Filled hands, Open hands

Gifts of physical goods were always, Edwards says, part of piety ( The Miscellanies, 833-1152 , 79): “It was a thing established in the visible church of God from the very beginning, that a part of the substance of God’s visible people should be brought as an offering to the Lord. So it was in the family of Adam: this is a duty that he trained up his two sons, Cain and Abel, in. What Cain and Abel did was not only in compliance with the institution of sacrifice, but with what they had been trained up in as their duty: to offer to God a part of their substance. Cain brought of the fruit of the ground, an offering to the Lord, doing his duty therein, as to the matter of it, though he did not do it with a right spirit.”

Such offerings were not only part of private devotion but “part of the public service of God in his church. When Cain and Abel are said to have brought their offerings to the Lord, thereby is doubtless meant that they brought their offerings either to Adam’s altar, or to the place where Adam’s family were wont to meet with God and worship God.” This responsibility did not end “with the abolishing of the Mosaic dispensation.” On the contrary, Edwards says, “Scripture rather seems to intimate that, in gospel times, God’s people should consecrate more of their substance to God.” Now as in the days of Moses, worshipers are “never ‘to come empty-handed’” (80).

This argues for the offertory as a specific moment and act of the liturgy that deserves to be italicized and bold-faced. This has fallen out of favor in some churches, in part out of a false scrupulosity that seeks to purge any memory of Mammon from spiritual worship. On the contrary, the offertory is the primary anti-Mammon moment in worship, the moment when we open our hands to let go of our goods and acknowledge that they are God’s goods. The offertory is an act of the gathered priesthood; the Hebrew phrase for “ordination” of priests is literally “fill the hands.” As the Aaronic priests had their hands filled with sacrifices, the general priesthood of Israel and of the church have their hands filled with gifts and offerings. Like the priests, our hands are filled so that we can open them in worship and charity.