Today’s Words of Inspiration come from the book The True Church and the Poor, written by Jon Sobrino, a Jesuit theologian: “The poor are accepted as constituting the primary recipients of the Good News and, therefore, as having an inherent capacity of understanding it better than anyone else."
Getting your theology corrected is a humbling experience.
Just when you get your understanding of God figured out, someone or something comes along and reveals a truth to you that you haven’t previously considered. That correction can come from an inspired sermon or a book written by a deep theologian. Your God-view can be turned upside down via a meaningful conversation among friends or in a small group. A spouse or a life-long friend can send along a note that makes you revise what you thought you knew about life with God.
Then there are those incidences where a person’s understanding of God can come from humbling and unexpected sources. As a youth minister, I was frequently challenged by a pre-teen who could see deep truth in scripture. Often times, one of my children would add a footnote to a dinner prayer that stopped me in my tracks.
When it comes to unlikely sources of deep theology, the Jesuit theologian Jon Sobrino wrote that the poor have “an inherent capacity” of understanding the Good News better than anyone else. The man on the corner with the ‘please help’ sign, the woman receiving a plate from Taste of Hope, the teenager coming through the doors for BACH, and the child at Burnett Elementary all inherently know God better than those of us who are not poor.
Of this quote about the poor knowing the Good News inherently, the Rev. James Martin, another Jesuit theologian wrote: “That's threatening for any comfortable Christian. For not only do we have to help the poor, not only do we have to advocate on their behalf, we also have to see them as perhaps understanding God better than we do.”
Our understanding of God could and should be upended at the Nativity. In that smelly, hot, unsanitary animal pen, God said “find me here.” The angels sang not to the people at the temple, but to farm hands. It’s as if the entire point of being wrapped in strips of cloth was to point out that God’s Wisdom isn’t refined, it’s desperate. By using a feeding trough as a bed, we’re led to a theology that informs us to be servants to the poor, the incarcerated, and the lonely.
Come to the manger, my friend. It is there we find the wisdom of God.
Let us pray,
God of Justice, open our eyes to see you in the face of the poor. Open our ears to hear you in the cries of the exploited. Open our mouths to defend you in the public squares as well as in private deeds. Remind us that what we do to the least ones, we do to you. Amen.
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