Who Are 'the Rich' and 'the Poor'?

In last month’s column I expressed a conviction that fundamental changes in the attitude of church leaders will be a necessary first step toward restoring to the church its biblical self-image; and the claim was put forward that poverty, though an evil by any biblical standard of values, must at times be endured (even pursued!) for the gospel’s sake. Our present age is one of those times; and what a deluge of defenses emerges from our corporate conscience when we begin dealing seriously with such an idea! In fact, a very great brouhaha occurs whenever ordinary Christians discuss poverty in relation to the gospel -- I suppose because opinions are divergent and old and run deep and strong. However, I think today’s Christian credential in an egalitarian and one-world-minded society is tenuous enough to leave us exposed as fraudulent if we continue to equivocate.

The big question is, by what criteria, in the spirit of the New Testament meaning of the term the poor, can we assess whether we are among those who are the happy and blessed in that condition?

A great deal of homiletical pap has been served up in order to season Luke’s 'the poor' for the popular palate; and much rejoicing has been done among the affluent because Matthew supposedly removed the subject from the realm of economics by adding the words in spirit. But I find it helpful to speculate about who the poor Jews of the first century might have been -- it helps me keep a clearer perspective.

Undoubtedly the meanings of ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ gathers some peculiarly religious and ethical content during the course of their use through Jewish history, but I find nothing in scripture to convince me that their obvious economic content was ever fully displaced. The outcast and despised ‘poor’ of the early psalms and of James epistle were surely economically depressed as well as downtrodden, and I suspect that not all of Israel’s poor were pious persons happily aware of their dependence upon God. Nor were all the rich self-sufficient sophisticates devoid of genuine piety. There was at least one New Testament man of means (Joseph of Arimathea) who was deemed good and righteous as well.

Jesus never accused the rich of being evil, but he dropped some heavy hints about how hard it would be for them to enter the kingdom of God.

But consider the poor for a moment. If you have ever lived in an urban ethnic ghetto you know that contrary to the fatuous assumptions of some (cf. The Interpreter’s Bible on Matthew 5:3), circumstantial poverty has never in itself offered its victims anything but misery, suffering, and disease. Enforced poverty is the breeding ground for a host of malevolent spirits: bitterness, despair, deceit, hatred, rage, violence, destruction, indolence; and of such was never a godly character formed.

However, in theory, at least, the poor Jew had something more going for him than his wretched circumstance. He had Yahweh. Suppose that through familial indifference or the finagling of a tricky businessman a Jewish man was reduced to the indigence of near-slavery. His and his kinsmen’s powerful and ethical God, Yahweh, whose life-encompassing law made provision for mercy, for restitution, and for vengeance was a common father to the rich and the poor. There was hope of relief. Given, then, the fact of an overriding faith and trust in his God (i.e., overriding the natural inclination to be embittered by oppression and persecution), circumstantial poverty could sharpen a Jew’s sensitivity to utter dependence on Yahweh whose record of faith-keeping might even engender a certain amount of peace in adversity.

Also, look at it from another point of view. A Jew, in accordance with Levitical social and economic laws, might conceivably distribute his personal resources among less fortunate kinsfolk and thereby become liable to economic deprivation himself; and depending upon the caprices of the local climate or politics, he might even expose his own children to a condition of want. I suspect that the potential for indigence was never far from the door of an average law-abiding Jew, and only an acute trust in Yahweh’s faithfulness and love for justice and mercy could keep him from succumbing entirely to the acquisitive economic practices of Gentile nations round about.

So the poor Jew was the one who, according to the law, relied solely and totally upon Yahweh for the provision of his every immediate need, for his future security and reputation, for his health and the well-being of his kinsfolk, and for protection against his enemies. To use an anachronism, he saw his entire life as a sacrament -- a visible sign of Yahweh’s faithfulness to care for those who would take him at his word, those who were willing to watch their personal history wonderfully unfold -- guided not by the might of human strength, nor by the power of human wisdom, but by the spirit of God’s love.

Are there any such poor among us clerics?

I am thinking of a young man, not seeking ordination, a trained lawyer. He has given himself to be part of a traveling team of Christian men and women who carry a renewal message of life in the power of Christ’s spirit for the churches. He has no time for clients or a law practice. He has no salary, and his only income is a portion of the unsolicited offering received and gladly shared with the rest of the team. He has no social security, no retirement or health insurance, no endowment policies for his children’s education, no savings or anticipated inheritance. His only possessions are his clothing and a few personal effects. He seems happy and comfortable; but each year that goes by he forgets more and more of the law he once knew, and the chances of his entering the profession once again grow increasingly slimmer.

Is he a fool?

Perhaps he is the poor.

Graham Pulkingham, former rector of Church of the Redeemer in Houston, Texas, was a contributing editor to Sojourners and one of the leaders of the Community of Celebration in Scotland, an international center for promoting church renewal, when this article appeared.