as long as he is not trying to be rich like everybody else, people put a wall between him and themselves. And he is utterly unable to do anything for them so as to claim their respect.
Poverty means shame, that dreadful shame which arises from a failure that cannot be concealed from others. These are the three dreadful faces of poverty: frustration, fear and shame. And whatever cares or responsibilities wealth may bring, to most people it seems like a picnic compared to poverty.
It can be said, therefore, that men love their possessions. But that is not really accurate. For it is not so much the positive goodness which lies in things that makes people cling to their possessions. It is rather the power of wealth to keep the evils of poverty away.
Wealth saves us—that is what we know. Therefore when we pray, O Lord, Deliver us from evil [Matthew 6:13], we probably mean, O Lord, give us the right possession to keep evil away. Give us money in the savings account when the accident occurs. Give us a fire extinguisher in the basement when the fire breaks out. Give us the right drug when our loved ones are sick. O Lord, give us that which will deliver us from the evil and helplessness of being poor.
I have been speaking mainly of physical possessions. But all of this is even more true of spiritual possessions—of the virtue we may have or knowledge, or integrity, or vivacity. These, too, must be maintained with care and involve responsibilities. But these, too, keep us from an even more dreadful poverty than a lack of physical possessions.
II
Let us now look at the New Testament, to see what light it throws on the problem of possessions and poverty.
We can begin with the passage by Paul read as our morning lesson. Paul is speaking about the cross, about the fact that Christians celebrate Jesus’s gruesome crucifixion as if it were a victory, an event of power and joy.
Paul observes that this makes no sense to the wor1d, which cannot imagine why people should celebrate a death, and a death by being victimized.
“Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” [1 Corinthians 1:20, RSV]. Human values and human wisdom simply collapse in the face of the horror and scandal of Jesus’s death.
Paul’s point is clear. The world judges everything according as it enhances man, or assists man, or improves man, or appreciates man. That is the wisdom of the world. And what are we confronted with in the cross of Jesus? No enhancement of man, no giving assistance to man, no improvement of man, no appreciation of man.
Do not imagine the cross as some kind of moral exercise by Jesus, where he exercises his virtues and displays his human goodness. Jesus died—he died all the way; he was not playing moral games. And because he died, it is impossible to look upon the cross as some new display of human possibility. And that, Paul says, is what shocks the world: that in the crucifixion, Christians should celebrate not Christ’s virtue, not his forebearance on his enemies, not his courage, but his death, which shows that all these virtures went for nothing.
Then Paul turns to the people to whom he writes and reminds them that they, too, in their own experience repeat just what is found in the cross. “Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth” (1 Corinthians 1:26).1 In short, not many were rich. “For,” Paul continues,
God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even the things that are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. (1 Corinthians 1:27–29, RSV)
Note carefully, Paul does not say, God shamed the wise and the strong and the real2 by giving his followers more wisdom, more strength and more reality, so that they could meet the world on its own terms and beat the world all [hollow ?]. Just like the crucified Christ, the Christians were and still are foolish and weak and, as it were, nothings in the world’s terms. They were, and they remain poor.
In this passage, of course, Paul is really elaborating a theme in Jesus’s own teaching. Here is the account from Mark 10:17–27:
And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: ‘Do not kill, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother.’” And he said to him, “Teacher, all these I have observed from my youth.” And Jesus looking upon him loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” At that saying his countenance fell, and he went away sorrowful; for he had great possessions.
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