26th Sunday of Ordinary Time—9-28-03
James 5: 1-6
Deacon Lee Hunt

The Rich Care for the Poor

In the second reading, James warns the rich against storing up treasure for the last days and warns them about withholding wages from their workers.

 A wider survey of Scripture shows that God frequently casts down the wealthy and powerful in two specific situations: when they become wealthy by oppressing the poor; or when they fail to share with the needy.

God loves the poor and the rich equally. It is only when the rich take a sinful preoccupation with being successful and wealthy as natural and normative that God’s equal love for all looks like a bias for the poor.

Since being rich is a relative term, each of us must decide where we stand.

Things were put into better perspective for me this summer. I was part of a group who went on mission to Peru. The first day we tore down a one-room house and rebuilt it as a 2-room house out of bamboo poles, dry grass walls, and a corrugated steel roof. The house had ten people living in it: parents, children, and grandchildren. Our mission group also brought food and clothes to other poor.

The pastor of the parish in Peru said the following: “Being poor here means finding enough to eat for your children so you can make it until tomorrow. It means begging for medicines that one cannot buy so that a sick family member might recover. It means fending off desperation with the only hope left available…that Jesus loves me.”

So, are you and I rich or poor? ……… Statistics help us decide.
o In the world, 50% of humanity lives on less than $2 per day
o 34,000 children die each day of hunger and preventable diseases
o Closer to home in the U.S, 1 out of 3 Americans fell below the poverty line for at least two months in the mid-1990s.
o And at home in Oklahoma County,  a minimum-wage job provides only 70% of a person’s living expenses, let alone that of a family.

So, are we rich or poor? ……… I’m wealthy; you must decide for yourself.

If we are rich, God expects us not to oppress the poor or to fail to share our wealth with them. Not oppressing the poor means paying a decent wage and/or campaigning for a fair minimum wage.

An example of how to better share with the poor came from a man from India, who is called by some the greatest person of the last century. Mahatma Gandhi said, “One must not keep a chair if one can do without it. By observing this principle we are led to a progressive simplification of our own life.” ……… Here in Edmond, how many more luxuries should we buy ourselves and our children when others are dying from the lack of bread?

By simplification of our lives, we find time not only to share our wealth with the poor but also to actually work with the poor. They have very much to give us spiritually, as I learned from my trip to Peru. ……… Are we not guilty of greed when we demand an even-higher standard of living for ourselves while neglecting millions of children who are starving each year?

Mother Theresa told the following story: “The mother of a starving family was given a small dish of rice.  Nice, but the real act of neighborly love happened next.  Before anyone ate a grain the mother disappeared out the door.  She came back quickly with half a dish of rice and everyone ate hungrily.  When asked why she gave away the rice when her children were so hungry, she answered that they could not enjoy the food knowing that their neighbor had nothing.”

This is what we are asked to do.  We cannot store up our treasure for the last days. We must begin with charity to help those on the doorstep of death to physically make it to the next day. Vaccines at just $1.50 per child save the lives of at least 1.5 million children annually. Along with charity, we must practice social justice by repairing the structures that got the poor where they are and keep them bound there.

There is no end of opportunities for us to serve the poor. At the international level, there is Catholic Relief Services. In the Archdiocese, there is Catholic Charities of Oklahoma that serves people of any or no denomination. In our own parish, we can serve the poor through ministries provided through our parish Social Ministries Subcommittee.

We cannot store up our treasure for the last days. The kingdom of God is now.