The Poor Will Be with You

According to World Data Lab, 604,988,913 people in the world, of 7.88 billion people, live in extreme poverty (https://worldpoverty.io/headline). That is 8 out of 100 people. Imagine being in a room with 100 friends or church members, and 8 of those have no food.

Poverty is even in developed countries, and people don’t seem to care. Sadly, I’ve heard Christians misquote Jesus.

“He said: The poor will always be with you. We can’t change poverty.”

In Bethany, as he was reclining to eat at Simon the leper’s house, a lady came with an alabaster jar of pure and expensive ointment of nard, busted the jar, and poured the ointment on Jesus’s head. While Jesus saw it as a symbolic act of anointing him for his death and burial, others fussed at her for wasting it on a single man when it could have been sold for a large sum and distributed to the poor (Mark 14:3–5).

Jesus rebuked them, mandating that they leave her alone. She had done what she could and prepared him for his burial. While she did the best she could, the grumblers had a new mandate:

“You have the poor with you. Whenever you want (thelo), you are able (dunamai) to do good (eu) for them.” (14:7a)

The problem wasn’t that they didn’t have an opportunity; they had plenty of poor around them. The problem was their heart – they didn’t want to help them even though they could do good for them. Instead, they wanted to fuss at this lady for a show.

Poverty exists not because we live on an impoverished planet but because people are greedy. Michael Parenti, a political scientist, said this eloquently:

“The third world is not poor. You don’t go to poor countries to make money. There are very few poor countries in this world. Most countries are rich. The Philippines are [sic] rich, Brazil is rich, Mexico is rich, Chile is rich. Only the people are poor, but there’s [sic] billions to be made there, to be carved out, and be taken . . . . The capitalist, European, and North American power, have carved out and taken the timber, the flax, the hemp, the cocoa, the rum, the tin, the copper, the iron, the rubber, the bauxite, the slaves, and the cheap labor – they have taken out of these countries. These countries are not underdeveloped; they are overexploited.” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoxT1UwTM3I)

That lady wasn’t heartless that she poured the ointment on Jesus rather than sell it and distribute it to the poor. She knew those grumblers’ hearts – they could help the poor but didn’t. She wasn’t going to join them. Instead, she did her best. Unlike the poor who were always with her (because of people’s careless hearts), Jesus wasn’t going to be (14:7b). She knew that and did what she could do the best: care for him, prepare him for his burial, just as the Hebrews prepared the lambs for the sacrifice.

Her forward thinking bought her a place in history: “Wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the world, what she did will be remembered” (14:9b). She chose wisely.

We can’t be calloused to the poverty around us. We might be unable to make mass changes, but we can feed one hungry person today. It depends upon our wanting or willingness (thelo). Those hinder us from helping the poor and letting poverty exist.