He said also to the one who had invited him, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”
Luke 14:13-14
Do you puzzle over how to care for the poor? I do. Hardly a week goes by without my wondering what we should do or can do in reaching to them.
I have followed conversations about poverty and the poor for decades in both the civic and the ecclesial worlds. I am old enough to remember the War on Poverty launched by the Johnson Administration. I remember the needs testing of welfare that was the product of a partnership between Democrats and Republicans during the Clinton era.
I’ve also been involved in efforts made by the church. Food pantries, overnight refuge programs, can good drives, and coat drives. I’ve read amazing stories about one non-denom in Chicagoland that built a 13 million dollar structure that offered instruction in parenting, citizenship classes, infant care, job searches, and included a garage where cars were repaired and mechanics were trained at the same time. (Some of my mainline friends groused about that last effort just because it was a non-denom. I asked them when they remembered a mainline denomination spending 13 million dollars on anything but lawyers.)
I’ve also been part of conversations in the church about what Christians should do. And I confess, very few of them have been helpful. There is usually a lot of blame-laying (often by people who don’t do much for the poor but spend a lot of time talking about them). And there are very few data-driven conversation about kind of program really makes a difference. The point of most conversations seems to be, wealth-bad, poverty-good. (I doubt that the poor would agree.)
And, then, I am sure that most of you have the same exposure I have to the needs of the poor on a regular basis just traveling to and from work. People stationed at intersections, hoping for a few dollars. People trolling the parking lots of groceries and coffee shops. Or specific appeals, many of them made at the doors of our churches.
My whole interior debate has been more difficult as a result, because you eventually discover that some of the same people come by, over and over again. I don’t resent them continuing to be in need – that isn’t the issue. And I don’t think that we should ever tire of caring for the poor. But I do wonder if we are really helping at all, if the people that we aid don’t achieve greater independence.
I can’t hope to resolve a problem in single article, that I haven’t been able to resolve over a lifetime. But what I do hope to do is broaden the conversation beyond the well-worn path it takes by reflecting on the words of Jesus.
The first thing to note from just these verses in Luke 14, is that Jesus doesn’t launch into a disquisition on economics and he doesn’t offer up a picture of what the government of Rome or of Israel might do to care for the poor. Instead, he turns to the most fundamental act of hospitality in the Ancient Near East: “When you give a luncheon or a dinner…”
This may seem to be strangest feature of the entire passage. Jesus doesn’t suggest that poverty can be eliminated. In fact, elsewhere, he reminds his disciples that poverty will always be a feature of life (Mt 26:11, Jn 12:8). He doesn’t launch into conversations about wealth redistribution or ownership of the means of production. Instead focuses on what could be rightly described as the homeliest of acts – sharing a meal.
Some of us don’t entertain much, so this may not even seem to be a thing. But in the Ancient Near East, sharing a meal was an act of reconciliation. You sat together. You conversed. Eating drew people together and created friendships. The whole image was so important that in the New Testament it is the last supper that prepares the disciples for his crucifixion, and it is a feast that becomes a metaphor for the Kingdom of God – both now, in the Eucharist and in the world to come.
Caring for the poor, then, has an immediacy and simplicity that anyone can embrace. It doesn’t require huge resources. It doesn’t require a governmental agency. In fact, those things can isolate us from the act of caring, and they can insulate us from the responsibility to care. Our obligation to care for the poor can’t be discharged by making it someone else’s problem or by voting for someone else to do it.
And hospitality to the poor is never a responsibility that we can pronounce, “job done”. Poverty and need are a feature of a broken world. Wealth and poverty are relative and constantly shifting. And even the poor can be wealthy.
I have a dear friend who has been homeless on and off for several years, who now lives in a shared community of men. Many of his housemates suffer from profound cognitive limitations. But even though he depends entirely on a Medicaid check and other assistance, he shares his food and his phone with the men who live in the same house. He treats them as friends, and he works hard to communicate with them and foster community.
A second thing to note is what Jesus has to say about the guest list: “When you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.” Now, I think that it is pretty wooden to assume that Jesus is putting a hard stop on eating with friends. Hyperbole has been the language of preachers ever since the first prophets.
But what Jesus is underlining is a fact about the poor that is almost always missing from secular conversations about poverty. In our materialistic culture, poverty is all about money and possessions. That is undoubtedly why we assume that putting money in the hands of people is the key to conquering poverty.
But while the Old and New Testament acknowledge the possession-driven nature of poverty, they both – along with Jesus – think of poverty as life without identity, presence, connection, and purpose. This is why the poor are often lumped together with widows and orphans. This is why the guest list Jesus outlines matters. An hour or two at a meal with the poor would really mean very little, until we realize that a meal of that kind also says, you are recognized, you are a friend, and, above all, you are a child of God.
But maybe the thing that will throw us the most is the final observation that Jesus makes: “And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”
A lot of people who read that line conclude, “Oh, I see, so this is really about you earning a reward – a place in heaven.” And, in a way, that is the same conclusion that lurks behind the logic that you should always care for people, without acknowledging that your relationship with Jesus prompted you to care.
But this isn’t about awards. It’s about seeing the world for what it is in the light of the Resurrection.
I read an article recently about a young entrepreneur who set as his goal becoming a billionaire by his 30th birthday. He treated going to university as a business proposition. He carved up his friendships based on their utility to his goals. He lived largely in isolation for four years. And he completely missed the connection the choices he made, the 70 pounds he gained, and the stress related illness he suffered in the meantime.
His was an unreal world. A world of acquisition.
Jesus is saying, you live in a world where that kind of calculation – or something like it – seems to make good sense. But that’s not the world you live in. This is a Resurrection world and whether you acknowledge it or not, life’s larger enterprise is a journey into God in Christ. One in which you participate now and one that goes on, long after the grave.
You can make that journey by embracing the poor as your companions, or you can ignore them, and use them and your friends as a means to an end. But the path that corresponds to reality is a reward in and of itself. It leads back to God.
So what are we to make of our responsibility to the poor? I don’t have a complete answer. I wish I did. But here are somethings to contemplate:
One, let’s realize that caring for the poor (in all that word means) will always be our responsibility. The poor will not disappear. And we cannot “farm out” our responsibility to them.
Two, let’s remember that caring for the poor is about more than material possessions or money. It is about identity, belonging, and purpose. If we don’t offer those, we haven’t offered enough.
Three, let’s remember that our efforts to care for the poor should never be about us. It is about our shared journey into God in Jesus Christ. We should always keep that purpose at the forefront of what we do, and we should never be embarrassed to acknowledge that this vision of reality animates all that we do and all that we long to share.
And let’s remember that no matter how large or small, the healing act of hospitality to the poor is something that we can all offer.
Here’s the thing: If you think that Jesus is doing a comprehensive review of your estate and running a comparison with billions of people around the world. Or, if worse yet, you are comparing everyone above your income level, comparing them with everyone who has less, I’m not convinced that is the point.
My mother grew up in a log cabin with a dirt floor. In seminary, I lived in an 8x 25 foot trailer, 25 feet off of a railroad track. But all she had access to was a high school diploma. I was a graduate student with a bachelors degree and a typewriter.
The real question is, do you have more than others you can reach out to now? Do you know people who have less, who lack relationships, belonging, and meaning? Then you are wealthy, they are poor, and how will you reach out in love?
If the church, the Body of Christ, is the instrument of God’s healing in the world – the healing of our relationship with God and with one another — then care for the poor is about restoring our brothers and sisters to a place of identity, belonging, and purpose, grounded in God’s vision of us all as God’s children, made in God’s image.
Thanks
Jesus, help us to be instruments of that healing.
Photo by Jonathan Kho on Unsplash
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In