In over 2000 verses, the Bible has a lot to say about poverty. Almost every page of the Bible speaks about God's heart for the poor. His concern for the marginalized. His compassion for the oppressed. His call for justice. In order to ignore those texts, you literally end up with a Bible that would fall apart.
Here's just one representative sample from 1 John 3.17-18: "If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth". I could just as easily quote Deuteronomy 10.18, 14.28-29; 15.7-8, 11; Joshua 1.14-15; 1 Samuel 2.7-8; Nehemiah 9.27; Job 5.15-16; 24.5; Psalm 9.9, 18; 12.5; 17.14; 22.26; 35.10 ... You get the idea.
So to hear Christians attack and blame the poor for their poverty is a very odd thing.
Last night, yet again, that's exactly what I heard.
Yesterday afternoon, news reports recounted how an IT glitch had interfered with folks using and having access to EBT funds (what we used to call "food stamps"). One person then commented on the common trope that that no big deal. Only lazy folks are poor. Only folks who waste money on "sodas and candy" are on EBT. Anecdotally, she offered evidence that is far from conclusive for me: "Well, I've seen it. I've seen parents spend the entirety of the allotment on candy and soda for kids". As if one experience then gives grounds to judge every participant.
I've lived and worked with the poor most of my years in ministry. I've seen poor widows who receive just the smallest Social Security also receive minimal EBT funds for milk, cooking oil, and other essentials. I've seen moderate-sized working families receive EBT's "generous" allotment of $300 and still not be able to feed themselves for a month on healthy foods. I've witnessed the oppressions and feeling like your life is worthless from nearly all of them. Interestingly, none of them have ever tried "gaming the system". They don't want to be poor. They aren't lazy. They're trapped in some of the worst cycles of death.
Because, let's be honest here, poverty is vulnerability to death in its crudest form. Poverty is the relentless daily wearing down of humanity. It's oppression. It's contending for the most primitive forms of existence imaginable: Where we sleep, what we'll eat, how to bathe in clean water, or how to wear clean clothes, or how to rest or work or play.
Because of that vulnerability, the Bible contends in those over-2000 verses, the poor expose the power of death in all our human affairs. Death becomes visible in the struggles of the poor to find food, secure shelter, and keep warm. Most of us, being affluent, are relatively immune to these struggles which creates the illusion that death isn't at work in our lives. But the lives of the poor puncture this illusion. The struggles of the poor reveal the activity and power of death in the world. What's more, the poor witness to the fact that we, the affluent, live at their expense.
You heard me right: We live at the expense of the poor. No, I'm not being a socialist here. I'm being biblical. That's the lesson of Cain. What benefits one, comes at the expense of another. We're all related. In history, we live at each other's expense. That's why the Bible is so concerned to demand justice and care for the poor and oppressed. Just think 1 John 3.17-18. Or Isaiah 10.1-3; 25.4; 58.6-11; Jeremiah 22.16; Lamentations 4.4; Ezekiel 16.49; Zechariah 7.9-10; Matthew 6.3-4; 25.34-40; Luke 14.12-14; Romans 15.1-2; James 1.27; 2.5, 15-17. Again, you get the idea. The Bible constantly and consistently points to the fact that our choices -- or even our failure to choose -- to act directly effects the daily lives of the poor. We live at their expense.
What makes the poor such a big deal for the Bible isn't their innocence. It isn't the extremity on some economic table of numbers. It doesn't matter at the crushing effect of loneliness that accompanies poverty. Nor the fact that it's so easy to ignore the poor. What matters to the God of the Bible is that poverty shows just how vulnerable we are to death. Death isn't any different for the poor or the rich. The poor have a harder time living the life that God envisions humans to live. That's the issue.
What makes poverty so sophisticated is that the poor live on the fringes of death, every minute of every day. And we -- I'm talking especially to Christians here -- are responsible to and for them.
If we take Jesus seriously, we will always have the poor with us (Matthew 26.11; Mark 14.27). So we should always work to care for them, as we would care for him. Because caring for the poor is caring for Jesus (Matthew 25.34-40).
The awful vulnerability of the poor is my own vulnerability to death. They only live with that vulnerability every minute of every day.
There's a common political narrative these days in the US that blames our national economic ills on the poor. They're lazy, they're draining us dry, we need to exercise "tough love" and force them to work. Cut them off any cycles of abusing dependence.
Thing is, once we Americans become serious about life, I'll listen more carefully. Once we're honest about our spending priorities, I'll listen. While we spend more on guns and bombs and a military complex that's more than any other nation, I'll continue to aid the poor.
Because at the heart of the Christian witness is our stepping into this state of vulnerability as a sacrament of resurrection, to bear witness to life in the midst of death's works. This is why the Christian witness is most potent among and with the poor. Among the poor, the power of death at work in all our our lives becomes most obvious and, thus, creates the location where the witness of resurrection is most clearly revealed. This is why the work of God is most clearly observed among "the least of these".
Standing with and for the poor is being a biblical prophet. It has nothing whatsoever to do with whether I'm a capitalist or a socialist. I'm neither: I'm Christian. Standing with and for the poor is, in a funny way to Americans, speaking God's good news. We are all lovable. We are all cared for. Though our lives are filled with anger and though we be enemies (with God and with one another -- Romans 5.1), standing with and for the poor is standing against the powers of death. It's being a resurrection people.
So, sure, I challenge anyone who repeats these tired political talking points that blame the poor. Particularly when those talking also want to claim America is a Christian nation. Because to blame the poor is unChristian.
When death is triumphant and powerful -- when we humans struggle with a hellish life -- that's most where good news is spoken.
The Word of God is secretly present in the life of the poor, as in the life of the whole world, but most of the poor do not know the Word of God. These two facts constitute the dialectic of the Church's mission among the poor.
All that is required for the mission of the Church among the poor is there already, save one thing: The presence of the community which has and exercises the power to discern the presence of the Word of God in the ordinary life of the poor as it is lived everyday. What is requisite to mission, to the exposure of God's Word within the precarious and perishing existence of poverty, is the congregation which relies on and celebrates the resurrection.