Before Jesus rode into Jerusalem for the last week before being crucified, he stopped at the house of Lazarus in Bethany. There, Jesus spoke one of the most misused sentences in all of Scripture.
Pastor Josh preached on the passage yesterday, a fitting last sermon before Palm Sunday. He read John 12:1-8, in which Mary poured expensive perfume on Jesus's feet. Judas was livid. He objected:
“Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It was worth a year’s wages.” He did not say this because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it.
“Leave her alone,” Jesus replied. “It was intended that she should save this perfume for the day of my burial. You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me.” (John 12:5-8)
IT WASN'T SUPPOSED TO BE THIS WAY
Josh explained that the phrase "You will always have the poor among you" has been used as an excuse to make no effort to alleviate poverty. Being poor is the fault of the poor person, many say. It's a shame. What are we supposed to do about it?
Jesus wasn't speaking to an audience as ignorant of Scripture as we tend to be today. There were teachers of the Jewish Law, the Torah present. They knew perfectly well that Jesus was not offering an excuse for poverty. He was issuing an indictment of a wayward culture.
If you asked a rabbi of Jesus's day to recite the Torah - the first five books of the modern Bible - he could do it flawlessly. When he reached Deuteronomy 15, he would say:
At the end of every seven years you must cancel debts. This is how it is to be done: Every creditor shall cancel any loan they have made to a fellow Israelite. They shall not require payment from anyone among their own people, because the Lord’s time for canceling debts has been proclaimed. You may require payment from a foreigner, but you must cancel any debt your fellow Israelite owes you. However, there need be no poor people among you, for in the land the Lord your God is giving you to possess as your inheritance, he will richly bless you, if only you fully obey the Lord your God and are careful to follow all these commands I am giving you today. (Deuteronomy 15:1-5)
The cancelling of debts every seven years was called jubilee. It was what the Lord commanded to ensure no one could be impoverished by debt for more than seven years.
Imagine that! Your credit card debt, car loan, mortgage, personal loan, private loans among friends and family, all cleared. You did your best to pay it back for a few years. Now, the weight is lifted and you can start fresh.
The teachers of the law could recite this part of the law, but did they understand it? Did they want to?
This is what Jesus was challenging them on when he said, "You will always have the poor among you." They should have known this meant the Jewish leaders were not enforcing jubilee, which meant they were breaking the Law of Moses.
NEHEMIAH UNDERSTOOD LENDING AND POVERTY
Jews had almost always lent to other Jews and charged interest, against the Law of Moses. Five centuries before Jesus's day, Nehemiah briefly tackled the problem.
Jerusalem had been destroyed. Poverty was rampant as the Jews struggled to rebuild while under threat from hostile neighbors. Still, the richest among them were making the poor poorer by forcing them into debt.
Nehemiah, who was in charge of the rebuilding efforts, was outraged. He said:
"What you are doing is not right. Shouldn’t you walk in the fear of our God to avoid the reproach of our Gentile enemies? I and my brothers and my men are also lending the people money and grain. But let us stop charging interest! Give back to them immediately their fields, vineyards, olive groves and houses, and also the interest you are charging them—one percent of the money, grain, new wine and olive oil.” (Nehemiah 5:9-11)
To the amazement of modern readers, the nobles relented. “We will give it back,” they said. “And we will not demand anything more from them. We will do as you say (verse 12)."
This would prove to be only a brief reprieve for the poor among the Jews, however. Historical evidence suggests jubilee was never fully embraced by any of the Abrahamic religions (which all regard the biblical Abraham as forefather): Judaism, Islam or Christianity.
"Poverty is the result of society's faults and wrongdoing," Josh told us. Lending with interest (called usury) is never going away in our modern context. The world's financial system runs on it. But that doesn't mean we can't apply the heart of God's Law in our modern context.
OBEYING GOD'S LAW MEANS OPPOSING USURY: PAYDAY LOANS
Financial products and services offered as "help" for the poor are often designed to take advantage of them by charging excessive interest. This is the modern definition of usury. It is the sin inherent in our modern financial system.
Some credit cards offer extremely low monthly payments, but have high interest rates that allow your debt to balloon to tens of thousands of dollars. Payday loans can be far worse. These are loans offered to folks who are struggling to make it to the next paycheck.
Here's how payday loans work:
1. You walk into a payday lending office. You provide proof that you will be getting a paycheck up to two weeks from now. You need $300 out of that to cover some emergency expenses.
2. You either write them a personal check for that amount plus a finance charge (which is really an interest rate of 15-30%) or sign over the right to debit your bank account. The finance charges on $300 range from $45-$90, so you might write a check for up to $390.
3. They loan you the $300. When your payday comes, they will cash the check or debit your account for $390.
4. If you don't have enough, you either pay another finance charge (another $90) to roll the loan over for two more weeks, or you default. Then they start to charge much higher interest rates until you can pay what you owe in full.
It used to be a crime to charge interest above 72% ($216 for a $300 loan!). The Indiana Senate has recently passed a bill that actually lifts that ceiling. It proposes allowing lenders to charge as much as 99% or even 192% for certain small loans. If the Indiana House of Representatives passes it and Governor Holcomb signs it, this will become our new law.
POVERTY IS DUE TO SOCIETY'S SINS, NOT THE SINS OF THE POOR
These predatory loans, and our modern societies that allow them, are sinful.
That can be hard to recognize when industry leaders who support payday lending describe these loans as "opportunities" for poor people to have quick access to cash and build credit while they're at it. Clearly, the stronger opportunity is for the lender to make more money if and when the borrower defaults, as they do in 1 out of every 5 loans. That rate is worse where payday loans are offered over the internet. Nearly half of online payday loans default.
How far we have fallen away from God's desire that we refuse to let there be poor among us. Once someone desperate signs on to these debts, our society agrees the lender has every right to keep them in poverty for as long as it takes to be paid what is owed.
We allow it because of our judgmental view of the borrower. It's true that people can make poor choices that keep them in poverty. But long-term, generational, inescapable poverty is not simply an individual problem. Payday loans are an example of how society offers false, short-term solutions that enrich some while make matters far worse for others. It's easy to dismiss those who default on them as foolish. Their fault, not ours.
But Jesus tells us the poor are the farthest thing from fools to be looked down upon. He calls the poor and meek blessed.
"Here in the Midwest we tend to think that if you're poor, you must be lazy, there's less value to you," Josh said. "But Jesus says that if you're poor you will inherit everything." (See Matthew 5)
When Jesus said, "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God," he wasn't kidding. (Matthew 19:24) Those who are poor, Josh explained, often have a better view of Jesus because they - like Mary - find a sense of security nowhere else.
MARY WASN'T THE FOOL IN THIS STORY. JUDAS WAS.
Mary looked foolish for "wasting" the perfume on Jesus. Judas pretended to care about the poor when he said the perfume should be sold and given to the poor instead. In fact, John plainly tells us Judas was a thief who helped himself to the money bag.
Our point of view is so often like that of Judas. The poor who praise Jesus and don't enrich themselves don't really get it, we think. Obtaining and building wealth in this world is our security. Only a fool wastes money like Mary did. Their poverty is clearly their fault, not ours.
To be more like Christ, we must adopt his point of view.
Jesus tells us the poor will always be among us because we keep failing to follow the heart of God's Law. Furthermore, he tells us no one understands how precious time with him is better than those like Mary. What to us seems foolish, Jesus Christ sees as acts of love in a relationship with him that will outlast our wealth to the bottom penny.
This ought to be convicting for many of us who have dismissed poverty as a personal problem, or looked down on others for being poor. At the same time, it ought to be deeply encouraging for those of us who have looked down on ourselves for being poor.
"If you are poor, do not look down on yourself and do not let anyone look down on you," Josh said. "If you hear those voices of shame in your head, that's not Jesus."
Jesus's voice is the one that tells those who hate you and want to take advantage of you to leave you alone. His is the voice that says, This world will never understand how much I love you, and it will never understand how much you are blessed.