On Giving and Receiving

Sojourners Magazine, Apr 2007 by Billings, J Todd

Susan Holman, a scholar of Gregory, summarizes his thought this way: "The persons who assist them [the lepers] may receive healing of their own 'diseases' of wealth and greed. In this way the church needs contact with lepers in order to cure spiritual diseases. Yet lepers also need contact with the healthy to relieve their own very physical suffering."

Thus, rather than just giving a handout and treating the poor as a mysterious "other," Gregory shows us how Matthew 25 offers a picture of fellowship and mutual interdependence. Persons like Larry are sick and tired of heing treated as "poor," "homeless," objects of pity. Larry wants help in taking care of his needs for shelter and food, but he also wants to be treated as a person, one who can befriend and who can give as he receives.

Gregory shows us how Matthew 25 need not lead to condescending pity. It can do the opposite: It can awaken an apathetic church to realize that it needs to touch the hungry, the stranger, and the prisoner if it is to have its own spiritual diseases healed. This will not lead to our own contamination. Rather, it will lead us to the humility of learning to receive from the poor as we give to the poor, to receive from the outsider as we give to the outsider. The kingdom is not about handouts. The kingdom is about a banquet! Not just the poor, but all of us will be receivers in God's banquet.

Do you want to know Jesus Christ, to touch Jesus Christ? Then go touch the hungry, touch the naked, touch the outsider, touch the leper. The leper will not make us sick, but will bring health. Jesus did not spurn the "unclean" and the "sinners" in his ministry. He sought them out. All of us need to be both givers and receivers, not elevated ones who "pity" the "unfortunate" or low ones who "receive" from the "generous." The way to break down these polarities is to come close to one another-recognizing our common humanity-and then realize that God wants us to sit together at the table of the kingdom. We are all hungry, so let's serve one another at that table. But to do that, we have to have the humility to realize our need and to receive from the hungry, the stranger, and the outcasts among us.

J. Todd Billings is assistant professor of reformed theology at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan. He wax on staff at First Church Shelter in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for five years while working on his Th.D. at Harvard.