Evangelical Poverty: Commitment to The Coming of The Reign of God on Earth Chapter 9 New Wineskins: Re-imagining Religious Life

Today Sandra M. Schneider, I. H. M I. Introduction II. What is poverty? a. Poverty: An Analogous Term? Poverty, it seems to me, is an analogous term. We speak of poor person, poor so ill, a poor idea, a poor joke, poor case, a poor excuse; of material, intellectual, spiritual, aesthetic, culturally and physical poverty. It is the primary analogous, the reality to which the term properly applies, which governs the meaning of the term in relation to the secondary analogous. In the case of poverty, the primary analogous is the economic one. Poverty is, first and properly, the lack of sufficient material goods. What the idea of poverty carries into other spheres in the qualification of insufficiency, lack, defect, whether that lack the material or spiritual, liberal or figurative. Page 169

b. A Phenomenology of Poverty But it's identifying characteristic is insufficiency. Frist of all, it means not having enough of those goods which are essential for human life: food, clothing, and shelter.Page 170 At all levels poverty is characterized by lack of possessions. The life of the poor is determined by the insufficiency which governs their world and experience.Page 170 ... Simplicity and poverty are not the same thing. Simplicity is not mild poverty or decent poverty. It is not poverty at all. Poverty involves insufficiency, not having enough of what is necessary for the meaningful human existence, however that is defined in the situation in question.Page 170 Whatever religious poverty, is not an analogue of real poverty. We must seek its relationship to poverty elsewhere than in the sphere of proper designation.Page 171 c. Poverty as a Religious Virtue

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The history of religious life shows that from the very beginning religious have willingly chosen poverty, by which they mean a relative lack of this world's goods, as an aid in the spiritual quest.Page 171 First, the poverty in question was not genuine insufficiency in regards to the essentials; second, the forms of poverty were extremely diverse, one form often contradicting another. In other words, the term was used in a relative sense, and it is not some Platonic ideal or essence but a specific argument for a particular situation.Page 171 In short, whatever the object of the vile poverty was, is not poverty in the primary or proper sense of the word: insufficiency.Page 172 ... poverty is a relative termpage 172 In other words, there is a way of using the word poverty which is legitimate even if it is not literal in the sense of denoting real insufficiency. It is in this relative sense that religious have used the word poverty to describe a certain ideal of their life.Page 172 III. The value of poverty a. Asceticism, Spirituality, and Poverty 1 contemporary religious speak about seeking a simple life they seem to be talking about this aesthetical aspect of poverty, about the deliberate choice to avoid a spiritually the debilitating luxury.Page 173 b. Justice, Charity, and Poverty As the philosophers have pointed out, matter is the principle of individuation. Matter is the kind of being that, strictly speaking, cannot be shared.Page 173174 . material goods divide people into haves and have-nots.Page 174 The only way to overcome the divisions and struggles occasioned by material goods is to make human decisions to renounce possessiveness in favor of a common project of stewarding the scarce resources of this earth for the good of all of the human family.Page 174 Christianity is a religion whose central tenant is love, universal love of neighbor based on and enlivened by an unconditional loving God.Page 174 Not only does renunciation of individual and private ownership make for peace and unity in religious community but it deposes the community for love and care of those outside the community.Page 174 Page 2 of 6

hospitalitypage 174 Religious not only welcomed the transient stranger but also shared their goods through almsgiving and care of the needy, especially in times of social disaster.Page 175 Unselfishness is an expression of charity which cannot exist piecemeal.Page 175 c. Holiness and Poverty Real poverty, actual want, despite its capacity to destroy people physically and spiritually, has a particular power to evoke pure religion.Page 176 anawim, the poor of Yahweh.Page 176 But the Old Testament writers came to recognize about the poor was they, unlike the rich or even the comfortable, were forced in a sense to choose between complete despair and a kind of noholdsbarred dependency on God which was the attitude God sought in all the people of the covenant.Page 176 God can only be God for us when all the bargaining is over, when we finally stopped trying to pay our own way and have come to rejoice in our destitution because the extent of our emptiness is the measure of God's gift.Page 176 . on the other hand, material poverty does not guarantee spiritual openness and that, on the other, one can be spiritually receptive without being material poor that Matthew amended the first beatitude to read: Blessed are the poor in spirit (Mt5:3) page 177 This is the poverty religious seek: not destitution, for to seek such would be to tempt God as well to abandon our responsibility for ourselves and needlessly to burden our sisters and our brothers; but a relative poverty that enables us to experience are creaturehood in all its starkness in order that we might be deposed to accept God's saving love and to extend it to others.Page 177178 IV. Religious poverty today a. Complications The major difference between our own age and any previous one, in relation to poverty, is our global interdependence at the economic level and our awareness of it. page 178 Our inner resources, which cannot be renounced, are a wealth of remarkable proportions that marks us off forever from the truly poor. page 179 Page 3 of 6

we are aware of the immensity of the problems of poverty which makes individual acts of sharing and hospitality seem almost pointless. page 179 we realize that the only way of affect the economic situation in which we live is to act collectively upon institutions. page 179 b. Mistakes We Need Not Make First, nothing much is to be gained by renaming the traditional vow. page 179 In any case, our efforts will be better spent trying to figure out how to achieve what religious poverty is about than trying to come up with an accurate term to denote it. page 180 Second, there seems little point in trying to come up with any kind of uniform understanding of what religious poverty involves or how it is to be practice. Page 180 Today the forms of religious life and even the variations from congregation to congregation make a uniform understanding of poverty virtually impossible. Page 180 Third, a more subtle stumbling block members of a single congregation is the desire of the individual to find the right formula for herself. Page 181 Fourth, imitation of those we judge to be truly poor is probably one of the most sincere and yet completely misguided approaches to religious poverty. Page 181 Fifth a return to the alienating and infantilizing practices of our own past. Page 128 c. The Two Foci of Religious Poverty Today The first focus is the societal one and has to do with our individual and corporate impact on the institutional sins which are making and keeping poor the majority of the earths people while the minority becomes progressively richer. page 182 The second focus is the personal spiritual one which has to do with our own ascetical preparation for and interior exercise of that openness to God in grateful receptivity to salvation that is the sin qua non of genuine holiness. Page 182

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1. The Societal Focus The economic system of the first world is radically unjust because it is built on principles of unbridled greed, selfishness, and might over right. Page 183 Responsible stewardship based on reverence for Gods creation and solidarity among people must replace exploitation, and material goods must be redirected towards human ends. Page 183 Congregationally, we can use our corporate resources to influence policy and practice on whatever level is accessible to us. Page 183 The energetic exercise of personal civic responsibilities such as voting, writing to converse people, protesting local in injustice, supporting non- violent efforts to influence corporate powers, attending meetings where our presence can help, is a way to help bring about the kind of society in which the poor will begin to attain justice. p 184 corporate planning for the care of our own personnel page 184 commitment of some of our personnel and resources to direct work with the materially disadvantaged. Page 184 involvement in political ministry page 184 2. The Personal Focus It is perhaps time to revive our awareness of the intimately personal character of the practice of poverty must complement societal involvement. I am not suggesting here that we return to such earlier practices as tediously asking pointless permissions for daily the necessities or traveling without adequate funds. p 185 First simplicity of life. Page 185 Voluntary simplicity of lifestyle says that enough, that material goods should be acquired only to the extent that they are really necessary and not as a frantic defense against mortality or an endless competition with ones neighbors. Page 185 If we want to pray, to be available for God and others, to keep our lives focused on the purposes for which we chose religious life, we cannot surrender ourselves to the current of materialism that carries our culture. Page 186

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Second areasense of gift in life. Page 186 A third area in which the personal practice of poverty.page 187 To welcome others into our homes and into her lives is naturally easier perhaps for extroverted types, but it is a challenge for everyone because it involves putting ourselves at others disposal.Page 187 Hospitality offers a marvelous experience of solidarity with other people. It involves the active and joyful breaking down of social barriers and breaking open of private supplies.Page 187 A 4th area... community financial structures.Page 187 Putting in the time and effort required to live communally from the financial point of view and accepting the restrictions on our own freedom involved in the real reduction of the independent use of money can be a severe form of asceticism because they are not simply a nuisance factor in our busy lives; they are daily reminders we have chosen not to be financially independent agents but to cast our lot with others in community.Page 187188 The lack of options page 188 What they cannot do for themselves we cannot do for them, and the more we care the more this hurts. The name of that herding is compassion and it is a fruit of genuine poverty.Page 189 Participation in the world of workpage 189 V. Conclusion

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