Voices In My Head Podcast Episode #218: The Poor You Will Always Have With You

Today's podcast is brought to you by Audible. Get a free audiobook download and 30-day free trial at audibletrial.com/voicesinmyhead. That's audibletrial.com/voicesinmyhead. Over 180,000 titles to choose from for your iPhone, Android, Kindle, or MP3 player. That's audibletrial.com/voicesinmyhead. Give it a try today. Have you ever thought to yourself, man, I'd like to host my own podcast? Well, guess what? You can go to podbean.com/voices and get everything you need to create, manage, and promote your podcast. I use Podbean every week for Voices in My Head. There's easy uploading and publishing tools, stunning templates, custom domains, social and promotional tools, an embeddable podcast player, monetization tools, and more. It is your all-in-one podcasting solution. With Podbean, you can create professional podcasts in minutes without any programming knowledge. Best of all, everything is mobile ready right from the start. So go to podbean.com/voices, and when you sign up, use the code "voices" and you'll get a sizable discount. Podbean, for your home podcasting. Thank you for listening to Voices in My Head.

Welcome to Voices in My Head, the official podcast of me, Rick Lee James. I'm a recording artist, a singer, songwriter, an author, a worship leader, and an ordained minister in the Church of the Nazarene. The Voices in My Head podcast is your source for discussions on music, literature, movies, pop culture, theology, and more. Now sit back, relax, and listen to the latest episode of the Voices in My Head podcast. And don't forget to let the voices in your head be heard by following me on Twitter @RickLeeJames and sharing your thoughts about today's show.

Welcome back to Voices in My Head. As always, I am your host, Rick Lee James, and I am coming to you today live, not dead, from my car. And yes, I am hands-free, so don't worry about that. I'm not gonna get in an accident, Lord willing. Got my eyes on the road and my hands at 10 and 2, and I am ready to podcast. It's gonna be a short one today, admittedly, because I have a short ride to where I'm going. But I did want to take some time quickly just to share a couple things on my heart and to share a little bit of exciting news. Just today I sent out an email to everybody on my email list. And by the way, if you don't subscribe to the Rick Lee James email list, you can go to my website at rickleejames.com and there should be a link there that allows you to join the email list so you can get updates from all things that are going on. There are several really cool things happening right now, and I just can't tell you about them yet, but they are coming soon. Soon. I will tell you this, that I plan on unveiling some of the exciting news for things that are happening, especially pertaining to my music career, on the podcast before the rest of the world gets to hear it. So if you listen to the podcast, that's going to be a plus for you. And thank you for listening to Voices in My Head. And that's sort of one way of me being able to say thank you for this. So then the email that I sent out just today It basically has a link to the podcast letting people know that listeners will get to hear the news first. And I'm really excited. There are some very significant things that I'm going to be sharing soon. My plan is to unveil most of this in a CCM cover story. Well, not cover story, but a story that is, as far as I know, going to be run about me in CCM Magazine in September. There's a very special issue coming out and there's a reason that I'm going to be in the September issue. I don't want to spoil it right now, but I do want you to be ready and alert. CCMmagazine.com is the best place for you to keep up on things there. You can go there right now and do a search at CCMmagazine.com, and you can find past interviews that I've done with them there. You can find reviews from hymns, prayers, and invitations. You can see some of my music videos and things like that at CCMmagazine.com. But there's some things I'm planning on announcing in that venue because it's such a huge venue to be able to share in September. So be listening to the podcast for more. There is some significant news coming up. I'll just say this as a little bit of a spoiler, and you, you probably know this if you follow me on Facebook a little bit, but I had a great conference call yesterday with some music people. I'm not going to tell you anything more than that right now, but it got me revved up so much. I just wanted to like go on social media and just tell everybody everything right now, but I couldn't do it. But in this conversation, I was encouraged, I was inspired, I'm just thrilled about some things that are going to be happening in the very near future. And I will tell you this, that the music video is being edited right now. This isn't really pertaining to what we talked about yesterday, but this is part part of the reason that I'm going to be featured in CCM Magazine again. The new music video is being edited. We are hoping to release it in mid-August. It's, it's still being edited, so I haven't even seen it yet, but from what I hear, it's going very well. And if we can do anything at all in this video, I hope it is to tell the story of some Syrian refugees. And I'm really moved by the story of these people who are without a home and without a place to go. They have been persecuted because of religion in many cases. They are people who have been displaced. They have suffered violence. Many of them have experienced death of family members, loved ones. They, they are people without a home in this world. The United States, for the most part, has closed its doors to them. And I believe we will be accountable for that one day, and those who make those decisions, I don't think God holds those things lightly. So the video is my attempt through song to be able to share some stories of some real refugees. We're using facts that are sort of general facts, but we are showing real faces on the ground of people who are in refugee camps. Nazarene Compassionate Ministries, through my friend Brandon Sipes, who was actually there in Croatia where many of them were trying to find places to go to. He was there and took a lot of video, and so we get to share the video from the footage from him being there and hopefully tell their story, hopefully raise some awareness, and hopefully bring some change about for the lives of so many people who are in such desperate needs and so many families who need help. So that's the exciting news. So we're hoping to release the video mid-August, and then CCM Magazine will be covering the video and some of this I have some other really, really exciting news that I can't wait to share with you. I'm just humbled, and I can't believe that this is something I get to do with my music career. So be listening to the podcast in the coming days for that. That being said, I want to move into just a very brief, what I'm going to call a devotional thought today. I have been working on a sermon from Matthew chapter 26. I'm going to be preaching in a— I think it's 2 weeks from now, 3 weeks from now. Probably will not matter from whenever you hear this podcast. I know some of you listen, so it may be well in the past by the time you hear this show. But Matthew 26, there is a lot that happens in Matthew 26 in the life of Jesus. It is the story where the Last Supper takes place. In Matthew, it is a Passover meal. It is not a Passover meal in every Gospel, but in Matthew's Gospel, the Last Supper does take place at a Passover meal. And before this Passover meal, there is a place in, in the gospel where Jesus has this phrase that gets used and misused over and over again. It says, "The poor you will always have with you." It's where Jesus has been anointed by an anonymous woman. We don't know her name. That's what anonymous means. And yet Jesus also says about this woman that she will be remembered and her story will be told forever. And it's interesting that someone who's anonymous, her story will live on, and thus far it has. When we read the Gospels, we hear her story, and the reason it's significant and that she is significant is that she is doing something Jesus taught about so clearly in that story. And I think I maybe have missed it until this time whenever I was reading it. She has a costly ointment. It is like an anointing oil, but it is something that is very valuable. In a culture where things that were very valuable could have been a lot of use to people who were poor. And this unnamed woman, this anonymous woman, people speculate who it is, she lavishes it on Jesus when He is at the home of Simon the leper. And from what I know of lepers, they are not people that you associate with. So immediately Jesus is in the home of Simon, not Slimon, Simon the leper, associating with people that good religious people are not supposed to be associated with because it will make him ceremoniously unclean, ceremonially unclean. And this woman also breaking a social standard of the day of women with men, lavishes this ointment upon Jesus, pours it upon Jesus, and the disciples get outraged. They are so upset that she would waste this precious oil in such a way. And Judas says, "That money, the money we could have gotten that if you sold it, we could have given that to the poor." He's outraged. It's what leads Judas to betray Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. And the thought that was new to me coming into this was when Jesus says, "The poor you will always have with you," it's interesting to me because Jesus is the poor. Jesus was a homeless man. Jesus did not have wealth. Jesus did not have anything that would make you think that he had money in any way. Jesus was one of the poor. Jesus lived as a poor man. Jesus was in solidarity. And there was something prophetically enacted in that moment that shows the kingdom of God so clearly. When this woman takes something that is reserved for the rich and those in the society who are the haves and the people who could only afford it, the wealthy, she takes this gift that would only be associated with the wealthy and would be reserved for those who had money, and she lavishes this gift freely upon Jesus. A poor person, someone who could not pay her back, someone who could give her no monetary gain. There was nothing in this act at all that would benefit this woman except the blessing of knowing that she had lavished something of worth upon the Lord. And I think that's such a beautiful thing because what Jesus is saying, he is the poor person. He is the one that we will always have with us. He wasn't just preaching to the poor, good news to the poor, as it says in the Gospels. He was the poor. He was the poor speaking to the poor. Isn't that a beautiful thing to think about? And it enraged Judas so much that Judas went to sell Jesus out for something as small as 30 pieces of silver. There's debate whether that was a lot or whether that was a little, but the interesting thing was this Judas, who seemingly was so concerned about the poor and so outraged that this woman had lavished this gift this gift in such a wasteful way, in turn goes and betrays the poor. The ones that he says he's sticking up for. The ones that he says, "Oh, we could have sold this and given it to the poor." Instead he betrays the poor for a mere 30 pieces of silver. And I think that what I'm taking from this is that the church at its best, that this statement of "the poor you will always have with you," by Jesus. So often it's been misconstrued and taken by people to say, "Well, there's nothing we can do about the poor. They're always gonna be poor, so we shouldn't do anything about it. So let's just spend all the money on ourselves and do all we can in that way." But the church's wealth is for the poor. The church is for the poor. And I wonder if we thought about this way, if it would be a little bit different. What Jesus might actually be saying It's not a proclamation that you don't have to care for the poor because they'll always be with you. It's an invitation to care for the poor, as if to say that church, if you are doing it right, you will always have poor people with you. The poor people, this is their place. The poor will be with you. If you are following me, you will always have the poor with you. Your worship is for the poor. It's for their benefit. Your houses of worship, they should draw in the poor and those who don't have a place in this world. The place where you dwell, the meals that you have, they should draw the poor. You should have the poor with you. When you give out gifts, it should be for the sake of the poor. When you spend your wealth, it should be with the poor in mind. And it's not so the church will make the poor rich, but so that the have-nots will be able to join in with the haves. It's what Paul talks about at the communion table. When he talks about not coming to the table unworthily and eating and drinking judgment upon ourselves at the communion table. Anyway, this is just thoughts that I've been having as I've been preparing this sermon. It's not the whole sermon. It's a little piece of what I've been thinking through. But I just thought it was such a beautiful thing, and it was sort of a revelation to me, and I just wanted to share it on today's podcast for us to think about that. And so a question for us when Jesus says, "The poor you will always have with you," do you think that's a true statement? I really do think it is, and I wonder how true it is in the American churches so often. I fear that oftentimes the poor and those who are down and out— and we can just use the poor not just as people who don't have money, but just the people who are downcast, the people who may not have family, the people who may not have many friends, the people who don't have much at all. Maybe it's the people who are homeless, and maybe it's the people who have mental illnesses and addictions and things that keep them from participating in society. Revelation people, the Kingdom of God is for them too. It's for all of us together. So all that is to say, if we are the Kingdom of God, I believe there will be evidence of that by the fact that the poor are with us.. If we serve in a place, if we worship in a place that has no poor among us, I have to wonder if we are even in fact the church, or if we are the kingdom of God at all. Are we in fact doing our mission? Are we in fact living it out? The poor you will always have with you, and Jesus is the poor. It's almost a way of saying, Jesus you will always have with you if you have the the poor. Whatever you've done to the least of these, you've done it unto me. Well, there's more I could say, but as I said before, this is going to be a short podcast today. It's more of a devotional thought, and I hope it's something that we can take to heart and dwell on, and dwell on it richly. It's something that I think we need to hear again and again and be reminded. Maybe you're like me, and, and right now things are pretty tight in the James family household. You know, we're trying to do some different things ministry-wise. Things are coming up, bills that we did not see being due. We have seasons in life like that. I think, "Man, I feel like the poor." But you know what? I am not the poor. I mean, I have a roof over my head. I have food. It is not like that. But there are the poor out there that we are called to minister to. I want to do my best to serve Jesus. I woke up this morning I don't always feel this way. I wish I always did, but I woke up this morning just thinking, "Man, I just really want to know Jesus so much. I want to know Him much deeper than I ever have before." And I felt like in my sermon prep and my study that maybe this was the answer coming to me again. To know Jesus, you must know the poor. To know me, you must know those that I am hanging around with. The people that I am calling you to. I wonder if this will be a help to you as much as it was to me. I hope it was something that was from God to our heart today together, and not just to me. If it was just for me, well, I needed it, so I hope you did too. Next week, tune in again. I am going to do my very best. It has been a very busy season, but I want to keep these podcasts going, even if they are short devotionals like this one from time to time. I have got several concerts and several appearances coming up. As I said, I am going to be preaching at a date coming up very soon. I have got a birthday My birthday coming up too. That's gonna be a time of celebration. The big 4-0 this year. 40. So, alright, well, you guys have a great day. Thank you for listening to Voices in My Head. And oh, and by the way, next month I don't know if I'll be podcasting again before August gets here because I think next week might be August, come to think of it. I'll have to look at my calendar. Things have just flown by. But we do have a podcast coming up again very soon with Brian Zahnd. He has a new book coming out. I've read it and I'm so glad that I got an advance copy. I'm super happy to be able to talk with Brian again and have him on the show. So thank you for listening to Voices in My Head. I gotta get out of here for right now, but I'm blessed by you. And drop me a line sometime, join the email list at rickleejames.com. I'd love to hear from you again. Thanks so much and take care.

Thank you for joining me here this week on the Voices in My Head podcast. I hope you'll visit me on my website at rickleejames.com, follow me on Twitter @rickleejames, like my artist page on Facebook at facebook.com/rickleejames, and keep up to date on what I'm writing at my author page on amazon.com.

Make sure to follow my calendar on the website, and if you would like to have me come to your town to do a concert, a speaking engagement, or a book event, you can book me through my website by clicking on the link for Pare Booking Agency.

That's P-A-R-E Booking. And finally, it would mean the world to me if you were to leave me a review of this podcast on iTunes. The more positive reviews that we receive, the more visible this podcast is on the internet. And now the benediction: May the God of peace, who raised Christ from the dead, strengthen your inner being for every good work. And may the blessing of God Almighty, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, rest upon you and dwell within you this day and forevermore. Amen.