Unsettling Advent 2025, Day 9
“He shall defend the needy among the people; he shall rescue the poor and crush the oppressor. … In his time shall the righteous flourish; there shall be abundance of peace till the moon shall be no more.” (Psalm 72:4,7)
In times like these, it can seem that ending poverty is impossible. That demands for human rights and human dignity are both politically inconceivable and impossibly expensive. Some even quote the Bible, arguing that since Jesus said, “the poor will be with you always,” or as Paul wrote, “those who do not work, shall not eat,” it can’t be God’s will for everyone to share in the abundance of our world.
But from Genesis on through the New Testament, including Jesus’s most famous of statements and Paul’s mutual solidarity of the poor, is a constant revelation of God’s will that no one should be made hungry, sick, homeless, underpaid, indebted, or bereft by the violence of social injustice. There is an ongoing indictment of those who would take and keep the wealth of our world for themselves and cause others to suffer. The biblical command to “fill the hungry with good things” (Luke 1:53) is not simply about “caring for the poor” as an end result, but advocating for policies and structures that lift the load of poverty — admonishing nations to “do no wrong to the immigrant, the homeless, the children. And do not shed innocent blood” (Jeremiah 22:3). Indeed, passage after passage reminds us that Jesus’s birth signals the beginning of a reign of justice (Psalm 72) and abundance for all, not mass starvation and death by poverty in the streets.
Even the prayer that Jesus teaches his followers speaks to these core beliefs and commandments: “Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one” (Matthew 6:10-13).
The Lord’s Prayer is very clear that the material position of the people is of great interest to God. It exhorts people and nations to release those imprisoned by injustice, to feed everyone, and to resist the temptations and trappings of the unjust. Rather, we are called to bring justice and goodness and truth on earth as it is in heaven. We are called to help bring the empire of God — not of any power or principality — into being, not deporting immigrant children, not funding the police and legions, not giving huge tax cuts to billionaires, not cutting families from life-sustaining food.
No, no one is being left behind this time. God preaches everybody in, nobody out.
Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis is director of the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, & Social Justice and co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. She is the co-author of the new book You Only Get What You’re Organized to Take: Lessons from the Movement to End Poverty and author of Always With Us? What Jesus Really Said About the Poor.