GOOD NEWS FOR THE POOR

The Beatitudes in Sunday's Reading from Matthew are declarations about those whom God favors. Each is an affirmation that God takes sides, that God plays favorites. And God’s favorites are the last, the least, the lost, and the left out. Luke's version declare both blessings and woes. 

The first of these, and possibly the best known, is "blessed are you who are poor". 

"Poor" here refers to people who are destitute, people who are so poor that begging and stealing become options for them to survive, people who are drowning in misery.

Two ways to become destitute in the first century were to lose land and to lose one's place in their family. For most people, land was not just property; land was life. Family identity was exceptionally important in the ancient world. People were known as the "son of" or "daughter of" their father, or mother, or clan. War, slavery, and indebtedness left people widows, orphans, and refugees. War, slavery, and indebtedness left people destitute, displaced, and dispossessed. 

The Tanakh (what Christians call the Old Testament) over and over and over challenges the Israelites to care for widows, orphans, and refugees. War, slavery, and indebtedness were all part of the structures and systems of evil that made the rich richer and the poor miserable. Alas, things have not changed. With development aggression, things are tragically worse! 

During the time of Jesus, the 1% owned and controlled the land and practically everything else. Half of the population was slowly starving to death. Life expectancy was 28 years.

When the Gospels talk about the poor, they do not mean the rich who are spiritually poor. Poor does not include the wealthy who live in poor relationships nor the powerful who feel poor. The poor that the Gospels talk about are people who have to beg God in prayer to give them the food they need today because surviving today is how they get to see tomorrow. 

There are people who love to pray this prayer while they have cupboards--or even storehouses--of food enough for a week, a month, a year, or until The Second Coming. These people are NOT poor.

*art, "The Sermon on the Mount," JESUS MAFA, 1973 (from the vanderbilt divinity library digital archives).

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