There is a midrash which relates the story of two rabbis walking through the countryside. One of these, as the day progressed, continually pointed to plots of land to comment, “That farm was mine once, but I sold it to devote myself to the study of Torah.” Or “That orchard.” By nightfall it had become apparent that this rabbi had once been very rich, but now retained none of his earthly holdings.
The second rabbi, realizing this, began to weep. His companion asked him why. “What about your security, your later years?” the crying rabbi wondered.
But the first rabbi scoffed. “I sold what it took six days to create and attained what took forty days and forty nights to reveal,” he said.
We don’t have much admiration for ascetics any longer. The mark of one’s earthly success does tend to exist somewhere in the realm of possessions. We share the concerned rabbi’s discomfort, falling into panic or despair when it occurs to us that we may not have enough.
Yet the gospel imperative has always been to be like the second rabbi: unconcerned with things worldly, absorbed in communion with revelation and in righteous living. We know that possessions are transient; we believe that what God gave and continues to give, in the instance of the Messiah, in the visitations of the Holy Spirit, is eternal and of limitless value.
Our readings this week return us to the idea of righteous living, and pull no punches in doing so. The passage from Acts is one bound to cause controversy in our sensitive days: it relates the story of the early Christian community, and reveals an economic plan of the sort that would certainly make many of our fellow citizens tremble. After all, the news that “all who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need” sounds suspiciously like voluntary distribution of wealth (Acts 2:44-45).
Would the early Christians find dissidents among the most vocal protestors of our day, perhaps facing comparisons to those whose names have been reviled in Tiananmen Square? Or, a better question: would they have cared? The need-based-distribution in Acts reflects a core set of values: things do not matter, and while bodily needs must be addressed, our ultimate aim is God. They relinquished their possessions to follow the risen Christ because they recognized that life had more to offer than the attainment of stuff.
“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,” declares the 23rd psalm. Its images are pastoral and its faith is in a God who ultimately provides. We deceive ourselves if we believe that still waters and green pastures are things we must chase after—as if eternal comfort can be bought at the rough price of an escape vacation to lush and verdant locales. Such places, the first rabbi reminds us, took six days for God to create; but the revelation of God’s word, the divine plan for our salvation, took 40 nights on Sinai, and an incarnation, to attain.
The first jubilant weeks of Easter are over, and we must descend from our high to the work of living as Christians again. Christianity is a system which we cannot cheat: when we promise to share, but withhold, God sees it, as is colorfully illustrated by Acts’ story of the couple who retains some of their property following a lie and to disastrous ends. God knows. There is no sneaking in; there in no holding off on relying on God, no basking in plentiful comforts of which God remains unaware.
Jesus speaks metaphorically of himself in John 10:1: “Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit.” He asserts that he is the gate, and that the sheepfold consists of God’s people. A trespasser, he assures us, will be recognized. And so his way demands that we openly meet our best potentials, though such tasks rarely sound fun and hardly promise to be easy. And yet their reward is green pastures; their result is loving community; the image they project is of a happy and fulfilled people of God.
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