Take these as the answer to your question, John. The blind see again, and the lame walk around; lepers are made clean, and the deaf can hear; the dead are raised, and the poor have the good news preached to them.
Signs of the Kingdom, signs of God’s reign.
John asks the question, “Are you the one who is to come?” And Jesus answers, “All these sick people are being healed. People who have been unclean are clean again. And the poor have the Good News preached to them.”
There’s a list of people with physical disabilities and diseases, and then the addition, a different category altogether, “the poor have the Good News preached to them.” All the rest are forms of blessing; all the rest seem to depend on the power of a miracle worker. But preaching Good News to the poor—why is it on this list?
I have been slowed in the process of thinking about this by having seen “Ben-Hur” in 10th grade. I hear Jesus say, “blessed are you poor” and my mind jumps back to Methodist Youth Fellowship in the basement of the Ewen Church, a hand-me-down TV and a VCR displayed pastel cinematography in which people with scarves on their heads take seats on rocks, and gaze up at Jesus preaching the Sermon on the Mount, with a kind of glowing, rapturous look.
These are the poor, but they’re really nice people. They don’t deserve to be poor, they’ve just gotten a raw deal, probably because the Romans are oppressing them or something.
But now I have a theological education, and I now know that my “Ben-Hur” vision of the poor is inadequate. The point about being poor, in Jesus’ society, is not just a question of having enough food. The point about being poor—you too have theological educations and you know this—is that if you’re poor you can’t keep the law.
You don’t have the wherewithal to keep the Law, because you can’t make the proper sacrifices, and your poverty might force you to take on unclean kinds of labor, and you simply end up living your life outside the circle of respectability.
You’re faced to live your life in a state of ritual uncleanness. In the world of the New Testament, this is an illness, too, as much in need of healing as blindness or leprosy.
Of course we are no less needy for healing, even if we’re not literally blind or poor. What does this mean?
For starters, it means asking God to release us from that which besets us…from tendencies to sound pious, our public displays of crossing ourselves at the right times, our stained-glass voice, or peculiar cadences that emphasize words we think need emphasis, or the arrogance of thinking that you don’t have to use the Hymnal because you know all the stanzas by heart, or the fact that most of us have been, at some point, performative in speech or action—hoping for, but not asking for, a good photo to post on social media that we can call “prophetic leadership.”
Secondly, it means being released from our perfectionism in Holy Orders because none of that will get us into the kingdom, and besides, doing it wrong will not diminish God’s desire for our place in the kingdom. This is Good News, and although right now I’m pointing up the absurdity of it all, it’s not trivial. It’s the fundamental Good News that we’re saved by God’s grace, and not by our own doing.
In the story, it was Good News to the poor, Good News to the outcasts of society, to those who, because of their poverty, couldn’t keep the Law; they’re outlaws.
But the pastel tones of “Ben-Hur” squeeze their way into my imagination again. So I feel sorry for the poor; I preach a kind of pastel Good News to them because they’re not a threat to me, because they stay in their place, on the screen, the literal one I use every day, and the one in my mind and heart. They’re out of my reach, and more to the point, I’m out of theirs.
But if we want to get in touch with the Good News of Jesus Christ, if we’re shocked by the outrage that is the in-breaking of God’s Commonwealth, then we need to turn away from the screen, and look around to see the undeserving poor warehoused in bursting prisons, the undeserving poor—the people filling the penal code wards of our way-too-few mental hospitals, and more and more, people who are unhoused, and neighbors running from ICE, documented or not. These are the people forced to spend their lives outside the margins of respectability, or who must navigate everyday a chaotic and mean-spirited-by-design federal government.
All of it makes me uncomfortable, probably because of my investment in my own respectability, and also because, let’s face it, the people I’m describing scare me. I’m afraid they’ll be violent, or that I will dislike their dirt or smell.
A few Sundays ago I was with a parishioner with schizophrenia, and I felt uncomfortable and inadequate, as I do with other folks who can’t talk in the same kind of straight lines that I like to think in. Do you feel comfortable in the presence of ones in our society labeled “drug dealer,” or “robber,” or sex offender.” Maybe you do, but I bet there are folk in your congregation who don’t.
If we’re disciples of Jesus Christ called to make disciples of Jesus Christ we must proclaim the Good News to those on the margins, to the very people of whom I am most afraid. And in this way of thinking and praying, I feel a little stuck, by my inadequacies—and by the very limitations of my bounded little life, and by my fear.
The fact is Jesus Christ is the Messiah, not I. That’s the key, isn’t it? And so long as I succumb to believing otherwise, I can wrap myself in my outrage at being victimized or oppressed, and wrapped in that outrage, my fists stay clenched tight—which makes it hard to be open-handed, and impossible to be open-hearted, to the true victims whom I encounter.
Nevertheless. Nevertheless…here is the feast of the reign of God, a perfect antidote for a Messiah complex or a victim complex. This is the altar on which to place all our obsessions, and lay them at the foot of the Cross. Here, once again, we practice loosening our tight fists, and opening wide our hands and hearts to receive.
Yet it’s also the place to give thanks, and to ask God to take our gratitude and transform it into generosity. Finally, this is the place—right here—to offer ourselves, our souls and bodies, with all of our inadequacies, to God, and find ourselves transformed to be preachers and healers of the Kingdom itself.