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Leading With a Generous Heart: Day 1

Have you ever been exploited? How did you respond?

by David Joynt on August 14, 2016

Leading With a Generous Heart: Day 1

 

MATTHEW 5:40-42

Quid pro quo. Mutual benefit. Reciprocal aid. Shared interest. Most relationships, most of the time, work by a calculation of benefits, conditioned on a fair exchange—if you do X to help me, I will do Y to help you. Economics is built on this principal, contracts embody it, and politics depends on it.

But the spiritual life has an added dimension called “the extra mile.” Roman soldiers could compel Jewish subjects to stop whatever they were doing and carry their packs for a mile. Such unfair treatment symbolized Roman dominance and communicated to Jews the arbitrary and unjust nature of their situation. It was legal exploitation.

Jesus had a radical response—generosity—carry the burden a second mile! 

Have you ever been exploited?

How did you respond?

Tags: generosity, leading

About the Author
David Joynt

Dave Joynt began his service as a pastor at Valley Presbyterian Church in Paradise Valley, Arizona in September 2014. This meant a move away from the Northeast, where he has a long history, growing up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and then serving congregations in Delaware and New Jersey for a total of 23 years.

Dave was nurtured in a great church in Bethlehem where his parents, Anne and Carey, served as elders. He graduated in classics from Lehigh University where his Father taught, and then from Oxford, where he met his wife Julia. Ordained in 1988, he completed a Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1993.

He and Julia have a son, Tristan, and a daughter, Madeleine.

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