!” And we remember him being at pains to point out that he himself was working for a living all the time that he was missionising and writing. There is a distinct line being pursued here, favouring the maintenance of ongoing life, requiring that people go on working in order that they can continue to discharging their present commitments. In this context Paul also chides people – and this is particularly interesting – who are busying themselves with doing too much pastoral visiting, praying for the sick and organising missionary meetings when they should be working for a living and supporting their families and community! Too much church can be a bad thing! If you don’t believe me, it’s all in 1 and 2 Thessalonians! This is Michael Goulder’s interpreatation, anyway, especially of 2 Thessalonians Ch.3 v.10: “For we hear that some of you are living in idleness, mere busybodies, not doing any work. Now such persons we command and exhort (not advise or suggest, but command and exhort!) in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work in quietness and to earn their own living.” Goulder interprets the’busybodying’ as this over-indulgence in pastoral and charitable activity which Paul is describing as a diversionary activity tantamount to a holier-than-thou form of scrounging! It’s a challenging observation.

This picture offered by Michael Goulder, is one assessment of the tension that we will all recognise in living and discipleship – between the pull of the all-for-Jesus, give-it-all-up and hand-it-over type of discipleship, versus the feet-on-the-ground appeal to be rooted in reality, earning a living so that the mission can be supported and the next generation safeguarded. It’s one of the ironies of the emerging early church that the very ones who Paul addresses as ‘busybodies’, who are letting the side down in his opinion, are probably Christians from the Jerusalem Church who are already responsible for the straightened circumstances of Paul’s new missions. They are both the ones who are receiving handouts, and they’re the ones upsetting his own people and steering them off course! Paul, however, was wise to this, and there’s evidence to suggest that he does a sort of deal with the other lot from Jerusalem: he agrees to encourage his Gentile mission Christians to support the poor Christians in Jerusalem (who are getting poorer all the time), so long as the leaders in Jerusalem like James, Peter and John agree no longer to pester him with their insistence on Jewish practices. They get their money and he can exercise his new found freedoms in the gospel! (We might see here a contemporary ring to this trade-off).

At this point, however, let’s pause as we return to our gospel of the day. We are observing that our earliest Christian forebears wrestled with each other and with themselves about possessions and earning a living, and with what and whom their money should go towards, and how this would enable the Lord to be praised and served, and how it enabled the then missions to flourish and thrive. It looks to me that not a lot has changed; but also that what was once urgent and vital is still just as pressing. How we earn money, how we disperse it, who it goes to, what it hopes to achieve: all these matter every bit as much as they ever did; and this goes for the corporate concerns of larger organisations like banks and businesses, the Archbishops’ Council and the Church Commissioners, just as much as it applies to us as individuals or to us as a local church with a localised mission. Luke’s gospel and the Year C lectionary will not let us off the hook lightly! And the continuing urgency of the matter is conveyed in today’s second reading in the second section. “Be dressed for action, and have your lamps lit,” says Ch.12 v.35. But for what, or for whom, we might ask? For the coming of the master, of course, who will call us to account for what we are doing with what we have! “For the Son of Man comes at an unexpected hour!” He comes not when we are signing the gift aid form for Christian Aid, or counting the emergency collection for the Pakistan flooding. Rather, the Son of Man comes when we’re signing the cheque for the luxury holiday we so need and for the low price shares that we know will double within six months! The point is of, course, that the Master or the Lord comes now; he comes now to challenge us to rehearse our thinking and our action on these important issues. And he will call us again and again to make purses for ourselves that do not wear out…….
But what, we may ask, are these purses like? Well, I always try and buy my wallets on holiday in places where leather is cheaper; and having been on holiday recently and bought my latest leather wallet, I am well aware how quickly a wallet or a purse wears out. I think I get through one every three or four years. But what are purses like that don’t wear out? The answer, of course, is that a purse that does not wear out is an empty purse! – a purse that’s spent up, and that’s given all it’s contents away for the sake of the kingdom. Or should we say, that’s given away all its disposable income? And it is a purse which is, therefore, of no interest to moth, because it’s still shiney and new, or to thief, as it’s empty. And it is a purse that will never fail in heaven because it tells its own story to the company of the saints, that the kingdom came first.

An empty purse for the sake of the kingdom is a challenge to all of us, and something we can all aim for. The fact that the Christians of the Jerusalem Church and the Christians of the Pauline missions held different views on how money and possessions should be handled, and adopted different stances and practices on these issues, helps us, I think, to discover what best routes we can take to achieve this greater goal.

We wish one another good spending, good giving, good receiving and good missionising – all in the cause of the kingdom of God. Amen.

Julian Francis
St John’s Berkswell