Sow righteousness for yourselves, reap the fruit of unfailing love, and break up your unplowed ground; for it is time to seek the LORD, until he comes and showers His righteousness on you. Hosea 10:12
“Imitate the earth; bring forth fruit as it does; should your human status be inferior to a lifeless thing? The earth brings forth fruits not for its own pleasure but for your service; you can reap for yourselves the fruit of all generosity because the rewards of good works return to those who offer them. If you give to the hungry the gift becomes your own and comes back to you with increase. As the wheat falling on the ground brings forth a gain for the one who scatters it, so the grain bestowed on the hungry brings you profit a hundredfold hereafter. Make the end of harvesting the beginning of heavenly sowing, “Sow for yourselves unto justice,” the Scripture says [Hos. 10:12]…
“I am not doing anything wrong to anyone,” you say, “I hold fast my own, that is all.” Your own! Who gave it to you to bring into life with you? You are like the one who takes a seat in a theatre and then keeps out newcomers, claiming as his own what is there for the use of everyone. Such are the rich; they seize what belongs to all and claim the right of possession to monopolize it; if everyone took for oneself enough to meet one’s own wants and gave up the rest to those who needed it, there would be no rich and no poor.
Did you not come naked out of the womb, and will you not go back naked to earth again [cf. Job 1:21]? Whence came the riches you have now? If you say from nowhere, you deny God, you ignore the Creator, and you are ungrateful to the Giver. But if you acknowledge they came from God, tell us the reason why you received them. Is God unjust when He distributes the necessaries of life unequally? Why are you rich and another poor? Surely it is that you may win the reward of generosity and faithful stewardship, and the poor the noble prizes of patience…”
Basil of Caesarea (330-379) a.k.a. Basil the Great, Bishop of Caesarea Mazaca in Cappadocia, also known as one of the Cappadocian Fathers, in Homily 6: “I Will Pull Down My Barns” edited and translated by Helen Rhee in Wealth and Poverty in Early Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2017) 58-60.
Rhee adds this helpful background (xxxiv): “In 368, a catastrophic drought and famine…struck Caesarea and its surrounding area, resulting in massive crop failures and a severe food storage throughout the region…In Homily 6: “I Will Pull Down My Barns” (c. 369), Basil displays his homiletic efforts to open the local granaries during the famine as part of institutional relief… Basil describes the poor as victims of injustice and addresses his audience as the rich who willfully deprive the poor of grain, intent to make a profit while taking from the poor whatever they have.
Practically in modern settings today, we can “make the end of harvesting the beginning of heavenly sowing” by making giving to meet the needs of a neighbor the first thing we do with any surplus money beyond what is necessary for ourselves. Sure we must give to our local church and to ministries that do the work of God, but we must not forget to love our neighbor. With Basil we must not view any money as our own, especially any surplus, but put it to work to benefit others so that we too may “win the reward of generosity and faithful stewardship.”