Jesus related to the weapons of the poor

Jesus grew up with poor people. The people with whom he regularly spent his time were rural, poor and illiterate. There were no people of wealth who lived in Nazareth; there was no middle class. His relationship with the poor people of Nazareth and the surrounding area became the context in which he advocated for justice and encouraged the practices of the kingdom of God on earth.

The people of rural Galilee were truly poor. They were not simply eking out a subsistence living. Many were expendables who struggled to survive. Understandably, they were not a happy, contented lot. Galilee was the area in which the zealot rebellion movement developed. They were at wits end in their struggle to survive. It was from this population that Jesus drew his disciples and found his listening audiences.

Somewhere in my theological/religious journey, I found a truth in reading and interpreting the Bible: A text without context is a pretext. Applied to Jesus, if the reader does not understand the context in which Jesus taught, his stories can be twisted to mean whatever the reader wants. It is the knowledge of the context of the life of Jesus that ought to keep every Christian minister honest. That seldom happens. Ignoring the context of the ministry of Jesus is a safe harbor that ministers and Christian leaders are slow to leave.

When the parables of Jesus are examined and placed into context, we find that wealth and poverty were a favorite topic. Jesus taught about the relationship between employer and employee, about fair wages, about the tragic gap between the wealth of the rich and the poverty of the poor, and about the absurd living style of the rich and the unbearable consequences of poverty.

I recently reread the parable of the dishonest steward as recorded in Luke 16:1-9. Rather than repeating the parable here, I encourage readers to take a look at the story for himself/herself. There are longstanding disagreements about the ending of the parable as it was first told by Jesus. Some scholars insist the story actually ends with verse 7 and that verses 8 and 9 are additions by Luke as he tried to make sense of the story two generations after the death of Jesus.

When the story is placed into context, it is a story about dishonesty. First, the rich owner was recognized by the listening peasants as the crook who stole their property with the help of the Roman rulers. He lived in luxury in one of the two large cities in northern Galilee and hired thugs to extract all the money they could from the peasants who tilled the land. The steward was in fact a hired thug who did the dirty work and who himself stole as much as he could. The poor peasants were trying to survive and were not concerned about the laws that were made by rich rulers and with the religious rules set by priests and other religious leaders.

When seen in this light the parable is a great cartoon portrayed by exaggerated characters and inflated numbers. Jesus probably told the story as a discussion starter among his poverty stricken friends.

In an attempt to understand the poor, scholar James Scott looked at the weapons used by the poor to survive. They include foot-dragging, false compliance, pilfering, feigned ignorance, slander, arson, sabotage, lies and half-truths. In real life, then and now, when people are truly impoverished, they will participate in any of the listed activities to survive. They will do so without any twinge of conscience. Survival ethics are very powerful, the laws of human beings and of God not-withstanding.

Jesus was not a law keeper. He was an advocate of justice that demanded dignity and meeting basic needs for everyone.

From my youth, I have tried to take Jesus and his teachings seriously. That has meant friendship with the poor. My actions have been deliberate. I found a lot of them in jail. In the past, very intentionally, I was a regular visitor of those who found themselves locked up. I have welcomed them when they left jail. My wife and I have hosted and befriended thieves, rapists, prostitutes, drug users, alcoholics and drug dealers. I have spent a good bit of time in courtrooms and have taken legal actions on behalf of the guilty poor. Some have become long-term friends. Some have stolen from me. I have found that what James Scott said about poor people is entirely true. Poor people will do most anything to survive and do so with a clean conscience.

What every Christian must realize is that poor people with seemingly dishonest ways are the people of Jesus. The weapons of the poor do not match up with the priorities of nice society. Our answer is to put them into jail. (I never met a rich person or even a middle class person in jail.) I suspect the simplest way to reduce our jail population is to make friends of poor people, invite them into our homes and churches, share our food with them and raise the minimum wage to a living wage.

Being a disciple of Jesus begins with placing him in the context in which he lived and taught. There we will find lots of poor people, whom we need to know and understand. Until then, most Christians will remain frauds in the kingdom of God.

The Rev. Howard Bess is a retired American Baptist minister who lives in Palmer. His email address is hdbss@mtaonline.net.

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