The Kingdom & Poverty of Spirit
Try to take away whatever she’s playing with – see what happens. Objection. That’s what happens. Protest.
My daughter is ten months old. She’s just undergone what the parenting books call a leap in her cognitive development. This last week she’s discovered a completely new idea: possession. It’s hard to know how clearly it’s worked it out in her mind. But the behaviour is there, and her behaviour says that her possessions belong to her. That’s mine – you can’t have it. Funny how early we learn that idea.
What she hasn’t quite worked out yet though is that everything she has and is ultimately comes from her mother and I.
Jesus begins his manifesto concerning the Kingdom of Heaven with a statement about just this idea, about ownership and about the kind of attitude we ought to adopt towards our stuff if we’re going to live the kind of life he’s promising, which is the happy life, a thriving life, an abundant life.
“Blessed are the poor in Spirit,” he says, “the Kingdom belongs to them.”
What a strange turn of phrase. ‘Poor in Spirit:’ super weird way to pitch your vision for a new society. I mean, what on earth is that?
It’s even weirder when you consider the word he uses: πτωχοs (ptokos). It means being like a beggar. Not just lacking wealth, but abjection. The fullest life possible consists in being spiritually destitute – that seems to be what he’s saying.
But, that can’t be right. I mean, God’s plan is to prosper not to harm me , to give me hope and a future. Right? But, poverty is lack: lacking finances, property, and resources, lacking status, opportunity; even freedoms. Or, maybe Jesus just hadn’t realised yet that all things work together for the good of those who love him – that in Christ we’re more than conquerors. And what about Mark 11 where Jesus tells me that: “whatever I ask for in prayer and believe, it will be mine.”
Poverty of spirit? What is he on about?
Recently I was reading an article about the world’s wealthiest person. To describe the immensity of his fortune, the author used a manner of expression I’m sure you’ve heard. He repeatedly said things like: so and so’s net worth is $160billion, he’s valued at… and so on.
The more I’ve thought about this, the more I think this way of speaking reveals why Jesus’ words are so hard for us to grasp. It’s as if the statements in the article mean exactly what they say, that the amount of money you have determines your value – as if there’s a connection between having more and being more valuable as a person.
And it got me thinking: the way we behave in our culture actually bears this out. The statistics are easily available: the wealthy are treated with more value than those with less: they enjoy better educations, better food, better medical care, better social circles, more access to political power. I could go on. In our culture we’ve arranged society as though money is worth. It’s as if we think having more means being worth more... as a person…
But, what does this have to do with Jesus’ claim that poverty of spirit is essential to the good life?
My suggestion goes back to the way my daughter will one day need to learn that all that she has and all that she enjoys owes to her mother and I. I want to suggest that Jesus is calling his listeners to acknowledge this truth about their existence, that they rely on God for all they have and all they are, and then to foster practices, attitudes and behaviours, reflecting this fact.
Of course, what’s true of us is true of all reality: that except for God’s ‘Let there be,’ there is nothing. My point is that before we are anything, we are recipients, receiving our being from God. Otherwise we are dust.
Which means that standing before our maker, we have no claims - we are poor. I think being ‘poor in spirit’ might have something to do with with this idea and with learning to live in ways appropriate to it.
The fact that everything is made and sustained by God will have concrete implications. For one, it must mean that, in reality, my property isn’t my own, not wholly so, at least not in an ultimate sense. It exists under the overarching truth that the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it – that’s what scripture tells us. And if that’s the case, whatever my bank statement says: the contents of that account belong to him – in the same way that everything belongs to him.
In these reflections we’re considering the promise of Jesus’ new Kingdom: makarīos - the fulfillment that comes from living as God designed us to live. We’re considering what practices, what pattern of life, Jesus describes as achieving this end in his Sermon on the Mount.
So we should ask, what practices are characteristic of being poor of spirit?
Let me suggest a few ideas.
First, we can practice, by constant self-reminder, a way of thinking around our belongings. When we wake up. When we’re at work. When we spend time with family -- when we spend our money, we can remind ourselves that we live in God’s world, as the result of God’s grace, on God’s terms, among God’s children, using God’s resources – that without God’s grace, we are nothing. We can practice that mindset.
There’s a second practice. If everything is grace, it should shape how we value each other; that having more can’t function as a measure of personal value. In reality we’re equally dependent, equally destitute. Viewed in this light, wealth can’t determine worth. Which should mean we practice a new pattern of behaviour towards each other, treating each other equally, showing each other equal love, deferring to one another equally, regardless of station or class.
Imagine what the kingdom would look like if we did that.
I think also that if the earth is the Lord’s, we should probably regard our property rights, our claim to our belongings as being custodial in nature - developing a discipline of holding our things lightly and, to be used for his purposes in redeeming and transforming the world.
Or, put differently, we should probably regard the stewardship of our things as one of our basic spiritual practice – and to make our primary goal to serve whatever purposes or projects, or needs, God calls us to devote our resources towards. But that will mean: we can’t just spend money in whatever ways that suit our appetites or moods. We have to develop different practices around our money, practices of responding obediently to God’s guidance and direction.
For my part, my aspiration is to remain mindful of my poverty before God, to remind myself constantly of his Lordship over all things, to be responsive to God’s quiet promptings, and to take joy in serving his purposes with the gifts he entrusts to me. Perhaps you feel called to do the same, or at least to conduct the experiment, and to see whether makarios might not be the result.