It’s not so long ago that a New Zealander had to go overseas to actually see poverty rather than just read about it. But within the last couple of decades we’ve seen the re-emergence of genuine poverty here in God’s Own Country, as well as the growth of a genuinely rich class. Poverty here is certainly not the absolute destitution of the Third World poor, who would give their eye-teeth to change places with our poor, and it has eased somewhat more recently. But it can still be real enough, all the same. I myself think of two places in particular: some rural Maori communities I’ve seen, and the rental housing at the back of the houses fronting some of the streets in one of my previous parishes.

Now poverty was also real in the Palestine of Jesus’ day. And it was real in the rest of the Roman Empire. The Christian message found a ready hearing among the poor in the cities around the Mediterranean. Including Corinth, perhaps the third largest city of the Empire. And in this morning’s epistle reading Paul writes to the Church in Corinth as though it were predominantly a church of the lower classes. He refers to their lack of education, power and noble birth. (Political power and education so often go with wealth, especially inherited wealth, don’t they?)

But Paul doesn’t make soothing noises about “pie in the sky” when they die. He doesn’t make revolutionary noises about storming the barricades and overthrowing the system, either. Nor does he encourage them to climb the social ladder - “keep your nose clean and you too can share some of the goodies trickling down”. Instead, he takes their present condition and explains its spiritual significance, drawing especially on Jeremiah 9:23-24 (which lies behind much of this section of his letter). And he points to what is a profound pattern in God’s dealings with us human beings.

When God seeks to touch and influence human life and history, where does he choose to start? with those on the underside of history. He turns away from the centres of human power, whether secular or religious, and goes to the relatively powerless or underprivileged.

To Israel, a rabble of Hebrew slaves within the Egyptian Empire (see Deuteronomy 7:7, for Moses’ words emphasising this).
God goes to barren women like Sarah.
God goes to youngest sons like David.
He goes to faithful remnants within Israel, broken and humbled by conquest and exile.
He goes to Galilee, a district suspect to the orthodox, rather than to Jerusalem, the heart of the religious establishment.

And when we work through Christian history we find again and again that God’s new beginnings usually seem to start away from the centres of institutional power. At a Vision New Zealand Conference some years ago I heard it put like this – ‘religious movements begin with the poor. Structural change on the other hand comes from the elites’ I’m not sure this has been universally true, but as a generalisation I think there’s considerable truth in it.

But who are the ‘poor’, Scripturally speaking? (And the ‘poor’ are referred to again and again and again in the pages of Scripture.) The word ‘poor’ translates the Greek ptochoi and the Hebrew anawim. It’s too easy to give a simplistic answer, whereas the reality is richer and more complex. In the Bible, the ‘poor’ are those
(1) who lose out before the powers that rule this world - political, economic and social AND (very importantly)
(2) who out of their affliction continue to trust in God and look for His deliverance. Which is what Matthew’s version of the Beatitude emphasises. ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven’. Our New English Bible translates it non-literally but probably accurately as ‘Blessed are those who know their need of God’.

The ‘poor’, the anawim, therefore, are not a socio-economic class as such. They cannot be identified with Karl Marx’s proletariat, nor can the category of class war be introduced into the Bible. But neither can the anawim be spiritualised, separated from their social condition of deprivation.

(3) The same beatitude in Luke’s Gospel fastens on material poverty. ‘Blessed are you who are poor…’ and adds ‘woe to you who are rich’ – which is rather difficult to ‘spiritualise’ away. Now there is in Luke’s Gospel the possibility that the anawim also include those who are voluntarily poor. The Lukan Jesus is addressing the disciples when He says ‘Blessed are you poor’. Are they poor because they are Jesus’ disciples, or are they disciples because they are poor? Whatever the answer, enforced poverty is not a virtue in the Scriptures, but like suffering it’s an evil, to be fought against and eliminated. Yet as with suffering, good and remarkable qualities can issue out of it:
* those who have little are likely to be much closer to the grain of life, knowing what really matters, having a truer sense of values;
* those with little are often remarkably generous (as any door-to-door collector or street-collector for charity can testify);
* those with little are often more likely than the rich to have real faith in God. Not necessarily to come to church more, but to have real faith.

‘Religious movements begin with the poor; structural change comes from the elites’. Now why? Why does God seem to choose the poor, the simple, the powerless? I can think of at least three reasons (apart from the obvious fact that globally speaking the underprivileged are almost by definition in the majority).

(1) God is a God of justice and mercy. He loves the anawim, He seeks to redress the balance amongst human beings, to restore the wholeness of human community when it’s been distorted and broken by the powerful. God’s ‘justice’ in the Bible is not a matter of even-handedly dealing out punishment to criminal wrongdoers, as in our customary use of the word. It’s a matter of intervening in the interests of the less powerful. In the Scriptures a ‘just’ king is one who protects the weak from the strong. And God’s justice and His compassion are very closely linked; we can’t play off the one against the other.

(2) Those without power, whether political or economic or educational, are more often open to God. They know they have many needs, they know they are not self-sufficient. They are often therefore more aware of their spiritual needs as well. The powerful on the other hand are often proud, confident of their ability to live life in their own strength. In the course of my ministry I’ve often wrestled with the question, ‘what is the Gospel for those who believe they are strong’? Those with power will support and use religion, any religion, to control the masses. But they will not easily surrender control over their own lives to God. This is why Jesus says, ‘Blessed are those who know their need of God [the poor in spirit], for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven’ (Matthew 5:3), and why He said that it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Reign of God.

(3) God is an all-wise God. And starting with the poor or the less privileged is His chosen mission strategy. Yes, there are individual people who are both humble and open to God and have wealth and influence and education. And there are many individual people who are both poor and proudly closed to God. But collectively, the rich are more closed, and the poor are more open. Do you really think that it’s an accident that it’s in the wealthy First World that the Church is struggling, indeed declining, while it’s in the poor Third World that it’s expanding? It’s neither an accident, nor is it the poor’s doing. It’s God’s doing. Only He can bless mission, (though we humans can impede it).

The great mission frontier of the 21st Century is among the urban poor in the huge cities, especially in the Third World where the bulk of the world’s population will increasingly be. Our century is seeing a new development in human history: for the first time ever, the majority of the world’s population is urban, not rural. And population growth will be in the cities of the Third World. Which is why Christian bodies like ‘Servants of Asia’s Urban Poor’ are so relevant.

Let’s turn our attention to churches - to denominations and to local congregations. Does the same principle apply - that God chooses the lowly? However uncomfortable it may be to some Christians, the answer is yes. Whenever a church starts to take pride in its numbers, its wealth, its institutional power, its wisdom and talents, and congratulate itself, forgetting God the giver and seeking to live in its own strength, then that church begins to die spiritually, even if its numbers hold up for a while. And the dying is speeded up if that church is allied to the powerful of this world.

We Anglicans, as still the largest denomination in this country, and with an Establishment history in England and a pseudo-Establishment history here, are being disciplined by God at this time, as is our Mother Church in England. If this opens our eyes and we turn to God in humility, then we may start growing again in spiritual vitality and perhaps in numbers. There are local Anglican churches where this is happening. But there are also small denominations in New Zealand where God is doing some quite remarkable things. Though even there, apparently “successful” congregations which have become proud have started to experience difficulties.

As with denominations, so with individual congregations. When we act in humble dependence on God, from our hearts, then there is growth of one sort or another, sooner or later. When we don’t become ‘poor in spirit’ before God, then sooner or later we die, sometimes institutionally, certainly inwardly.

Most Anglican congregations are middle class, neither very rich nor very underprivileged. That means we have a choice, a choice of learning humble dependence on God, or going the other way. Make no mistake, New Zealanders continue to strive to find their essential identity and security in the acquisition of wealth or of power of one sort or another, or of the sort of education which leads to wealth or political power. That’s the way our society has been moving. And so in this election year this is what most political parties will be playing to. And New Age spirituality has been a perfect religious expression of this. The term ‘New Age’ may be less used now than a little while ago, but the substance of that spirituality is still very much with us. We have to consciously move in the other direction, as individual Christians and as a Church.   

But what we Christians must do above all else is to return again and again to Christ crucified. Paul resolved to know nothing while he was with the Corinthian Church ‘except Jesus Christ and him crucified’ (1 Corinthians 2:2). For there we see the self-emptying love of God. There we see His identification with the powerless of the world; indeed, Jesus is the archetypal “poor man”. (St Francis of Assisi was drawn to Christ’s poverty, not to bird-baths.) In the Cross we see the cost of obedience to God’s purpose in this world, and the path God takes to achieve His purpose. There we see what the proud and powerful of this world think of God, and what God thinks in His mercy of them. Of them? Of us.

The Cross of Christ judges us, and forgives us. It defeats our merely human power, and empowers us with God’s power. It brings us to our knees before the holiness of God, and it raises us up to serve Him in His world.

Blessed are the anawim, the poor in spirit, for theirs, theirs is the kingdom of God. So let’s make sure we are numbered among them.

A sermon preached by the Revd Canon Peter Stuart in St Alban’s Anglican Church, Eastbourne, on 3February 2008.
Texts: Matthew 5:3; 1 Corinthians 1:26-30

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