Musing on the Word: Matthew 5:3

I’ve been wondering what it means to be “poor in spirit.” I keep looking for such a spirit, but they’re not easy to find. I look to the mega-church pastors, who seem to set themselves up as exemplary of the attitude the rest of us should emulate. They don’t seem poor in spirit; in fact, the furthest thing from it.

What does it mean to have nothing, spiritually speaking. Does it simply mean that I can’t save myself? Is that it? Does it mean that I’m utterly dependent on the mercy of God? That seems close to the mark. Mercy. I need mercy.

Which reminds me of the tax collector in the parable. He went up to the temple to pray and said, “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.” There’s that word again. mercy. This man was a child of God, not a pagan, not a stranger to the worship of the One. If he needed saving, it was not simply that he needed to “accept Jesus into his heart.” If saving is what he needed, we need to expand our definition of “save” from that of a decision we make, or the instance of our being transferred from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light. It must mean something that goes on from there, a continuous need on our part, and a continuous action on God's part. All of which has to do with that other word the tax collector's used: sinner.

Well, he was “poor in spirit,” that’s for sure. I think what’s clear here, what I’m getting at, is that this poverty of spirit is not some necessary condition we must have prior to our salvation, after which by God’s grace we are rich in spirit. That’s the proposition I’m testing. I know there is a way we can say in truth that yes, we who believe are rich in spirit. We have the gifts of the Spirit, we have riches stored up in heaven, etc. But this may be one of those “both/and” cases, not “either/or.”

Was Jesus rich in spirit, or poor? I seem to recall that Luke says in several places that Jesus did this or that “in the power of the Spirit.” And when Paul prays that the Ephesian Christians would be filled with all the fullness of God, is that not spiritual wealth, spiritual abundance? Not poverty. Not emptiness.

Yet I also recall that Isaiah said of the coming Messiah, “He had no form or majesty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.” And I recall his cry from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you deserted me?” And Paul said that Jesus, in coming to die for us, “made himself nothing.”

Was Jesus then poor so that we could be rich? That’s what Paul says at 2 Corinthians 8:9. But recall what Paul said mockingly to these same Corinthians in his previous letter: “Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich!” His words drip with sarcasm, because in fact the Corinthian faith has led to spiritual boasting and pride. So Paul is verbally scourging them here. He is reminding them that they have nothing to boast of, since it is all gift.

So then what did Jesus mean when he said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit”? I know a man, a believer, who was once filled with spiritual pride and ambition. Through no one’s fault but his own he has now fallen upon very hard times. He told me recently that he can’t pray anymore, but then he said that the last time he tried to pray, he fell to his knees (and he said he'd never prayed kneeling before then, never in his ambitious years had he done so) and cried out, “God, I’ve got nothing.”

That’s the tax collector’s prayer. My friend once believed that it was he who brought things to God in prayer. He brought a kind of spiritual prowess, an impressive background of spiritual accomplishments and evangelistic fervor, things that would be sure to please God and prompt a generous response. Now in a spasm of despair he prayed, "I’ve got nothing," and I think perhaps it was his finest moment as a believer. "Blessed are those who are poor in spirit."

My pastor, preaching on the parable of the pharisee and the tax collector, said that the point of the parable was that the tax collector had "a yes in his heart." It was in many ways a helpful sermon, but I think he was profoundly and sadly wrong on this matter of the tax collector’s heart. The point of the parable is that he had nothing at all in his heart that pleased God, but that he threw himself on God’s mercy. He was, without a doubt, poor in spirit.

Only the spiritually poverty-stricken know their need for mercy. And they know from whom such mercy flows. It is not to a throne of rewards ("just desserts") that we are to draw near, but to a throne of grace.

Still, I am left with a few questions. Are we poor for a moment–an hour, say, or even a day or two–after which our lives are marked by spiritual riches, overflowing banqueting tables, water into wine celebrations, continuous spiritual foretastes of heaven’s wealth? Do we quickly move from poverty to riches in our spiritual walk? From rags to crowns? Is that the point of Matthew 5:3? That would be "either/or" thinking. I have a hunch that God wants us to hold these two seemingly contradictory truths about our spiritual condition together in our minds and be careful not to let the one nullify the other.

Or, to put it another way, I have a hunch that our riches in Christ, our gifts, our mercies (new every day), our "powerful" and persitent prayer, our stirring exhortations and high wisdom and way with words, our capacity to bless others with comfort and encouragement, none of these must supercede or replace the sense of our own brokenness, our innate condition of absolute need, our helplessness and nakedness, our spiritual poverty. We must appraise ourselves accurately. Like my friend, we've got nothing.

Only the helpless can really accept a gift as gift, pure and simple, thoroughly undeserved, and requiring no repayment (for we have nothing with which to repay, as the Giver well knows). To be in this place is to know and experience very intimately the loving generosity of our God. That is, it is to know God.