call-in radio

I have been listening to the radio. On Tuesday I was eating a sandwich and listening to ‘1370 Connection,’ the local NPR show that plays from 12 to 1, and two area ministers were discussing a recent conference they had been to in DC on the issue of poverty in this nation and around the world. I believe it was organized by the Christian activist organization Sojourners. They were inspired. They were listening carefully to the callers. I decided I wanted to be one of them.

When I got onto the air, I noted something that had been suggested over the course of the hour, but hadn’t been directly addressed: without a doubt, alleviating poverty is going to require massive structural changes across economics, politics, and social policy, and more importantly, it is going to require sacrifice. (Ironically, this is a word never heard from the Bush Administration, unless it falls within the broad context of “please sacrifice your desire to know what’s being carried out in your name and your ability to participate in those pivotal decisions.” We have yet to hear an even half-hearted call to sacrifice our familiar and destructive habits of self-gratifying consumption. Not incidentally, I believe that we, the people are actually starving for a larger vision that demands our participation and action. We’re waiting for the opportunity to make a contribution – if only someone would give us enough credit to ask.)

Of course there are barriers to sacrifice. People are not going to throw down their remotes and plant victory gardens on Obama’s say-so. Even with the starry eyed diagnosis above coming from my own lips, I’m not sure I’m chomping at the bit to give up the ability to walk into Wegman’s and buy whatever my heart desires. I’ll ride my bike there, but I want a selection of rich foreign cheeses that stirs indecision and feelings of inadequacy. Speaking more seriously, it would be difficult to move away from an abundant array of choices in fresh produce when, well, most of the country is under a blanket of sooty snow. Yet that might be one of the 12 steps to becoming recovering petroleum addicts.

Getting back to poverty and these two ministers: what is necessary, then, is a structural adjustment program here within our very borders. But that institutional transformation (or victory garden) won’t happen unless, to use some extremely appropriate language, something or someone ‘changes our hearts.’ Being ministers, I imagined that these gentlemen would be familiar with some of the ins and outs of interior transformation. I asked what ideas or even specific verses from the prophetic tradition of the Bible touches and inspires them in this mission.

Both men spoke about Jesus’s discussion of the Judgement in Matthew’s Gospel. As one put it, on the last day “God is not going to judge nations according to their GDP. The more important matters are ‘did you feed the hungry, help the oppressed, visit the sick and imprisoned?’ And these are the questions we need to be making into priorities here and now.”

The other expounded upon that idea by directing listeners to a nearby passage in which Jesus says that ‘the poor will always be with you.’ He explained that many have used this passage to bolster an argument that poverty will be a perpetual and irresolvable problem, and we should essentially give up. He took a different tack. ‘I myself am convicted by this [convicted – word choice...wow]: I think this means that the poor are always here, and certainly as people who deserve human consideration, but also that the poor are here for us to learn from.’ The poor will always be with us, that we might see God at work and manifest among the most humble, those pushed to the margins. For if those in the gutter are deserving of God’s love and indeed have it showered upon them, are they not worthy of ours?

we are convicted.