When you give alms...

Our theology professor was telling us in class last week about going to Russia once, and experiencing an Orthodox church service.  Being in seminary, I get to hear idealized recreations of various orthodox church services all the time (usually accompanied with wistful sighs), but in this particular case, he referred to what happened after the service, when the people walked out the doors.  There, lined up along both sides of the walk, were the poor, the disenfranchised, the disabled, old, sick, and helpless people from the community, lined up with their hands out, waiting to receive alms.  Imagine this the next time you walk out of a Sunday service - how would the folks in your church react?  I know in my neighborhood the police patrols would be stepped up and the loitering laws and zoning ordinances would come under immediate fire!

Now add to this shocking picture - my professor said that everyone, from the old lifelong church-goers to the young disaffected teenagers in Guns 'n Roses t-shirts (who obviously didn't come of their own free will), absentmindedly reached into their pockets and began handing out coins and bills.  No shock, no second thoughts - just free money changing hands.  He attributes this in part to the idea that the Enlightenment never really happened in Russia, that they have no idea what it might be like to live in a society where capital and productivity are the prime values.

Here in America, we don't know what to do with people who don't contribute their 'fair share' (measured, of course, in monetary value).  The poor, that is- the old, sick, weak, very young, severely disabled, etc.- are all marginalized by our skewed measure of personal worth, and our society has trouble interacting people who require its aid to survive.  On one side of the spectrum, we say that they should be able to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps - that they must want to be poor or they'd work harder.  On the other, that poverty itself is the problem and we should do all in our power to eliminate it. 

"Blessed are the poor," Jesus said, not "cursed are the poor," not "there shouldn't be any poor."  "Blessed are the poor."  Again and again in the Bible, "the poor" are attributed God's special favor and protection, and in parables and stories, they tend to come out on top.  In his 1890 (ish) theological critique of the ideals of the Enlightenment / Industrial Revolution, the pope gently pointed out that the poor still had some very much worthwhile value to society: they can pray for the rest of us.  I don't know about you, but I wouldn't mind parting with some pocket change once in a while in return for someone with favored status from God interceding on my behalf...