Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? James 2:5
There’s an obvious link between today’s Old Testament and Gospel reading about the unsealing of the ears of the deaf – it’s about Our Lord fulfilling the Old Testament as Messiah, the promised one who comes to help people hear the word of God.
I felt God lead me though to the reading that stands rather on its own – the epistle of James Chapter 2 which speaks of the blessings of poverty. It seems as if James’ church had rather forgotten what Jesus said about the poor since the rich were getting the best seats in church! At any rate the apostle makes a striking point that it’s those who are poor according to the world…God chose to be rich in faith.
What do we make of this? Or for that matter of the blessing Jesus himself announces upon the ‘poor in spirit’ in his Sermon on the Mount.
Seeing all those refugees and would be refugees from Afghanistan puts in your mind’s eye how, faced with the need to flee, what would you take with you, or even, less emotively, faced as we often are with short breaks what not to take! That sort of review touches on a key feature of spiritual poverty, the call to detachment which goes alongside confidence we should have as children of God in Our Father to provide for us in all circumstances. God bless the many migrants across the world who are fellow believers and victims of international unrest with such confidence and provision.
There’s a school of Christian faith that speaks of abandonment to providence. Jesus is said by St. Paul to have ‘emptied himself, taking the form of a slave’ in his abandonment to God’s will. It is this sort of poverty that’s in Christ himself that’s spurred on his Saints all through the ages. St Francis of Assisi is the great example, casting even his clothes to one side to belong wholly to the church as servant of God! There’s a story of how the Bishop of Assisi one day said to Francis: ‘Your way of life without possessions of any kind seems to me very harsh and difficult’. ‘My Lord’, Francis answered, ‘If we had possessions we should need arms for their defence. They are a source of quarrels and lawsuits, and are usually a great obstacle to the love of God and one’s neighbour. That is why we have no desire for temporal goods’. There’s wisdom there! The migrants on TV again speak of this!
The wealth of the rich is their strong city we read in Proverbs 18:11-12, in their imagination it is like a high wall…but humility goes before honour. The ‘high wall’ riches can literally raise up can all too easily put worldly honour before humility. This ‘honour’ is also the false lure of materialism into which we are brainwashed day by day – the valuing of people for what they possess rather than for who they are as those loved by God bearing his image!
What does it mean to be ‘poor in Spirit’? It means to have a true knowledge of God for who he is and of ourselves as who we are. To know God in his infinite grandeur is to know oneself as a child of God yet materially nothing and less than nothing through sin.
We all want progress writes C.S.Lewis but if you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back on the right road; and in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive. To be poor in spirit is to be progressive in that you go further when you’re travelling light. When you repent of ‘seemingly little sins’ and turn back from an alluring path you’re not regressing on your spiritual journey but progressing. You’re seeing all sins are great and you’re moving forward in the knowledge of God as the great God he is and as his beloved daughter or son.
Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements – surely you know! Have you commanded the morning since your days began, and caused the dawn to know its place? Job 38:4,5,12 Words from God provided through the poetry of the book of Job. If you’re ever feeling self-satisfied pick up your Bible and turn to Job 38 – it puts you in your place more than any other passage I know and moves progress for you in the sense we’re examining! What must he be like who made the earth, who provides the dawn new every morning? Who stretches out the stars above?
From our town we enjoy splendid views of the South Downs and have ready access to the beauty of Mid Sussex which motivated my ‘Fifty Walks from Haywards Heath’ with its quotes from scripture and the Sussex poets. What must he be like who designed the grandeur of the Downs?
When James warns being ‘rich in faith’ means poverty according to the world this must be at the heart of his concern – that a true knowledge of God in his infinite grandeur brings with it humbling recognition of one’s inadequacy! Our capacity to do harm is a deadly quality even though balanced by capacity to do good things.
As someone put it, our poverty is like that of a song compared to the singer. We are like a song of the Lord – he is the singer, we are the song. How can the ‘song’ compare itself to the singer?
Yet it is our privilege to be able to live in the praise of God! Here at the Eucharist, the great thanksgiving sacrifice of the Church we can admit this truth – all things come of God and of his own do we give him… through, with and in Jesus Christ!
If poverty of spirit is about detachment, abandonment to providence and humility it is also a whole sphere where we find Christ in this world. In Matthew 25 Our Lord’s picture of the Last Judgement portrays the poor as manifesting his own hidden presence. As C.S.Lewis again wrote, next to the Blessed Sacrament your neighbour should be to you the most sacred object on the earth.
We are to welcome Jesus in a moment in the Blessed Sacrament. God in the material order, hidden in bread and wine. As we welcome him here, may he open our eyes to see him elsewhere in the material order - particularly in the run of our lives in the coming week - that we may encounter him in the needy - those who are enduring personal ordeals in need of attention - our attention, our time, our money if needs be, especially to serve Afghan refugees.
God free us to travel lighter in our Christian pilgrimage more detached from material things, abandoned more to his purposes. The Lord deepen our humility, strengthen confidence in his provision and set our hearts more into the praise of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed all might, majesty, dominion and power now and henceforth and to the end of the ages. Amen.
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