Tag Archives: the poor

“Give Up All Your Possessions”: Wrestling with Jesus’ Teaching

Posted on by

Jesus says a lot of hard things. Some are things that are hard to understand. Some are things that are hard to do.

A teaching of Jesus that definitely falls into the latter category is Luke 14:33: “None of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.”

Heinrich Hofmann, Christ and the Rich Young Ruler

Most people are familiar with a version of this saying in the context of the Rich Ruler. In that story, narrated in varying ways in Matthew 19:16-22, Mark 10:17-22, and Luke 18:18-23, a rich man comes to Jesus and asks, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus tells him to follow the Ten Commandments (and some Christians today are like, “Wrong answer, Jesus”).

The rich ruler responds by saying he’s kept these since his youth, and Jesus doesn’t insist he must be mistaken for no one can fully keep the Law (“Doesn’t Jesus know how to do this?”). Instead, Jesus says the rich man only lacks one thing: “Sell what you own, and give the money to the poor. (“What?!”) Then come, follow me.”

With this version of the saying—“Sell everything you own and give the money to the poor”—we could be forgiven for saying, “Ah, that’s just for the Rich Ruler. Clearly he had a greed problem.” But Luke 14:33 doesn’t let us off the hook like that. This is for all Jesus’ would-be disciples: “None of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.”

What do we do with this?

Well, the first thing we should do is to sit with this hard teaching of Jesus, and really wrestle with the possibility that it is calling us to do the very thing it seems it is calling us to do. Even if, in the end, we conclude that Jesus is using hyperbole, or exaggeration for effect (which is very much a Jesus thing to do), we need to sit with the full challenge of this hard teaching.

Yet, having done that, I think there are good reasons for thinking Jesus is using hyperbole here, that not every disciple of Jesus literally has to give up every last one of their possessions.

The first reason is that, just a few chapters later, we see this put into practice. Zacchaeus, that diminutive but wealthy tax collector, determines he wants to be a disciple of Jesus. Yet he doesn’t literally give up every last denarius in his vast collection of denarii. No, but he does give up half of his wealth for the poor, and commit to paying back anyone he’s defrauded four times what he took from them. That’s good enough for Jesus, who resolutely declares, “Today salvation has come to this house” (Luke 19:1-10).

Second, we know of other people in Luke’s double narrative who have wealth and, while being very generous, do not literally give away all of their possessions as Jesus’ disciples. There are the women who support Jesus and the Twelve out of their resources, for instance—this is a continuous reality, which means they didn’t give everything away in one shot (Luke 8:1-3). In Acts also, for example, there’s Lydia, the wealthy businesswoman who sells purple cloth to the upper crust—there’s no indication she gave away all her wealth (Acts 16:13-15). And even in those halcyon days of the early Christian movement, when people shared their possessions with such joy and zeal, Peter makes clear that there was no requirement that the wealthy sell all their property—it was theirs to do with as they wished (Acts 5:4).

This last story can help us come to a solution in our wrestling with Rabbi Jesus’ teaching. In those early chapters of Acts, we’re told that “no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common” (4:32)—yet clearly, as we’ve just seen, that doesn’t mean everyone was literally required to give up their property. Rather, statements like this—and, I’d suggest, Jesus’ teaching in Luke 14:33—call us to a different perspective on our possessions and property than we’re told in the dominant economic narratives of our day.

Capitalism suggests private property is the cornerstone of economic wellbeing.

Communism insists there should be no private property at all, only collective ownership.

The Jesus way, embodied by Jesus’ early disciples, is different than either of these: we may own possessions and property, but ultimately they aren’t ours alone. Ultimately, they belong to God, and thus they can and should be used for the good of God’s people, and for the good of all.

This way of understanding Luke 14:33, I think, gets to the spirit of Jesus’ teaching. And it remains a hard teaching for us, challenging us always to examine our relationship to our possessions and property, holding them loosely, always open to opening up our hands to give generously to those in need—even if it means selling our possessions and property to do so.

Following Jesus Is Not Enough

Posted on by

Okay, let me start by saying I really do believe following Jesus is “enough,” in the sense that “following Jesus” nicely sums up what it means to be a Christian. Following Jesus in his teachings and way of life, united with him in his death and resurrection, and so being conformed by the Spirit to the image of God’s Son—this is what being a Christian means.

But here’s the problem: “following Jesus” can so easily be used to mean whatever we want it to mean.

We pick and choose which teachings of Jesus we think are really important. We make morality solely about inward intentions or private sexuality. We make the cross about an individual transaction with God. We view the resurrection as something still to come, no bearing on the here and now.

And then we can go on amassing our possessions, condemning “sinners,” ignoring the poor at our gates, and otherwise living in stark contrast to the way of Jesus.

It’s a well-worn path, a broad road even, this individualizing and privatizing and genericizing and spiritualizing of “following Jesus,” so we can justify our comfort and privilege, maintain our sense of piety and morality, and otherwise feel good about the life we lead.

It’s a path I find myself on often.

And so we need something to help us focus what it means to “follow Jesus,” to be “united with Christ,” to be “conformed to the image of God’s Son.”

Here’s where I’ve been helped by Black theologians like James Cone, by feminist theologians like Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, by liberation theologians like Gustavo Gutiérrez. Here’s where the practical theology of people like Martin Luther King, Jr. has been important to me.

It’s from these followers of Jesus and others like them that I have learned of God’s “preferential option for the poor.” This is not that God loves the poor more than the rich, but that, because God is love, God pays particular attention to the poor.

Ferdinand Hodler, The Good Samaritan

“The poor” in biblical context does not simply refer to the financially destitute. The phrase is aligned with “widows” and “orphans,” “aliens” and “strangers.” Jesus used words like “last” and “least” to refer to these children of God who were left at the bottom rung of society. “The poor” is often used, then, as a kind of cipher for all who are impoverished in power—economic power, yes, but also political power, social power, the power to change one’s circumstances for their wellbeing.

“Remembering the poor”—in the sense of “paying attention to those who are impoverished in power”—was at the heart of Jesus’ ministry. It was a crucial emphasis of his teaching. It was the way he lived. It gives greater meaning to the cross as God’s solidarity with the powerless, the evil-oppressed. It brings Jesus’ resurrection, God’s life-giving liberation, into the here and now.

This divine attention to the impoverished in power is the lens that can help us focus what it means to “follow Jesus.” When we “remember the poor” as we follow Jesus, we begin to see the world through Jesus’ eyes. We pay attention to those marginalized or even oppressed by powerful forces beyond their control, both spiritual and material. We see the ways we might be complicit with these powerful forces, whether by circumstance or by choice. We are Spirit-prompted to repent of this complicity and to walk in solidarity with the power-impoverished, even if it means a cross.

All this recalibrates our love of God and neighbour. It realigns our sense of morality and our ethics. It reforms our theology and heightens our worship. It draws us more closely to the way of Jesus. It unites us in practical ways with Christ in his death and resurrection, revealing us to be conformed to the image of Christ.

“Remembering the poor” helps us to follow Jesus. And this is indeed enough.