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by David Winter

‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor’  Luke 4:18

Over recent months the great slogan has been ‘Make Poverty History’. We are all aware that  in parts of Africa poverty, hunger and sickness are endemic. Consequently we have come to see poverty itself as a great evil, to be eliminated at all costs from every society on earth. Few Christians would disagree with that agenda.

However, early this month we celebrate the feast day of one of the most popular of all saints, Francis of Assisi, who did not seem to think of poverty as a burden or evil to be eliminated, but as a gift and grace to be gladly accepted. His friars, following his own example, lived lives of genuine poverty. He himself lived in a hovel a few miles outside the city. For Francis, the real evil was wealth and possessions. To be rid of them was to be set free to serve Christ and others without hindrance.

Is there, then, a contradiction between our longing to ‘make poverty history’ and Francis’s longing to celebrate the simplicity of the poor? I suspect not, and the verse above, words of Jesus in the synagogue in Nazareth, may help to clarify the position. The ‘good news for the poor’ that Jesus proclaimed was the affirmation that being poor was not a sign of sin or failure (as many people believed). The poor, too, were candidates for the kingdom of heaven and all its riches. It is  a rebuttal of the notion, widely held then and not entirely absent sometimes from church life now, that the powerful and wealthy  have  preferential rights to God’s favour, when in fact they have the fearful burden of their power and riches to deal with first. These words of Jesus, and the preaching of Francis, were not a political manifesto but a declaration that all, poor or rich, are equally valuable to God. But of course if they are, the love of God constrains us to do something to redress the suffering of the needy – and to challenge the self-sufficiency of the rich.

Canon David Winter is former Diocesan Director of Evangelism, a broadcaster and author of many books including Message for the Millennium (BRF).

Comments
the difference between Francis of assisi is that he chose to live in poverty and could have left that way of living whenever he wanted to. Those facing poverty in India and Africa is that they have no choice but have to suffer this humiliation while those in the west prosper in riches.
john Blakeston	2nd February 2008
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