When fear grips the wealthy and the poor are brave
Jesus said to his disciples:
“Do not be afraid any longer, little flock,
for your Father is pleased to give you the kingdom.
Sell your belongings and give alms.
Provide money bags for yourselves that do not wear out,
an inexhaustible treasure in heaven
that no thief can reach nor moth destroy.
For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.” –Luke 12:32-34
Jesus tells us not to be afraid: to not let the thoughts, feelings, and tension in our bodies and brains stall our charitable actions, freeze us in the mission to be a community of love. A Christian community courageously gives our heart to God’s treasures: compassion, kindness, mercy, generosity.
Fears, though, are human and contextual. Sure, Jesus was speaking to oppressed people in a violent empire state. And yes, Jesus knew his own life was threatened, conspired against—that his own courage could kill him.
And goodness knows, Jesus’ bravery did bring Him to the bloody and awful cross. But His nonviolent surrender for the greater good shepherded in His reign here and now, and it is ours, God says, to reveal to others through our actions.
Yet, even though we are in God’s reign, the fears persist. In God’s reign, horror hasn’t been wiped away.
In much of my prayer, I wrestle with the meaning of Jesus’ words and the gap between his time and mine.
I pray: Jesus, we know a lot nowadays. We can access practically any piece of information with the swipe of a screen, a push of a button. Jesus, with so much information available to us we have so much awareness of dangers, threats, disorders, so to not be afraid in our context could be irrational, flimsy, or dumb, right? It seems that everyone, from rich to poor, is worried. Jesus, you’re not asking us to be in a state of denial, are you?
So I beg you, Jesus, what do you really mean when you tell us not to be afraid?
Last weekend, my friend Sister Annie Killian professed her final vows as a Dominican Sister of Peace. I didn’t get to travel to the celebration, so on Sunday morning I sat in a quiet living room with my computer on my lap, watching the livestream and praying along with the crowd gathered in the chapel in Ohio. (And grinning, as I recognized so many people in the assembly.) As I heard Sister Annie declare her life-long commitment to religious life (Gospel living), tears welled up in my eyes.
Later in the ceremony, I heard Sister Annie’s strong and articulate preaching voice boldly describe our context. She declared, “I could easily prioritize my own comfort and feel entitled to my own consumption – eat, drink, and be merry. And it would be easy because we live in a nation dominated by rich men intent on building up their own wealth by building big: bigger walls, bigger bombs, bigger detention centers. They’re passing bigger bills to give themselves bigger tax breaks. And our media culture persuades us to admire these rich men, vote for them, to make excuses for their abuse of power. Or if we don’t support them we’re told to be afraid and keep silent.”
Jesus tells us not to be afraid. He says that God is pleased to give us the kingdom, the reign of peace and justice.
When Sister Annie spoke, her voice didn’t shake. She was bold and strong and passionate, far from silent. I sobbed as I listened to her, as her courage and witness soaked into my soul, hundreds of miles away in Wisconsin. Sister Annie became forever poor as she gave her whole life to the Order of Preachers, but that poverty didn’t stop her from being brave. Sister Annie shared how the vows help her to resist temptations and follow Jesus, to be counter-culturally nonviolent. “Poverty helps us to recognize that all we have is gift,” Sister Annie proclaimed.
Since the start of this year, I’ve been praying and thinking a lot about the duty of Christians when systemic injustice and violence are prominent, when decades of experiences taught us to trust governments to collaborate with us in our mission to feed and shelter people, to save lives. Because recent big bills are helping the rich, systems are collapsing, and more people are poor. Many are afraid.
“Do not be afraid any longer,” Jesus says. Then Jesus tells us to get our priorities in order, to possess little to nothing that is material, to resist the ways of the rich and store up only the treasures of heaven: joy, communion, liberation. Poverty is The Way, he seems to say.
What is a Christian called to do, to prioritize, when our poverty becomes more than material or spiritual, when our poverty starts to taste like fear, numbness, overwhelm? When the awareness of injustice spirals us down to the temptation to despair and we feel our powerlessness tangled up with fear and poverty?
Poverty is forced on us nowadays, when previously structures provided the wealth of security and expectations. It was rich of us to think that the human-made systems could provide.
“Your father is pleased to give you the kingdom,” Jesus says. And Sister Annie said that poverty is a gift. Perhaps the answer is to unwrap the gifts, to receive the treasure we have been given. If we have little to cling to, then our hands become free to reach toward Jesus Christ and let him lead.
Walking with Jesus, as poor people united together in the mission to love and serve, we shall find we have become brave. Only as a Christian community can we be both poor and brave.
In her preaching, Sister Annie also declared that “Christian love is universal in scope and all inclusive and yet it must be practiced in the concrete circumstances of our daily encounters. When we welcome the immigrant and the stranger we welcome Christ.”
Amen Jesus, and Amen Sister Annie. I do believe: as people of love and courage united as a community, we are indeed the welcoming hands of Christ tending to those in need. Amen.
You can read more by Sr. Julia and and by Sr. Annie Killian at our web site.
