If there was one scriptural mandate many believers are willing to follow, it would be this one. But probably not how it was intended.
There should be no poor among you (Deuteronomy 15:4)
The Bible has an interesting sub-theme – a motif that runs through almost every page.
Taking verses out of context ignores or obliterates, ahem, the context.
The premise of the Bible is that the kingdom of God is at hand. And the kingdom of God has its own rules, guidelines and intentions.
And this verse is not merely an admonition, it is a condition for an extended promise.
The kingdom of God, unlike the kingdom of humans, is a kingdom where no one is in need or at risk, and there are, literally, no poor in any community where believers are present.
Many communities have “no poor among us” not because there are “no poor”, but because they are not allowed – or at least not visible – “among” the rest of us.
A community, or “kingdom” where, for whatever reason, people don’t find themselves falling off the economic margins would be pretty close to paradise for those who find themselves desperate and vulnerable.
You’d never know it from the version of religion we often hear (or see, especially as expressed in public attitudes and policies) but the topic of Jesus’ first recorded message (Luke 4:14-30) was a focus on those poor, neglected members of his society, widows and orphans in particular, who had no adequate protections from the larger society.
This larger society, with an eye for “the least” would indeed be a working example of the kingdom of God.
You’d think that, among several nations who call and define themselves as “Christian”, that somewhere there would be a region, community or even a town where, the “poor” were not visible, not because they were banned or restricted, but because, literally, there were “no poor among us”.
One might imagine that one of them would initiate something like a friendly competition to literally do what the Bible repeatedly says to do; take care of the weak, broken and demoralized.
Poor people are those who, by whatever set of circumstances, do not belong, are not wanted, and are generally not acknowledged. Usually in a very public way.
A fair appraisal of how “Christian” any community really is, could, at least according to scripture, be measured by this simple criteria; are there any “poor among you?”.
Somehow I am not convinced that gated communities or homeless encampment “sweeps” are what Jesus had in mind.
But, as any observer of religion and social policy knows, we humans excel at following the letter of the law ( or at least convince ourselves that we are following the law) while violating the “spirit of the law”.
But if you have been in almost any city, almost anywhere in the world, one thing you will see in virtually every setting – urban or rural – is the unrelenting, ever-present, obtrusive, and often dangerous level of poverty and desperation.
In the United States, a recent survey showed that the number of millionaires is roughly equivalent to the number of homeless individuals.
To put it simply, this is a very strange equivalence.
It would be a fascinating study to consider how scriptures around the world and throughout history, have framed the concept of wealth alongside poverty.
One Biblical reference, rarely noted in sermons for some reason, addresses directly this cultural and economic dichotomy.
“Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. 50 They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen.” Ezekiel 16:49-50, New International Version
You have probably heard a very different summary of the “sin of Sodom” from preachers or sermons, but this is direct from scripture.
The “sin” that led to destruction of a major city was not wrapped around moral issues, but literally how the rich treated and responded to the poor.
This is, of course, a message most of us don’t want to hear.
What city, or even which individual among us, is not “unconcerned” as we hurry by homeless camps or individuals in crisis?
How many of us are “overfed” while some, in most urban centers it would be many, are hungry or, as the officials tend to put it, “food insecure”?
As a reminder, if one is “food insecure” that person is likely to be “everything else” insecure as well.
Insecurity, of course, presumes vulnerability and desperation, and, for better or worse, no one gets accustomed to vulnerability or desperation, and acting in almost any way to escape those things becomes, not only a high priority but a reasonable, even desirable and necessary response.
Insecure people breed further insecurity. It is to our own benefit and well-being to eliminate poverty, not by pushing it out of sight, or pretending it doesn’t exist, or even by punishing, harassing or shaming those who, for whatever set of decisions or actions, found themselves dropping off the acceptable margins of society, but instead, ensuring, by a variety of means and strategies that there are indeed “no poor among us”.
The kingdom of God, again, in contrast to any human kingdom, is one where everyone is safe and taken care of, and no one is pushed off the margins of civil society. And no one who is pushed off is judged for, if not forever defined by it.
For some reason, crossing that gap, from the kingdom of God to the kingdom of humans, even for people of faith, is just too far to go.
If you’ve been to any communities of faith, most of them tend to identify themselves by their doctrines or traditions.
The Bible, and scriptures of other historic faith traditions, tend to have a very different criteria for evaluating how close, and present, and undeniable the kingdom of God is in any given community.
Stepping into a neighborhood, household or even a nation that held primary the guiding principle that there should be no poor would be immediately noticeable – even something like tangible – no matter what anyone believed or held sacred.
It might be an interesting experiment – social, philosophical or theological, maybe even political.
What if a community took it upon itself to do the right thing, by any criteria, for any reason, just out of common, basic decency.
No faith is required, and no official authorization is necessary. And in most cases, not much of a budget needs to be involved.
We just might find that yes, the kingdom of God, or something like it, is in fact among us.
