To Remember the Poor
Luke 1:46-55
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLkNGyPq90E
Somehow this is what we've turned Christmas into. When did Christmas become all about us? The Madison Avenue version of Christmas with the angels, glitter and gold, and cheap plastic Santas and snowmen and Christmas gifts ad nauseum stands in sharp contrast to the stark reality of the first Christmas in which God entered into the world in a borrowed cave which served as a stable, filled with dung and animals and a feeding trough. Most of us make Christmas and birthdays for that matter about us but Jesus’ birth was never about him. He came to live and die for the sins of the world. One can never separate the cross from the cradle. So in many respects, our Christmas of today is a faint resemblance of the first Christmas and what it was meant to be. So our task this Christmas is to go back and re-imagine Christmas or reclaim the first Christmas.
Shane Claiborne tells of going to the Gallery Mall in Philadelphia on "Black Friday" to invite people to do just that, re-imagine the Christmas season. Rather than Christmas being about spending money, buying and giving gifts, they invited people to re-imagine the season with messages on signs like, "Love doesn't cost a thing," "Spend time not money," and "Buy less and love more." The celebration was magnetic. One woman passing by with shopping bag in hand stopped and said pensively, "Why do we do this empty routine every year? Thanks for making me think." Sometimes we just need permission to say "NO" to the 450 billion dollars spent (on us) during this holiday, and (instead) to remember the poor, the refugees, the invisible people….”
Last week we looked at Mary this teenager of 12 to 14 years of age to whom the angel Gabriel showed up and made the announcement that God was going to impregnate her with the greatest miracle in history. We also saw the consequences for this young single mom - that she would be considered a capital criminal with the possibility of execution by stoning. That was the penalty in this culture for being pregnant and unmarried. Yet it amazes me that Mary, instead of sitting around in her fear and uncertainty, wrote a song of praise to God, "My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my savior, for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant."
The English word humble is very inadequate. In the original language what we interpret as “humble” literally means low in situation, poor and depressed. God has been mindful of the low status, poor and depressed state of his servant "and from now on all generations will call me blessed," Mary said. God is mindful of the humble state of his servants. God lifts up those who are poor in status, low in situation and depressed. "For the mighty one has done great things for me - holy is his name." God's priority is the poor. Think of all the people God could have chosen to conceive this miracle in. I would think God would have chosen someone of prestige, power and influence. Maybe it would have been like a Princess Diana type or maybe it would have been someone who had media exposure like Beyonce’ or Oprah. Yet God chose a poor, Jewish peasant girl from a backwater town.
Being Jewish meant she was a nobody in a Roman world. Peasant meant she was marginalized, and being female meant that she had no social or political voice or rights. I think if I had the opportunity to place my child in a situation where they would prosper, I would be very careful to put them in a home situation where they would have all of the advantages. But God placed Jesus in this poor, working class family. How do I know this was a poor family? Look at 2:22-24. When Jesus was eight days old, Joseph and Mary brought him to the temple to dedicate him to the Lord, according to Jewish law. According to Jewish law in Leviticus, when you presented a baby on the eighth day you had to make an offering. And the preferred offering for a baby was a lamb. Now the lamb is a very important symbol in the Old Testament because it represented a sacrifice to God for the sins of the Jews. And Jesus is called the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world. So after Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, there was no more need for sacrifice because he paid the price for all of our sins. Now Mary and Joseph don't offer a lamb. They offered birds for sacrifice. Leviticus 12 says: "If a woman in presenting her child to the Lord cannot afford a lamb (in other words, if she is poor), she is to bring two doves or two young pigeons.” This tells us that Mary and Joseph were a family of limited resources. In other words, they were poor.
All throughout scripture, we see the priority God has with the poor. Isaiah says, "This is the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke. Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter - when you see the naked, to clothe them and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? Then your life will break forth like the dawn."
When Jesus first started his ministry, he read from the prophet Isaiah: "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor." He shut the book, set it down, went back to his seat and sat down. People began to mutter to each other, because he was reading a passage of Scripture Jews believed spoke about the Messiah. Then Jesus had the audacity to say, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." The Kingdom of God is here when good news is proclaimed to the poor. What was the response of the people in the temple? They were furious when they heard this. The churched people didn’t get it. Why were the people were furious? Because God would never choose to come in the form of a poor, uneducated, low class person from Nazareth. The problem is that Jesus came to challenge the society, traditions, the beliefs and lifestyle of today.
Jesus wasn’t just born for 2000 years ago, he was born for today. The birth of Christ is a message for today. That message is, "Today in the City of David is born for you a Savior." Today, Jesus is born. The presence of the resurrected Jesus wants to be born in you today, not some self-serving, God-of-convenience religion. Today, the presence of Jesus wants to be born in you. How do you know the birth of Jesus happens in you? How can you tell that the real Jesus is in you and that you haven't settled for just religion? How do you know if you are doing the work of Jesus? The poor have the gospel of good news proclaimed to them.
Christmas is all about gift receiving gifts, isn't it? Even the wise men knew it was Jesus' birthday and that you don't approach the King of kings without the appropriate gift. That's why they were called wise men. Wise people understand whose birthday it is. What is the appropriate gift for Jesus on his birthday? It’s not gifts for each other but rather gifts of the good news and gifts of food, shelter, and clothing for the poor, homeless and disenfranchised. It’s about reaching out to the poor and providing for their physical, emotional and spiritual needs in the name of baby Jesus.
Eddie Ogan writes, I’ll never forget Christmas 1946. I was 14, my little sister Ocy was 12 and my older sister Darlene was 16. We lived at home with our mother, and the four of us knew what it was to do without many things. My dad had died five years before, leaving Mom with seven kids to raise and no money. A month before Christmas the pastor of our church announced that a special Christmas offering would be taken to help a poor family. He asked everyone to save and give sacrificially. When we got home, we talked about what we could do. We decided to buy 50 pounds of potatoes and live on them for a month. This would allow us to save $20 of our grocery money for the offering. Then we thought that if we kept our electric lights turned out as much as possible and didn’t listen to the radio, we’d save money on that month’s electric bill. Darlene got as many house and yard cleaning jobs as possible, and both of us babysat for everyone we could. For 15 cents we could buy enough cotton loops to make three pot holders to sell for $1. We made $20 on potholders.
That month was one of the best of our lives. Every day we counted the money to see how much we had saved. At night we’d sit in the dark and talk about how the poor family was going to enjoy having the money the church would give them. We had about 80 people in church, so we figured that whatever amount of money we had to give, the offering would surely be 20 times that much. After all, every Sunday the pastor had reminded the church to save for the sacrificial offering. The day before Christmas Eve, Ocy and I walked to the grocery store and got the manager to give us three crisp $20 bills and one $10 bill for all our change. We ran all the way home to show Mom and Darlene. That night we were so excited we could hardly sleep. We had $70 for the sacrificial offering. We could hardly wait to get to church! On Sunday morning, rain was pouring. We didn’t own an umbrella, and the church was over a mile from our home, but it didn’t seem to matter how wet we got. Darlene had cardboard in her shoes to fill the holes. The cardboard came apart, and her feet got wet. But we sat in church proudly. That day we felt rich.
When the sacrificial offering was taken, we were sitting on the second row from the front. Mom put in the $10 bill, and each of us kids put in a $20 bill. As we walked home after church, we sang all the way. At lunch Mom had a surprise for us. She had bought a dozen eggs, and we had boiled eggs with our fried potatoes! Late that afternoon the minister drove up in his car. Mom went to the door, talked with him for a moment, and then came back with an envelope in her hand. We asked what it was, but she didn’t say a word. She opened the envelope and out fell a bunch of money. There were three crisp $20 bills, one $10 and seventeen $1 bills. Mom put the money back in the envelope. We didn’t talk, just sat and stared at the floor. We had gone from feeling like millionaires to being poor. We kids had such a happy life that we felt sorry for anyone who didn’t have our mom and dad for parents and a house full of brothers and sisters and other kids visiting constantly. We thought it was fun to share silverware and see whether we got the spoon or the fork that night. We had two knifes that we passed around to whoever needed them. I knew we didn’t have a lot of things that other people had, but I’d never thought we were poor. That day I found out we were.
We sat in silence for a long time. Then it got dark, and we went to bed. All that week we girls went to school and came home, and no one talked much. Finally on Saturday Mom asked us what we wanted to do with the money. What did poor people do with money? We didn’t know. We’d never known we were poor. We didn’t want to go to church on Sunday but Mom said we had to. Although it was a sunny day we didn’t talk on the way. Mom started to sing but no one joined in and she only sang one verse. At church we had a missionary speaker who talked about how churches in Africa made buildings out of sun-dried bricks, but they needed money to buy roofs. He said $100 would put a roof on a church. The minister said, "Can’t we all sacrifice to help these poor people?" We looked at each other and smiled for the first time in a week. Mom reached into her purse and pulled out the envelope. She passed it to Darlene. Darlene gave it to me, and I handed it to Ocy. Ocy put it in the offering. When the offering was counted, the minister announced that it was a little over $100. The missionary was excited. He hadn’t expected such a large offering from our small church. He said, "You must have some rich people in this church." Suddenly it struck us! We had given $87 of that "little over $100." We were the rich family in the church! Hadn’t the missionary said so? From that day on I’ve never been poor again. I’ve always remembered how rich I am because I have Jesus and I have always remembered the poor! When we remember the poor and proclaim the kingdom through our words and actions, we become rich in the kingdom. This Christmas, may we recognize and celebrate the birth of Christ by remembering the poor.
