On Not Ceasing to Be Poor

The gospel's focus is on God's love for those who will never be winners, never be whole, never succeed. Its loving word to them is not that by God's help they can rise to well being and success, but that they do not have to be whole, they don't have to be winners. It reminds the poor that we are here above all to be holy, i.e., we are here to be embraced by the holy God, to enter into God's glory, to be "partakers of the divine nature," to be bathed in God's holy life. Now, that it certainly a kind of healing, a kind of well being, a kind of peace (in the big cosmic, social, economic, existential, and political sense of that term), but it is a peace that does not give itself for analysis and categorization in any of the systems of meaning that we use to get through a day. This peace is non-teleological and it does not yield to any strategy for survival or success. That is what it means that it is the mutilated body of Jesus that was raised from the dead, not an intact one.

But the gospel is also kind of us as we struggle to make our way through precarious days and nights. Its focus on those who will by no means ever achieve anything anybody would ever call happiness, this focus, leads to a concern for those whose suffering could be ameliorated, even if only for a while. And so, the good news for the poor who will never stop being poor is also good news for the poor that might no longer be poor, if there are changes in economic and political and medical policy, or by a friendly act of kindness by a neighbor.

And since it is no longer necessary to be whole, to be pure, to be holy, the work, say, of the church makes no demands on the poor, insisting that they conform to somebody's idea of what a pure life might be. The task of the church is to enter into the love of God and thus care for the poor (and every sufferer, on the way to the poor) and in so doing, without demand, to call the poor (and every sufferer, on the way to the poor) into God's love.

That God's Ways Are Not Our Ways

Gentiles