Sermon Cliff Note: Blissful Are the Poor

The Literal Sentence (from Matthew 5.3)

Privileged the beggars the spirit, because of them is the kingdom of the heavens.

Some alternatives:

Beggars make happy the spirit, for because of them is the kingdom of the heavens.

Beggars be happy in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of the heavens.

Beggars are blessed by the spirit . . .

Happy beggars to the spirit, because of them is the kingdom of the heavens.

Because of them is the kingdom of the heavens, [so] blessed [are] the beggars [for/by/with] the spirit.

My two suggestions:

(1) The beggars [among us] are blessed by the spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of the heavens.

–or–

(2) Blessed, privileged the spirit of the poor ones, the beggars among us: because of them is the kingdom of the heavens.

It requires a bit of linguistic twisting, but the second one is where I land – I remain unconvinced that ‘poor in spirit’ is correct, thinking that the poor and the spirit are two separate things given the grammar, but I bow to the vast weight of scholarly consensus to adopt the idea that the spirit here is the spirit of the poor, but decline to agree that it’s ‘poor in spirit’ as opposed to the spirit of the poor.  There are problems both ways, but no one really has any idea what ‘poor in spirit’ means, so it makes sense to me to adopt the obvious solution: the blessing is for the poor, but it is a spiritual (rather than material) blessing of which Jesus speaks.

Either way, however, the question that begs to be asked by the clear language of the last part of the sentence is this: what if it’s that the kingdom of heaven has its existence among us precisely because of the poor?  What if the kingdom is the gift of the poor to all of humanity?  What if it’s not the poor in spirit who are blessed, but simply the poor and that what they receive is the spiritual blessing of knowing that because of them, the kingdom of heaven is at hand?

So imagine yourself driving to Staunton and coming to a stop at which stands a man with a sign begging for money.  You are Jesus sitting in the car, so instead of just sitting there and pretending not to see him or slipping him, somewhat guiltily, a little bit of cash, or even getting out and taking him with you for a meal or to find a job, you jump out of the car, unmindful of the blocked traffic, hug him, and declare what a great day this is that the two of you have met up, telling him as you hold him in your grasp, I am so glad I got to see you today!  You are such a blessing!  Thank you!  Thank you for bringing the kingdom of heaven with you!  Thank you for being here!  I’m headed into town – you want to come with me?  I want all my friends to meet you!  You have helped me so much today – you don’t even know.  Is there anything I can do for you?  What a lucky day that we met!  I can’t believe my good fortune!

So what if this is what God is actually thinking:

Oh how lucky you are, oh, the bliss God has in you and has in mind for you . . . you who are poor, who lack, who must beg for what you need . . . without you, there is no kingdom . . . you in all your need, make it possible . . . and your God is grateful for you . . .

You, who don’t know where you next meal might come from . . .

You, who have to beg the kids to call or visit . . .

You, whose family is ashamed to even admit they know you . . .

You, who don’t know what to do without the one you always counted on to be there . . .

You, exhausted by the demands of surviving . . .

You, who crack the door open for others to help and God to enter just by being here  . . .

You, who challenge the rest to change the world simply by your very existence . . .

You are the kingdom bringers, the God bearers, the very image of God in our midst . . .

And you are blessed. . . not your state . . . not your misery . . . not your poverty . . . but you.

The poor have much to teach.  And friends, I don’t know about you, but I’ve got a lot to learn.

Amen.

Praying on the Impoverishment of My Generosity

Rereading me some liberation theology – condemned, as always, but this time, struggling not to be bogged down in guilt (that I am not poor, but wealthy, very wealthy, by the standards of the world) – I stand indicted by some of the first words of the original Introduction to Gustavo Gutierrez’s A Theology of Liberation: “My purpose is . . . to let ourselves be judged by the word of the Lord . . .”

Sigh.

And yet I recall to memory that to stand in judgment before my Lord is not to be bent down as a broken and caught-out criminal, but rather to stand in glory side-by-side with all, claimed, loved, redeemed, set and sent for purpose, fulfilled and unfulfilled, and that judgment this side of heaven is not my rod so much as my guide.

Yesterday we marked the anniversary of the declaration of war on poverty.  It sounds a bit ridiculous, all this war-declaring we seem to like to do.  But the impulse (I leave to others far brighter than I to judge sincerity of intentions at the time) to eradicate (at least some of) the problems associated with poverty – economic, educational, and health care lack – is a good one.

That the conditions of poverty are (often if not always) institutionally created, it also seems good to me that we endeavor to address them in institutional ways, ever mindful of my far more progressive friends’ mistrust of all things institutional.

But if dismantling is not to our liking, maybe what we need is more mantling – more cloaking, but with what?  Perhaps with righteousness – an unpopular word in my time and place.  But even more, perhaps, with love – the act of actual care, of walking alongside, of doing better at doing better.

This, then, in observing yet another anniversary of human (claimed) desire to eradicate the misery of poverty, oppression, injustice, is my prayer . . .

Lord, I hear You telling me that sitting at table together, being the guest rather than always the host, matters.  For the gifts I have received from those with so much less in a material way than I, I give you thanks.  For the lessons in humility, I give you thanks.  For Your ways not being our ways, my way, I give You thanks.  For Your not-always obvious or even apparent ways of blessing the poor, I give you thanks.  When I have trivialized Your beatitude bestowing upon them by trying to make it about something other than genuine material lack, I regret.  When I am impatient because the solutions are hard and often not obvious, I regret.  When I am tempted to judge the worthiness of another before I bestow Your graces shared with me upon them, I regret.  Help me to do better at doing better.  Amen.

Why the Anger at the Poor?

If you’re not poor, I’ve got a question for you.  Have you found yourself angry of late with those who have less than you?  And a follow-up, if you would allow me: why?

Why, oh why, oh why, are we so angry with the poor?  Why do commentators trash talk folks who work at MacDonalds and other fast-food chains for staging a walk out seeking higher wages?  Is it wrong to protest?  What’s so bad about going public with your desires?  About banding together with others in similar situations?  About exercising the same power that the corporations use in order to try to change your circumstances?

Whether you think someone ‘deserves’ a higher wage isn’t the point in a protest by workers.  This isn’t about changing existing laws.  This is about employees seeking a raise.

To compare your situation when you were 16 and presumably living at home with no expenses save those your parents assigned to you to the situation of someone who actually must survive on their wages is specious and insulting.

To tell someone who may only ever be qualified for a minimum wage job to move up the ladder is condescending.

The valuation of labor in a society has little to do with intrinsic worth to the society.  A corporate CEO is not inherently more valuable to a society than a food service worker.  Think of it this way: one of them, if they get it wrong, could actually kill you on the spot.  (Hint: it’s not the CEO – it usually takes a CEO much longer).  And while I enjoy sporting events as much as the next person (well, okay, I probably don’t), intrinsic worth has nothing to do with their levels of pay, especially at the higher end of the scale.  Ditto movie stars.  Ditto, ditto, ditto.

If we measured pay based on intrinsic worth, wouldn’t we begin with those who provide food and shelter?  The farmers, grocers, restaurant workers, home builders (meaning the actual carpenters and joiners and not the company’s head), etc.?

Walking in the shoes of another is more a good and healthy exercise than it is a catchy bumper sticker.  The next best thing is to imagine those shoes.  Imagine trying to actually live on a minimum wage.

It’s not, perhaps, that it can’t be done.  I’m not in a position to say.  But even if it can be done, the thing is that there’s no margin for error – none.  There is no breathing room.  One blip and the whole house can come tumbling down.  One trip to the emergency room and the budget’s shot for months, if not years.  One request home for money for a school trip is a family crisis.  And one family member with out-of-the-norm expenses (such as an on-going medical problem) renders the entire family unit unviable.

When those who have groan and worry, those who do not have have long been beyond the place of groan and worry and wonder what all the fuss is about.  When those who have lament, those who do not have pray, not necessarily because their faith is deeper, but because there is no other place to go.  I think, anyway, for I’ve been either blessed or cursed never up to now to have to know.

But this I do know: it is unseemly at best for we who have so much to begrudge those who do not in trying to attain more.  And if you think organizing a labor movement isn’t work, I suggest you give it a try.

Years ago, I asked my uncle Harvey, who worked his adult life as an executive for Good Year International, what the solution is to low wages, inequalities, and poor conditions in the work place.  His answer was quick, unequivocal and clear: labor unions.  Genuine, international, independent labor unions.

I was surprised at the answer coming from him as it did – this, after all, was a man who spent his adult life on the corporate side of the equation.  It took me years to understand that his work had actually given him a bird’s eye view, leading him to the obvious conclusion that only with parity of power can there be fairness.

So to the fast-food workers who go on strike seeking higher wages and benefits, I say well done and Godspeed.

And shame on you, Brian Kikmeade, Steve Docy, the Employment Policies Institute, Neil Cavuto, Tracy Burns, for a failure of moral imagination that at the least, cannot appreciate folks with less using the same strategies that you use to advance in your own lives (making allies, expressing your concerns, seeking advantage, working together cooperatively, to name but a few).

Worrisome, Woeful Wednesdays

Holy Week Wednesday in Mark’s gospel highlights the contrast between faithful following and falling away.  How ironic, how cruel, really, that centuries later, we claimed faithful followers take Jesus’ words to the very proto-betrayer Judas Iscariot (you will always have the poor with you. . .) and turn them into a command to ignore the needs of the poor, as if in that ignoring is found love rather than blind indifference, faithfulness rather than falling away.

So here is how I hear Jesus’ words to Judas that fateful Wednesday . . .

Really, Judas?  You’re going to throw up care for the poor to me?  Really?  You (of all people) are really going to chastize this woman for anticipating your deed, your betrayal?  Well, son, you’ve got the money purse in your hands – why don’t you take that money and provide for the poor?  Oh – we have need of it, do we?  Well, that’s different then, isn’t it?  Ah, Judas, how very sad you make me.  That bribe money you’re going to get?  It’ll burn a hole in your hand, you know.  Poor folk need you too, Judas.  They need you to be caring and providing, but they also need you to be humble and a little less sure that you’ve got the answers to their problems.  They and I need you to listen to us instead of the voice in your own head for a change.  Could you do that for us?  No?  I was afraid of that.  It – you – could have been so different, you know.  The poor you speak so passionately about?  They’ve been standing right in front of you your whole life.  Where was your concern for them yesterday?  Where will it be tomorrow?  No, Judas, this isn’t about the poor.  It’s about you.  You’re watching a funeral happen right in front of your own eyes and because we laugh and celebrate, you mistake it for a party.  Life is a celebrating thing, Judas.  Why can’t you see that?  Why can you not see that caring for each other – all of each other – is a blessing, not a burden?  Oh, Judas, I had such hopes for you.  It’s not too late – you know – for you.  You can still change your mind, change your course, change your destiny.  It’s possible.  And it’s up to you.  Just don’t throw the poor in my face.  This – her love and your betrayal – have nothing to do with the poor.  Stop blaming them and choose your own life.  I am begging you, Judas.  Do not do this.  And yes, Judas, you will always have poor folk among you – folks like you, sadly, will make sure of that.

When Is a Dollar Not a Dollar? Taxes, Poverty, Economics & Justice

A dollar costs some more than others.  Economics isn’t all arithmetic.  Thus all dollars are not created equal.  A dollar costs me some spare change in my purse.  But a dollar costs some people a week of labor.  If you’re poor, a dollar is a bag of rice, which can feed your family for a day.  If you’re the widow Jesus watched at the temple, even less than a dollar can be all that’s left between you and starvation.

It is at best a fundamental failure to understand that all dollars are not created equal that is leading to the call by many governors to eliminate or substantially reduce income taxation in their states under the guise of economic stimulation.*  They are, perhaps, merely mirroring the national election debates, all of which, from all political spectra, emphasized the middle class.  The poor were seldom, if ever, even mentioned.  It’s past time they were.  I say ‘they’ for one simple reason: I am not poor.

Economics that is theoretical is a waste of time.  Economics that does not take realities into account is worse than a waste of time; it is an attempt to alter our understanding of reality, to distance ourselves from it, that we, the wealthier, might be insulated from the sting of the poverty of another.

Social justice that ignores economic injustice is no justice at all.

Charity is what I am free to do or not do out of the goodness of my own heart.

Justice, on the other hand, is what I owe to my fellow human beings.

It is an enormous difference.

I can congratulate myself on my charity.

But justice is like breathing; it is necessary, even essential, to my, to our, continued existence.  Who congratulates themselves for breathing?

***

*What calls to eliminate state income taxes generally leave unsaid is the simultaneous implementation or increase of sales tax to make up the difference.  Sales taxes affect every consumer exactly the same.  Well, isn’t that fair?  No.  It isn’t ‘fair’ because of the fact that all dollars are not created equal.  Flat taxes that hit rich and poor alike are called ‘regressive’ for a reason.  To regress is to go backwards and in the case of flat taxes, what we do is back away from justice for the poor, those who have less than I do.  They are not a disease.  They are not a ‘problem’.  They are people.  “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal bread”, observed Anatole France.  The irony is as obvious as it is cruel: it is illegal for both, but it is only a necessity for one.  Another quote comes to mind: “To whom much is given, much is required.” [Luke 12.48].  Waging economic war on the poor is not merely unseemly (although it is certainly that); it is unjust.  I suspect the origins are not in some overtly evil impulse; rather, it is a case, I think, of governors and others similarly situated, simply having little, if any acquaintance, with the folks their laws impact adversely.  A friend at a cocktail party observes how hard the current taxes hit them and their friend the governor starts thinking about how to help these friends and believes, because friends don’t lie to friends, after all, the lie that helping the friend will help ‘everyone’.  While they smile and tip their glasses, there are no poor people present to protest, to point out that the change will be on their backs.  Maybe governors and presidents and the like should be required to, at the least, join the movement to live on a poverty-level income for a month.  Maybe then some eyes would be opened.

***

A sampling of governors calling for elimination or substantial reduction in income taxes to be made up with simultaneous increases in sales taxes:

Governor Sam Brownback, of Kansas, per The New York Times:

. . . there is significant concern in Kansas over the cost of the tax cuts, which is expected to total nearly $850 million in the coming fiscal year. In the budget he presented last week, [Governor]  Brownback proposed to help cover the cost of those cuts by keeping in place a sales tax increase that was scheduled to expire this year and by eliminating the mortgage interest deduction. . . Critics say Mr. Brownback’s tax cut was passed on the backs of low-income Kansans. The bill included the repeal of tax credits for food, rental housing and child care that benefited low-income residents. Because of those repeals, the poorest 20 percent of Kansans will spend an additional 1.3 percent of their incomes, an average of $148 per year, on taxes, according to a report by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. The top 1 percent, meanwhile, will see the share of their income that goes toward taxes drop by 2 percent, or $21,087 per year, the report said.

Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, from The Advocate:

Gov. Bobby Jindal said Thursday that he wants to eliminate the state’s personal income and corporate taxes. . . [To make up the difference] Alario, R-Westwego, said Jindal administration officials discussed a 1.6 percent increase in state sales tax during a meeting with legislative leaders this week.  

Governor Dave Heineman of Nebraska, from The Daily Nebraskan:

Gov. Dave Heineman made a bold proposal during his State of the State address Tuesday — eliminate the state income tax. . . As a means to make up for the lost revenue, Heineman’s proposal would also end $5 billion in sales tax exemptions [although food would continue to be exempt].

Bread on the Ground

Thursday I was running late to meet Merwyn DeMello* to prep for our day of meetings with faculty and students at Eastern Mennonite University (EMU).  I was late and I was lost among the myriad of buildings and grounds.**  This is the excuse I offer to God in my regret that I did not stop for the moment it would have taken me to rectify a wrong.

There on a beautiful sidewalk lay an equally beautiful loaf of bread.  I thought about stopping, but I didn’t.

Why would someone stop to pick up a loaf of bread from the sidewalk if she didn’t plan to eat it herself?  And what would she do with it?

Some of you will already know the answer.

Among my Muslim friends and acquaintances, bread is a sort-of holy thing – the very stuff of life – and it is never thrown away or discarded.  All of the leftover bread scraps are gathered together at the end of a meal for use.  If the bread is stale, it will become the base or bed for soups like tashrib or fried in olive oil as a sort of chip for dipping in humus or simply eaten the next morning for breakfast.

And if one has leftover bread when on the move, you simply leave it in an elevated place, for someone who may need it.  It is a literal leaving of food for the poor, a small but integral and integrated part of daily life which remembers the needs of the poor.

This custom of preserving bread reminds me of Jesus’ feeding of the 5,000, where at the end of the meal, the leftovers were gathered (Matthew 14.20).  In the West, we tend to focus on the abundance of Jesus’ providing, marveling that from such a small start, there even were leftovers.  But this misses the point of the custom in that part of the world that nothing be wasted, that all be provided for, for those ‘leftovers’ of bread and fish would have just as surely gone to feed the poor as the bread I saw one day walking the streets of Amman, Jordan.

Thus do I offer sincere apology both to the Lord of my life and to the one who may have had need of the bread that I did not simply stop and take the care to place on a nearby wall.



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*Merwyn is the co-director of Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT).  We spent the day at EMU engaging with folks there about CPT’s life and work and how the Academy and those ‘in the field’ might intersect in more intentional ways.

**Note to EMU admin: I loved the peace in many languages sign pole, but as a visitor, I would have also loved more signage pointing me to The Commons.