“If you go into your neighbor’s vineyard, you may eat your fill of grapes, as many as you wish, but you shall not put any in your bag. If you go into your neighbor’s standing grain, you may pluck the ears with your hand, but you shall not put a sickle to your neighbor’s standing grain. (Deuteronomy 23:24-25 ESV)
Possession
We might think this commandment is intended to give us permission to wander around taking fruit from our neighbor’s tree. But it is not. It is aimed instead at how we think of the fruit of OUR trees.
It is considered good sense to hold tightly onto the fruit of our labor. In this Land of the Individual, we cling tightly to what is ours, believing that our money, our food, our land, our cars, our clothes, our everything are best utilized in ways that benefit us.
But in Deuteronomy God is making the point that the fruit of the Israelites’ trees was meant for the community. Yes, owned privately; yes, managed personally; yes, under our immediate control, but for the purpose of the needs of all.
Our hearts pull back at this concept, don’t they? It sounds like socialism, communism, fascism, or anarchy. But it is not.
It is growing crops for the purpose of love. It is earning money for the purpose of love. It is managing our resources for the purpose of love. It is realizing that God has placed our land, our income, our possessions in our hands for the chance to love someone.
I yearn for a society that enables us to do just that. Where we are free to use our resources as the Lord leads us to love. Where we are free to manage our possessions as the Lord leads us in love. Where we are free to have, so we can give.
Without Christ in society, it would not work. Without the Spirit in society, it would not work. Without the love of the Father in society, it would not work.
But with Son, and Spirit, and Father? Wow…
We are peculiar, we have the potential to understand the purpose of our possessions.