SOS: Choosing Poverty, Choosing Life

Desperate Rohingya refugees from Myanmar crowd into
Bangladesh, already home to over a million newcomers.

"God, please help the poor get rich and the rich get poor, so they know what it feels like. And then, God, let everyone switch back to medium and let everyone have the same amount of food and money."
                       

- Ben Zimmerly Jantzi, age 7

Mennonite Central Committee was formed a hundred years ago to raise money to alleviate the suffering of Mennonites in famine- and war-ravaged Ukraine. Over a three year period, the new organization raised $1.3 million in food aid and purchased 50 Fordson tractors and plows to replace draft horses that had been destroyed or confiscated during the recent war. Adjusting for inflation that would represent over $33 million worth of relief aid.

A century later, people all over the world are suffering the effects of similar and even worse kinds of famines, along with persecutions, locust plagues, floods and the worldwide COVID-19 epidemic. And among the populations most affected are an unprecedented number of refugees around the world.

In all, an estimated 265 million people may face starvation this year, twice the number experiencing severe food shortages just a year ago. We face needs so overwhelming that mere freewill offerings, even generous ones, will never be sufficient to address the problem.  Even if Christians and other people of goodwill around the world were to give an entire tithe of their incomes in response it would scarcely be enough, given the fact that nearly one in 100 people around the world have been forced into homelessness through war, famine or some natural disaster.

So young Ben Jantzi (above) got it right. The only response that will make a real difference is for the world's rich to become substantially poorer, in an all out effort to help the the world's desperately poor to become even reasonably well off.

Clearly this is what Jesus did. He literally gave up heaven’s wealth to become an impoverished Palestinian peasant. He voluntarily became a homeless refugee, and devoted his life to healing, feeding and bringing good news to those in need.

We can argue over whether God is asking us to do the same, but we can’t deny that this what our Lord did.

This should trouble us. Are servants to be better off than their Master?

Some of us have been an active part of the annual Virginia Relief Sale’s SOS (Sharing Our Surplus) Campaign, which aims to raise substantial cash, check, and credit card donations for refugee relief. But in spite of the money raised, around a tenth of total Relief Sale income over the past three years, we still may find ourselves offering crumbs from our table rather than actually inviting the impoverished around the world to join us at our well laden table.

In Jesus’s upside-down kingdom, the more we divest of our own wealth and invest in the well-being of others the more truly well-off we become. Conversely, the more we indulge in our own convenience and comfort, the poorer we become.

Jesus may not be asking us to divest ourselves of wealth used in the production of essential goods and services. In fact, some may be entrusted with the stewardship of farms, factories or other business enterprises worth millions. But what Jesus is asking us all to re-invest is the wealth we have accumulated in consumer goods and stored in our growing savings accounts—the kind of wealth subject to loss by theft, economic downturns and depreciation.

So in light of the specter of untold suffering and death around the world, let’s join the ranks of those who willingly become poorer in perishable consumer wealth--instead of our becoming ever more “rich in things and poor in soul.”

God will bless us immeasurably, and the hungry and homeless will be eternally grateful.