Beatitudes: Blessed Are the Poor

Blessed are you who are poor,
    because God’s kingdom is yours.
Luke 6:20

What?  We are blessed by being in poverty?  I don’t know about you, but at first ­– and second ­– blush I rebel at this notion.  What is so fortunate or happy (alternative translations of “blessed”) about being poor?  Prudence – the name of one of my key life guides – has continually urged me to work hard, save, plan for the future lest I be caught without enough.  “Avoid poverty,” she urges; “it’s the pits.”  And she has been a fruitful guide: I have never, in fact, felt poor. Oh, there was a time – the month I was married to be precise – when my wife and I owned so little it would all fit in the trunk and back seat of the car we rented to set out across the country to start a new life, with next to nothing in our bank account.  But I had a scholarship and assistantship at the university where I was to begin graduate work, and my wife already had a line on a job.  We were poor objectively, but did not feel that way.

Of course financial poverty is not the only thing, or even the main thing, this beatitude is about.  In Matthew this beatitude is rendered as the “poor in spirit.”  Even this rendering causes me to pause.  If poor in spirit means “dispirited,” “unenergized,” “unmotivated,” or “depressed,” where is the boon in that?  Don’t both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures affirm that God’s will for us is wellbeing, abundance, and wholeness? 

Many wise commentators – far wiser than me -- point to much deeper meanings of this beatitude.  I hope I can reflect some of their wisdom here.  But what I want to do is wrestle with this now, in writing, along with you as readers.

Whether financial or spiritual poverty, something in me doesn’t want to go there; I recognize within me a low-level but persistent fear of being not far from falling into this pit, and I want to guard against that happening and take steps to protect myself from it.  Is this a barrier to being blessed?

I also wrestle with this beatitude’s apparent endorsement of the goodness of being poor (materially, or spiritually).  It’s almost as if the beatitude is encouraging us to choose poverty as a means of becoming blessed.  That doesn’t sit right with me; what is the goodness to be found in the harms, impediments, and sufferings of poverty?  I want a world in which such poverty no longer exists or where at least we organize our society to eliminate its causes and mitigate its negative effects.  Afterall, is not God a God of compassion who wants all people to be whole?  And how can you be whole when you are barely scraping by or are living with depression?  Did not Jesus, as told in the scriptures, heal all who came to him, testifying to the compassion of God?

Digging Deeper

On deeper reflection, what if my objections are based on false assumptions about what this beatitude is actually saying.  It does not say “poverty is what makes you happy”; let me offer some alternative renderings of this beatitude:

·      Even in your poverty, there is still good news for you.

·      When you are poor, what is most essential is not lost.

·      You who are poor, rejoice anyway for you are not alone; God is in the pit with you.

I am reminded of the traditional wedding vows in which the couple pledge themselves to one another “for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part.”  This pledge at its heart is about a love between persons that transcends external circumstances, however good or difficult they may be.  And it is one meant to endure as long as life shall last.  For couples we might say:

·      When thing get worse, the good news is you have each other, or

·      When you lose your home and all possessions in a wild fire, you realize that being alive and still together is of far greater importance, and a blessing, or

·      When you are greatly disheartened in spirit, you are fortunate to have a spouse who cares and encourages you.

In parallel and far wider fashion, these same blessings are available though all our relationships, not just the relationship with a partner, and through all the communities of which we are a part.  Moreover, if it is this way for our human relationships, how much more is it true for our human-divine relationship:

·      When you are poor – in any way – be glad for God is still with you.  The commonwealth of the community of God (the “kingdom”) is yours just as much as ever.

Deeper Still 

There is, however, an even deeper and more challenging truth here, I have come to believe.  And that is that there is some advantage to being poor.  Not that we should seek poverty as a means to this advantage.  Blessing is a gift, a grace, not something that can be achieved by any means, including the means of impoverishing oneself.  Yet those who live in poverty know their dependence in a lived way that I and many who are well enough off, materially or spiritually, do not.  They see more clearly that all life is a gift.  The next meal is a gift of a stranger or of community services.  The home, or even tent shelter is provided by others.  Warm clothes are handed out without charge.  None of this is to glorify poverty in any way, but to say that poverty opens awareness to the dependence we all in fact have upon one another.  We forget this depencence to the extent that we think ourselves to be “self-made.”  At the most fundamental level, “It is God who has made us, and not we ourselves,” as the Psalmist confesses.  In daily life, forces beyond our control strongly shape our lives and fortunes, for better or for ill.  Indeed, even when we have worked hard and have achieved a measure of well-being as a result, the poor know better than we that life is a gift.

One way in which this “fortunateness” of poverty shows up is the observation that the poor are often far more generous with one another that those with more means.  They share with one another from their poverty more fully that we from our wealth.  Jesus praised the poor woman who contributed her two pennies to the temple coffers. 

“Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury.  For all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

Fundamentally, I think this beatitude is about humility.  The humility of knowing we are humans, made in the image and likeness of God, but not God. The humility of knowing that we come into this world with nothing, and depart leaving everything behind.  The humility of recognizing that our worth is not measured by our accomplishments or even by our good works, but by being loved by God.  The humility of recognizing that we are not ultimately in control of our lives, while still having some measure of choice and influence in directing it.  Blessed are we, happy and fortunate, when we can live out of this kind of poverty.

I am still wrestling with this beatitude, but I hope I am seeing some deeper truths embedded within it, and inviting you to see more deeply as well.

Pause and Reflect

·      What aspects of this beatitude do you object to or wrestle with?

·      Is there some actual advantage you see in poverty – material or spiritual?

·      If you were to rewrite this beatitude in your own words as you understand the depth of its meaning, how would you write it?

·      What invitation to you personally do you sense as you reflect on this beatitude?

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