Faith and Works in the Face of Poverty – Br. Curtis Almquist
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Br. Curtis Almquist
Prophets were held in honor so long as they were talking about distant people, about “them.” But when prophets were in their hometown, among their own people, talking about “you,” the prophets were abhorred, and sometimes stoned to death. Jesus spoke and acted as a prophet, and that was trouble. We can distill the hometown people’s disdain of Jesus just by looking at what is now happening in our own country and elsewhere around the world.
Jesus aligned himself with the poor. Among the destitute beggars were the sick and disabled, none of whom had anything similar to Medicaid. Unskilled day laborers, migrant workers, and slaves were also among the poor. If there was a famine or a war, they starved, like the people of Gaza just now. Another social factor was hugely important for rich and poor alike: being regarded with dignity. Several days ago I visited a food pantry, and those waiting in line would not make eye contact with me.
Jesus also aligned himself with sinners. Sinners were people who could not pay the temple tax with their “tainted” money, or make a sacrificial offering, or observe the sabbath, or practice ritual cleanliness. They were held with contempt. People labeled as unclean were prostitutes, tax collectors, those charged or convicted of crimes, prisoners, and herdsmen. The uneducated or the resident aliens who did not speak Hebrew or Aramaic were caught in the trap of not being able to understand or negotiate the law. We need only look at what is now happening in our own country to people who are not proficient in English, those whose skin color is not white, those who do not have just access to sound legal representation. There is certainly no “prosperity Gospel” evidenced in anything that Jesus taught or did. He aligned himself with the misaligned.
In one of the confessions of sin we use in this Chapel, we confess our own sins and those sins done on our behalf. Quite. We must pray for the amendment of our own lives, and the same for our governmental and corporate leadership. And we must act. We must act in some way to redress the egregious poverty that surrounds us in many forms. As we heard read in The Epistle of James: “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but does not have works? … Faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.”