This piece was given at Dalhousie University Student Union Building, Room 224 on Nov.21: a panel on poverty.
Once upon a time, so the story has been told, God dreamed a dream. The dream was a dream that saw the people of the world distributing and re-distributing the world’s wealth. It was idyllic: people were to live and move and be –enjoying life. It was a place where the law was such that it protected the marginalized: grain was left on the sides of the fields, vegetable and fruit crops were not picked clean –so that gleaners could help themselves. The gift of law was full of love, to teach relationship, justice, equality.
Every sixth year the people were to gather and put away enough of the harvest for the following year, for every seventh year was a Sabbath –where the ground would lie fallow, the people would enjoy leisure, people would concentrate on each other.
And every 50 years was a year of Jubilee: where wealth and resources were re-distributed –family land was returned if it had been sold, slaves went free, debts were cancelled. Everyone started again: a new beginning where none had too little, and no one had too much.
Although this dream was grand, the gift of the law was given such that it could come true, but perhaps the dream was too grand for the people. People set about living their lives. It started small with a simple gathering of those things that were needed to survive –then a few extra pleasures; but it didn’t take long for people to start accumulating, saving, growing, investing, amassing, stealing, developing, hoarding,... The world became full of those who had too little, and those who too much.
Centuries came and went, and God’s grand dream was forgotten.
God thought of a new way to share the grand dream with the people; so God came in person –to preach, teach, live by example. This God-person, Jesus,
Welcomed the disenfranchised -women, children
Healed the sick –the leper, the blind, the paralytic
Brought hope to poor: “Blessed are the poor in Spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven”
Those are the sayings, the stories that get told again and again, but this God-person, Jesus was about something quite different. The mission was to wake the people up, particularly those with too much. It was the teaching and answering questions that shared the dream; God-person, Jesus was found speaking to the authorities, the system, the religious leaders, the powers-that-be; and it wasn’t shake-your-hand-let’s-do-lunch politics, it was challenge, in your face confrontation.
It was standing in the Temple watching the people come and give their required, prescribed, offerings to God. And in the moment when the widow came and placed all that she had –her grocery money, her rent, - her two mites; Jesus comments, not for the widow to hear but for the system and those running the system to hear; “She’s given all that she has”; That wasn’t to built up the widow, to suggest that all should give all they have –it was God saying look this isn’t my dream; there is a systemic problem here when the powers-that-be require the poor to have nothing; don’t you see the grand dream, even an inclining of my vision?
Jesus speaks to the people, trying to ignite God’s grand dream: beware of those who teach and like to walk around in long robes and love to be greeted with respect in the market-place; who choose to sit in reserved seats and the best places at feasts; who take advantage of the poor and rob widows of their homes –and yet still go as if all is OK, to worship and pray with a big to-do.
Yes, your right the story is heard and told differently because many of those telling the story are now the ones with too much; too much to lose –too attached to lose – too overburdened too love.
But the story goes that after this God-person Jesus left, there was a small group of those whose eyes did twinkle with the grand dream; their hearts were one and they sought to love. Now some were poor themselves, others had walked with Jesus as he comforted the poor, still others came with wealth: men, women, children, slave, free, from all nations. They saw the dream and thus shared their property and possessions, distributing to each according to their need. The big deals had trouble understanding and were less forgiving of the people who wished to dream God’s dream -to envision and work towards a new world; so the people were quieted –in conflict, by prison, through persecution.
As the story continued to be told, small groups throughout the history of the world caught the wind of the spirit who whispered the grand dream. Those who kindled the flame of this dream offered food, charity – collecting alms; offered medicine, herbs, hospital care for little or no payment; the poor were offered school –the chance to read and write. This was done for the love of the neighbour out of the love the people felt from God.
And the big deals kind of liked it –because they could give guilt money, feel they had done their part, work on behalf of the poor and never get their hands dirty, never change the way they lived.
As the story continues today, there is a group of people who have caught the winds of the spirit who whispers the grand dream; God vision is being painted through NGOs, food banks, shelters, non-profit housing...but the picture is constantly shadowed by graffiti –not the pretty bright coloured bubble kind, but the black ugly destructive sort. The people who have vision never get anywhere, or so it seems. The hope goes from one generation to the next in small patches here and there. Alms are collected, charity given, but nothing really changes.
..it doesn’t change because we as Christians often fail to tell and listen to our own story; the one where this God-person Jesus confronts the powers-that-be, the law.
This is not the end of the story but a moment in the journey of people who wander seeking more, and the more is the grasping and living the grand dream; where none have too much, and no one has too little.
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