radical generosity

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Redistribution is a description of what happens when people fall in love with each other across class lines… [it] flows naturally out of a love for God and neighbor.

 

The way we give money and possession power is by holding them with clenched fists.  On the flip side, the way we take away their power is by holding them with open hands and giving them away winsomely

          Shane Claiborne

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We are controlled by what we have

And the more we have

It seems

The more we are controlled

 

I have always wondered why the really rich

Never seem to have enough

I have always wondered why those people with power

Always want more

And more

And more

And more

 

Jesus hints that it doesn’t have to be this way

Indeed we are invited to give it all away

 

I don’t think Jesus gave that challenge to the rich young man

Just to shame him

 

He knew it could be done

He knew it needed to be done

 

Jesus would also say

“Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also”

 

No kidding!

 

It is not where our heart is, our treasure will be

It is that our hearts follow the money,

And the power

 

But if our hearts follow the money and the power

Then they aren’t being given to God and our neighbor

 

If our hearts follow the money and the power

Then most of what we do will be about money and power

How we spend our time

The kind of jobs we take

 

It is all determined

We are determined and defined

By power and money

 

And then our house, our boat, our car

Our clothes, our bank balance

Become our identify

Our comfort

Our all

 

Not God

Not love

 

There are people who have done this well

Or so we are told

At times radical generosity blossomed in the early church (Acts 4)

Francis of Assisi perhaps

 

Mother Theresa had deformed feet because she

Would always take the worst shoes out of the donation piles for herself

Leaving the better shoes for the poor

 

I suspect radical generosity is often more frequently

Among the poor

 

A friend tells of a time he gave a child

Begging on the streets, a piece of gum (all he had on him at the time)

That child broke the piece into three pieces and share it with friends

 

The more we have, the harder it is to give

Proportionally the poor are more generous than the rich

 

I truly believe that radical generosity

And perhaps the eradication of extreme wealth

Are the most powerful antidote we have to hate

And to such movements as fascism and MAGA

 

God did not mess up and make too many people

And not enough stuff

Poverty was created because too many people have too much stuff

 

As Gandhi suggests

“There is enough for everyone’s need, but there is not enough for everyone’s greed”

 

We cannot afford to cling to wealth and power

We think we cannot afford not to

But we are wrong

 

It is when we cling to such things

that we are in peril

of gaining the world

but losing our souls