“We have had more than enough of contempt, too much of
the scorn of the indolent rich, and of the derision of the proud.” says the
Psalm we read today.
Like most of the Psalms, we don’t know what context these
words were written in or for, but the passion in them is obvious .The Psalm is
at least 2500 years old, but it could have been written at any point in
history. These could have been the words of someone forced to enter a Victorian
workhouse – deliberately humiliating places, designed so that people would do
almost anything to avoid having to enter them. They could be the words of
someone who has to resort to a foodbank today; however well and humanely they
are run, no one uses them for fun. It is hard work to be poor, and depressing,
and tiring and complicated. It makes everything more difficult. It is harder to
access and benefit from education. You have fewer opportunities and less
protection from risk, so it’s harder to try new things. But to add to all that
you also have to contend with those who have never been there, or who have but
have escaped it somehow, and who are often all too ready to sit in judgement,
to assume that those who have
less are less; less valuable, less hard-working, less careful, less conscientious.
The contempt, scorn and derision the Psalmist complained of 2500 years ago is
just as prevalent today as it ever was; you only have to take a look at the
tabloid press to see that.
It was interesting to read that Psalm today alongside the
other Bible readings we heard, because they too had things to say about
poverty. St Paul and Ezekiel both discover that God is with them in times when
they are poor in spirit , battered down by life. God’s strength is made perfect
in weakness, says Paul. In the Gospel Jesus tells his followers to choose material
poverty deliberately. He sends them out on their first mission, with nothing
but the clothes on their backs and a stout stick. No bag, no money, no bread. No
back up if they find themselves homeless, nothing to smooth their way if it all
goes wrong and they have to buy themselves out of trouble. I have heard of
travelling light, but this is something else. …
My guess is that very few of us would be happy setting off like this
anywhere, no matter how resourceful and adventurous we are, let alone to do the
challenging task of preaching and healing. It would seem irresponsible, asking
for trouble. But Jesus is clear. It is as if he is saying “if you get the
baggage issue right the message will follow.”
Why is this? Preachers will often explain it by saying that
it is about the disciples learning to trust in God rather than in their own
strength. That’s a valid and valuable point. But I think that there may be more
to Jesus’ instruction to the disciples to take nothing on their journey than
simply this. I believe he is trying to break the very deeply rooted link that
we all tend to make between material success and the blessing of God.
As the Psalmist said it is easy for people to look down on
those who are poor. We lazily assume that if life is going well for us it is
because we are cleverer or stronger or more hard-working than those who seem to
be failing. There’s nothing wrong with wisdom, strength or hard work, of
course, but the link between those qualities and worldly success is often less
clear and constant than we might like to think. Why do people rise or fall in
the world? The truth is that it is often just as much by luck as judgement.
Success is affected by the family we are born into, the people we encounter
along the way, the good weather that
ripens a vital crop or the bad weather that destroys it. Political instability,war and unjust trading practices tilt the playing field so that some have it
easy while others struggle.Billions of people around the world who work harder
than most of us could ever imagine still live their whole lives in dire
poverty.
We might be able to
overcome a bad start if we have other gifts we can use, like physical strength
or intelligence, but these things are handed out by a genetic lottery; it is no
reflection on our intrinsic worth if we have, or don’t have them. The fact that
some manage to pull themselves up by their bootstraps doesn’t mean that
everyone can – you have to have some bootstraps, for a start. It isn’t fair that it should be so, and we are
all called to right injustice where we can, but there will always be some who
fall between the gaps; it might be others, it might be us, now or in the
future. So it is also important that we learn to talk and think about poverty
in ways which don’t demonise or reject those who find themselves stuck in it.
When Jesus sent out his disciples with nothing it was one
way of breaking the link between economic and personal worth. Effectively he
sent them out as beggars; they would be
dependent on the good will of those they worked among. That has to have been
tough. They weren’t wealthy people, these fishermen and tax collectors, but as
far as we know they weren’t destitute either. I’m sure they took pride and
comfort in being able to provide for themselves and their families. Going out
with nothing was a huge challenge to them, not just in material terms, but
because it made them look at themselves afresh. It forced them to discover how
much of their sense of self-worth was tied up with having a decent income and a
secure background and the respect of those around them. There’s no promise in
this passage that they would always find a welcome on their travels – if there
was Jesus wouldn’t need to tell them what to do when they weren’t welcomed.
This wasn’t a test of their faith in God, designed to show them that if they
believed firmly enough they would always find themselves with a three course
meal and a comfy bed at the end of the day. It was a confrontation with
reality, with the insecurity and fear that stalks human life and which we all,
sooner or later, have to deal with.
It mattered that they sorted this out, because they would
certainly face opposition and hatred later. Many were arrested, tortured and
killed for their faith – they lost everything, including their good names. It
was the same for Jesus. We tend to think of Jesus and the disciples as good
guys, but to many at the time they were dangerous blasphemers, bad influences
whose needed to be silenced. The story that the Gospel reading began with gave
us a glimpse of this danger.
Jesus had been preaching in his own home town. The people
who heard him were astounded, but evidently not in a good way. “Who does he think
he is?” the crowd asked. He was just a carpenter – not someone who had been through
the theological training of a Rabbi. What was more they described him as “the
son of Mary”. People in that patriarchal culture would usually have referred to
people as sons of their father, not their mother, even if the father was dead.
To call him the son of Mary implies that that there is something distinctly
questionable about his parentage. Mark’s Gospel, the earliest one we have,
doesn’t have any stories about Jesus’ conception or birth. It doesn’t mention Joseph
at all or any other father. We have to
wait for Matthew and Luke’s Gospels for the familiar Christmas stories. Mark
doesn’t seem to have heard of the Virgin Birth. It is reasonable to assume that
Jesus’ neighbours in Nazareth thought he was illegitimate – that’s the
implication of what they say here. That would have been a cause of stigma at
the time. Whether it was true or not is neither here nor there – it was what
people believed, and maybe what Mark believed too. His birth was only the
beginning of Jesus’ humiliation, though. He would go on to die a shameful
public death on the cross, a means of execution deliberately designed to
humiliate and to expose criminals to mockery.
So if Jesus’ disciples thought that following him would
bring them honour and respect, and that this would be proof that he was sent
from God, they needed to think again. For their own sake, as well as the sake
of those they would be ministering to, they needed to learn that material
success and popular acclaim weren’t signs of God’s blessing, and that lack of them
weren’t signs of God’s curse.
“Blessed are the poor,” said Jesus. We are very used to
those words, but they weren’t obvious at all to those who first heard them. It
was a message that had an electrifying effect on those who first heard it
though. The crowds who flocked to Jesus, and those who made up the early church
were disproportionally made up of the poor, slaves, women and others who would
have been disadvantaged in their world. They knew good news when they heard it, and
the news that they – even they - especially they – were blessed and loved by
God was like water in a desert. They found new dignity in following Jesus’ way.
They discovered the truth that set them free, that they were of infinite worth
to God, however much contempt, scorn and derision the world heaped on them.
It is a message which is as important now as it was then. It
is important whether we think of ourselves as poor or rich in the world’s terms,
because the truth is that all of us are both at some stage. Sooner or later we
all have to face situations in which we don’t have what we need, whether that
is money, health or status. However charmed a life we may seem to lead none of
us is invulnerable. Whether we are rich or poor, contempt, scorn and derision
are no part of God’s view of us, and they should be no part of our view of
others, and no part of our view of ourselves either when trouble strikes.
Instead we are called to open our hands and hearts to one
another, in our need and in our riches, in our weakness and in our strength, so
that together we can rejoice in and share the limitless generosity and grace of
God. Amen
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