The poor will always be with us?

Let us pray.

You have given all to me.

To you, Lord, I return it.

Everything is yours; do with it what you will.

Give me only your love and your grace,

that is enough for me.

And in the name of God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Amen.

This morning we are taken into Lazarus’ home and told of Jesus’ coming over for dinner.

This is Lazarus who died.

This is Lazarus over whom Jesus wept.

This is Lazarus who Jesus brought back from the dead, showing in real-time Christ’s promise of resurrection, his and ours.

And now things are back to normal, maybe.

I assume Lazarus has since removed the remains of his funeral shroud, he is now perhaps pouring drinks for his thirsty guests and welcoming them wholeheartedly into his home.

Perhaps he thinks about what happened from time to time; what are his memories?

Did his spirit rest in Sheol?

Can he recall the space he was left in, did he explore the intersection of grief and ecstasy?

Perhaps he just puts it out of mind, busying himself with household tasks and teatime conversations with his sisters.

Perhaps he does not wish to recall his demise just as others do not wish to think about the coming of their own.

Yet die he did and raised he was and that is proof enough for those who follow this man who promises eternal life, victory over death.

And hosting too were Mary and Martha, those sisters so faithful to Jesus who grew up with Jesus and could speak freely of their disappointment and anger with him after Lazarus’ death and before him being brought back to life.

They spoke freely with their friend.

Martha, perhaps in her consternation, told Jesus he should have been there or Lazarus would not have died.

And Mary, while weeping, said the same but differently.

“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

They said these words through tears and accusations; they were familiar with their savior.

And that was then.

That was that day, the day they sometimes thought about but perhaps did not discuss all that much over teatime conversation with their brother.

They could return to the fear they felt, they could relive the grief but those were days gone by and there was work to be done thought Martha and why return to the sadness thought Mary, after all.

So we are in this place, Lazarus’ house who was brought back from the dead and they were fulfilling their roles in a great unspoken normality.

Jesus, the savior; Lazarus, the host; Martha, the worker; Mary, the compassionate one.

Fulfilling their roles as if nothing had changed.

And then Mary enters the room; she has with her a jar of nard, a very expensive perfume worth 300 denarii, a year’s wage for many people.

This is not usual.

In fact, it is un-usual.

The house filled with the aroma of expensive things as Mary began to anoint Jesus’ feet with the perfumed oil, she let down her hair to wipe away the excess; her hair was Mary’s power and glory in her day and age.

And then Judas, whose heart was not yet infected with betrayal but worried that his thievery might be discovered, “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?”

And the room went silent.

The conversation Lazarus was having with a tax-collector or some other ragamuffin that Jesus tended to attract at such dinners stopped.

Lazarus, was in a stooped position with both elbows on the table, arms crossed, head turned to his tablemate and listened intently to his fellow sinner.

He looked up, still stooped, elbows still on the table and his dinner plate pushed aside, and stared at Judas criticizing his sister.

He then looked to Jesus.

He wanted a response before he told this disciple to move on and stop yelling at his sister.

And Jesus read the room, he saw Judas upset about the finances of the group; he saw Lazarus glaring; he looked down to Mary who continued her work diligently and without acknowledging Judas’ critique.

And Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

The poor will always be with you.

You will not always have me.

The poor will always be with you.

You will not always have me.

And that is our scene for this morning.

A dinner party and the hint of betrayal.

An anointing and a hint of our savior’s death.

And those words about the poor and Jesus’ own words about himself.

Words to the effect that Jesus will leave us one day.

Words to the effect that Jesus will leave the poor behind.

Words that confuse me, that twist in my head and betray the optimism I try to hold onto.

The poor will always be with us?

Why?

Is not poverty a human problem, does God want us split into groups of rich and poor?

Why are we to accept that the poor will always be with us?

Why are we to expect children to lose access to that one good meal a day found in subsidized school lunch programs?

If the poor should be with us, should we just accept that is their fate, as if God has some pseudo-Calvinistic predestined plan for the poor, that they should suffer on this human plain for they are always to be with us?

Yet Jesus commands us to feed the hungry and lift up the poor in other gospels, does he not?

This is confusing.

It is almost contradictory.

Yet Jesus is an educated man, some acknowledge that he was a teacher or rabbi as well as the son of a carpenter.

Some even speculate that he was a Pharisee, one of the learned classes.

So, he would have known that in saying “the poor will always be with us”, he was speaking in shorthand knowing too his audience would have known the full context of the quote.

And the poor always being with us, is only half the story for Jesus is referring to Deuteronomy 15:11 which reads: Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, “Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.”

And there it is.

We are not absolved from our duty to serve each other and the poor especially.

We cannot walk past the homeless, shrug, and say, “well, the poor will always be with us, what can I do?”

What can I do?

I can do what I am commanded to do, I can do what God is telling us to do, to open our hands to the poor and needy in our land.

Open my hand to the poor so that they might share in my wealth, such as it is.

Open my hand to the poor so that the gulf that divides the haves and have nots is thinned and is not as wide.

But then, okay, Jesus is telling us to help the poor, we can do that.

But why?

Isn’t Jesus just going to abandon his disciples, his friends, his dining companions?

He’s just going to be around for a short time, is he not?

So maybe, they should just go through the motions while he’s around.

“Hey, Jesus, look at me! I caught that Deuteronomy reference. I’m helping the poor!”

And then, when Jesus is gone, we can just go back to how things used to be.

You know, do a real deep clean before company arrives so that they don’t know what is really hiding under the living room couch, but things will get back to how they normally are once they leave; the dry cleaning will return to its rightful place on top of the treadmill.

Because Jesus is temporary.

And yet again, are we reading the full story if we think of Jesus’ ministry on earth as being temporary?

In response to Mary’s and Martha’s please to help Lazarus even after he died, Jesus responded to them that he was the resurrection and the life.

They knew he was not going away permanently, they knew he was living and to be resurrected.

And, maybe, deep down, so do we.

We have faith in Jesus’ return and maybe, somewhere in our silent ruminations; our thoughts held close, perhaps we even know.

Jesus’ time on earth was not short, for Jesus is with us now.

Just as God the Father and God the Holy Spirit, God the Son remains with us and will one day return in the form known to his disciples and his friends.

And that is the promise.

That is our faith.

In a world divided into categories, rich and poor, liberal and conservative, New York Met fans and everybody else, our faith demands that we reduce the depth of the chasms between us and the vastness of our divisions.

And we do so for we are commanded to do so.

We do so for we are to open our hands to those in need.

We do so to prepare for the arrival of our Savior.

We do so because, ultimately, it is the right thing to do.

It becomes clear that God wants us to experience God’s kingdom.

God tells us to help the poor for in doing so we are reducing the numbers of those in poverty and after all there is no poverty in God’s kingdom.

The kingdom is not just about our reward for being good people, instead it is the higher state in which God desires us to live for it is a place without suffering, without hunger, without fear.

Are we building the kingdom if we allow poverty to continue?

Are we opening the gates of the kingdom as described in Revelation if we close our doors to refugees in peril?

Are we a kingdom people if we remain in our various tranches, separate from each other, blissfully unaware of the pain others experience?

No, we are not.

The poor will always be with us, yes, so we will reach out our hands to lift them up.

And Jesus, though with us for a short while 2,000 years ago shall return, permanently anointed in God’s glory.

A kingdom, returned.

Amen.