The Poor Are Always With You...
Sunday, 22 April 2007 @ 3:36 PM
The Poor are Always with You
Isaiah 43:16-21; Psalm 126; Philippians 3:4b-14; John 12:1-8
How much greed and selfishness
has been exercised in the name of this saying of Jesus? How many times has
economic evil been justified by reference to this verse? It is so simple to
extrapolate indifference to poverty from this verse, to claim that poverty is
inevitable and thus we have no responsibility for it. That such an
interpretation flies in the face of everything Jesus asserts about poverty has
not stopped this insidious message infecting our lives.
What else, then, could this story
be about?
The other readings this week are
about looking forward to a time of restoration. This story of Mary anointing Jesus
with expensive perfume is also about that. It is a week before Passover, not
long before Jesus will eat a final meal with his disciples. Mary anoints Jesus
for his burial, prefiguring how the church should serve one another (foot-washing:
John 13), and Jesus speaks of where the church will be once he has gone. Does
he? Yes, that is the meaning of the saying “You always have the poor with you,
but you do not always have me.” It is an interesting saying, because though it
speaks of a future reality (Jesus will soon not be with them) it expresses this
in the present tense. Jesus vision of the church is one in which “the poor are
always with you”. An ironic question lurks: “Are the poor always with you?”
What are the implications of the
poor always being with us, with the church? It seems to mean that Jesus knows that
poverty will continue far into the future. I don’t mean to imply that Jesus is
sanctioning poverty. On the contrary, his life, death and resurrection enable a
world without poverty.
But Jesus’ life and parables never call us to solve
poverty. They give us the resolve to do something in response to poverty. The gospels are full of stories encouraging and
challenging us to respond to poverty and pain: visit the prisoner, feed the
hungry, invite the lonely, sell our possessions, cloth the naked, touch the
leper. None of these call us to “end poverty”. But too often, like Judas, we do
want to end it…with money. Throw 300 denarii at the problem, text at a rock
concert and poverty will be made history, like our stinging
conscience. Instead, Jesus calls us to “make poverty personal”.
In his study of John, Wes
Howard-Brook claims that Jesus’ response to Judas outlines a more radical
response to poverty than “more money”. Instead of the poor being made objects
of charity, they are brought close as intimate friends. How many of us can
claim, as a trusted friend, a person who is poor, marginalised, oppressed?
What
does/can it mean to be friends, to be with the poor? The poor will not only be
with us, they will be in our houses, they will be at our parties, they will
reject us, they will play with our children, they will cook for us, they will
steal our stuff, they will give us gifts, they will drop in unannounced, they
will let us know secrets, they will know our secrets, they will ask for money,
they will not appreciate our efforts, they will be human.
Dave Fagg is "Seeds Bendigo - Long Gully" convenor. He is a secondary school teacher and works with young people in Long Gully.
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