"The poor you will always have with you..."

I was reading Naomi's blog, and her post about the budget deficit and cuts proposed in Minnesota. She quotes their governor as saying "...there is a spending problem in this state in the area of human services," to which she definitely (and appropriately) took exception. In response to her posting, a person commented, "Jesus said the poor would always be with us. We can't spend or minimum-wage them out of poverty."

That really irked me.

I agree that Jesus did say, "The poor you will always have with you." It is important, however, to note that those words were spoken in the context of a poor woman pouring precious nard on the feet of Jesus. The objection was, "Why waste that stuff on Jesus? We could be feeding the poor!" Jesus points out that worship and reverence to the Son of God (not to mention physically ministering to the 'Son of Man') ought to be first, and everything else should follow that. The entire quite says, "The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me" (Matthew 26:11)

For me, the real danger is that we hear "The poor you will always have with you..." and we allow the unspoken tagline to be "...so screw 'em - we can't fix 'em all, anyway." However, if you look at the record of Christ's work while here on earth, it shows that he spent much, much more time healing, feeding, and restoring "the least of these" than he did anything else. Sure, Jesus didn't heal them all, or feed them all - but that's no reason not to make efforts to try a priority.

I have always understood that a primary function of democratic government is to provide for those that cannot help themselves. That's why it always blows my mind that we as a culture (at every level of government) seem to ensure that the strong-healthy-wealthy one is taken care of, and the weak-and-struggling 99 are often left to fend for themselves amidst the dregs and the cast-offs from "polite society."

I live in Chicago. I still find it amazing that infrastructure for wealthy neighborhoods continues to get first priority under the reigns of The Son of Daley and Herod of Blagojevich, while funding for the Chicago Transit Authority - the primary transit option for "the least of these" (including me) - is in serious danger of being drastically slashed. Trust me - the folks up on the Gold Coast and out in Naperville aren't standing out in the cold to find gas for their Lexuses (Lexi?) or Hummers...but I know what it is to stand in the cold waiting for a bus, because I can't afford car insurance as a member of the working poor.

I've said it before (here), and I'll say it again - I will never understand why so much of the Christian world considers homosexuality to be "incompatible with Christian teaching," and yet blithely ignores the *demands* of Matthew 25:31-46 as some sort of "we'll get to it someday" suggestion. A careful reading of that text would put most of the all-too-holy evangelical Christian church in the "goat" category. And the text is all too clear about what the goats get...