If you define the poor as the people who are homeless, who sleep in their cars at night, you will see only a highly visible, but oh so small part of the population. But if you frame the whole question with the ‘the poor with their many faces,” you will experience poverty in a very challenging way.
Now, all of us will experience poverty a long the way. We all grow old. We lose our hearing and find family gatherings are so frustrating. Our eyesight becomes limited and we lose our driving licence. We lose loved ones, close friends and co-workers who die an early death due to cancer. We lose. We lose. We lose.
This is why we need to live with the direction that the poor are always very close. The very poor may be our aged mother, in all her dementia, in the nursing home. All we can do is just hold her hand in human friendship.
This past Sunday we were gifted with the parable of the Good Samaritan. (Lk. 1025-37) When confronted by the lawyer about “who is my neighbor?,” Jesus throws him a curve. This is not about installing limits about the identity of the poor but it challenges us to a new awareness of who is to identified as a neighbor.
It is the despised and unwanted Samaritan (nothing good could ever come of Samaritans!!), who reaches out to this beat-up stranger in the ditch.
Jesus challenges all codes of human correctness. Helping the beat-up man in the ditch is giving value and respect to every human being, especially those who are cast aside. This upsets every social norm of who is “in” and who is “out.”
Look around to see who is poor.
It is your aged father in the nursing home. He is sharp as a whistle, but we cannot walk. He is lonely and hungers for the human contact of family and friends.
It is your co-worker who tears up when she shares the pain in her heart over her thirty-two year old son who is into the drugs. She fears that she will lose him in an over-dose. She triess not to burden you with her fears but some days the tears just flow like an unexpected rain shower.
And then there is your cousin whose family is split up. No one wants to talk to the other and there are no family gatherings for the past four years. He is so confused. Was there anything that he failed to so or did he say something that caused such searing pain?
Being poor has many faces. If we keep our eyes open, we will discover how close the poor actually are. We will find this Sunday that the victim in the ditch could be someone we know personally.
The poor with their many faces are always close to us.
