Hear now, Rep. Marshall and all you politically holy Republicans, the word of the Lord concerning the poor: “You shall generously give to him, and your heart shall not be grieved when you give to him, because for this thing the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in all your undertakings” (Deuteronomy 15:10, New American Standard Bible).
The next verse, 11, may sound familiar: “For the poor will never cease to be in the land; therefore I command you, saying, ‘You shall freely open your hand to your brother, to your needy and poor in your land.’”
Jesus’ reference to this verse is recorded in three places: Matthew 26:11, Mark 14:7 and John 12:8. In the last days of his life on earth, the Son of God is in the house of Simon the leper, eating with a group of disciples, including Mary, who takes a quantity of very expensive perfume and anoints Jesus with it – his head, in Matthew and Mark’s account, his feet according to John.
A disciple or disciples protest that this is a terrible waste. The perfume, worth 300 denarii or more – equivalent to at least 300 days’ wages for a laborer; very expensive indeed – could have been sold and the money given to the poor. Mary is berated, but Jesus tells them to leave her alone.
From Matthew and John: “For you always have the poor with you, but you do not always have Me.” All three gospels agree that Jesus points out that she is preparing him for burial.
Mark and John add detail relevant to the discussion here. In the Mark verse, the full quote is this: “For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you wish you can do good to them; but you do not always have Me.”
And so for Dr. Marshall et al., the question becomes, Why don’t you ever want to help? Their answer is always some version of four basic answers: We can’t afford it; it’s not the government’s job, it’s the church’s; pump more money upstairs, more will trickle down, and fewer people will need help; or, stated by Marshall more baldly than most, they can’t be helped because their poverty is the only way they know.
The Stat writer asked Marshall to expand on his thoughts, and Marshall said, “The Medicaid population, which is [on] a free credit card, as a group, do probably the least preventive medicine and taking care of themselves and eating healthy and exercising. And I’m not judging, I’m just saying socially that’s where they are.”
A few days later, after taking some heat, Marshall spoke to The Kansas City Star, trying to lower the temperature. The first thing he said was entirely predictable: He was misinterpreted. Second, he’s a doctor, not a physician, and he therefore doesn’t “perfectly rehearse talking points.” Third, “I was explaining that we cannot build a national healthcare policy around any one segment of the population.”
About this second go-round, two things: One, he did not disavow his first statement. Two, if what he said the second time was really what he was trying to say the first time, no wonder he was misinterpreted.
His first statements, the ones to Stat, were on the character of a particular socio-economic level (“socially, that’s just where they are”). In the second try, to The Star, he did not change his judgment about that particular group’s cultural attitude toward health care and healthy living (and yes, it was a judgment). Instead, he changed the subject from a particular social condition to a discussion of the technicalities of health care policy. His claim was that the statement to Stat had been simply a poorly worded version of what he was then telling the Star.
But those two things are so far apart conceptually that it is highly unlikely to be a matter of interpretation, and I can conclude only that in his first statement he was speaking from his heart, and in the second statement he was speaking from his head, with a primary goal of hiding what was in his heart.
This brings the discussion back to scripture, which is where Marshall began it. The apostle John, in his telling of the story of Mary, the perfume and the poor, has another detail that is not present in Matthew and Mark. It was not, says John, disciples plural who protested the awful waste of money on perfume. It was one disciple, Judas.
John 12:6: “Now he said this, not because he was concerned about the poor, but because he was a thief, and as he had the money box, he used to pilfer what was put into it.” John notes that Judas will betray Jesus, but his importance to this story is in his nature as a liar and thief.
Money that goes for perfume to prepare Jesus for burial is not money that goes to the money box, where it is available for Judas. Tax money that goes to health care for the poor and working class is money that cannot go to tax cuts for the rich.
Read Deuteronomy 15:1-11, on the sabbatic year, which is a year that is all about forgiveness of debt and treatment of the poor. Jesus, citing one verse, is referencing all of them. He knew his audience was familiar with the whole passage and what it meant. The contrast he was drawing was between a duty of daily life and the need of a particular, extraordinary moment, when a loving, faithful servant performed an extraordinary kindness to help prepare for the death looming over Him.
The fact is that a lot of people at the lower end of the American economy are about to lose something very valuable and basic to life – health care. Marshall and the Republicans don’t even deny this. They justify it. One of their justifications is scriptural: See, even Jesus says it’s no used trying to help the poor. The party that claims so loudly and insistently that it is the party of the Christian God, based in no small part on its supposedly “pro-life” beliefs, is nonchalantly careless, callous even, in its use of scripture. If they prove themselves untrustworthy on spiritual things, why should they be regarded as trustworthy on earthly things like the economy and health care?
The answer is they shouldn’t be, especially by Christians, because in the present day application of the story of Jesus and the poor, Marshall and his party have too often cast themselves in the role of Judas.
Kurt Beyers, a former newspaperman, is a communications professional at Fort Hays State University.