Good News for the Poor

For you know how generous our Lord Jesus Christ has been: he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that through his poverty you might become rich. (2 Corinthians 8:9)

Such a powerful and beautiful statement comes to us in the midst of prosaic instruction about finances in the life of the church. Paul takes us from the ordinary problems of daily life in the Christian fellowship and plunges us into the heights of poetry and the depths of theology.

Paul is not just leaving the mundane in order to have a refreshing aesthetic jump into spirituality. He is not just giving us a beautiful truth without consequences; he is, rather, telling us that the sublimity of the incarnation shows a pattern of action to be imitated by the Christian today.

"You know," says Paul. The Corinthians knew that he who was rich became poor for their sake. To begin with, those who had not been able to see Jesus in Galilee received his message from those who could honestly say, "Poor ourselves, we bring wealth to many; penniless, we own the world" (2 Corinthians 6:10). Just like Jesus, they too had a lifestyle marked by real poverty.

Jesus' Poverty
"He became poor" is not only a poetical way to express the truth of the incarnation. Jesus was literally poor.

Sociologically speaking he was in the group that in his time could be classified as "poor." The gospels give us insights about that poverty. He was born in a poor home (Luke 2:6, 7, 24). He might not have had the asceticism of John the Baptist, but his lifestyle was still clearly the one of a "have not" (Matthew 8:19). His teaching shows a tremendous concern for the masses (Matthew 9:36-37), which in Palestine were the poor, like in the Third World today. Jesus' style communicates well to the poor. His stories, about clothes that have to be patched, men who have to borrow a loaf of bread, or women who cannot afford to lose a coin, show an awareness of poverty that has come by experience. His poverty, which is real, not poetical, gives us light for a better understanding of his teaching, and adds credibility to it.

Take, for instance, his statement, "You have the poor among you always" (Mark 14:7 and parallels). It has been used to discourage efforts of assistance to the poor and efforts to change the social order. It has been misused as a cloak for blind conservatism. The circumstances in which the words were pronounced are usually forgotten, and the second part of the statement is also forgotten: "you can help them whenever you like."

But what is worse, in the lips of the rich it really comes to mean: "You have the rich with you always." Whenever it is used by those who have, as an excuse against those who remind them of their responsibilities and those who cry for justice, the words of the Master who was poor are twisted into an instrument of appeasement by the rich and their religious ideologists.

Spiritualized Poverty
Why is the message of a poor Galilean preacher "good news for the poor"? Does he show the poor a way of escape from their misery by providing a vision of spiritual wealth? Is the message he brings suited especially for those who live in poverty and for them alone?

We cannot stop proclaiming Jesus' words today, only because for some people they sound like "pie in the sky."

How blest are you who are in need, the kingdom of God is yours.
How blest are you who now go hungry; your hunger shall be satisfied.
How blest are you who weep now; you shall laugh (Luke 6:20-21).

Blacks, Chicanos, and Indians, the poor minorities of North America, need the fire of these words to warm their hearts. Prisoners of oppressive governments need these words. Harassed and helpless masses running desperate behind messiahs of the right and the left in the Third World need these words. Indigenous peoples of South America, chased by the oil companies and their native agents, need these words.

These words of Jesus for the poor point to the fact that there is a God who sees and judges, who is not indifferent to the human drama behind their poverty. The history of the world is not in the hands of the powerful and the rich.

Speaking about judgment, Jesus also said words that have to be heard today:

But alas for you who are rich; you have had your time of happiness.
Alas for you who are well-fed now; you shall go hungry.
Alas for you who laugh now; you shall mourn and weep (Luke 6:24-25).

Because of so much spiritualization, we have forgotten that the people who rejoiced at Jesus' coming were the poor, the victims of a corrupt and abusive social system imposed by the Roman Empire and its native collaborators. A message about judgment and deliverance is never popular among those who benefit from the existing order, unless they repent and change.

The gospels tell us about two men who were among the rich. Though his lifestyle and belief were very unorthodox, one man, Zaccheus, confronted with the good news, repented and changed radically. The other was an articulate and morally righteous fellow, an "evangelical" in doctrine. But the existing order of which his fortune was a part was too dear to him. He did not repent. It was not that the message was not clear. He understood it quite well, but he preferred his wealth.

Sociological Poverty
Is Jesus' message, then, only for the "have nots"? Some have interpreted it that way. One of the most interesting Pentecostal pastors in Chile was Victor Manuel Mora. In 1928 he founded a church to which only those who were mining workers and socialist could belong. It was a church for the poor; it proclaimed a message for the poor (see Christian Lalive d'Epinay, Haven of the Masses, 143ff).

On the other hand, more than once I have talked to men in Latin America in the tradition of political liberalism who have said to me, "We the enlightened classes do not need religion. We approve of you preaching to the poor. They need it. For them it is the only basis for a good behavior. Protestant religion is good to save them from drunkenness, laziness, sexual abuse, and their tendency to steal." I have also heard American businessmen in Latin America express the same idea. They are cynical about the relevancy of Christianity for themselves, but they are very supportive of the missionary enterprise if it produces "better natives."

We have also the missionary theory of receptivity to the gospel among the poor. A very articulate presentation of it is provided by Donald McGavran, the apostle of the church growth movement, in chapter 13 of his book Understanding Church Growth. In it McGavran tries to make his readers aware that the masses of the world outside North America are poor today. He goes on to show that in biblical teaching God has a special concern for the poor:

These selected passages must not be distorted to mean that God loves the poor and not the rich.... Nevertheless, it remains true that the common people are dear to God. The fundamental thrust of God's revelation demands a high valuation of the masses....

In accordance with these facts, then, McGavran advocates a missionary strategy that will concentrate on the masses and not on the small middle or upper classes:

Eurican (European and North American) churches are middle-class churches. Most missionaries are middle-class people. They have grown up with interior plumbing, electric light and plenty of books. They ride in cars and travel to the lands of their work in jet planes. Really in relation to the masses of the lands to which they go, they are not middle- but upper-class people....

For the most part the strategy of winning the upper classes first has not worked. They will not be won. The middle classes have it too good. Why should they risk losing it all to become Christians?

Although sociology and missionary history both prove McGavran's point, the fact of belonging to the poor classes of society does not in itself make one eligible for the kingdom of God. We must discover the deeper meaning of the term "poor" in scripture and consequently the real meaning of the gospel being "good news for the poor."

Poverty Redefined
A study of the biblical vocabulary about poverty throws helpful light on the subject (see the excellent study by A. Gelin, The Poor of Yahweh). Initially the Hebrew words described material dispossession and stressed the need for a social conscience to help the poor and provide for their needs (Exodus 21-23; Leviticus 19, 25; Deuteronomy 15, 24). Later, poverty became equated with piety, humility, and dependence on God. Thus the Psalms and the prophets are filled with expressions in which the Hebrew root for "poor" is translated as "humble" or "meek" by later New Testament writers quoting those passages (Psalm 37:11 and Matthew 5:5; Zechariah 9:9 and Matthew 21:4-5). Just before the Exile, the process culminates when a prophet like Zephaniah tells us that the hope of the future, the hope of reconstruction and renewal after the national disaster, will be the poor (2:3; 3:12).

Those who were expecting the Messiah were those whose hearts could not trust anymore in human justice, human power, human wealth. Because they were victims of an order where there was no compassion nor regard for the poor and afflicted, they had turned their eyes upon God. By their hope and their trust in the promises of a just God, they were the only living witnesses in a world organized pragmatically around the principle of survival of the fittest. That was the social and spiritual context in which the prophets spoke clearly in favor of the poor by stressing the justice of a God who was in favor of the poor:

Listen to this, you cows of Bashan, who live on the hill of Samaria, you who oppress the poor and crush the destitute...The Lord God has sworn by his holiness that your time is coming (Amos 4:1-2).

And when the Messiah came, his words were very much in line with the Psalms and the prophets, and his lifestyle with that of the poor. For those who had nothing to lose but their chains, his words were immediately perceived as good news. For those who had something to lose, the choice was more difficult (John 12:42-43), but some chose him. The community that developed out of this evangelization took very seriously the problem of poverty, and was exhorted carefully and constantly about the dangers of wealth and status (Acts 2:44-45; 4:34; 20:35; 1 Timothy 6:3-10; James).

Thus, to understand "the poor" in the Bible as only a reference to spiritual poverty is to miss an important part of the message. As in biblical times, today there is a correlation between sociological and spiritual poverty that cannot be dismissed simplistically.

Jesus Christ, the Psalms, and the prophets are still a threat to the rich and the powerful. Jesus Christ still is the only power that can demythologize human idols of the right and the left. That is why the powers that be ask for a Christian message that will make no reference to material, social, and political realities. They want a domesticated message that will not challenge executives or commissars but will only be used in church buildings to produce somnolence and inaction. And we Christians, here and there, fall into that temptation. By cutting, trimming, and twisting, we produce a gospel that is inoffensive and bland: good for marketing but in no way "good news for the poor." Today the world is divided into rich countries and poor countries, and some of the very tensions in which we live come from that fact. Unfortunately, some of our leaders in the Christian world are rich or new rich and find it very difficult to see the world with the eyes of an African American, a Chicano, a Portuguese immigrant, or an American Indian on a reservation. That is what conversion should do for them.

The same happens in the international order. How many times the missionary identifies more with his rich country than with the plight of the masses of the country where he is serving. Repentance must come at this point. Both in terms of the content of our message and our lifestyle, we have a long way to go to be really imitators of Christ's incarnation.

Not all the poor of today automatically accept Jesus as Lord. Not all the rich of the world today automatically reject Jesus as Lord. The god of this world dominates men and women through their wealth in terms of money, power, civil or ecclesiastical prestige, status, culture, education, abilities, institutions, virtue, achievements, and so on. This god also dominates men and women through the fear of chaos, of principalities and powers, of persecution and suffering. From the god of this world, only Jesus Christ can deliver us when, like the beggar who cannot help himself, we extend our hands to him. But who wants to be a beggar?

Samuel Escobar was president of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, Canada, and a contributing editor, when this article first appeared in The Post-American, the forerunner to Sojourners.