What is Mine? Early Christianity, “Personal” Property vs Today
Author: Bobby Valentine | Filed under: Contemporary Ethics, David Lipscomb, Discipleship, Grace, Kingdom, Unity
There are numerous dissimilarities between the ancient faith and Christianity in modern North America. One of the great chasms between the early church and contemporary north American Christianity can be summed up in just a few words: attitudes toward “personal” property or possessions.
Money – Mammon – is indeed the greatest cultural, even religious, value in the western world. Money drives our attitude toward almost every ethical issue facing disciples. We ask what will it cost us rather than what is the just and righteous action to do.
I share in this chasm as much as anyone but it is helpful and challenging to become aware of the glaring contrast between what Christians once held and what is the common value among us today. I will share four brief vignettes.
DAVID
The Hebrew Bible tells us that David spent years collecting materials and saving up “money” for the temple. He ended up donating his personal fortune to God(1 Chronicles 29.3).
“Besides, in my devotion to the temple of my God I now give my personal treasures of gold and silver for the temple of my God, over and above everything I have provided for this holy temple: three thousand talents of gold (gold of Ophir) and seven thousand talents of refined silver, for the overlaying of the walls of the buildings, for the gold work and the silver work, and for all the work to be done by the craftsmen. ” (1 Chronicles 29.3-4).
David then asked a crucial question,
“Who am I, and what is my people, that we are able to make a freewill offering?“
It is actually a critical question. David then confesses,
“For all things come from you, and OF YOUR OWN have we given you. For we are but aliens and transients before you” (1 Chr 29.14-15).
Read that again. David claims that he owns no property. He does not even own what he is to offer God a freewill offering. It is already God’s. So the people of God,
“Then the people rejoiced because these had given willingly, for with single mind they had offered freely to the Lord; King David also rejoiced greatly” (1 Chronicles 29.9)
David’s understanding pervades the Hebrew Bible. The people of God were, in reality, to regard no human as an alien from themselves because God’s people are themselves, by definition, “aliens and transients.” People who live off the generosity of another. They owned nothing.
JERUSALEM WAY
We find this perspective did not change in the so called New Testament. Luke tells that strange, to us, story in Acts 4. We probably have never heard a sermon on it because it is part of the “pattern” we feel free to discard. Luke tells us,
“Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions but everything they owned was held in common” (Acts 4.32).
The language here echoes our text from 1 Chronicles 29.9, the NRSV renders Israel gave with a “single mind” but it is quite literally with a “single heart” or a “perfect heart” (בְּלֵ֣ב שָׁלֵ֔ם) They regarded themselves as “aliens and transients” and people who live off the generosity of another, the generosity of Yahweh, the God of Israel.
BASIL
Basil, the great Church Father from what we call Turkey today, preached a sermon from Luke 12 on the Parable of the Rich Fool (12.13-21). He calls the Fool a “robber and a thief.” Why? because by keeping “his” possessions he was robbing others who had need. Here is an extended quotation. Basil understood David’s prayer and the teaching of Luke. He asks profound questions. The great preacher asked,
“Tell me, what is yours? Where did you get it and bring it into the world? It is as if one has taken a seat in the theater and then drives out all who came later, thinking that what is for everyone is only for him. Rich people are like that. For having pre-empted what is common to all, they make it their own by virtue of this prior possession. If only each one would take as much as he requires to satisfy his immediate needs, and leave the rest to others who equally need it, no one would be rich — and no one would be poor.” [End Quote]
What is “mine?”
Who are we that we can give?
No one claimed private ownership. We are but aliens and transients! It’s who we are.
NASHVILLE BIBLE SCHOOL
David Lipscomb and James A. Harding, founders of the Nashville Bible School “tradition” among the Churches of Christ would Amen loudly David, the images of the gathered people in Acts 4, and make Basil’s words their own. God calls us to be rich in trusting faith and generosity that flows out of a full self-consciousness that “nothing belongs to me.”
We find fellowship, unity, by sharing. If I have my needs met for today then I have enough to share with another. This sharing, Lipscomb/Harding called “fellowship” is actually a “means of grace.” We are brought into genuine communion with Christ Jesus himself as we both emulate his actions and find him personified in the face of the poor, the widows, orphans and aliens in our midst. We share, in reality, from the family table. It is not mine but OURS equally.
It is no wonder that we want to argue about trivia as American disciples. Those fine points cost us nothing. And we ignore, sometimes outright deny, the great themes of biblical faith and legacy of the early church because those are the things that actually call us to change, to give things up, to deny ourselves.
I admit, this is hard to do. But we have to allow the Spirit to challenge us.
Shalom.
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