Been pondering a lot about money this week. I’ve been told Jesus says more about finances in the Bible than he does about love, faith, heaven... etc put together. In short, it’s the number one topic in the Bible. What does Christ say about it? In short, give away all your possessions to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven. As many times as I listen to such a message, will I ever sell off my 401K (security) and (hmmm, I don’t have much else, iphone perhaps?) stuff and be Brother Teresa? Probably not. But I can learn to live simply, and in doing so, generously.
But the other side of the equation is who we’re giving our money to. Many people have thought that when we give our $5 to the homeless guy, we just lift the barrier for him to buy alcohol. And yeah, it’s probably true in many cases. But like Jesus Christ who knew that the people he died for would use the cross as a means to sin more, or to trample his spilled blood under their feet, we should err on the side of mercy. I believe this when it comes to the personal people we meet on the street. Buy a homeless guy a beer? Sure.
But systemically, and holistically, beer is not the best solution for the homeless. Selling our stuff and exporting our problems/possessions is not the answer for the people we aim to help. Why? Because they have the same fallen nature. The father of the Slumdog Millionaire girl who played Latika tried to sell her after she became worth more. The poor don’t know what to do with the possessions we have any more than we do! Suelo, who lives in Utah in a cave and hasn’t lived off the monetary system in 3 years explains his experience in the peace corps helping out a tribe in Ecuador become richer. As the tribe became richer, they sold their quinoa, potatoes, corn, and lentils for soda, white flour, and televisions. The more they spent on modernity, the worse their health outcomes became. “It looked like money was impoverishing them.”
I don’t want to take this as a call for inaction, but rather a call to pair up the call to end poverty along with the call for a new nature. It isn’t enough to altruistically place the caveman into modern society and money and expect the caveman to be better off. We have to educate the caveman about the new nature he must take on, the responsibility that money comes with. We have to teach the caveman how to live. But when many of us don’t know how to live ourselves, how do we teach them? We have to take the poor into our community. They have to live among us, live with us, so they will stop seeing us as an ATM machine, and we can stop seeing them as a leech in society. And to live simply so that even when we give to them, they can see what we’re giving out of, as an example of how to live.
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So two girls at my church decided a year and half ago to follow Jesus. No, not accept Christ into their hearts but to really read Matthew and not water it down. This lead them to live in the South Bronx. And not the safest street in the South Bronx but the most violent street in the county. The last census counted 15 white people in their neighborhood and none on their street. Ever.
So here are 2 beautiful NYU students not really having a clue about how to live like Jesus but knowing they want to be with the downtrodden, the marginalized, the poor. Their neighbor is a single mother with 7 kids. 4 of the kids are the sisters, who died awhile ago. She works two jobs to make ends meet and can't be home all the time.
So they do what they do best. Make salsa and cookies. And they would sit outside on the stoop and eat their food and share to anyone who passed by. Gangbangers, single mothers, whomever. They became known around the building and the security guards who worked there as the cookie girls.
The Treyside Blood control the neighborhood. But while the danger is very real every night coming home, they also come by to the girls place to get help studying, homework for the G.E.D., job prospects, anything to get out of the gangs and the only life they know. Contrary to popular belief, violence is not good for drug business and they don't really want to be in it. But these girls are bringing peace to their neighborhood. Just by baking cookies, reading stories to 7 kids when their mom can't come home, being a friend to the teens who have no other shoulder or role model they can see.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God.
In Australia, ranchers have thousands of acres and thousands of cattle. There had to be a way to keep the cattle free and yet within the ranch's boundaries. How do you keep cattle in only one land? Do you have the materials to build fences around your miles and miles of border? Even if you could, how do you patrol it?
Pharisees would build fences to keep the right cattle in, and the right cattle out. They had a dress code, circumcision, diet, behavior modifications,..etc. All these things to brand who was from the Jewish root and followed God, versus who was a Gentile.
Christians and churches have fences, boundary markers to tell who's in and who's out. We have behavioral codes, language, Friday night or behavioral do's and don'ts that distinguish one church Christian from another. We have churches in the past (Certainly not yours!) that have requested their young people cut their hair to an appropriate length so that God could use them more! We have people doing a million little cuts based on a person's sexual past, divorce rate, use of curse words, or even judgemental on being too broad or narrow-minded. (Including me).
Marketers get paid millions to tell us their products are the boundary markers and fences that make you one of the cattle that belong. You are from the herd of the Brooklyn hipster with your tight jeans and neck scarf. You are the surfer with your long hair and never been in shoes feet. If you drink Sprite, you'll quench your thirst more. If you're from New York, you'll like diet Coke and hate diet Pepsi.
You're so entrenched in these boundary markers and culture of the city, the church, the state, that you don't even realize you're part of it. Or maybe you do and just go along since life is comfortable.
A few ranchers thought a better idea than hammering down fences to keep their cattle in and other cattle out was to dig wells. Cattle never stray far from water and ranchers now knew where to always find their cattle. Jesus also gave us boundary markers. But he dug wells. By this they will know that you are my people. That you love one another. Please, put down the hammer. Love the social nerd, the stained lonely guy or woman who slept around, the people who culturally are on the outside of the marketing machine. Love the guy who can't stop saying fuck every other sentence. Love the guy who occasionally has to light up to make it sane through the day. Don't tell him/her that they should stop before they step into your community. Stop being appalled and start learning to see him as a person. May the way you love and your life be a living well that attracts everyone you come in contact with.
Dos, two beers, two Mexican beers Ray, the guy who sells me beers Me, the guy who drinks the beers Fa, a long long way to beer So, I think I'll have a beer La la la la la la la la (slurred) Tea, no thanks I'll have a beer And that brings us back to
