02/11/01 Blessed are the Poor 01/03

Scripture: Jeremiah 17:5-10

Luke 6:17-26

"How happy are you who are poor: yours is the kingdom of God"

Luke 6:20.

Martin Both is an Englishman who writes fiction and non-fiction, poetry and children’s books, and has most recently given us a beautiful and uplifting novel entitled, "The Industry of Souls." He writes in the epigraph: "The Industry of the Soul is to love and to hate: to seek after the beautiful and to recognize the ugly, to honour friends and wreak vengeance upon enemies: yet, above all, it is the work of the soul to prove it can be steadfast in these matters..." The soul’s proper work is steadfastness. Is that true? What does it mean? Since an epigraph is a distillation of the point of what is to follow, we may answer our question by reading the book.

It tells the story of a fictional Englishman, Alexander David Bayliss, who while visiting Moscow in the 1930’s was picked up in a restaurant by Stalin’s police, convicted of uncommitted crimes, and sent to a Siberian labor camp for 25 years. He accepts his fate and makes the best of his circumstances. They are the circumstances of a miner in the frigid coalfields of central Russia, rigorous, relentless and cruel. The miners worked in teams of seven and the leader of his team Kirill Karlovich Balashkov gave him the nickname Shurik, a diminutive of Alexander. As Shurik he is indistinguishable from the Russians with whom he lives and works, especially when the strange accent disappears form his Russian speech. His team becomes his family, and there in the hell of the mines he finds the heaven of fellowship, trust and support. One by one his teammates perish from disease and accidents. When Kirill is dying he makes Shurik promise to take his greeting to his daughter in her remote village. "’Shurik’ he was saying. ‘Go to Froshya. One day, a million years from now. Even if you are a ghost. Go to her. Tell her it was good.’ ‘What was good?’ I heard myself asking, my voice echoing as if from the end of a long dark tunnel. ‘To die with a friend,’ Kirill replied. ‘ To die by the hand of a man whose name you know.’" Kirill was pinned under a fall of rock and had asked Shurik to put him out of his agony, which he did. The message to the daughter was that he had killed her father, and that it was good.

Shurik survives the mines and after 25 years they put him out alone on the frozen roads. He staggers on for 5 weeks until he arrives at Kirill’s village of Myshkino, at the house of Froshya, and collapses on the doorstep. Trophim the husband said he thought someone had dumped a scarecrow on the porch. Shurik delivers Kirill’s message and they take him in to live with them. He stays for thirty years. We meet him on his 80^th birthday, waiting for a car from the British Embassy in Moscow to bring his cousin, who is coming to fetch him back to England at last.

In that 30 years he had become the beloved schoolmaster of the village, a moral and spiritual power in their midst. He was especially revered because he was the only man they knew who had survived the camps intact. Only one other had ever returned to their village from the Gulag and he had hanged himself within the first months. Shurik had survived …because he had industry of soul, spiritual steadfastness. He could see the diamonds in the dirt, the wealth in the heart of poverty. In the misery of the mines and in the monotony of the village he found the treasure of the soul, the reward for its industry, namely, satisfaction in simple things, like the loyalty of seven struggling men to one another, and the density of life among people of good heart, people like Froshya who could take in the one who brought the message of her father’s death and the part he played in it, and love him for it.

I have spent so much time retelling this story because it is a story of the blessedness of the poor. Shurik experienced the kingdom of God in the midst of deprivation, oppression and poverty. He was steadfast of soul so he could see the Kingdom hidden in its opposite. I don’t need t tell you that he refused to return to England to claim the fortune his mother, who never gave up believing that he was still alive, left him. "By hunting me down, my cousin has forfeited an inheritance of a considerable sum of money. That, I consider, is the sign of a true man….I shall write my cousin and request that, from my inheritance, a sufficient sum of money be set aside to re-equip Myshkino school, with another sum to be placed in trust to provide two scholarships per annum for pupils to travel and see the world, that they, like me can come to understand that there is evil and there is goodness, to learn the lesson that if you kill something of beauty, two uglinesses spring up in its place. The balance after these deductions shall be divided equally between my cousins… Or not quite. I shall also request that my cousin order one of those Land Rover vehicles. It will be dark red, have a plush leather interior and air conditioning. Along the side, in both the English and Cyrillic alphabets, I shall have painted the words Myshkino Taxis."

The steadfast soul contrasts with the devious heart of Jeremiah’s prophecy ( Jer. 17:9). The devious heart is like "dry scrub in the wastelands; if good comes, he has no eyes for it, he settles in the parched places of the wilderness, a salt land, uninhabited" (Jer. 17:6). This is the person whose heart turns from God and puts its trust in man (Jer 17:5). So there is a type of soul that is the opposite of industrious, that is ultimately less than serious and trusts in human things for life, when the truth is that life comes only from the divine. This soul is cursed.

The opposite kind of soul, the one that trusts in God is, "…like a tree by the waterside that thrusts its roots to the stream: when the heat comes it feels no alarm, its foliage stays green; it has no worries in a year of drought, and never ceases to bear fruit" (Jer. 17:8). This is the industrious soul who is steadfast and fixed on God at all times and in all circumstances.

Martin Booth’s character Alexander David Bayliss, Shurik, is such a soul. A tourist taken randomly from the streets of Moscow and thrust into 25 years of hellish suffering, he is like a tree by the waterside, drinking from deep sources. His foliage remains green through all the years of drought and for thirty years thereafter he continues to bear fruit among the villagers of Myshkino. His steadfast soul calls forth love and devotion in others; they give him a home and are blessed by his presence.

What has this to do with the blessing of poverty? It is nothing less than a portrait of that blessing. We can imagine how we might have reacted to such misfortune as he suffered. The sheer randomness of the misfortune would drive me mad. For years I would reflect resentfully on its cruelty, cursing the carelessness of my God. I would become bitter and rebellious, "…like dry scrub in the wastelands; if good comes, I have no eyes for it, I settle in the parched places of the wilderness, a salt land, uninhabited" (Jer 17:6). My soul would become like that dried scrub, my hope a wilderness, and my love a salt land without inhabitant. My eyes would be blind to the good around me.

Why would I be so helpless in this situation? Because I am rich, and I have found it easy to "…put my trust in man, and rely on the things of the flesh, and have turned my heart from God" (Jer 17:5).

But Shurik willingly gives up all of his rich life and enters into the density of his poverty. He loses everything from his former life, ceases to be a well to do Englishman and becomes a Russian miner in the Gulag. He becomes poor. In that new poverty he finds the Kingdom of God; his eye lights on the good that comes, with the camaraderie of his six teammates in the mines and with the love and respect of the people of Myshkino. Of course, he does not go back to his former life but one, the English upper class. He had been bereft of everything, including his identity and plunged into the most perfect poverty. Thus he had entered into the most perfect blessing. His greatest loss was his greatest gain.

I trust the point is clear; I hope you are able to "get it." Whoever has ears to hear, let him hear! Matthew the evangelist "gets it" when he renders the beatitude, "Blessed are the poor in spirit." Several recent translations read, "How blessed are those who know their need of God" (Matt 5:3). It means at least that, and perhaps a bit more. Poverty is blessed when it turns our hearts from the penultimate things of the world to the eternal things of God. Deprived of all that might distract us here, we are better able to discover the presence of God there, in our deprivation, anxiety and distress. This applies to many different kinds of human predicament. I know you will find wisdom and power here for your present need.

"Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the Kingdom of God."

Amen.