Journalist Barbara Ehrenreich was in a similar position with a good writing career and a nice home when she decided to find out – Could a person make a living by working in a low-wage job in America? She took jobs in three different geographical locations doing waitressing, housecleaning, and retail jobs, and although she was able to do the work, she found that it took a second job or living with relatives to actually be able to get a roof over her head and consistently pay the rent. Finding adequate food without access to refrigeration and the times she needed medical attention caused problems as well, but she found that the percentage of her wages it took to secure even sub-standard housing was the real hardship. Economists say that rents have to be less than 30% of one’s income to be considered affordable, and housing analyst Peter Drier reports that 59% of poor renters, amounting to a total of 4.4 million households spend more than 50% of their income on shelter. (Why American Workers Can’t Pay the Rent,” Dissent, Summer 2000, pp. 38-44 as quoted in Nickel and Dimed, p. 170) Since the time of Ehrenrich’s study five years ago, there has been no public outcry, no increase in the federal minimum wage, and yet the market for housing has consistently gone up without reliable subsidies to make it attainable for the working poor. I can’t say that I have a magic solution either politically or economically to make it all better, but I can say that reading her book Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting By in America made me angry, sad, and anxious all at the same time.

As Christians, especially for those of us who have attained upper middle class lifestyles by whatever means, this should cause concern. Who do you think were housing those bands of traveling disciples? The Corinthians had some measure of a cushy lifestyle – at least for those times, and Paul was begging them – open your hearts, open your lives, which I suspect also meant open your homes. His criticism of them was that they were thinking small. They were restricting their affections. For them, there was no room at the inn, and the ones who were spreading the good news needed a place to stay.

What does it mean for those who have everything they need and most of what they want to embrace and welcome those who have nothing? And will those who live on handouts really have something to teach the well-to-do about living richly? Scripture is particularly, almost peculiarly consistent on this theme – having “stuff” doesn’t deliver true joy. True joy comes from a different source, a source that promotes open lives and open hearts. This source will shame us for living small when we should have been living large. This source says that there is only one appropriate social contract, and in that contract, the rich and the poor are absolutely dependent upon one another for survival. God does not forget the poor; indeed the hope of the poor will not perish, and that sometimes means that God might have to shake the balance right out of our pockets.

This congregation has addressed the problems of the poor before. In fact, this congregation was instrumental in developing ADFAC – a social service agency that gives relief to the distressed families of the Appalachian counties that surround us. I have noticed that more of their clients stop by at odd hours since they have difficulty getting here during ADFAC’s 9 a.m. – 4 p.m. workday shift. Having a job doesn’t mean financial security by any means. The invisible people that you see working behind the grocery store check-out, in Walmart, waiting tables at Shoney’s, or coming to clean your house may be living in conditions that would astound you because you just can’t support a life on somewhere between $5 and $7 an hour.

I wish I had an even better solution than raising the flag of ADFAC to you. Yes, they still need our support because it takes the contributions of individuals and congregations to the non-profits who provide help to make a difference in our own backyard. However, Paul was clear with the Corinthians that they had a part in not only hearing, but in acting upon Jesus’ message. Paul did not leave it at, “The poor you will always have with you.” He gave them a message to give up the restrictions on their affections and welcome others in Jesus’ name. I think this meant not only the traveling groups that were teaching the new faith, that we might understand, but to welcome all that Jesus welcomed – the poor, the outcast, the forgotten, and the invisible. He said to do it because we have something to learn. Those who seem to have nothing may perhaps have everything. When you are dependent on your family members huddling together to provide housing, when you have to turn to an agency to pay your bills, when you have to go to a food bank – doesn’t that say more about the passage for how God provides even for the sparrows than what we think about when we have health insurance covered, and reliable transportation to and from work, and a job that makes us feel important in the world.

Like I said before, my experience of living as Barbara Ehremreich lived for her story is non-existent, and even for her, she always knew in the back of her mind that it was a choice, the she could return to a different kind of life at any time. So, shall we wait for the uprising of the poor that will eventually happen? Those in political careers on both sides of the fence seem to care very little right now about poverty as an issue of the public good. Employment as a whole is up so the statistics look positive, but the statistics as we know, rarely tell the whole story.

What will it take for us to open our hearts to God’s story, a story where the poor are visible, important and God’s treasured children? Wherever you are on the spectrum of plausible solutions, personal or political, isn’t it time that we started to care? It’s part of our Judeo-Christian history. The Corinthians were not bad people who turned away those in need, but I think that Paul had to coax them to see the need, to imagine what it would be like to live so desperately dependent on God’s love. The more we have, the harder it is to realize that we who have nice houses and meals on the table are just as radically dependent on God’s grace.

Amen.