On the Poor Always Being with You

“The poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me.”—John 12:8 

This verse and its parallel in Matthew 26:11, along with 1 Thessalonians 3:10 and a smattering of Proverbs, seem to do most of the heavy lifting for rationalizing Christian inaction against poverty, and especially against structural poverty or welfare for the un- or underemployed. The argument seems to turn on a kind of Christ-sanctioned fatalism. In both vignettes, we encounter the real (in Matthew) or feigned (in John) shock and disgust on the part of disciples at the use of valuable resources on something as frivolous as washing Jesus’ feet in perfume rather than the imminently more practical and humane use of it for the care of the poor. To this, I suppose the argument against aid to the poor would go, Jesus says “poverty will always exist (and thus it’s a fool's errand to try to address it at all), so putting resources toward alleviating it is the real frivolity.” 

I haven’t had many occasions to experience sincere attempts to marshall this verse to the purpose christian indifference to poverty in the church circles I grew up in and exist in now. But, I also know that this verse is not infrequently employed to argue against Christian intervention, directly or through policy advocacy, in efforts to alleviate poverty for a number of reasons and in traditions that have far more cultural cachet than my Episcopal Church. I can’t point to specific instances of leaders in my church circles making such arguments, but I regularly got the impression that this was a common position among many members and leaders of the larger evangelical culture I grew up surrounded by. Then there’s the fact that a google search of this verse will give you plenty of posts arguing against such an interpretation, indicating at least that the perception of it being employed as an argument for Christian inaction is much broader than just me. Finally, you can find data like that of a Washington Post survey from 2017 pointing out that 50% of Catholics and 53% of white evangelicals blame poverty on lack of effort on the part of the poor compared to 31% of atheists and agnostics.

Of course, blaming poverty on individual lack of effort doesn’t necessarily mean someone thinks the poor shouldn’t be helped—and indeed a robust Christian grace-ethic rooted in the cross would say that people should be helped despite the fault they can be assigned for present circumstances. To riff on Rowan Williams in Resurrection, Christianity is not about the business of helping people because they’re innocent (because none of us are), but instead because we are loved and valued by God. However, perhaps cynically, my intuition inclines me to the thought that most Christians are not formed by a robust grace-ethic and for most Christans, as probably for most Americans and indeed humans in general, the assumption is that insofar as you have a duty to help people, it is only the victims of circumstantial, rather than self-imposed, misfortune to which such a duty applies. 

The usual strategy for responding to such Christian arguments for inaction on poverty, rooted as they are in specific verses such as John 12:8, seems to be to point out the inconsistency of such interpretations with the larger witness of the Bible generally and Jesus specifically on the question of helping the poor, with things like Matthew 25, Proverbs 29:7, Exodus 23:10-11, Psalm 68:6, and most of Luke, James, and 1 Corinthians providing almost unequivocal witnesses to God’s concern for and command to care for the poor.

However, lest one risk meeting proof texting with proof texting or giving ground to the idea that there may be an irresolvable conflict within Jesus’ own witness that allows Christians of goodwill to come down on opposite sides of the question of whether Christians should work for the alleviation of poverty, it’s important to look at what Jesus is actually saying in John 12 and Matthew 26. 

Importantly, in both John and Matthew, Jesus has his face set toward the passion, his imminent crucifixion and death. This is a unique—the unique—moment of human history, the moment upon which history turns, the culmination of Jesus’ earthly life and the definitive sign of God’s forgiveness and outpouring of love. Especially given the fact that in Matthew Jesus goes on in chapter 28 to say, “Lo, I am with you always,” a direct contrast to his “you will not always have me” in 26, there’s a good chance 26 is speaking about the particular manner of his earthly, pre-resurrection presence. 

John further emphasizes the particularity of the moment, identifying the woman, nameless in Matthew, anointing Jesus’ feet as Mary the sister of Martha and Lazarus. Following immediately upon Mary’s lack of faith in the Jesus as the Resurrection, or indeed in the Resurrection in general, John presents the anointing as a poignant moment of reconciliation between Mary and Jesus, a moment of absolute and irreducible particularity in the interchange between these two individuals flowing out of the specific and contingent events that preceded. 

Understood in light of where this incident falls in history, Jesus’ acknowledging the persistent nature of poverty in the world takes on the opposite meaning from how it is often deployed for indifference, being the exception that proves the rule that Christians should always take care of the poor. Jesus is much more likely saying “you will have plenty of other opportunities to help the poor, but this is the only chance this woman has to offer me this service because this is a unique time.” In other words, and much more consistent with the larger thrust of Jesus’ message (not forgetting that Matthew 25, the text par excellence for grounding social justice Christianity, immediately precedes the anointing at Bethany in Matthew), Jesus is saying to the disciples, “You’re right that in every other instance helping the poor should be prioritized. Your error here is not in wanting to help the poor, but in failing to see the all-surpassing—but also utterly unique—significance of this time that we are in. You’re just demonstrating more and more that you don’t really get who I am and what I’m about to do.” 

Far from authorizing Christian indifference to poverty, the persistence of poverty in the world (at least prior to the general resurrection and New Creation) offers a ground for unceasing Christian work for its alleviation more secure even than the most hopeful progressive vision, a vision liable to falter in the face of its own underlying foundation on the perfectibility of human society regularly running aground on the persistence of Sin in the world. Insofar as the injustice of poverty is grounded on sin-distorted worldly power arrangements, poverty may be mitigated and even diminished, but it will never be eradicated prior to the total transformation of all things. Christians should expect the perdurance of the effects of Sin in the world and they must continually be confronted as a sign of our hope and as a proclamation of the Resurrection until Christ comes again. 

The Bible