Let Your Light Shine
Day 259 – 16 September
Good at Giving
They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share. (1 Timothy 6:18, ESV)
A Coffee for the Rest of the World
In the cafés of Naples there is a custom so old that nobody can say when it began. A man walks up to the bar, orders an espresso, and pays for two. He drinks one. The other is left, in the local phrase, sospeso, suspended, hanging in the air, and any time afterwards a stranger who cannot afford a coffee may come in and ask whether there is one waiting, and be served without a word about money. The tradition grew up in the working-class bars of the city in the nineteenth century, flourished in the hard years of the Second World War, faded, and was revived in 2010 when the grand old Caffè Gambrinus on the Piazza del Plebiscito, celebrating its hundred and fiftieth year, set a giant brass coffee pot on the counter with its lid tilted open so that customers could drop in the receipts for the coffees they had paid forward. The Neapolitan writer Luciano De Crescenzo explained the heart of it. When a Neapolitan is happy, he said, instead of paying for one coffee he pays for two, one for himself and one for whoever comes in next; it is like offering a coffee to the rest of the world. Two things are worth noticing in that. The gift is made in advance, to someone the giver will never meet. And it is made out of happiness, from a full heart, never a squeezed one. Paul, writing to a young pastor in Ephesus, asks for exactly that kind of giver, and he reaches for two words nobody else in the New Testament ever used.
Rich in Beautiful Works
The verse comes at the end of Paul’s first letter to Timothy, in a charge aimed at the well-off in the Ephesian church. “As for the rich in this present age,” Paul writes, “charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy” (1 Timothy 6:17). Then comes the instruction itself: “They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share” (1 Timothy 6:18). The phrase in the middle is the arc’s own. To be rich in good works is πλουτεῖν ἐν ἔργοις καλοῖς (ploutein en ergois kalois, to be rich in beautiful works), and the adjective is καλός (kalos, beautiful) again, the word we opened the week with. Paul is playing on the word rich. The people he addresses are rich in money, and he tells them to become rich in something else, in works so lovely that they draw the eye and warm the heart; an old rabbinic saying he may have known held that the only truly poor man is the one without good works, because a person’s real wealth is the good he does. And the first two beautiful works Paul names are both forms of the open hand.
Two Words Nobody Else Used
Here Paul does something unusual. For the two qualities he wants, he reaches for two words that appear nowhere else in the whole New Testament, as if the ordinary vocabulary of giving were too thin for what he meant. The first is εὐμετάδοτος (eumetadotos, good at giving). It is built from εὖ (eu, well, readily) and μεταδίδωμι (metadidōmi, to give a share of what one has), so its literal sense is something like readily-sharing, good-at-handing-on. The King James has ready to distribute, Moffatt open-handed, the ESV generous; but the picture underneath is of a person whose first instinct with anything they hold is to pass some of it along. The second word is κοινωνικός (koinōnikos, ready to share, sociable), from the great New Testament word κοινωνία (koinōnia, fellowship, having things in common). The King James renders it willing to communicate, in the old sense of making common; the ESV, ready to share. A κοινωνικός (koinōnikos) person treats what they have as held in common, as though the table were already shared, so that giving is less a transfer than a recognition. Put the two together and you have Paul’s portrait of beautiful generosity: quick to hand on, and glad to hold in common. It is the man at the Neapolitan bar exactly, paying ahead for a stranger as if the stranger’s coffee were already partly his own to give.
Where the Open Hand Comes From
But the most important word in the passage is in the verse before, and it explains where such people come from. The rich are to set their hope on God, “who richly provides us with everything to enjoy.” The Greek is lavish on purpose: τῷ παρέχοντι ἡμῖν πάντα πλουσίως εἰς ἀπόλαυσιν (tō parechonti hēmin panta plousiōs eis apolausin, the One providing us all things richly for enjoyment). Every word of that is generous. He provides, present tense, continually. He provides all things. He provides them richly, πλουσίως (plousiōs, abundantly), the same root as the riches the wealthy were tempted to trust. And He provides them for enjoyment, ἀπόλαυσις (apolausis, enjoyment, pleasure), which is a remarkable thing for an apostle to say about a God so many imagine as grudging. The God of this verse is the original open hand, the first and greatest εὐμετάδοτος (eumetadotos, good at giving), who does more than meet our needs; He heaps the table and tells us to enjoy it. That is why the open hand is beautiful in a person: it is a small copy of His. The happy Neapolitan pays for two because he has been given something to be happy about; the believer is generous because a lavish Giver got there first, and everything in the hand was handed to it. Generosity that knows this is beautiful because it is true to its source. It is the light of the Giver, shining out through a hand that has stopped clutching. And it turns out to be the way to become rich: Paul says that those who give like this are storing up a treasure that is truly life.
Paying Forward on a Wednesday
A Wednesday gives you a hundred small counters to pay something forward across. It can be money, and it can be far more than money: time you were saving for yourself, credit you could have kept, a skill someone needs, a seat, a meal, a word of introduction, a portion of the day’s patience. The two words ask two things of you. Be good at giving: let your first instinct with whatever you hold be to pass some of it on, quickly, before the calculating part of you wakes up and starts to count. And be ready to share: treat what you have as already partly common, so that giving feels less like loss and more like recognising whose it always was. Do it, if you can, out of happiness, the way the Neapolitan does, because you have been richly provided for and it is a pleasure to hand some of it on. Do it for someone who may never know it was you. And leave the credit where the coffee custom leaves it, suspended, unclaimed, belonging to no one but the Giver who filled your hands in the first place. That is a beautiful work, and by tonight the whole world will be one cup better off.
Declaration
Everything in my hands was put there, and it was put there richly, to be enjoyed and to be passed on. I have been provided for by a Giver who does more than meet my needs; the table was heaped before I sat down, and I was told to enjoy it. So I refuse to be rich in the wrong way, hoarding what was handed to me as though I had earned it and might lose it. I will be rich in the right way instead. I will be good at giving: quick to hand on a share of whatever I hold, with no ledger open. I will be ready to share: holding what I have loosely, as if the table were already ours together. I will pay something forward today to a stranger I will never meet, and I will do it out of gladness, because I have so much to be glad about. And I will let the thanks go past me, to the One whose open hand filled mine first.
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