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\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n He said also to the one who had invited him, \u201cWhen 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.\u201d<\/p>\n Luke 14:13-14<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Do you puzzle over how to care for the poor?\u00a0 I do.\u00a0 Hardly a week goes by without my wondering what we should do or can do in reaching to them.<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0 I remember the needs testing of welfare that was the product of a partnership between Democrats and Republicans during the Clinton era.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve also been involved in efforts made by the church.\u00a0 Food pantries, overnight refuge programs, can good drives, and coat drives.\u00a0 I\u2019ve 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.\u00a0 (Some of my mainline friends groused about that last effort just because it was a non-denom.\u00a0 I asked them when they remembered a mainline denomination spending 13 million dollars on anything but lawyers.)<\/p>\n I\u2019ve also been part of conversations in the church about what Christians should do.\u00a0 And I confess, very few of them have been helpful.\u00a0 There is usually a lot of blame-laying (often by people who don\u2019t do <\/em>much for the poor but spend a lot of time talking about them).\u00a0 And there are very few data-driven conversation about kind of program really makes a difference.\u00a0 The point of most conversations seems to be, wealth-bad, poverty-good.\u00a0 (I doubt that the poor would agree.)<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0 People stationed at intersections, hoping for a few dollars.\u00a0 People trolling the parking lots of groceries and coffee shops.\u00a0 Or specific appeals, many of them made at the doors of our churches.<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0 I don\u2019t resent them continuing to be in need \u2013 that isn\u2019t the issue.\u00a0 And I don\u2019t think that we should ever tire of caring for the poor.\u00a0 But I do wonder if we are really helping at all, if the people that we aid don\u2019t achieve greater independence.<\/p>\n I can\u2019t hope to resolve a problem in single article, that I haven\u2019t been able to resolve over a lifetime.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n The first thing to note from just these verses in Luke 14, is that Jesus doesn\u2019t launch into a disquisition on economics and he doesn\u2019t offer up a picture of what the government of Rome or of Israel might do to care for the poor.\u00a0 Instead, he turns to the most fundamental act of hospitality in the Ancient Near East: \u201cWhen you give a luncheon or a dinner\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n This may seem to be strangest feature of the entire passage.\u00a0 Jesus doesn\u2019t suggest that poverty can be eliminated.\u00a0 In fact, elsewhere, he reminds his disciples that poverty will always be a feature of life (Mt 26:11, Jn 12:8).\u00a0 He doesn\u2019t launch into conversations about wealth redistribution or ownership of the means of production.\u00a0 Instead focuses on what could be rightly described as the homeliest of acts \u2013 sharing a meal.<\/p>\n Some of us don\u2019t entertain much, so this may not even seem to be a thing.\u00a0 But in the Ancient Near East, sharing a meal was an act of reconciliation.\u00a0 You sat together.\u00a0 You conversed.\u00a0 Eating drew people together and created friendships.\u00a0 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 \u2013 both now, in the Eucharist and in the world to come.<\/p>\n Caring for the poor, then, has an immediacy and simplicity that anyone can embrace.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t require huge resources. \u00a0It doesn\u2019t require a governmental agency.\u00a0 In fact, those things can isolate us from the act of caring, and they can insulate us from the responsibility to care.\u00a0 Our obligation to care for the poor can\u2019t be discharged by making it someone else\u2019s problem or by voting for someone else to do it.<\/p>\n And hospitality to the poor is never a responsibility that we can pronounce, \u201cjob done\u201d.\u00a0 Poverty and need are a feature of a broken world.\u00a0 Wealth and poverty are relative and constantly shifting.\u00a0 And even the poor can be wealthy.<\/p>\n I have a dear friend who has been homeless on and off for several years, who now lives in a shared community of men. \u00a0Many of his housemates suffer from profound cognitive limitations.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 He treats them as friends, and he works hard to communicate with them and foster community.<\/p>\n A second thing to note is what Jesus has to say about the guest list: \u201cWhen you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.\u201d\u00a0 Now, I think that it is pretty wooden to assume that Jesus is putting a hard stop on eating with friends.\u00a0 Hyperbole has been the language of preachers ever since the first prophets.<\/p>\n But what Jesus is underlining is a fact about the poor that is almost always missing from secular conversations about poverty.\u00a0 In our materialistic culture, poverty is all about money and possessions.\u00a0 That is undoubtedly why we assume that putting money in the hands of people is the key to conquering poverty.<\/p>\n But while the Old and New Testament acknowledge the possession-driven nature of poverty, they both \u2013 along with Jesus \u2013 think of poverty as life without identity, presence, connection, and purpose.\u00a0 This is why the poor are often lumped together with widows and orphans.\u00a0 This is why the guest list Jesus outlines matters.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n But maybe the thing that will throw us the most is the final observation that Jesus makes: \u201cAnd you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.\u201d<\/p>\n A lot of people who read that line conclude, \u201cOh, I see, so this is really about you earning a reward \u2013 a place in heaven.\u201d\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n But this isn\u2019t about awards.\u00a0 It\u2019s about seeing the world for what it is in the light of the Resurrection.<\/p>\n I read an article recently about a young entrepreneur who set as his goal becoming a billionaire by his 30th<\/sup> birthday.\u00a0 He treated going to university as a business proposition.\u00a0 He carved up his friendships based on their utility to his goals.\u00a0 He lived largely in isolation for four years.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n His was an unreal world.\u00a0 A world of acquisition.<\/p>\n Jesus is saying, you live in a world where that kind of calculation \u2013 or something like it \u2013 seems to make good sense.\u00a0 But that\u2019s not the world you live in.\u00a0 This is a Resurrection world and whether you acknowledge it or not, life\u2019s larger enterprise is a journey into God in Christ.\u00a0 One in which you participate now and one that goes on, long after the grave.<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0 But the path that corresponds to reality is a reward in and of itself.\u00a0 It leads back to God.<\/p>\n So what are we to make of our responsibility to the poor?\u00a0 I don\u2019t have a complete answer.\u00a0 I wish I did.\u00a0 But here are somethings to contemplate:<\/p>\n One, let\u2019s realize that caring for the poor (in all that word means) will always be our responsibility.\u00a0\u00a0 The poor will not disappear.\u00a0 And we cannot \u201cfarm out\u201d our responsibility to them.<\/p>\n Two, let\u2019s remember that caring for the poor is about more than material possessions or money.\u00a0 It is about identity, belonging, and purpose.\u00a0 If we don\u2019t offer those, we haven\u2019t offered enough.<\/p>\n Three, let\u2019s remember that our efforts to care for the poor should never be about us.\u00a0 It is about our shared journey into God in Jesus Christ.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n And let\u2019s remember that no matter how large or small, the healing act of hospitality to the poor is something that we can all offer.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s 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.\u00a0 Or, if worse yet, you are comparing everyone above your income level, comparing them with everyone who has less, I\u2019m not convinced that is the point.<\/p>\n My mother grew up in a log cabin with a dirt floor.\u00a0 In seminary, I lived in an 8x 25 foot trailer, 25 feet off of a railroad track.\u00a0 But all she had access to was a high school diploma. \u00a0I was a graduate student with a bachelors degree and a typewriter.<\/p>\n The real question is, do you have more than others you can reach out to now?\u00a0 Do you know people who have less, who lack relationships, belonging, and meaning?\u00a0 Then you are wealthy, they are poor, and how will you reach out in love?<\/p>\n If the church, the Body of Christ, is the instrument of God\u2019s healing in the world \u2013 the healing of our relationship with God and with one another \u2014 then care for the poor is about restoring our brothers and sisters to a place of identity, belonging, and purpose, grounded in God\u2019s vision of us all as God\u2019s children, made in God\u2019s image.<\/p>\n Thanks<\/p>\n Jesus, help us to be instruments of that healing.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Photo by Jonathan Kho<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 He said also to the one who had invited him, \u201cWhen 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. 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