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Our reading this week is from the gospel of Luke.
“Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will never fail, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
“Be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps burning, like servants waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet, so that when he comes and knocks they can immediately open the door for him. It will be good for those servants whose master finds them watching when he comes. Truly I tell you, he will dress himself to serve, will have them recline at the table and will come and wait on them. It will be good for those servants whose master finds them ready, even if he comes in the middle of the night or toward daybreak.
“But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.” (Luke 12:32-40)
The first portion of this week’s reading centers on Jesus’ ethic of resource-sharing and wealth redistribution as a universal expectation for all of Jesus’ followers. This is the same ethic Jesus called individuals to elsewhere in the gospel stories (see Luke 18:22, Mark 10:21, and Matthew 19:21). But in Luke, this ethic of sharing and redistribution was not for isolated individuals in specific situations, but for every able Jesus follower.
There’s a similar principle in the companion book to Luke’s gospel, the book of Acts. We’ll begin unpacking this next.
(Read Part 2)
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