In Christianity, the earliest historical reference to a collection being taken up occurs in Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, written around 50 C.E. This collection is frequently called “the Jerusalem collection” as it was taken up for the benefit of the Jerusalem assembly. Paul’s instructions in 1 Corinthians are purely practical, and he tells the Corinthians to follow the same instructions he had already given to the Christians in Galatia: “On the first day of every week, each of you is to put aside and save whatever extra you earn, so that collections need not be taken when I come. And when I arrive, I will send any whom you approve with letters to take your gift to Jerusalem. If it seems advisable that I should go also, they will accompany me.”[1]
Paul’s terse set of instructions offers a window into the economic network that this international movement of Jesus followers had become.[2] While there is considerable debate about what prompted this collection -- was it really the Jerusalem apostles’ instruction from fourteen years earlier to ‘remember the poor’ as recorded in Galatians 2.10? -- and even more speculation as to the nature of this collection -- was this collection a kind of tithe versus a freewill act of sharing resources as suggested by the language of 2 Corinthians 8-9? -- what is immediately apparent is that organizing the Jerusalem collection occupied a great deal of Paul’s time.
Paul writes about the logistics of this collection in 1 Corinthians 16.1-4, the underlying theology of the collection in 2 Corinthians 8-9, and describes his plans to deliver the collection in Romans 15.25-29. Indeed, this Jerusalem collection appears to have preoccupied so much of Paul’s time that the assemblies he was writing to became suspicious of his motives, an accusation he takes umbrage with and responds to in 2 Corinthians 12.14-18 when he says “Nevertheless (you say) since I was crafty, I took you in by deceit. Did I take advantage of you through any of those whom I sent to you?”[3] That Paul’s writings on the Jerusalem collection are spread across four major Pauline letters (1st and 2nd Corinthians, Romans, and possibly Galatians) suggests this collection was a central issue of importance for the apostle.[4]
In my undergraduate studies, the emphasis placed in teaching on this collection was on how it was an expression of unity between the Gentile churches founded by Paul with the mother church in Jerusalem. In The Jerusalem Collection as Κοινωνία: Paul's Global Politics of Socio-Economic Equality and Solidarity, J. Ogereau accurately describes my own experience of studying this collection when he notes that “an overwhelming majority of these treatises have primarily focused on the theological rationale of the collection, ignoring its more practical economic implications, or even its political dimension.”[5] This theological unity is certainly important but it’s also worth focusing on the economic and material significance of the Jerusalem collection: namely, that as early as 50 C.E., we find the energetic Paul giving instructions to the Corinthian community for a collection of monies to be sent to Jerusalem that Paul sincerely hopes will be accepted (Romans 15:30-31). Monies would be taken up in Galatia, Corinth, and eventually Rome and would be physically brought for the Jerusalem assembly. There were logistics that had to be arranged (1 Corinthians 16.1-4), there were accusations of impropriety made, transparency had to be ensured by having multiple people dealing with the funds (2 Corinthians 12.14-18), and protection against theft/robbery as the funds were brought to Jerusalem (Romans 15.25-29).
This first collection underscores something so ubiquitous about Christianity that we oftentimes fail to see or appreciate it, which is that Christian churches have been engaged in the considerable logistical effort of taking up collections and sending monies to one another since its origins. Further, this Jerusalem collection appears to have been an example of the wider network of churches collecting monies in the slightly wealthier urban areas, and sending these resources to the mother church in Jerusalem that was especially vulnerable in the aftermath of a time of famine. It was a relief collection, in other words.
Bruce Longnecker convincingly argues that this Jerusalem collection should be understood as a particular example of Paul and the other apostles’ insistence that Christian communities ‘remember the poor’ (Gal 2.10). Both in this collection and at the Lord’s Supper, Paul expects “concern for the indigneous (and deserving) poor to be a hallmark of Jesus-groups that he founded throughout the Mediterranean basin - no doubt as an outworking of the story of Israel’s deity of justice, refracted now through the story of the Galilean Jew who stood alongside the poor in the promise of divine blessing.”[6] In this, “the collection was probably seen by Paul to be a single application of the more general principle of caring for the poor, and perhaps even as one of the most important manifestations of that principle.”
The purpose of this post is to look into this first instance of taking up a collection to “remember the poor” and then to explore what this might mean for the way the Church takes up collections today. I’ll argue that the theological language that Paul uses to describe this Jerusalem collection in 2 Corinthians 8-9 - language that entirely avoids “stewardship” and “tithes” - is surer ground for thinking through how and why the Church raises money today.
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The belief that the Jerusalem Collection was in response to a time of famine comes primarily from both the Book of Acts, as well as external historical evidence that Jerusalem underwent a period of famine around 47 CE. In the Book of Acts, we hear that Agabus the prophet “predicted by the Spirit that there would be a severe famine over all the world; and this took place during the reign of Claudius.”[7] The Jewish historian Josephus (37-c100) also describes a famine taking place during this same period, although he describes it as taking place specifically in Jerusalem rather than the entire world. Further, modern scholars such as Morten Jensen in “"Climate, Droughts, Wars, and Famines in Galilee as a Background for Understanding the Historical Jesus" describes how “known famines of 25/24 b.c.e., 38/39 c.e., 45/46 c.e. (besides the local famine in Jerusalem in 69 c.e.) cohere well with modern data, which indicate that famine occured as regularly as every twentieth year."[8] The Book of Acts further states that this famine prompts an international collection to take place in that “the disciples determined that according to their ability, each would send relief to the believers living in Judea” and that they did this by “sending it to the elders by Barnabas and Saul.”[9] The New Oxford Annotated Bible adds that “the relief operation resembles the arrangements for Paul’s collection” referred to in his letters.[10]
Perhaps you, like me, have never lived through an experience of famine. As I’ve written here, it is important to try to wrap our minds around the severity of this experience in order to understand what it means for the wider church to take up a collection for the Jerusalem church. If there was, indeed, a famine that took place in Jerusalem between 45-47, then we should bear in mind the grave suffering it would have caused when reading over Paul’s logistical and theological language about this collection for the saints in Jerusalem, for it tells us something about the urgency of this generous undertaking.
Even in the best of times, it is estimated that 75-90% of the Roman world lived close to subsistence level -- near, at, or below -- and were struggling for survival and sustenance on a daily basis.[11] We also know that, generally speaking, life expectancy was somewhere between twenty and thirty years and that nutritional deficiencies were widespread.[12] To be poor meant (and still means, actually) being the first victims of natural disasters and political calamity, including the compounding devastations of food shortages, political instability, and disease.
The above description applies to life in the Roman Empire outside a period of famine. To say, then, that Jerusalem experienced a famine around 45-47 C.E. is to talk about a period of severe hunger and heightened desperation. While landowners and tenant farmers were able to apply different agricultural and storing techniques to offset the impact of a year of bad harvests, a period of famine represents a time in which those mitigating techniques no longer served as much help. This is partly because famine was a compounding of bad harvests with political instability of warfare and disease. Morten H. Jensen writes, "In the biblical traditions, famine is placed among the most well-known ills together with pestilence and sword in a kind of negative triad.”[13] Severe hunger and hardship occurred when food ran out and societal stability collapsed.
Paul’s urgent instructions to the Corinthians to “put aside and save whatever extra you earn” needs to be read with this broader context of severe hunger in Jerusalem in mind. Although the Jerusalem collection may very well have been an expression of apostolic unity between Paul and his Jerusalem counterparts, and ecclesiastical unity between the Gentile assemblies and the Jerusalem mother church, it’s worth emphasizing that its particular form was that of a relief collection taken up by churches who were not experiencing famine for a community that was. We can look to much more recent history for an understanding of how a collection in a time of need can serve all those purposes.
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| From the IndigiAid social media campaign |
Such examples call attention to the fact that the debates about whether this collection was first and foremost an expression of unity or whether it was an example of “remembering the poor” may be missing a larger point. The Jerusalem collection of 50 C.E. - like the Navajoland collection of 2020 C.E. - leveraged the long-term relationships, strengthened a sense of unity among churches experiencing different levels of hardship, while also being a concrete gift that helped to feed people. Redistribution of resources through relationship - at its best, it’s what the church has always done.
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The theological terms and rationale that Paul uses to describe the Jerusalem Collection in 2 Corinthians 8-9 are particularly interesting when considered in light of how the church today oftentimes frames its fundraising efforts today.
First, it’s important to emphasize what Paul doesn’t say. Nowhere in Paul’s descriptions of the Jerusalem collection does he refer to it as an act of stewardship or as a tithe. As I’ve written about here, stewardship continues to strike me as a bizarre theological framework for congregational fundraising in light of some of the Gospels’ negative descriptions of stewards, as in the parable of the unjust steward in Luke 16:1-13. Nor does Paul refer to this collection as a tithe. This is significant as Paul would have certainly been aware of this biblical tradition but he chooses to not use it to describe the collection. This aligns with the view of historian Diarmaid McCullough who describes Christian tithing practices as a tenth century development which occurred alongside the emergence of the parish system. It was only then, he argues, that the example of the biblical tithe was rediscovered and dusted off by church leaders as the basis for an ecclesiastical tax on the laity. “As parishes were organized, it became apparent that there were new sources of wealth for churchmen as well as for secular landlords. The parish system covering the countryside gave the Church the chance to tax the new farming resources of Europe by demanding from its farmer-parishioners a scriptural tenth of agricultural produce, the tithe. Tithe was provided by many more of the laity than the old aristocratic elite, and was another incentive for extending the Church’s pastoral concern much more widely.”[15]
In lieu of the familiar language of stewardship and tithes, the eighth and ninth chapter of 2 Corinthians tie together the themes of Christ’s poverty, the grace of giving, and what Paul refers to as a sense of “fair balance” among those who are in need and those who have abundance. Paul emphasizes grace (charis) - including the grace of Jesus’ becoming poor so that we might become richly blessed - and fellowship (koinonia) - to describe a unique bondedness and interconnectedness with one another that carries financial responsibilities. Whereas “charis” is frequently translated as both “grace” and “privilege”; “koinonia” has a wider range of meanings and is often translated as everything from “fellowship” to “collection” to a “collective” and “a sharing.” Both words appear in 2 Corinthians 8:3-4 in which Paul describes how the churches of Macedonia “overflowed in a wealth of generosity” and “voluntarily gave according to their means, and even beyond their means” for the “privilege (charis) of sharing (koinonia) in this ministry to the saints...”[16] Importantly, Paul grounds this ‘generous undertaking’ in the ‘generous act (charis) of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.”[17] An underlying argument here, I believe, is that the community can follow in this “generous act” - or grace - by becoming a bit poorer for the sake of those in need.
Paul is characteristically blunt in urging the Corinthians to consider the abundance they have and even employs the language of ‘fair balance’ as a rationale for this collection: “I do not mean that there should be relief for others and pressure on you, but it is a question of a fair balance between your present abundance and their need, so that their abundance may be for your need, in order that there may be a fair balance.”[18] And though he tells the Corinthians that this is a “voluntary gift” and “not an extortion”, he also reminds them that “the one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.”[19] It is within the context of this pressured clarification that we hear that (somewhat cloying) phrase which so often appears as part of congregational fundraising campaigns: “God loves a cheerful giver.”[20]
But lest I am unclear, the cheerful giving that Paul is encouraging here is in the broader context of a relief collection for the Jerusalem poor. That the language of cheerful giving is so frequently disconnected from this broader context is unfortunate, to say the least, for if we only read these chapters more carefully we’d see that Paul is explicitly speaking about the righteousness and generosity of those who willingly give to the poor. In 2 Corinthians 9:9, Paul cites Psalm 112:9 when he celebrates the generous: “As it is written, He scatters abroad, he gives to the poor; his righteousness endures forever.” In the following verses, he speaks explicitly about supplying “bread for food” to fulfill “the needs of the saints.”[21]
Unfortunately, congregational fundraising experts have often lifted particular lines within 2 Corinthians 8-9 with little regard to the fact that this generous undertaking was originally a relief collection for the poor, including for people experiencing famine. I find this to be somewhat disrespectful. A better example of how these chapters might be used comes from the mid fifth century, when Pope Leo the Great drew on 2 Corinthians 8-9 to urge his wealthier parishioners to donate to the poor of Rome.[22] This series of five sermons - called De Collectis - was a collection taken up annually for the poor and sick in Rome.[23] In one of his most beautiful homilies of this series, he interweaves the grace of Jesus’ becoming poor with the judgment described in Matthew 25:31-46 as the rationale for this collection:“Rightly indeed do we see the person of our Lord Jesus Christ in the poor and needy. ‘Although he was rich,’ as the blessed Apostle said, ‘he became poor so that he might make us rich by his own poverty.’ So that his presence would not seem removed from us, he ordained the mystery of his glory and humility in such a way that we might nourish in his poor the very same one whom we worship as King and Lord in the majesty of the Father. Thereby are we ‘to be freed’ from eternal condemnation ‘on that terrible day.'’It is in return for our care of the poor so regarded’ that we are to be admitted into fellowship with the kingdom of heaven.” [24]
Beyond the language of grace, generosity, fair balance, and the evocative imagery of Jesus becoming poor for our sake, Paul also emphasizes what it means to be in economic koinonia - frequently translated as fellowship - with one another. Dr. Julien Ogereau of the University of Vienna has looked closely at 2 Corinthians 8-9 and notes that this term of “fellowship” is “often all too vague a word to capture fully what Paul is trying to convey,” and that as a term drawn from the language of administration and law, it really conveys “the idea of commonality, and by extension, of community on the basis of a common bond.”[25] He sees Paul’s description of the Jerusalem collection as “the practical expression of koinonia across socio-cultural and ethnic boundaries” and “the manifestation of a persistent concern for socio-economic equality and solidarity within the Christ-centered ekklesia.”[26] Importantly, elsewhere in Paul’s letters, koinonia also refers to “the sharing” in the body and blood of Christ at Eucharist (1 Cor 10.16) and in Paul’s desire “to share” in Christ’s suffering (Phil 3.10). Koinonia brims with meaning including bondedness to one another and, yes, sharing -- and in 2 Corinthians 8-9 Ogereau argues that the term “evokes a certain sense of political unity and socio-economic equality within the (global) Christ followers to an extent that is observed nowhere else in the NT except perhaps in Luke’s summary description of the original Jerusalem community.”[27]
An attempt to summarize Paul’s theological rationale for the Jerusalem Collection might sound like this: The joy and privilege of a generous undertaking is ultimately rooted in God’s grace of becoming poor for our sakes. Yet, clearly, questions of fair balance between those with great abundance and those in need remain. It is out of a sense of fellowship and bondedness to one another that we can share our resources with one another so as to alleviate the poverty and hunger in our midst. In doing so, may we join in Jesus’ becoming poor for the sake of others.
Frankly, this strikes me as a far more interesting - and faithful - starting point from which to think about how money is employed in congregations and communities. Further, recentering giving practices in this relief fund of a Jerusalem collection raises important questions about what our giving is actually for. How do our fundraising efforts benefit people who are in need? Against the richness of the language of “charis” and “koinonia”, and the overall framework laid out in 2 Corinthians 8-9, the language of ‘stewardship’ and ‘tithes’ continues to strike me as rather thin. Stewards and stewardship are frequently figures of injustice within the Gospels, and the parish tithe is a tenth century development that emerged as an ecclesiastical tax on the laity. Yet here Paul is talking about Christ’s entering into poverty, fair balance and sharing, and an interconnectedness among communities that carries financial responsibilities for caring for the poor. These earliest documents from the Jesus movement - letters that predate even the Gospels themselves - employ very different language than we currently use for the process of collecting funds for the saints. It is worthwhile to pause and consider what this language teaches us and consider whether this isn’t a better basis for describing what the church is doing when it takes up collections and redistributes money from place to place.
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[1] 1 Corinthians 16:1-4
[2] New Oxford Annotated Bible commentary on 1 Cor 16:1-4
[3] "collection for Church of Jerusalem." In A Dictionary of the Bible. Ed. W. R. F. Browning. Oxford Biblical Studies Online. 04-Jan-2021. <http://www.oxfordbiblicalstudies.com/article/opr/t94/e410>.
[4] Paul’s ‘Collection for the Saints’ (2 Cor 8–9) and Financial Support of Leaders in Early Christianity and JudaismZe’ev Safrai and Peter J. Tomson in Bieringer, R., Nathan, E., Pollefeyt, D., & Tomson, P. J. (2014). Second Corinthians in the Perspective of Late Second Temple Judaism. Brill. https://brill.com/view/book/edcoll/9789004271661/B9789004271661_007.xml
[5] Ogereau, J. (2012). The Jerusalem Collection as Κοινωνία: Paul's Global Politics of Socio-Economic Equality and Solidarity. New Testament Studies, 58(3), 360-378. doi:10.1017/S0028688512000033. Page 362
[6] Remember the Poor, Longnecker, Page 155
[7] Acts 11:28
[8] Josephus, Ant. 20.51-53,101
[9] Acts 11:29-30
[10] New Oxford Annotated Bible, notes on Acts 11:27-30
[11] Rhee, Helen. Loving the Poor, Saving the Rich: Wealth, Poverty, and Early Christian Formation, pages 5 and 11
[12] Poverty in the Roman World, Robin Osborne, Cambridge University Press. Page 4
[13] JENSEN, MORTEN H. "Climate, Droughts, Wars, and Famines in Galilee as a Background for Understanding the Historical Jesus." Journal of Biblical Literature, vol. 131, no. 2, 2012, pp. 307-324. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23488227. Accessed 23 Dec. 2020. Pages 319-320
[14] Paulsen, David. “Church’s grassroots efforts help Navajoland feed families impacted by COVID-19 outbreak” https://www.episcopalnewsservice.org/2020/05/14/churchs-grassroots-efforts-help-navajoland-feed-families-impacted-by-covid-19-outbreak/
[15] Mcullough, Diarmaid. Christianity: The First Three Thousand years. Page 369
[16] 2 Corinthians 8:3-5, see commentary in New Oxford Annotated Bible - Commentary on 2 Corinthians Chapters 8-9
[17] 2 Corinthians 8:9
[18] 2 Corinthians 8:13-15
[19] 2 Corinthians 9:5-6
[20] 2 Coritnhians 9:7
[21] 2 Corinthians 9:10 and 12
[22] Ze’ev Safrai and Peter J. Tomson, Paul’s ‘Collection for the Saints’ (2 Cor 8–9) and Financial Support of Leaders in Early Christianity and Judaism in Bieringer, R., Nathan, E., Pollefeyt, D., & Tomson, P. J. (2014). Second Corinthians in the Perspective of Late Second Temple Judaism. Brill.
[23] Saint Leo the Great, Jane Patricia Freeland, and Agnes Josephine Conway. 1995. Sermons. The Fathers of the Church. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press. Page 34
[24] Saint Leo the Great, Jane Patricia Freeland, and Agnes Josephine Conway. 1995. Sermons. The Fathers of the Church. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press. Sermon 9
[25] Ogereau, J. (2012). The Jerusalem Collection as Κοινωνία: Paul's Global Politics of Socio-Economic Equality and Solidarity. New Testament Studies, 58(3), 360-378. doi:10.1017/S0028688512000033, Page 371-372
[26] Ogereau, J. (2012). The Jerusalem Collection as Κοινωνία: Paul's Global Politics of Socio-Economic Equality and Solidarity. New Testament Studies, 58(3), 360-378. doi:10.1017/S0028688512000033, Page 363
[27] Ogereau, J. (2012). The Jerusalem Collection as Κοινωνία: Paul's Global Politics of Socio-Economic Equality and Solidarity. New Testament Studies, 58(3), 360-378. doi:10.1017/S0028688512000033, Page 372
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