The following article is adapted from a meditation given in Cincinnati, Ohio, in February 1983. The occasion was the annual gathering of pastors from communities which comprise the Community of Communities, a circle of communities of which Sojourners Fellowship was a part. —The Editors
The spiritual journey goes on—in our individual lives, in our local communities, in this Community of Communities. More than three years ago I spoke on this journey as a journey into weakness, and leadership as suffering servanthood. There is, however, a far greater significance for our journey into weakness. It is not only for the sake of developing trustworthy spiritual leadership or even for the reason Paul cites "that the power of God might be made known in our weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:9).
Our journey into weakness is absolutely essential for us to minister to the poor and to discern the true meaning and significance of the good news in our contemporary historical context. Perhaps our journey into weakness could more accurately be called a journey into poverty or littleness. Whereas weakness defines human experience in the language of self-analysis and self-perception, poverty or littleness describes human experience in broader economic and sociological terms. When we speak of the "poor" or the "little ones" we are speaking of more than psychological perception; we are speaking about historical realities related to wealth, position, and power.
When I first realized the meaning of the biblical challenge to "identify with the poor" I hardly knew how to respond. How could I, with all my North American, middle-class, white, male options and opportunities, ever experience what the poor of my neighborhood, let alone the poor of the Third World, experience? It seemed too huge a leap to take in one lifetime, let alone in a few years.
Yet through my attempts to live in obedience to the gospel and to communicate that gospel to my children and to my church community, I have come in touch with a profound poverty both in our society and in myself. I have come to understand new dimensions of what it feels like to be poor and little, and although these in no way exhaust the meaning of the terms, I have found it important to examine them, especially in the light of Scripture. It has been humbling to face my personal poverty and littleness and our poverty and littleness as a church community. And I am beginning to see that it is important to learn how the gospel is good news for my own poverty in order to address the gospel to the poor in our neighborhood and beyond.
This experience of poverty and littleness has many dimensions. Some of the more personal ones are in spiritual, emotional, physical, and relational areas. However, such poverty is not limited to the personal: the concrete choices the gospel calls us to make bring us into direct conflict with the wealth and power of our society, and when we refuse to go along with these forces we become their victims.
God calls us to let go of more and more of our North American options that ensure us ready access to power, prestige, education, financial security, and other social advantages. As we respond to this call we begin to experience the oppression, the discrimination, and the violence that are so much a part of the daily lives of the poor. We feel more and more of the tyranny of our own nation and culture as we draw closer to the poor and oppressed, as their struggle becomes ours.
But it is our personal poverty that remains most real and painful. Although the biblical truth is that we are choosing true riches and finding the life of God's kingdom in the midst of the poverty and death of our society, we are still caught in the illusion that life around us is rich and full of opportunity and that we are poor and deprived by comparison. Furthermore, we feel impoverished and threatened when the gospel calls us to break with our old mental categories, emotional safeguards, relational patterns, cultural milieu, social class, and even familiar church patterns.
We often find ourselves marginalized and misunderstood, and even ridiculed and opposed, by those in the church as well as in our society. At first we may get more energy from being viewed as radical, but such negative energy doesn't last long. All of us need understanding, approval, acceptance, and good results to keep going, and while we are being converted from what provides acceptance in our society to what provides it in the kingdom, we experience acute poverty and littleness.
Such painful realities give rise to difficult questions. What happens when we can find no obvious successes to motivate us? What happens when we ourselves become victims in the neighborhoods we hoped to serve? What happens when we continue to feel marginalized or ignored by the denominations we feel called to serve? What happens when the energy expended shows no measurable results and we become worn out and humiliated? One biblical [word for] the poor—ani—seems very applicable here. It means the bent over one, the one laboring under a weight, the one not in possession of his or her whole strength and vigor, the humiliated one.
Sometimes it seems that we are caught in a life and death struggle. It is hard to feel vocationally alive without all the rewards of the system and all the usual indications of professional accomplishments. It is frightening to think of the longterm emotional and physical effects of the many stress factors resulting from living a life so at odds with the "normal" way of life in this country.
I have a strong sense that to survive this struggle we need to study the Scriptures and do theology in our context in the way being shown us by our brothers and sisters in Latin America. Gustavo Gutierrez, author of A Theology of Liberation, says, "If our theology is not framed in the context of the salvific dialogue between God and the poor, then it ceases to be the word of God in history about the gift of faith." For us I think that means that if our understanding of God and salvation is not coming from our struggle with God in the midst of our poverty, then it is no longer good news for us or for our culture. In trying to name our North American poverty I am not implying that it constitutes poverty comparable to that which those in the Third World face. But I am asking, "How are we dealing with the realities which make us feel lonely, little, helpless, impoverished, hopeless, tired, and worn out?" And, "Are we discovering the good news which frees us?" I believe that our feelings of littleness comprise our identity with and conversion to the poor, and if we do not experience "good news" in the midst of these feelings, we will never move beyond our poverty, nor will we have heart to encounter more poverty in the poor around us.
Our poverty is not necessarily comprised of being materially destitute but of refusing options that protect us from suffering and the cross. It is a poverty made up of being misunderstood, marginalized, discriminated against, and violated in our historical context for the sake of Christ.
The theology of suffering and the cross is absent from the gospel preached in many of America's most successful churches. It is not only a matter of North American Christianity ignoring this part of the gospel, but a matter of denying that it is even a part of discipleship. A new biblical theology must be shaped by the pain of North American poverty and oppression as experienced by the most faithful in our Christian communities. As church leaders we must recognize and name such poverty and let it shape the formation of our worship life, spiritual disciplines, ministries, and solidarity with one another.
In addition to pursuing a prophetic vision for the church in North America, we must nurture and strengthen those already committed to such a vision so that they will be able to face the resulting conflicts and tensions. This requires theological reflection upon the realities of living out biblical choices in contemporary society. It requires helping people make the biblical connections to sustain their faith and their corporate life. And it requires not only calling for repentance and conversion but pointing to biblical themes that shed light upon our path.
Responses to Jesus' Prophetic Voice
One such passage is found in Matthew 11. After recording how Jesus taught his disciples and commissioned them to work in the kingdom, Matthew describes how people reacted to the kingdom and Jesus' response.
First, Matthew records that John the Baptist's response to Jesus was to send his disciples to inquire whether Jesus was the Messiah. Jesus answers by telling John's disciples to report what they hear and see happening to the blind, the lame, the sick, the deaf, the dead, and the poor. Although such evidence will convince John, Jesus knows it will be a stumbling block for others, so he says, "Blessed is [the one] who does not fall away on account of me" (Matthew 11:6). Here we see Jesus accepting his unpopularity and the offensiveness of his actions and preparing us for the same.
Second, in anticipation of the crowd's reaction to John's strong convictions, Jesus says, "Did you expect a reed swaying in the wind?" (Matthew 11:7). Jesus also anticipates the crowd's reaction to John's lack of social impressiveness when he says, "Did you expect a person dressed fit for a king's palace?" (Matthew 11:8). Jesus goes on to identify John as a prophet and his forerunner, but rather than making him larger than life in the kingdom, Jesus says that John is less than the least in the kingdom. The question is this: Can the crowd accept him, and do they have ears to hear him? (Matthew 11:14-15).
The Prophetic Voice and Jesus' Light Yoke
Jesus then denounces his generation for their attention to style and social conformity and acceptance. They wanted everyone to dance to their tune (Matthew 11:17). They were critical both of Jesus' style and of John's style even though one came eating and drinking and the other didn't.
The society and culture of each age (even in the church) always wants to control the prophetic voice through criticism and caricature, creating a pressure to conform to expectations and be cooperative with the social pressures and powers. Such conformity is the price many "prophets" pay for popularity and success. Jesus' response to such pressure is to point out that truth is vindicated in actions, not in popular or public perceptions and acceptance.
Matthew 11 also shows the response of some Jewish cities to Jesus' ministry. The people in these cities are undiscerning, hardened, and unrepentant. The miracles Jesus is doing may be obvious, but when they take place on the fringes of society among the marginalized people—the blind, the lame, the lepers, and the poor—they don't bring the movers and shapers of public opinion to their knees. What is more, the fact that a city or society is known as godly often works against the ability to recognize the truly miraculous: What shakes and convicts the godless may only be rationalized or ignored by those who are spiritually sophisticated.
Following Jesus' denunciation of the unrepentant cities, we read in Matthew 11:25, "At this time Jesus said, 'I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.'" The ways of the kingdom are being revealed to the little ones, the simple ones. As with Jesus' parables, it was those who seemed so wise and learned who would not understand. It is God's good pleasure (grace) that unlocks the mysteries of the kingdom, not human aspirations and success.
But who are these little ones? They are the marginalized and ridiculed. They are the ones who do not shy away from poverty—their own or that of someone else. They are the "little children" in the eyes of the scandalized, the arrogant, the unrepentant, the wise and learned. And these, who are burdened and weary, are the ones Jesus invites, "Come, and I will give you rest" (Matthew 11:28-30). Jesus offers to ease the yoke and lighten the burden of those who are yoked to him in fulfilling their calling and bearing their load. The heaviness and weariness of this load often comes not from being with the poor but from feeling poor and powerless ourselves and from being treated as if we are insignificant by social and even ecclesiastical standards.
Perhaps we don't allow ourselves to feel our poverty because we still hope for some soon-coming vindication. Perhaps we await the rewarding day when someone in the institutional church will say, "Well done, good and faithful servant!"
What if these words never sound in our ears on this earth? Only then do we fully face what it means to celebrate good news and know the liberation of the gospel even though our circumstances never change. Will we find Jesus to be our hope, our joy, our peace, and our resurrection life in the face of such poverty, pain, and death?
Much of contemporary North American resurrection theology is based on evidence of Christian victory that is wholly unbiblical and even idolatrous. Yet Matthew 11:28-30 promises neither an escape from nor a change in the hard realities but companionship with Jesus and rest. That is the foundation for true biblical liberation!
May this promise encourage us to remain in the same places with the same commitments that Jesus carried and to which he commissioned his disciples. And may we also be united with and encouraged and challenged by the faithfulness of many brothers and sisters around the world who with God's grace still face poverty and powerlessness beyond what we have ever known.
May God create in us a true poverty of spirit so that we may be fully at God's disposal, free from the ambitions, options, power, and prestige of this world, which make us feel poor and little by comparison. Such people our Lord calls blessed. May we be liberated from that stifling and overwhelming sense of poverty that destroys personhood, and may we be freed from the contemporary illusions of life and death. May we then find resurrection life in the midst of what appears to be certain death, and the riches of our Lord's grace to the little ones in the midst of what appears to be hopeless poverty.
Gene Beerens was the pastor of Christ's Community in Grand Rapids, Michigan, when this article appeared.
Got something to say about what you're reading? We value your feedback!