Do Not Have Too

Do Not Have Too Much

2 Corinthians 8:13 -15

I do not mean that there should be relief for others and pressure on you, but it is a question of a fair balance between your present abundance and their need, so that their abundance may be for your need, in order that there may be a fair balance. As it is written, "The one who had much did not have too much, and the one who had little did not have too little."

The community discipleship began for the Apostle Paul in Antioch, the capitol city of Greek Syria at that time, when a well known missionary figure, Barnabas ventured to Tarsus looking for for Paul, and he convinced him to come to Antioch. During in the first year of their common ministry in Antioch the number of the regulars increased, who were gathered as an assembly. It is documented that, the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch.

In the historical reality, at least the Greco-Roman Christianity was born in Antioch, which imperial city became the most important Christian Patriarchate after the Jewish Temple was destroyed. When Paul and Barnabas together served the Antiochian Christian assembly, it is written that “prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. One of them named Agabus stood up, and indicated by the Spirit that there should be a great famine all over the world, which also happened in the days of Claudius. ”

And indeed happened soon, that a great famine came to Jerusalem, and in Antioch where any of the disciples had plenty, each determined to send relief to the brothers who lived in Judea; which they also did, sending it to the elders by the hands of Barnabas and Saul.”

The famine lingered and recurred in Jerusalem, and also the frequent persecution in Jerusalem made life sometimes quite difficult, thus Apostle Paul as habitual charity work, kept collecting for the Jerusalem congregation among the gentile congregations in Macedonia, in Cappadocia, in Corinth and many other places. 

The by Agabus prophesied famine indeed happened, as historians, like Tacitus, Josephus, Suetonius and many more recorded several serious famines regarding the reign of Emperor Claudius, who ruled in Rome between 41 and 54 AD. It is well documented that these famines greatly affected the desert areas in Judea and Idumea, though Galilee as a garden province fared a bit better.

Apostle Paul in Corinth had a couple of collecting projects for Jerusalem, and in his second letter, he asks them that to be generous, because there must be “a fair balance between your present abundance and their need, so that their abundance may be for your need, in order that there may be a fair balance. As it is written, "The one who had much did not have too much, and the one who had little did not have too little."

The Corinthian congregation must have been convinced, motivated, inspired to give for the relief effort, even when Jerusalem is around 800 km far from them, and they probably had needy people among them as well.

He had to even appeal to the mutuality principle, that now you have abundance and they are in need, but the time can easily come, when this situation will be the opposite, that they will have abundance and you will be in need.

Although Paul first mentions them the spiritual gift they received from the Christ, who sacrificed everything, by saying to them that “For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.”

Nonetheless, he was not ordering them by a leadership ruling that they must have collections for Jerusalem in need, but he was almost  begging them by saying to them that  “I do not say this as a command, but I am testing the genuineness of your love against the earnestness of others …. in this matter I am giving my advice: it is appropriate for you who began last year not only to do something but even to desire to do something--

now finish doing it, so that your eagerness may be matched by completing it according to your means.”

As a year before, when they heard that there is a great famine among the Jerusalem congregants, they mad pledges and created plans, how they will help. It looks like that much happened in ornate speeches, but not too much in actions, thus Paul urges them to take action. And he was right. The mere conviction about the good is not enough. God, the word of God, Moses, Elijah and the Prophets, John the Baptist and Jesus, James and the Apostles and Heaven itself demand genuine good deeds.

It is like what John, the prophet in the desert said that to talk the talk is not enough, you have to walk the walk aka if someone has two shirts, he has to give one of the shirts to the one who has none. Faith in itself is not enough, if it it walks alone, without the faithful deeds.

If someone has food, said John the Baptist, he has to share it with those who has none. 

And in this there was a huge difference between the Gentile, mostly Greek speaking  congregations and the Jerusalem community. Mirroring the Greek lifestyle for today, for whatever they understood from Christianity, they accepted the Greco-Roman lifestyle, including slavery, in equality, like today the congregations  accept capitalism as an unchangeable reality, in which we must swim maybe against the currents, however there is nothing we can do to change it. In the Greco-Roman world giving to the poor was not really sharing or giving a share from our abundance, but it was charity work. It was not really sharing it was alms giving. Even though, let us say they frequently collected for the local poor or for the far away poor in Jerusalem, it was not real sharing but occasional help here and there.

Meanwhile in the Jerusalem congregation there was a real community where they shared closed to everything, and there was no needy among them. They annihilated poverty within the community, not whimsically, but as a major, indispensable, and inalienable feature of the community of faith, as it is written in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 4:

“When they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were gathered together. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spoke the word of God with boldness. The multitude of those who believed were of one heart and soul. Not one of them claimed that anything of the things which he possessed was his own, but they had all things in common. With great power, the apostles gave their testimony of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.

Great grace was on them all. For neither was there among them any who lacked, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them, and brought the proceeds of the things that were sold, and laid them at the apostles’ feet, and distribution was made to each, according as anyone had need. ” 

The ancient Greco-Roman world and the modern industrial-financial world are incompatible with the path to Heaven. May the Lord help our souls to understand what is really important on Earth ind order to earn the World to Come. 
AMEN