Blessed Are the Poor in Spirit: Philip Matherne
I can’t wait to be humiliated
“Blessed are the poor in spirit.” Yeah, ok. Sounds about right.
Learn… to… be… poor… in… spirit… I write on a re-discoverable piece of paper before I turn to the dependable practices of becoming more like Christ: prayer, worship, study, service. Having successfully filed the task away on my “becoming Christ-like” to-do list, the matter about becoming spiritually poor is promptly forgotten for the more achievable goals of becoming more mature in my faith.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit.” What?
I’m pissed. Pissed and not a little awed. I just passed the beatitude in the left lane of the highway. Standing in a field of crops, the poor in spirit are pasted onto a bright yellow sign next to a face—not of a disappointing artist's depiction of Christ, but of our good pal, Gordan McKernan, who just wants to help. Are you sure you didn’t mean the poor in finances, Gordon? “Blessed are the poor, for theirs will be a nice, fat, personal injury settlement.”
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
Listen, I understand becoming richer in something. You survey the strategies and resources, make a plan, and start laboring. How am I supposed to become poorer in something? Well, there are a few ways. Like the rich man building his barns, you may have your riches (spiritual or otherwise) separated from you at your death. Maybe you give them away? Much more straightforward with our dollars than whatever it takes to become spiritually poor. What do I give away to do that?
I think that what’s much more likely is that whatever resource it is that we have valued so highly is suddenly revealed as worthless. Looking at you, diamond industry. We find out that the 401k, the pension and social security that we’ve been so smartly backing have gone bankrupt. The Bank has gone under and our lines of credit are dry. I’m talking about your salvation.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
He who has an ear, let him hear. These days, it seems we are much more interested in becoming rich in our spirits than becoming poor in them. On my end, I read a lot of books with the aim of being more mature in my doctrines, theologies, and wisdom. By “investing” into our spiritual accounts, we reckon we can accumulate a good credit score of the spirit variety. I want to “grow spiritually” I tell my pastor earnestly, really meaning that I want to know more things about God. I can remember that when I first came around the Methodists, I was so intent on soberly judging the kosherness of the tradition that I asked for a copy of The Book of Discipline so that I could “search the scriptures” (Acts 17:11).
If we spend enough time with our Bibles, with our books about Bibles, and with our people talking to us about the Bible, we should be headed in the right direction, right? Probably. I suspect, though, that too many of us have replaced our reverence for the word of God unto salvation with worship of the word of God unto our salvation. We grasp onto scripture and fail to grasp Christ when he doesn’t fit the shape we expect him to be in.
Jesus has a different view of scripture:
“You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.” -John 5:39-40
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
If it’s true that the kingdom belongs to such as these, it seems that we ought to be interested in considering how to become poor in our spirits. Many people like to substitute the word “humble” in place of “poor” in this verse, I think, to some helpful effect. Do you want to be humble? Of course you do. As far as I know, the process for becoming more humble is called humiliation. If you’re being honest, you won’t lose anything that doesn’t already need to go.
Solemnly ask God to humiliate you.
Another place we can look to become poorer in our spirit is our children. In addition to (or perhaps the same as) the poor in spirit, Jesus says that the kingdom of heaven belongs to them.
“but Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.’” - Matthew 19:14
Humiliation and being a kid. We remember our childhood and groan in humiliation at what we used to look like, what interests we used to like, or over something we did at that age. If it’s sufficiently embarrassing, we might wake up in the middle of the night with a consuming shame or suddenly physically cringe on the commute home. Jesus prefers you as a child and advises you to be like one. I haven’t met many children who are thrilled to “invest”, “study”, and be “more mature” in the way we mean it as grown-ups.
Please don’t paint me as an anti-intellectual, but please do meditate on the juxtaposition of the kinds of people Jesus endowed the kingdom of heaven to (children, the poor in spirit) and the picture of the kind of Christian that you have ambitions to become. What practices are you using to pay your way into the kingdom? What dimensions of your character and practices as a Christian are you putting the effort into to develop? Do they include practices to be more childlike and poor in spirit? What does a child value and practice? Play, for one. Curiosity, trust, and time.
P.S. In Luke’s gospel account of the Beatitudes, he writes that Jesus says that the kingdom of heaven belongs to the poor. Not the poor in spirit, just the poor. Geez.
Phil served as an intern through the 2020-2022 school years here at LaTech Wesley. He has a deep abounding love for Jesus, his friends, crawling through creeks, birds, and anything out of doors. He is currently serving as a youth pastor, blessing his new community at FUMC Minden.