I came across a quote during the week that at first I dismissed, but then I woke up the next morning and the quote was still in my mind. I went back to search for it, and it turned out that this quote captured everything I want to say to you this morning:

"I long for the Calcutta slums to meet the Chicago suburbs, for lepers to meet landowners and for each to see God's image in the other. It's no wonder that the footsteps of Jesus lead from the tax collectors to the lepers. I truly believe that when the poor meet the rich, riches will have no meaning. And when the rich meet the poor, we will see poverty come to an end." - Shane Claiborne

The prophet Isaiah put into words what we know deeply to be true and that is that our own personal liberation is intimately bound to the liberation of those who are oppressed in the world.
(Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? 7Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?  Isaiah 58; 6-7)

And the words from Matthew 25 voice a thought that we know deeply to be true, and that is that when one person suffers, we suffer with them, and if there's one person in our world who lives in poverty, we all live in poverty, and that's an unacceptable situation.
(Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? 38And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? 39And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ 40And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’  Matthew 25; 37-40)

Religion is Concerned with Engagement with Poverty

So I bring you a very profound challenge from Shane Claiborne, the prophet Isaiah, and from Jesus himself. That is that our religion needs to be marked by our care for the poor, above all else. Your religion is not primarily about what you believe; beliefs about the afterlife, or the Trinity, or whether you think that God exists and created the world or not. Your religion is not marked by your beliefs, and your religion is not marked by your rituals, whether you are “High Church” or "Low Church” or anywhere in between. Your religion is marked by your engagement with the poor, by your proximity to poverty, and that is the profound challenge that I want to explore this morning.

You’ve probably heard many sermons about poverty and are left not sure what to do. You feel generally rotten about yourself and the world, but you are none the wiser as to what you can do differently. What I want to do is to try and give you some very practical ways that you can make a real difference in terms of poverty in the world.

Coming Face to Face with Poverty

Let me begin by telling you about a time when I came face to face with poverty. I was raised in a very stable middle-class family, but my parents encouraged me to mix widely. So in my childhood I was friends with a lot of poor people. I grew up in Sydney, went to an inner urban school, and mixed in some very poor and unstable families. Poverty was a reality for me, but it was only when I was 19 that I came close enough to poverty that I had a new relationship with it. It was a relationship that would turn my world upside down. It gave me a new sense of what it meant to engage poverty.

The first two church jobs that I held were with youth. The first of these positions was as a youth worker in a middle-class suburban parish, and the second was as a youth worker on the streets in Sydney. So for two years I ran youth groups in the suburbs, and mixed with middle class families. I spent time in their homes, getting to know what appeared to be some very stable middle-class families. I had a great time, and I met some wonderful people in those years.

Then I moved into street work, and it was not uncommon for me to be walking down the main drag of King's Cross in Sydney, and see a line of young kids, hands outstretched, each of them asking for money.

I was walking past in a rush on one particular day, and except for a slight glance to the left, I would not have noticed one particular boy with his hands outstretched. Along this line of 12 and 13 year-old kids, I looked over and saw one of the very kids from my middle-class suburban youth group. It had only been three months since I had been in his home talking to his parents, who seemed to be very stable. And yet, now I saw their young son begging on the street.

When our eyes met there was a brief moment of recognition, and I saw on his face all the poverty in the world. He looked so innocent. I saw every teenage boy that I’d ever met. I saw into the future to my own children. I saw every person in the universe.

I saw him from time to time over the next few months and like so many who live that way, he aged years for every week on the street. He spiraled from broken to desperate.

When I glanced into his eyes that first time, I learned something very profound about myself and about life. I learned that as long as he was in poverty, I was in poverty. And as long as there's one person in poverty, we’re all in poverty, and that situation is unacceptable. It is a profound spiritual truth that Jesus was pointing to in his words in Matthew 25.  Jesus was urging his disciples to come closer in their relationship with poverty, and to put a name on poverty.

Putting a Name on Poverty

There was a recent study in America done by the Pew Research Center. They asked a sample of people, “Are we spending too much, too little, or just the right amount on welfare?” The results came back that 44% said America is spending too much, and 23% said America is spending too little.

They then asked the same group the following question, “Do we spend too much, too little, or just the right amount on assistance for the poor?” Changing the word “welfare” to “assistance for the poor” made the results quite different. A surprising 13% said we’re spending too much, and 64% said that we're spending too little. The word “welfare” has a lot of baggage attached to it, and when that word was changed it brought poverty at least one step closer to reality. American values support the notion that we need to do more to assist the poor.

That's an encouraging study. It suggests to me that the closer we come to engaging poverty, the more seriously we take it. I want to bring it even a step closer than assistance for the poor, because that still feels a little removed to me. I would like to put some very specific names on poverty. When we put names on poverty, we begin to see what we can do about it.

1. War

For every soldier felled by a bullet, countless children die quietly of preventable and treatable maladies while fleeing to safety, waiting for care at an understaffed clinic or huddling terrified and hungry in a jungle hideout. For every soldier felled by a bullet, countless children are left in poverty; orphaned and homeless.

It's a travesty of justice in America that we spend so much more on defense and the military than we do fighting the war on poverty.

2. Overpopulation

It is well documented now that societies that have increased poverty also have a problem with overpopulation. Therefore, the opposite is also true. As we fight poverty in those places, population begins to level out. There is a direct correlation between poverty and overpopulation.

At present there are about 6 billion humans. In 40 years, if the doubling time stays constant, there will be 12 billion; in 80 years, 24 billion; in 120 years, 48 billion. ... But few believe the Earth can support so many people. Because of the power of this exponential increase, dealing with global poverty now will be much cheaper and much more humane, it seems, than whatever solutions will be available to us many decades hence. Our job is to bring about a worldwide demographic transition and flatten out that exponential curve—by eliminating grinding poverty, making safe and effective birth control methods widely available, and extending real political power (executive, legislative, judicial, military, and in institutions influencing public opinion) to women. If we fail, some other process, less under our control, will do it for us."

—Carl Sagan, Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium (1998, Ballantine Books)

3. Global Warming

If the estimates are correct, ocean levels will raise 3 ft. over the next decades, leaving millions of people in poverty. 35 million people just in South Asia will be immediately left in poverty and then will end up in territorial disputes, more conflict, and more and greater poverty.

Some people believe that the war in Darfur is the first war that is being fought over ecology. Amongst the various causes of conflict, it seems that global warming is at least a part, as people fight for arable land.

4. Sheep and Goats

The text from Matthew 25 speaks about the distinction between sheep and goats. Sheep are the righteous and goats are condemned because they didnt engage with the poor. The reality in Darfur is that sheep and goats are part of the livelihood of the people, and they are being destroyed either by government of Sudan bombs or the natural disaster that is taking place, leaving the people in poverty. Unlike the parable in Matthew 25, war and poverty do not discriminate when it comes to the sheep and goats.

5. African-American Families

The percentage of white American families living in poverty is 12%. The percentage of black American families is 29%. Poverty is not color-blind, poverty is deeply racist.

If you want to bring it closer to home, another name for poverty is Muskegon Heights. The percentage of families in Muskegon Heights living in poverty jumps to 35%. And going further, another name for poverty is gender relations. Amongst the households in Muskegon Heights that are led by women alone, the percentage of families living in poverty jumps to 49%.

The closer to home you bring it, the more names you can put on poverty, and the more practical actions you can take. Every one of us can live with greater mindfulness about our ecological footprint. Every one of us can live lives of greater peace, and we know our ecological footprint is bound up with the poverty of those around the world. Every one of us can take steps, even today, that can ease global poverty.

Empowerment, not Charity

But having come close to poverty, now what do we do with it? Having had an engagement face-to-face with brokenness, what we do?

I appreciate Lynne Twist’s book The Soul of Money, so much that I read it again this week, and I recommend it to everyone. Lynne speaks about the distinction between charity and empowerment, between charity and solidarity. The poor do not need charity. What the poor need is empowerment.
Lynne tells a beautiful story from Senegal, where she brought her Hunger Project Group to work with a very poor tribe. This tribe was excluded even from government assistance. It was a Muslim group, so women were completely left out of any decision-making.

When Lynne arrived, she began a conversation with the women of the tribe. The woman said they had a feeling, this very strong sense that there was a well beneath their village. The village water supplies had run almost completely dry. But the men were not convinced.  So Lynne’s job was to convince the men that they should search for the well beneath the village.

They searched and discovered a well beneath the village that was so large that it provided water not just for their village, but also to 17 other neighboring tribes. Something profound happened in that spirited conversation that took place between Lynne and the women. Not only did they now have water, they also gained a voice in their community. Now the men looked to the women to find the resources that proved to be in abundance in their community.

It is a profound story that says that the antidote to poverty is to direct people to the resources that they already have at their disposal; the inner courage, resilience, and natural resources that are already there. The truth of abundance is that there is a well within each of us that oftentimes lies untapped; it is a spring of human fortitude that transcends wealth or poverty.
Human Resilience

Bangladesh is another wonderful example of a country that, against all the odds, has shown amazing resilience over the last decades. Here is an excerpt from The Soul of Money, which comes from the Prime Minister of Bangladesh:

What we have now are not 120 mouths to feed, but 240 million hands that are ready to go to work. What we have are 240 million eyes that are ready to see the world anew. What we have are 240 million ears ready to listen to one another. We are poets.  We are weavers. We are musicians. We are intellectuals. And we are able to manage disaster, flood after flood. We are among the most creative and resilient people in the world. We don't want charity, what we want is a partnership.

When we understand that our liberation is bound up with the liberation of those who are oppressed and broken, we discover true partnership, which is the real calling of religion. Our spiritual calling is to be partners across boundaries of difference and when we engage poverty in a real way, face-to-face, riches are put in their correct perspective. We no longer expect riches to bring us Nirvana. Riches are put in perspective, and we see poverty for what it is.

We begin to forge partnerships, empowering partnerships, where liberation breeds liberation. People move forward together, people find resources that are in abundance right there within them. Courage, resilience, natural resources, they are all there.

The Eagle and the Condor

There is an ancient indigenous prophecy about the condor and the eagle. The indigenous people say that at one time, the condor and the eagle were united. But over the course of the last centuries they have been “rent asunder.” The condor and the eagle are now separate archetypes in separate societies.

The eagle represents the West; the intellect, scientific materialism, progress, wealth, and prosperity. The condor on the other hand represents intuitiveness, awareness, being in tune with the earth, heart, the abundance of sufficiency. These qualities have become separate so that in the West we have surged forward with the materialistic and we have seen advances like no one could ever have imagined- technology and wealth in abundance. What’s missing is soul. What's missing is the realization that no matter how fast or far we move forward, if we do it in a soulless way it will count for nothing.

What the people of the condor have discovered is that to be part of today’s world, some of the eagle quality is necessary, alongside the intuitive awareness of the earth and soul.

The indigenous prophecy is that now we are in the midst of a cycle that comes around only once every 500 years. It's a time when the condor and the eagle come back together, and I couldn't be more excited about our progressive movement as a movement of unifying the condor and the eagle. We bring together the head and heart. We unite Western advanced technology and progress, with intuitive awareness; connectedness and sufficiency.

The call of the prophets is the same as the call of Jesus, that you discover the unity of the condor and the eagle within. May our communities discover the condor and the eagle in harmony. And may our nations bring the condor and the eagle together. May the East and the West come together in the most exquisite partnership of peace that has ever existed.

I could not be more excited about our place in the partnership, because as we seek peace in the world, as we seek mindfulness in our lives and our consumption, as we come face to face with poverty and brokenness in our own neighborhoods, and as we take practical actions in each of those cases, we are indeed overcoming global poverty.

We shall overcome poverty the very day that we decide to wake up to our connectedness and the resources that are already there, just waiting for us to claim and use with love for the good of all.