Sell your possessions

From my Bible reading this morning in Luke 12: 

12:29 “And do not seek what you should eat or what you should drink, nor have an anxious mind. 30 For all these things the nations of the world seek after, and your Father knows that you need these things. 31 But seek the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added to you.

32 “Do not fear, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. 33 Sell what you have and give alms; provide yourselves money bags which do not grow old, a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches nor moth destroys. 34 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. 

That's an interesting clause there in verse 33 which I've highlighted, isn't it? "Sell what you have".

We're accustomed in Western conservative evangelicalism to emphasise thinking about what proportion of "our" income we'll give to the kingdom. The way round this ought to be said, biblically, is thinking what proportion of God's money that he has decided to channel through us will be given directly and immediately to kingdom projects, and what proportion will serve God in other ways, including through our immediate needs. 

But let's leave that aside for now. Here, Jesus didn't speak to us about giving from our income. He spoke about giving from our possessions. He told his disciples to liquidate from their assets, and give specifically from that. He even told us what specifically to do with the liquidated assets.

How often, I wonder, have you or I heard about that? Memory is very unreliable when trying to review a lifetime of hearing, but frankly, I don't ever remember hearing it. I've read it a handful of times (book recommendation). But if I've ever heard it taught in church ministry - well, at the very least, it must have been very rare.

Our temptation is to immediately jump to caveats and questions such as "of course he didn't mean all of them so that you become a beggar yourself, of course some people are still dependants, students, spending other people's money, of course we must be wise, this, that and the other....". This temptation should be resisted. Let's not start with what we're not going to do, and what Jesus did not tell us to do. We might take in what we're not going to do along the way at the appropriate point: but that can never be the departure point.

The Son of God did tell us to do something, and did not clarify, immediately or otherwise, that it was in fact optional. What did he teach, what does the positive response look like for us? Do we actually want to receive the wonderful promise that he attached in the following verses? Or will we be quite content if he eternally chips the promise away into essentially nothing in the way that seems to be the norm for Christians in our setting and culture with his instruction?