Low Sunday: Jesus and the Wealth Gap

Almost all Sundays of the church year have a gospel reading that rotates amongst the three annual cycles of lections.  But Low Sunday does not.   Every year we read John 20: 19-31.  That passage contains two segments that are suitable for homily and discussion.  The first is the story of the Risen Christ imparting his Spirit to the Church and, specifically, empowering the Church to forgive the sins of penitents.  The second vignette is a tale in which we see John's early Christian community ridiculing the theology of Thomas's community but making Thomas look like an idiot.  For many years we have focused on these same two options.  Today I am going to address the reading from Acts, 4: 32-35.

You may recall that earlier Jesus has told the disciples that they will do what he has done, and even greater things than that, because he is going to the Father.  That principle is seen in action today in our passage.  We have a snapshot of the early Christian community in Jerusalem.  We read that the members are of "one heart and soul, " and flowing from that "everything they owned was held in common."  Sharing was a natural, spontaneous result of the Spirit at work in the community. In fact, "there was not a needy person among them," as the parish received value from each according to his ability, and provided for "each as any had need."  It is clear that first-century one-percenters were liquidating real estate and other assets to assure that economic justice happened in their community.

Clearly, primitive communism was being practised, a development flowing from Jesus' teachings against the accumulation of wealth and the oppression of poor, needy, and vulnerable people.  The reaction of Christians to this passage over the centuries have fallen primarily into two camps.

The first camp -- the bible literalists -- took the snapshot as a command, and they attempted to form viable communistic communities.  Walden Pond, Koinonia, New Harmony, and many others come to mind.  I am especially sensitive to that reality being present in the Shaker communities, as one of my direct paternal ancestors was a Shaker.  The complication is that Shakers were also celibate.  Thank God, my ancestor couldn't handle that and left.  😁   But Shaker economic policy was communistic.  In doing genealogical research, I discovered there were amazing cases of greed and corruption, theft and misappropriation.  In other words, human sin marred the moral landscape in those intentionally egalitarian communities.

The second camp -- the conservatives -- simply ignore the passage as if it weren't there.  They see the utopian ideal as fanciful and assume they have nothing to learn from considering the passage.  Often we find selective reading and selective literalism at work in fundamentalist circles.  The Bible then is a tool to be manipulated, not a resource from which to learn.

I pose this question:  In fidelity to the teachings of Jesus on wealth accumulation and inequality, is there a position to which faithful Christians are called -- a position lying between the extremes of egalitarian communism and ignoring the passage?   If so, what might that look like for us as individual people of faith and as a modern community?  I leave that for your prayer consideration this week.