A Moral Revolution of Values

Sunday, January 17, 2021 • Second Sunday after Epiphany
Readings: Excerpt from “Beyond Vietnam” (April 1967) (Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.), Matthew 26:6-13 (NRSV)
The Reverend Dr. Liz Theoharis, guest preacher

Since I began to organize as part of a movement to end poverty, people have said to me that our goals are too ambitious, that demands for human rights and human dignity are both politically inconceivable and impossibly expensive. They quote the Bible, arguing that since Jesus said “the poor will be with you always,” it can’t be God’s will for everyone to share in the abundance of our world.   

But when I read the Bible, including and especially that statement by Jesus, what I see from Genesis through the New Testament is a constant revelation of God’s will that no one should be made hungry, sick, homeless, underpaid, indebted, or bereft by the violence of social injustice. 

I read an ongoing indictment of those who would take and keep the wealth of our world for themselves and cause others to suffer. I hear the biblical command to “fill the hungry with good things” (Luke 1:53), not simply as “caring for the poor” as an end result, but by building a movement and advocating for policies and structures that lift the load of poverty - admonishing nations to “do no wrong to the immigrant, the homeless, the children. And do not shed innocent blood” (Jeremiah 22:3).

Indeed, throughout sacred scripture—including the codes, policies, and laws/regulations contained within the Bible as well as in the prophets, gospels, letters—there is a call to end exploitation and to attend to the poor, a mandate of sabbath rest and Jubilee years, a prohibition against charging interest on survival loans or profiting from pandemic, commandments to pay living wages promptly, to bring equity to legal proceedings, to give to everyone who asks of you, to welcome the immigrant neighbor, to care for the needs of the entire community, and to stop depriving the rights of the poor. 

Whether in the books of Moses, the prophetic critique, the parables and ministries told throughout the Bible, God’s beautiful creation is lauded and God’s intention for that abundance to be a blessing to all—not an elite few—is the central theme. In truth, the instruction and lessons in scripture is that society must be organized around the needs of the poor, suffering, and marginalized—that when we lift from the bottom, everybody rises.    

Whenever policies to share in the blessings of creation are lifted up throughout the Bible, there is a reminder of exploitation, oppression, and the need to struggle for liberation, lest we forget that while empire, unjust policies, and immoral systems lead to poverty, this is not God’s will. 

Ending poverty is possible. After all, that passage weaponized against those challenging the inevitability of poverty and scarcity, in Matthew 26, when Jesus says, “the poor will always be with you,” he is referencing just such a policy and just such a reminder, from the prophetic and sacred Hebrew scriptures. 

Yes, that line from Matthew 26:11 is what evangelical leader, Jim Wallis, calls the most famous Bible verse on poverty. I hear echoes of this verse when I read Dr. King’s statement on true compassion from his Time to Break the Silence sermon at The Riverside Church on April 4,1967. 

Indeed, this may well be Rev. Dr. King’s interpretation of Matthew 26:11:

“A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”

Matthew 26:11 takes place in the context of a meal with his disciples, the last supper, when a woman comes and pours an alabaster jar of ointment, muron, on his head and right before Judas decides to betray Jesus by turning him over to be crucified. 

With this action, the woman anoints Jesus. He becomes Christ in this scene. But the disciples don’t get it. They critique the woman for wasting, for destroying, the ointment by pouring it on Jesus’ head, anointing him Messiah and prophet, preparing him for his burial. They say that instead of breaking the jar, they could have taken the nard and sold it for a year’s salary and given the money to the poor. 

But this suggestion follows the dominant economic systems of oppression during Jesus’ day. And this idea of earning lots of money and giving the proceeds to the poor follows how we think we’re supposed to address poverty. By doing charity work, by buying and selling and then donating to the poor. But never questioning how poverty was created in the first place.

When Jesus responds to the disciples, he quotes Deuteronomy 15, one of the most radical Sabbath and Jubilee prescriptions in the Bible. Deuteronomy 15 says that there will be no poor person among you if you follow the commandments God is giving today – those commandments are forgive debts, release slaves, and to lend money even knowing you won’t get paid back. Deuteronomy 15 continues and says that because people will not follow those commandments, there will always be poor among you. 

So when Jesus quotes this phrase, he isn’t condoning poverty, he is reminding us that God hates poverty, has commanded us to end poverty by forgiving debts, by raising wages, by outlawing slavery, by restructuring society around the needs of the poor. He is reminding the disciples that charity and hypocrisy will not end poverty but keep poverty with us always. He is reminding his followers that he is going to be killed for bringing God’s reign here on earth and it is their responsibility to continue the fight.

At this moment, this is a hopeful lesson and a hard one. We live in a nation where there are 140 million people who are poor or who are one fire, health crisis, job loss, storm, away from deep poverty. A nation where over the past months, during a pandemic, more than 12 million people have lost their employer-based health care—adding to the 87 million who already had inadequate health care; where nearly tens of millions of renters are behind in rent and could face eviction in the coming months; where 26 million people reported not having enough to eat in a nation where 72 billion pounds of food goes to waste each year.  At a moment when emboldened racists plan and carry out attacks on democracy and even churches that stand for justice.

In truth, these are exactly the times when prophets rise up to remind us of God’s demand for justice—and God’s judgment of those whose power and wealth rests on the dispossession of the rest of society. Jesus’ ministry began in a time like ours, when the Roman Empire was strangling millions of poor people and calling it peace. He began by declaring, drawing directly from the prophet Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, and he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.” The prophets go on to proclaim “liberty to the captives”—a phrase that, in turn, comes from the Jubilee laws of Leviticus.  And he reminds us that there should be no poor person among you if you follow the commandments that God is giving to you today.

He teaches that as long as we forgive debts, free those in bondage, give to others without any expectation that we’ll be paid back, and care for each other in times of crisis—when we build a movement of those considered expendable, when we confront the powers and principalities, when those wounded by deep social and economic wounds heal through mutual solidarity and moral action—only then will there be “no poor among you.” But we are also warned that if we instead refuse to organize our society around the needs of the poor rather than the endless, systemic greed of the powerful, then poverty and want can never be banished.  

It must be said. No. God does not condone poverty nor suggest it is inevitable. Christ Jesus does not proclaim: “I didn’t make enough food for everyone to eat.” No where does God say “my abundance will trickle down from the rich to the rest.” Jesus does not suggest that anyone should profit off a pandemic, nor that “I want Peter to have to rob Paul” to be able to pay bills. He does not say “Get a job!” to the homeless of society, nor “you shall not bear children” to the refugee mothers of his community. The Bible does not proclaim that a little charity is as good as you all can do, nor that the powerful should be exempt from taxes but that the poor shall pay for the pleasures of the rich. Nowhere do we find teachings that mob violence, threatening people, is anything other than adherence to empire. Jesus does not teach that private insurance companies can pay families of those bruised and battered by the legions of empire in order to leave the governing authorities unaccountable. And he never once suggests to charge lepers a co-pay, or to cut people from accessing health care in a public health crisis.  

In the midst of all this suffering, despair, and loss of life—let us remember the God we follow cries out “I am the one who led you out of Egypt.” That God reminds us how we treat the poor, how we treat the immigrant neighbor, is how we honor and worship God. So in this season, in each and every season, who do we worship? What do we honor? What will we do?

I end with yet another powerful quote from Rev. Dr. King. Perhaps not the Dr. King we are used to hearing but the Dr. King that is so needed in this pandemic moment, at a time with unbridled white supremacy and violence, when the earth is groaning, and millions are being pushed into poverty and misery. Let us take these words to heart,

“God has left enough (and to spare) in this world for all of his children to have the basic necessities of life, and God never intended for some of his children to live in inordinate superfluous wealth while others live in abject, deadening poverty. And somehow, I believe that God made it all…I believe firmly that the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof…and since we didn’t make these things by ourselves, we must share them with each other. And I think this is the only way we are going to solve the basic problems and the restructuring of our society which I think is so desperately needed.”

We need you in the Poor People’s Campaign. We are building a moral movement, led by the people. We are coming together, organizing together, uniting together.  We are addressing the interlocking injustices of systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation and the war economy. We reject the distorted moral narrative of religious nationalism. We are choosing life, and truth, and justice, and peace. We are solving basic problems and restructuring our society around the people. Please join.

(c) Liz Theoharis 2020
All Rights Reserved.

            201 West 13th Street, New York, NY 10011               
212.243.5470