Blessed are the Poor In Spirit

Back in the ’60s, Arlo Guthrie did a song called “The Pause of Mr. Claus.” In the introduction to this song, Guthrie says that if you are down, your friends can often point to someone else who has it worse, and you will think, “Yeah, that guy has it worse than me,” and you’ll feel better about your situation.

Guthrie then says,

But think of the last guy. For one minute, think of the last guy. Nobody’s got it worse than that guy. Nobody in the whole world. That guy…he’s so alone in the world that he doesn’t even have a street to lay in for a truck to run him over. He’s out there with nothin’. Nothin’s happenin’ for that cat.

Guthrie used this “last guy” to make a humorous political point about the FBI. But I have always remembered this last guy. And whenever I read this beatitude I think of the last guy. Because I believe that when Jesus talks about the “poor in spirit” he is talking about the last guy, and people like him.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God.

Many people, when they think of “poor in spirit,” believe it is talking about … ironically … a kind of spiritual richness. That is, they think of it in terms of spiritual humility. J. B. Philips, translated this beatitude as “How happy are the humble-minded….” The New Living Translation says, “God blesses those who are poor and realize their need for him….” Another version said, “Blessed are those who know their need for God….”

These paraphrases show a subtle tendency to be uncomfortable with what Jesus is trying to say here. Because Jesus is talking about people who are spiritually poor. They are not somehow closer to God, any more than the physically poor are. This is not talking about a way for humans to be more acceptable to God. Rather, it is telling us something about God.

In human terms we value success and winners. We try to avoid losers. Someone who is “poor in spirit” is a particularly intense kind of loser. By contrast with someone who is physically poor, or poor on the outside, someone who is poor in spirit is poor on the inside. He carries his poverty with him wherever he goes — like the Buckaroo Banzai meme: “No matter where you go, there you are.” He is his own worst enemy. He is not a victim of circumstances; rather, circumstances have no effect on his happiness. He will find a way to be unhappy or to foul up any situation, no matter how good.

This is the kind of person we seek to avoid at all costs. We are afraid that he will drag us down with him. He is like the small, unathletic kid that nobody wants to pick for their team.

But the amazing thing — the good news — that Jesus proclaims is that someone wants the person who is poor on the inside. The little unathletic kid hears a friendly voice cry out, “We’ll take him!” The cat for whom nothin’s happenin’ suddenly gets a piece of the action.

And what action it is! The one nobody wants is told that the kingdom of heaven is his! The person who is of no human value is valuable to God — so valuable that he gives him God’s own kingdom. Again this shows the contrast — the chasm — between what God values and what humans value.

Most of us do not feel like we are the last guy or the born loser. At least not most of the time. But ironically we run a risk: we have too much going on.

Jesus, in Luke 14, tells a story about a great banquet to which many people were invited. He tells this story in response to someone who had said, “Blessed are those who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!” Jesus’ reply seemed to be in the vein of “You think so? Well what about this?”

In Jesus’ account, the people who were invited to this banquet simply were too busy. Their calendars were full. They just could not seem to squeeze this banquet into their already tight schedules.

In response, the man giving the banquet ordered that the invitation list be filled with those who had nothing going on — the poor, the crippled, the blind and lame. And even after that, when there was still room, his servants were told to dig them out from under bridges and hedges — to bring in homeless people. In other words, this man, who represents God, filled his banquet with last guys. Their only qualification was that they were not too busy to come.

This is the danger of not being poor in spirit: we will fill our lives with many good things that will make the kingdom of God seem unnecessary or undesirable. Again, the one advantage the last guy has is that “nothin’s happenin’ for that cat.”

Why would we do this kind of thing? Of course we all want to “go to heaven.” But we think of heaven as if it were an elite college. The way to get in is to get really good grades and test scores and lots of extra-curriculars. Just fill your life with enough stuff and they will take you.

In other words, we stuff ourselves with what we see as valuable so that God will decide we are good enough for heaven.

But the stuff we fill our lives with is stuff that God thinks is worthless for the simple reason that those things keep us from hearing his word. The invitation to the banquet is just one more call on our time, already full with business. The Word sewn among thorns is just one more thing trying to grow in this patch of soil that is just too full of life.

Note that “humility” is just more stuff. Any human qualification misses the point of this beatitude. God is not looking for those who have found the way; instead, he sent his son to seek and save the lost.

In this beatitude Jesus tells us that God values those who have no value. But what does this mean for those of us who see ourselves as having value? Do we “pretend” that we have no value before God? Do we toss aside everything we have so that we can be as worthless as the next guy?

I believe this beatitude is simply saying, “Come as you are. Do not try to qualify, because God takes even the least worthy.” If we are willing to come before God on those terms, we start to see how the things we value do not matter. We start on the path toward embracing God’s values. We end up, perhaps, like Paul, who can “count [the things of value to this world] as but dung” for the sake of winning Christ.

And perhaps one more point is we start to value the losers the way God does. We are always tempted to love the lovable and reject the unlovely. But God does not do this. He can love people into loveliness. And he wants us to be part of that.

So at the very least we can look at those people around us, especially in the Church, who we find hard to love, and think not of the value they have in themselves, but of the fact that they are precious and chosen in God’s eyes, and their very unlovableness is part or the reason God pities them and welcomes them.