I wish Jesus had not said that...

Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
Lent V, Year C
April 3, 2022
 
“You always have the poor with you.”
 
I really wish Jesus had not said that.  It is so radically off message.  After all, 11 of his 39 parables are about the folly of hoarding money.  One of Jesus’ most central messages is that we are to care for everyone, especially and particularly the poor.  If we pull back and read the Bible Jesus had, even before the Gospels and the Epistles and Revelation, there are more than 2000 references to the poor as emblematic for our call to love all people, not with our emotions but with our actions. 
 
“You always have the poor with you.”  That is such an oft lifted line and hopeless view of poverty, usually giving the speaker an out, a justification for cynicism or fatalism about poor people, or at least, a way to end a conversation and move onto a more comfortable subject matter. 
 
“You always have the poor with you.”  The Muslim faith has a saying they repeat regularly roughly translated “It must be the will of God.”  It is said often as a way of living with what cannot be explained, or that which is uncomfortable and frustrating. Further, my friend, Ed, reminded me that there are no weather reports in Saudi Arabia.  The reason for this is that it would be presumptuous and arrogant to predict the will of Allah.  It could also be that there are only two kinds of weather there: hot, and really hot.  “It must be the will of God” is onthe one hand, a faithful way to accept reality.  On the other, it is a safe out like “You always have the poor with you,” rendering us free of moral agency, innocent of what we allow or enable,  as if we are just just flapping in the wind of God’s capricious activities.
 
The pervasiveness of evil, the random chance and cruelty of bad things happening to good people is a question for the ages with no satisfactory answers this side of eternity, does not mean we are created with no free will of our own.  “Things happen for a reason” is what some folks tend to say because there is nothing else to say, and tends to do more harm than good.  Rotten things can and do happen.  The world can be terrible, tragic, and awful.  The world can be beautiful, amazing, and wonderful too.  Even in the face of unspeakable tragedy, we can show up with casserole, cookies, and the willingness to just be there, not trying to do anything to make us feel better.  We may not know the will of God, but that does not mean that we are helpless to be God’s hands, feet, agents, actors, givers, and advocates in this world. 
 
 
“You always have the poor with you.”  This is the closer of this short vignette about Jesus’ stopover in Bethany, a bedroom community outside of Jerusalem.  Unfortunately, it steals the thunder of the message, and provides the convenient line to put to rest our unease about the scandal of poverty.  As with most things biblical, it is better expressed in context.
The backstory is this.  Lazarus has been raised from the dead.  Jesus is having a big celebration dinner with Lazarus.  His sisters Mary and Martha are there serving up the feast.  In the middle of all that, Mary cracks open the nard.  Nard is an exceptionally expensive and fragrant oil used to anoint the dead, covering the stench of rotting flesh in an era without embalming and refrigeration.  There are lesser quality oils, but the Lazarus family must have some resources.  This pound of nard Mary slathers on Jesus tired and dirty feet is a left over from that which still gives Lazarus a sweet-smelling cologne.  Of course, John the gospeler is all about symbol and metaphor too.  Mary is foreshadowing Jesus’ death, and highlighting the sacrifice that is to be made.
 
Meanwhile, Judas is grumbling at his end of the table.  A pound of nard is worth about an average year’s wages.  Surely, it could have been sold and the money used to help the poor.  Of course, John throws some shade on Judas, saying he was skimming of the communal bank account, so his sentiment is tainted at best.  “You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”  Still, we have to wonder.  Even if he is a scoundrel, does Judas have a point?
 
“You always have the poor with you.”  Jesus knows that even 300 denarii is not enough to fix the problem, but the statement is not what it appears if we take it by itself, apart from all of his teaching about money and, people with money.  Over and over, Jesus speaks of abundance in God’s kingdom.  When people get money, people tend to see it as a limited resource.  While it may be so for them and us, and the irony is that the more folks have, the more conscious folks are about protecting what we have.  Clearly, a billion is not enough, if you are a striving and scrapping billionaire.  In God’s economy there is plenty.  It is not that there is not enough food, it is just that food is unevenly distributed.  There are not too few resources for God, there is a lack of imagination, faith, and generosity on the side of humanity.  Our nation spends more than half of all we have, collectively, on what we call defense.  Defending what we have.  And it is naive and idealistic to say that this is not needed, but it is no less shocking or scandalous that humanity is so short of our potential to wage peace.
 
“You always have the poor with you.”  Maybe Jesus says this because poverty is a sign of opportunity for God’s people to participate in God’s abundance.  Maybe Jesus says this because poverty is not just about money.  As fallible humans, we experience a poverty of hope, imagination, generosity, peace, patience, kindness.  This is not the will of God.  This is the absolute, utter, and stark statement of our need for God to rearrange our wills, imaginations, and priorities.  
 
True, we may not give it all away and go all ascetic on the world.  True, we cannot blow up the world’s economic systems, rearrange the distribution of wealth, or enforce an ethic of enoughness for the 1 percent.  The world may be as it is because humans are inherently sinful and selfish, BUT, that does not have to be because of us.  Just because something is does not mean God wills it that way.  We have agency.  We have ability.  We have influence. 
 
“You always have the poor with you.”  We always have the poor with us because we are broken and in need.  I take it back.  I am glad Jesus said it, because it is the Truth.  Amen.