Gifts From Poverty
Fifth Sunday of Easter | May 2, 2021
2 Corinthians 8:1-9
John 15:1-8
Following WWII, many countries in Northern Europe experienced the devastation that the war had brought upon them. The rations necessary during the war continued. Clothing and food was scarce, and famine scourged the countryside. And then, in a small Dutch town of Olst, the postmaster delivered a small box to a small girl named Katje. As she opened the box, she discovered wool socks, a real bar of soap, a letter from a girl from Indiana, and a bar of chocolate. She hadn’t eaten chocolate in years. And as she looked at the bar and at her family and at the postmaster, she decided to share that chocolate.
Afterward, she sat down and wrote a letter to the girl from Indiana, and they became pen pals. And Rosie continued to send boxes to Katje filled with small gifts and amenities. As the adults in Rosie’s small town discovered what she was doing and the impact it made, they began sending bigger boxes filled with food and clothing for the townspeople of Olst.
In the spring, the people of Olst wondered what they could give the generous folks from Indiana. As they looked at their tulip gardens, they knew. They packed up hundreds of tulip bulbs and sent them to their friends in America. They didn’t have much to give, but what they had they gave graciously. Willingly. With excitement and hope.
It’s a true story written by Candace Fleming that can be found in the children’s book section of most libraries. It’s called Boxes for Katje. It’s a story not unlike Paul’s description of the generosity of the churches in Macedonia. He describes these churches as going through a ‘severe ordeal of affliction.’ We don’t get more than that, but we can perhaps imagine. Maybe there was famine. Maybe oppression. Judging by some of the challenges described in Revelation, we can assume that Christians who didn’t worship the pagan gods may have been ostracized from the trade guilds—meaning, they couldn’t operate their businesses without the approval of what one might call a ‘union.’ And that permission would be withheld unless the businesses made proper offerings to the pagan gods.
But instead of doing what was needed to keep businesses afloat, the people of the churches in Macedonia chose to give to the needs of the church in Jerusalem. Instead of giving to pagan gods, they entrusted their entire lives—including their finances—to God and to God’s purpose. Wow!
Paul also describes them as having both extreme poverty and abundant joy. Honestly, that sounds like an oxymoron to me. How can anyone experience abundant joy when one lives in extreme poverty? I can’t even experience abundant joy when I live in the wealth that I have. But maybe that’s the problem. Maybe, because I think I own what I have, I spend more time worrying about losing it and less time letting it go—giving it away.
And as long as I’m worrying about keeping what I have, I can’t experience the joy of being held in the hands of God. But that’s exactly what these churches experienced.
Now, I don’t want to convey that everyone who lives in poverty is more joyful than those who have much. And I don’t want to suggest that you have to live in poverty in order to experience joy. It really has nothing to do with what one has or doesn’t have and all to do with how one views what they have. It seems to me that the people of these churches viewed everything they had as gift. It wasn’t theirs; it was God’s. Not only their money and stuff but their wholes lives. Whereas, I (and probably most of us) tend to view what I have as mine/ours. We ‘earned’ it. We ‘deserve’ it. We should have more of it. We better not lose or damage it. And God forbid we give it all away.
No matter how much or little you have, I would wager that this is the unspoken—and perhaps even unacknowledged—approach that the majority of us have toward our stuff. Which is why it’s so hard for us to imagine those with so little giving, not only according to their means but beyond their means. Giving more than they can afford to give.
I had the wonderful opportunity to listen to Bryan Stevenson speak about his work this past week. If you don’t know, Bryan Stevenson is the lawyer who wrote “Just Mercy,” a book about his experience defending an innocent black man who was on death row. If you’re not a reader, watch the movie.
Bryan talked about the various barriers to justice that our culture and communities still have. One of those barriers is poverty. And he said something very profound about poverty. He said, “The opposite of poverty is not wealth but justice.” The opposite of poverty is not wealth but justice. What does that mean?
It means that as long as we focus on what we have or don’t have, we will continue to live into the cycles of injustice. Because if we only focus on what we have, we will justify the underhanded and deceitful ways in which we might use to get what we have or what we want. Ways that may very well be legal but are certainly not just. Ways that include denying votes to citizens of this country simply because of their skin color. Stevenson told of meeting a man with a variety of scars on his body. And when he asked where he got those scars, the man pointed to each one, saying, “I got this scar when I fought for the black vote in [this county.] And I got this scar when I fought for the black vote in [that county]. And I got this scar…” And he went on and on and on.
Did you know that those in prison, though they are denied the right to vote, are still counted in the census that delineates political representation? The opposite of poverty is not wealth but justice. When justice is in place, poverty will no longer be an issue. When justice is in place, people will be paid living wage for their work so that they can afford to work in order to provide. When justice is in place, children will not fear being abused by parents or bullied by classmates. When justice is in place, all of our children will have access to early learning, families will have access to healthy food, and neighbors will not fear sitting on their front porch at night. When justice is in place, law enforcement can focus more on changing tires and bringing lost children home instead of curbing gang violence and cleaning up traffic accidents. When justice is in place…
Sound like a pipe dream? Perhaps. Sound like heaven? It is. But that doesn’t mean we have to wait to die in order to see this justice begin to take root. We are the ones tasked with planting the seed. Paul tells us that our generosity—our drive toward justice—is evidence of our love for God. Evidence of our trust in God. Evidence of our connection to the vine, if you will (as John says)—evidence of the generous act of Christ who, though he had the riches of God became poor, for YOU, for US, so that by his poverty, we might know the wealth and grace of God. We might know heaven now. And knowing that, we could become it. And becoming God’s grace and wealth, we would give it all away.
That is heaven, my friends. That is the seed we are challenged to plant, over and over again. A seed of hope for those who have none. A seed of grace for those who long for a kind word. A seed of justice for those in poverty. A seed of life in the midst of death. We have the seed in our faith in Christ. So, as Dr. Seuss’ the Lorax says at the end of the book, “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”
Pastor Tobi White
Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church
Lincoln, NE
