Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral, Kansas City, MO

The Poor In Spirit and the Just Plain Poor

February 15, 2004 (Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany)

- Jeremiah 17:5-10
- Psalm 1
- 1 Corinthians 15:12-20
- Luke 6:17-26

“God has a preferential love for the poor not because they are necessarily better than others, morally or religiously, but simply because theyy are poor and living in an inhuman situation that is contrary to God’s will. The ultimate basis for the privileged position of the poor is not in the poor themselves but in God, in the gratuitousness and universality of God’s agapeic love” (See the citation at the bottom of this page.)

These words about the poor and God’s particular love for them were written by Gustavo Gutiérrez, the father of liberation theology. Liberation theology had its origin in Latin America, in the homes of laborers and farm workers. It is very concerned with social justice, particularly with the plight of the poor. Liberation theology is a very practical kind of theology, its primary feature being a model of alternating practice and reflection; participants in liberation theology go back and forth between reflecting on the Gospel message of liberation and seeking to bring that message to reality and the circumstance of their lives.

I went looking for this quote when I read the Gospel lesson for today. It may have sounded to some of you like you were hearing the beatitudes. “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled,” etc. It sounds like Jesus’ beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount. Only this Gospel reading was from Luke, and Jesus delivers it on a plain.

At first I wondered why we were reading this bit from Luke when really the version in Matthew is so much more well known. Matthew’s beatitudes are a little more graceful, a little better spoken. Perhaps the lectionary is just trying to give equal time to Luke out of a sense of fairness. Yet if I were going to preach on the beatitudes, I’d want Matthews version in front of me.

Then I looked a little closer and began to notice that the little differences between the beatitudes in Matthew and the words of Jesus in Luke were fairly significant little differences. In Matthew, Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they shall inherit the Kingdom of Heaven.” In Luke, Jesus says, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” What’s the big difference? Well, what’s the difference between the poor in spirit and the just plain poor? And which was Jesus talking about?

We can’t know exactly which way Jesus said it of course. But it does make a big difference. If Jesus was talking to the poor in spirit, then he could have been talking to me. But if Jesus was talking to the just plain poor, then he wasn’t talking to me. Compared to nearly every other person on the planet, I’m filthy rich, which means that the Kingdom of Heaven might just be a little harder for me to reach. Matthew’s version with the poor in spirit certainly makes this saying of Jesus’ more accessible to me and the rest of us relatively well-off Americans, but in the process of taking it to a more spiritual level, Matthew has taken some of the edge off of Jesus’ words.

Something very similar can be said about the next beatitude in line. Luke has Jesus saying, “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.” Matthew has it, “Blessed are you who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for it shall be given to you.” Maybe I’m splitting hairs here, but it seems to me like there’s a difference between hungering for righteousness and just not having enough to eat.

And this isn’t the only place in the Gospels where such double meanings can take the edge off of Jesus’ words. Consider the prayer Jesus taught his disciples. “Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” The Lord’s prayer: we say it all the time and everyone knows what it means, right? Daily bread refers to the eucharist and trespasses are sins, right? The modern translation even makes it easier: “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.”

There’s another way to say that line of the Lord’s Prayer though, one the Presbyterians use: “Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” All three of these translations are correct: trespasses, sins, and debt; the original language carried all three meanings. Yet while trespasses sounds like an old fashioned word for sins, debt carries a very specific meaning, even today.

And let us not forget that when Jesus taught the disciples this prayer he had not yet instituted the eucharist via the Last Supper. Which means that “give us this day our daily bread” is actually about bread; if Jesus meant to foreshadow the Eucharist, the disciples certainly wouldn’t have caught his meaning.

So what we have then, right in the heart of the Lord’s Prayer, the only prayer Jesus ever explicitly taught his followers to say, are the two greatest concerns of the world’s poor: what are we going to eat today, and how can we pay our debts. Judging by the number of people who eat at our community kitchen each week, and the number of payday loan stores on the other side of Troost Avenue, these two concerns remain big issues for the poor of today as well.

I am convinced that when Jesus said poor, he meant poor, not just poor in spirit. And when Jesus said hungry, he meant hungry, not just hungry for righteousness. He may have meant those other things too, but not more than he meant just plain poor, and just plain hungry.

I am further convinced that Gustavo Gutiérrez and liberation theology are on to something with the concept of God’s preferential love for the poor. All throughout the scriptures, particularly in the Gospels, you find evidence that God has a special interest in the poor.

So now comes the most difficult part of a sermon on the poor preached to a predominantly middle class parish: What, for the love of God, are we supposed to do about this? It seems to me that once someone who is not poor has come to hear Jesus’ message regarding the poor there are usually two initial reactions. The first is to feel guilty. The second, is to convince yourself that you really are poor. Let me be the first to admit that I am guilty of both these reactions.

Liberal guilt is a concept widely known: the idea that most of the charity projects undertaken by the middle and upper classes of the economic scale are done so out of a sense of guilt. This concept is based on that first reaction I mentioned. If you know you are not poor, and realize that it’s not really fair that lots of people are, this is bound to cause feelings of guilt. The feelings may be even more strong if you think God has a particular love for the poor. I for one am not immune to these feelings.

One way to deal with this guilt is the second of those initial reactions I mentioned: to convince yourself that you are poor. I’m sure most of us have met someone who is constantly telling anyone who will listen how tight their money is, how close they are to being broke, how they can’t afford the things they really want or need. I hope I’m not as bad as all that, but I can’t say that I’ve never looked at my Kia sitting in the parking lot next to a BMW and felt justified for being “poorer than thou”.

But I still haven’t answered the question. What are we supposed to do? In the face of poverty and a God who loves the poor most especially, how can we who are not poor respond? One answer at least can be found in the idea itself, inside the concept of God’s preferential love for the poor.

If God does indeed love the poor most particularly (and I’ve convinced myself if no one else) then God must wish the poor to be helped. And while the poor certainly need God to provide them with a sense of spiritual peace (as do we all), they also need food, and clothes, and jobs. Yet God cannot provide these things, at least not directly. God has no hands in this world but our hands. The hands to help, the hearts to love, the backs to lift, and the minds to enlighten can only be our minds. God has no others.

By now I imagine some of you are beginning to wonder if I have really spent the last ten minutes of your lives telling you that charity is a good thing and God would probably like us to do more of, which you already knew. I suppose I have done just that. Yet the same act of charity can be done out of a sense of guilt, or of self-justification, or of honest seeking after God. The first two will likely end up being resented, both by you and those you seek to help. The third might just possibly bring you closer to God.

This Cathedral operates several ministries to the poor. The Kansas City Community Kitchen, The Social Action Committee’s Emergency Assistance Program, and the Culinary Cornerstones Job Education program are the most obvious examples. All of us are proud to be a part of a place that does such good work. Fewer than all of us are really engaged in making those ministries flourish.

I urge you to give, of your time, of your skills, of your wealth. Not out of a sense of guilt, nor out of a need to prove you are not one of the uncaring rich. Give of yourself because doing so is a spiritual discipline the results of which will return to you ten fold at least. Give of yourself because doing so makes you the instrument of God’s love to people God loves most dearly.

The quotation at the beginning is from Gustavo Gutiérrez, “Song and Deliverance,” in Voices from the Margin: Interpreting the Bible in the Third World, ed. R. S. Sugirtharajah (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1991) 131.