I find in my own heart a spirit of judgment, ready – yea even eager – to damn the oppressor. I can often hear judgment in the voices of all those who hunger for justice. It is a Pharisaical spirit that will not only get in the way of those of us praying and working to see “thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” but will also invite condemnation upon ourselves.

Any World Cup fan will argue that a certain amount of team favoritism is good for adrenaline and vuvuzela sales. But as it concerns wealth and power, the church has an historic abhorrence and a checkered love affair with favoriism as it concerns the rich and powerful.

As you can tell by the last several posts I have lately been impressed with the expansiveness and earthiness of Christ's governance. He has come, at least in part, to have rulership in the here and now. The reign of Christ is intimately personal and it is immeasurably global - both today and escatalogically. His reign is individual, social, economic and political. We would like to limit him to the sphere of the "me" or perhaps extend his reign as far as the Christian community. But Jesus must have the supremacy over all things, including all the ways in which humans govern one another, over how the poor are treated, over the ways in which we generate wealth, over corrections facilities, over judicial systems, over waste and sanitation, and over any way humans can manipulate the environment. And talk about universal health care - the Greek word for "save" (sodezo) is used on occasion for "heal," or "to be made whole." He came to save-heal-make whole the entire human family: physically, spiritually and emotionally.

1. The context of this passage was the fleeting, physical presence of Jesus Christ on earth just before his death and resurrection. The focus of the passage is centered on worship not poverty and wealth. If his second coming included his physical appearance at my house for dinner, and if I were privileged to pour him his first taste of wine since the last supper, I would not hesitate to spend my retirement savings for a bottle of 1945 Chateau Mouton-Rothschild Jeroboam.
2. His statement was in response to the berating this woman received, particularly from Judas who was greedy for the money this perfume might have fetched to line his own pockets (John 12). He was defending this woman’s act of worship. Perhaps he was suggesting that our acts of worship would be to pour our alabaster jars of perfume upon the heads of the poor after his ascension, essentially saying, “This woman has done a beautiful thing to me now while I am physically present, you will have many chances to do beautiful things to me later when I am present in the form of the poor.”
3. Jesus was quoting Deuteronomy 15. This is a stunning Old Testament passage which says both, “You should have no poor among you,” v. 4, and “There will always be poor people in the land,” v. 11. God set up an economic system that, if followed, would make poverty virtually unheard of. The acknowledgement in verse 11 that there would always be poor in the land is either a prophetic denouncement that Israel would never fully obey the commands, or that the flourishing nation would be so economically solid that it would attract the poor from the nations around them. Either way, in his quote Jesus harkens to a passage which essentially says that poverty was never meant to be a thriving condition among God’s people.