Ancient Charity

Since whenever the cliché was coined, we’ve all been pretty sure that we think that it is better to give than to receive. Yet there are millions in this nation who still need to receive on a daily basis, and there are many gifts that could be given a lot better. Gestures that might have seemed extremely good-willed in the past can all too often be contaminated by a kind of down-hill charity; the benevolent giver sends aid rolling down in the direction of the surely grateful, surely too poor to be picky, receiver. No relationship. No intention to work toward sustainability. And a whole lot of dehumanization at both ends of the slope. The problem with charity is that acts of it inherently create inequality; better are those who give than those who receive.

But there is another way. When the Bible says “charity”, what the original text says is “agape”. The most perfect, unconditional love. The kind of love that lays down life for a friend. Love that says your life is as valuable as my life. Love that says we are equal. In fact, the Bible is full of instances where God teaches this kind of “charity” to His people. The Israelites are instructed in Leviticus 23:22, that when they reap the harvest of their land, they must not reap to the very edges of their fields, or gather the gleanings of their harvest. They are to leave these portions for the poor and the alien in their midst.

It’s a beautiful concept. It presumes that there will be a harvest; that there is abundance and blessing for God’s people. It also assumes the presence of poverty and of foreigners in their community life. But God’s solution encouraged the people to take a good look at what they had, and to identify their excess. It also ensured that those who would be receiving could gather these gifts with dignity. It was not a hand-out. It was not the chaff that remained when the wheat had been sifted out.

Urban Gleaning, based at the Warehouse, is an initiative that seeks to take this Old Testament principle and consider what it could look like in our twenty-first century urban context. The truth is that we are all blessed. We have a heavenly Father who has promised to provide for his children. Whether we are living out our lives in Khayelitsha or Constantia, after we have seen to our own and our family’s needs, and tithed what we have decided in our hearts to give, the challenge of Urban Gleaning is to take a look at what is left at the edges. What is the excess of our own life’s harvest of time, skills, things or money that could be redistributed to the poor in our midst?

But Urban Gleaning goes deeper than this kind of provision, for this process of restitution is all about relationship. It’s about recognizing that there are communities of believers living and working amongst the poorest people in our city with minimal resources. Meanwhile there are communities of believers living amongst and serving some of the richest people in our nation. Each faithful group of disciples is a part of the Body of Christ, and yet that Body lies broken and strewn, severed by the partitioning lines of history that physically scar our landscape and divide our people. Imagine a youth group from somewhere in the City Bowl deciding to thresh through their wardrobes to find the clothes they still like, but that the teenagers who have just lost their homes to a shack fire would love. Or a retired UCT professor spending an hour each week teaching young mothers on the Cape Flats how to read and write. Or a middle-class housewife and an unemployed young man from Manenberg who both have some time on their hands, spending it sorting through bags of donations, and putting together ‘love packs’. Imagine what it would look like if we all, as followers of Jesus, were working together to bring about a Kingdom of equality and justice in this city, no matter from what side of the M5 we hail.

The point of Tutu’s words is that neither being oppressed, nor the act of oppressing others brings life; neither is the expression of a fulfilled humanity. And so for our city to be truly transformed, we need to be working for the freedom of both the oppressed and the oppressor, for “they need each other to become truly free, to become human.”