Last Sunday’s Gospel reading and this Sunday’s Gospel reading are really one reading. You should read them together. The teaching Jesus offers is layered and rich and radical. He is trying to liberate his disciples, liberate us. You would do well to dive deep here to hear what Jesus has to say. Chances are it will make you uncomfortable. Chances are it will be good for you, especially eternally.
Jesus has been preaching against what causes fear, about what we should really fear instead. We shouldn’t fear what can kill the body, for instance, but instead fear him who can cast the soul into hell (Lk 12:5). We shouldn’t worry about things like inheritance, money, food or possessions, for “your Father knows that you need them” (Lk 12:30).
Jesus is not telling his disciples to shun possessions or money or food completely; he is not saying that each Christian should become a beggar like St. Francis. Rather, he is talking about the proper perspective believers should have and how such perspective should order their lives. That is, unlike the birds of the air or the lilies of the field, human beings have an eternal destiny to account for and prepare for.
What Jesus is trying to do is to get his listeners to focus on one treasure rather than another. That is, he is saying that when we fail to account for eternity, for the kingdom of God, our fear will too likely cause us to store up treasures for ourselves to hedge against the future. Which is plainly foolish, Jesus says; for once you’re dead, he asks, “the things you have prepared, whose will they be” (Lk 12:20-21)?
| August 10, 2025 – Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time |
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| Wis 18:6-9 Ps 33:1, 12, 18-19, 20-22 Heb 11:1-2, 8-19 OR Heb 11:1-2, 8-12 Lk 12:32-48 |
Instead, Jesus tells his disciples to focus on “a treasure in the heavens that does not fail” (Lk 12:33). And you do that, Jesus says, by selling your possessions and giving alms (Lk 12:32).
‘Almsgiving delivers from death’
Here Jesus is simply underlining good rabbinic wisdom, wisdom almost completely forgotten today. It is the wisdom found in Proverbs 10:2 and 11:4, the idea that wealth “does not profit in the day of wrath” but that only “almsgiving delivers from death.” The notion of a treasury in heaven is thoroughly Jewish; Jesus didn’t pull it out of thin air. “Store up almsgiving in your treasury, and it will rescue you from all affliction” (Sir 29:12).
This, simply and radically, is what Jesus teaches, but with an emphasis and urgency befitting the advent of the Messiah: “it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom,” he says (Lk 12:32). These words have the same punch to them as those he spoke at Nazareth at the beginning of his ministry, that “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Lk 4:21).
What Jesus is saying is that his disciples are to enact the ethics of the kingdom now, to sell possessions now and to give alms now. “I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous mammon,” Jesus will later say, “so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal habitations” (Lk 16:9).
This is not something to put off, Jesus clearly teaches, for that’s the warning of the parable of the rich fool (Lk 12:20). Disciples are meant to begin heaven now not simply by believing in Jesus but also by living as he taught us to live as sharers with one another and as friends with the poor.
What are we waiting for?
Now we may understand better the strange ethics found in Acts, why the first Christians “had all things in common,” selling their possessions and distributing goods “as any had need” (Acts 2:44-45). Now we know why Luke said of that community, “There was not any one needy among them” (Acts 4:34).
These first Christians were simply being faithful to Jesus’ rabbinic teaching made real and contemporary by his continued Messianic presence in the community, the same Messianic presence we believe is present in the Church today. The kingdom has been given in Christ today too, so what are we waiting for? Why aren’t we sharing our possessions now?
Which is the question, I said at the beginning, would make you uncomfortable. But I also said it may just save you, eternally at least. And please know how serious the question is: Why aren’t you sharing your possessions now?
Eternally weighed down
Please don’t make the mistake of thinking this is not a question immediately connected to your salvation. Please don’t think you can get into heaven while ignoring this question, passing it off with excuse after excuse.
The whole wisdom of the Scripture, the clear teaching of Jesus, can’t be set aside. The matter is urgent. As St. Basil the Great preached once, “Think reasonably about that which is and that which shall come, and what you might lose through shameful profit.”
Really, I can’t say anything more chilling or truer than that. Just that maybe it harrows the soul to think of so many Christians who ignore such teaching, so weighed down by their possessions, unaware how eternally weighed down they really are.
