Preferential Option for the Excluded

Jesus’ Preferential Option for the Excluded

For the Socially-Oriented Activities

2004

Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude and insult you, and denounce your name as evil on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice and leap for joy on that day! Behold, your reward will be great in heaven. Luke 6: 22-23

Thank you for inviting me to give a talk about the Preferential Option for the Poor. There are two reasons why I am especially thankful for the invitation. First, it has always been my secret desire to give homilies without being a priest. But don’t worry, I won’t be preachy.

Second, believe it or not, it has been my secret desire to be invited to talk about the Preferential Option for the Poor or POFTP. The fact that I have been invited to come here is an answer to my prayers. I have been waiting for an invitation because I have had these thoughts floating in my head about POFTP and I needed some motivation to put these thoughts together in a coherent way.

There is an understanding of the POFTP that is floating around campus that I disagree with. When people associate POFTP with manifestations of social injustice, the tendency is to think of the poor as being victims of structural sin and the motivation for having a Preferential Option for them is pity. As Gus Rodriguez of our philosophy department observes of Ateneans, they have a tendency to come out of immersion experiences saying, “Oh shit, kawawa naman the poor”.

I have no problem with the concepts of social injustice and structural sin. When you are in a field like Development Studies, you can’t help but agree that those concepts are real.

I do have, however, two problems with the consequences of this kind of thinking. First, kawawa ba talaga the poor? I have two concerns regarding that reaction of Ateneans. First, pity is not empowering and empowerment is something which the poor need desperately. Pity leads to charity and the lack of concern for capacity-building, giving the poor fish and not teaching them how to fish, as it were. Second, kawawa ba talaga the poor? In my experience of dealing with poor people, there are a handful who are themselves deceitful and some who live in poverty areas who are not really poor.

I have a second problem with the colloquial concept of POFTP. Papaano naman the rich? Sometimes I think that what Ateneans get out of their social formation is one massive guilt trip, an idea that by their participation in sinful structures, they are sinners as well. I have two problems with this consequence. First, it leads students to act based on a need to assuage their guilt, leading to arms length contributions that do not effectively address problems of structural injustice. I think that there are manifestations of dissatisfaction with this motivation when students look for concrete results in their apostolates. Second, it affects the students profoundly, making them carry this baggage well throughout their lives, making them feel guilty about the very legitimate need to earn money and to make a living. It also forces them to be other-centered and leads them to ask if we are to be men and women for others, papaano naman kami?

I believe a lot of problems in Ateneo can be traced to our failure to outgrow the 70s mentality and POFTP is a very 70s concept. The 70s had a very particular context that is no longer here. But rather than saying POFTP is useless, because it is not, maybe it is time to re-interpret the concept.

In re-interpreting this concept, I want to go all the way back to the original inspiration of the POFTP and that is Jesus. Did Jesus have a Preferential Option for the Poor? Yes of course, and he is our model for what it really means. And we get an insight into what the POFTP means for Jesus by asking ourselves, did Jesus hate the rich?

A softer, less radical question is, did Jesus ignore or neglect the rich? To these questions we can answer, he did not. Jesus did not hate the rich and he did not ignore or neglect them. In fact he was often in their company. This is a side of Jesus not often emphasized.

Another related side of Jesus that is not often emphasized is that he loved to eat. According to two accounts in the Gospel, Jesus ate with his disciples after the Resurrection. In one account he asked, may pagkain kayo? In another account he was on the shore with a fire going and he asked the disciples to give him the fish they caught. Jesus loved to eat.

Developing this point further we can say that Jesus loved to eat with the rich. Jesus ate with the religious elite. Jesus ate with the tax collectors. Jesus went into a town and who did he ask if he could stay and eat in his home? Zaccheus, the tax collector. In John’s Gospel, Jesus first appears publicly in the Wedding at Cana, an event which in our time would have been part of our newspapers society pages. Imagine Maurice Arcache with a column on the event and a picture with the caption, “The bride and groom with Jesus of Nazareth”.

In general, I think, Jesus recognized that eating was a social activity and he liked being with people.

In order to understand what POFTP meant for Jesus, I think it is necessary to understand the context he was living in. Jesus was living in a highly exclusionary society. On one level we see that Jesus’ society excluded lepers (and forced them to wear bells around their necks so that people could avoid them), Samaritans and Romans.

But on a deeper level, we can see this exclusion as an exclusion of certain people from worshipping God. Jewish society had very strict rules about who could worship at the temple. You had to be clean. And who were considered unclean?

The sick were considered unclean. Illness back then was associated with sin. There was a man born blind and the religious authorities asked Jesus, since this guy was born blind is he blind on account of his own sin or on account of his parents’ sin? More often than not, when Jesus healed sick people, he forgave their sins, all in line with the dominant understanding of illness in his day.

The sick were excluded from society. They could not even touch other people because if unclean persons touch clean persons, the clean person becomes unclean. When Jesus healed the sick, he restored their standing in the community, and more often than not, he asked those whom he healed to present themselves to the priests at the temple, reintegrating them into society and enabling them to worship freely once more.

Aside from the sick, the excluded included the sinners like the prostitutes and the Samaritans.

Who made these highly exclusionary rules? The religious authorities of Jesus’ time who interpreted tradition.

The sad thing about it is that even the materially poor were excluded. In order to worship at the Temple, Jews had to buy animals to offer as sacrifices so if you couldn’t buy, you couldn’t worship. And that is why Jesus got mad at the moneychangers.

Within this context of this highly exclusionary society, who is Jesus? Jesus is God who is available to everyone. He was available to the excluded: the lepers, sinners, prostitutes, tax collectors, to Romans and Samaritans and the poor. But he was also available to the mainstream of society, the religious authorities and the rich.

Jesus is God who can be touched by anyone. In a society where to be touched by the unclean was to become unclean oneself, Jesus loved touching and being touched by everyone. In healing the sick, Jesus as God could have simply given a command and that person would be healed. But no, he just had to touch those who were sick to restore their health yes, but also to say, you are part of my community.

Recall the story of the women with hemorrhage who touched Jesus. That was a social no-no for a person who had unstoppable regla to touch a clean person. So when Jesus stopped to ask “who touched me?” the woman was probably cowering in fear.

When the apostles tried to exclude children and shut up lepers calling for Jesus’ attention, Jesus countermanded them and invited the children and lepers over to him. Jesus is the accessible God who charges no entrance fee.

In that sense, and I do not mean to offend the non-Catholic Christians, Jesus is the true Catholic. To be Catholic is to be universal and all-inclusive.

So what is Jesus’ POFTP? First, we must understand his context. Jesus knew he didn’t have long to live, that if he said what he needed to say and did what he needed to do, he knew somewhere along the line he would be put to death. Given his limited time, Jesus had to prioritize and budget his time. He couldn’t stay in one place too long. But more importantly, during his limited time, Jesus actively sought the people in his society who were excluded.

I think the parable of the lost sheep is instructive. The one sheep that was lost could be the one sheep that was excluded. Not that he didn’t love the 99 other sheep. He is after all the shepherd of the entire flock. It’s just that that one excluded sheep required special attention.

I recall the story of the Samaritan woman by the well, the one who was living in with a man not her husband. The Gospels tell us that Jesus sent his disciples ahead of him to look for food while he prayed. I’d like to embellish that story by saying that while they were walking along, Jesus saw the Samaritan woman out of the corner of his eye and said to himself that he wanted to talk to her. Knowing full well that if he brought a whole gang of Jewish men with him, the Samaritan woman would shy away, Jesus sent his disciples off. Not that he did not pray and was just making up some excuse, but before or after prayer, he found time to converse with the woman.

One of my favorite stories in the Gospels is when Jesus at the start of his ministry went off to a lonely place to pray after being mobbed by a particular town the whole day. I think that Jesus went off to lonely places not only to pray but also to look for the lonely people, the people who cannot go around with the mob. He spent time alone with them away from the mob and away from his disciples.

Note too that Jesus also actively sought the excluded rich. Much to the consternation of the religious authorities, he dined with the taxpayers. He also chose to stay in the home of Zaccheus who was excluded by his community. Jesus made himself as available to them as he was to the other members of the community.

I think Jesus’ message is that God is available to everyone but he actively seeks the company of those who are excluded by men from worshipping God. Kung ayaw niyo silang palipitin sa akin, ako ang lalapit sa kanila.

Let me share with you a personal story. With four weeks to go before being scheduled to give birth, my wife went into premature labor. We also found out that something was wrong with the baby. Over the course of four weeks, the baby had not gained weight. So the strategy was to try to delay birth as long as possible to give the baby a better chance to live. They wheeled my wife to the delivery room for observation and she was there for one night. The rules of the hospital says that no one can be inside the delivery room except the patient. So I had to spend the night away from my wife. The next day she was wheeled into a regular hospital room with strict instructions not to exert any effort. She couldn’t even exert any effort to move her bowels kasi baka sumabay na yung bata. The next day, she was wheeled back into the delivery room and she stayed there for three days. The rules of the hospital said that while my wife was in the delivery room we had to have a hospital room anyway. So there I was all alone in the hospital room, worried about my wife and my baby. It was all so terribly depressing. We were told that my wife might have to stay in the delivery room for one month.

One night, I found myself alone in the hospital room and I broke down crying. At that moment, I received a special grace, a realization that it was precisely sad people like me that Jesus actively sought out and was most available for. I just wanted to share the personal message with you. That when you feel most excluded, most alone and most rejected by society, remember that Jesus is actively looking for you. When you feel like you are the worst sinner, remember that Jesus is actively looking for you not to condemn you but to tell you that he is still available for you.

Let me go back to my main point. Jesus’ POFTP was his seeking out people to whom God was made inaccessible. What is the implication of this for SOA? First, I think that this framework of exclusion, inclusion and a Christ-initiated community is helpful for SOA. Your apostolates are to society’s excluded, the urban poor, those excluded from good quality education and health services, the mentally challenged, abandoned babies, sexually-abused children and children with cancer.

They are our societies new “lepers”. They are the people whom we would not normally invite into our homes. Think about it, we ask to be invited to their homes but would we invite them into ours?

In the work that you do, you participate in the work of Jesus. You actively seek out the excluded and include them in your lives, in your communities.

More importantly, you serve witness to Jesus’ mission and proclaim to everyone what kind of Church we are by being true to the mission of our founder. We are a true Catholic Church and by that we not only mean that we are all-inclusive but like Jesus, we actively seek out those who are excluded from society and from God.

I remember when I was doing my own apostolate as a member of the ACLC. My job was to play the guitar for the Sunday mass at 9 a.m. and to lead the choir. I usually came in early so I often walked around the community trying to see if by my presence I could invite people to go mass. I remember Mang Gil, a former police officer who was the resident bad boy and the neighborhood bully. He was a tall man who lost some of his fingers and was blind in one eye. Every Sunday morning, without fail, he was drinking gin with his friends. Imagine drinking gin at 8 a.m. in the morning. Once he invited me to drink gin before mass and I did not refuse. So the first thing in my stomach that day was gin. Every once in a while, Mang Gil would invite me to drink gin before mass and I never refused. I always thought it a small victory when the usually half-naked Mang Gil would show up at mass in a collared shirt discretely standing at the back of the chapel.

By your presence and through your company, you bring God to people like Mang Gil and you tell them that God and the Church are accessible and more importantly, that God and the Church are actively seeking them out.

What does Theology teach us after all? That we are the Church, not just the church heirarchy and the religious and the manangs who run the parish groups and the Couples for Christ and the CYA. Since we are the Church, by our actions we proclaim what it is to be the Church and we serve witness to the fact that the Church actively seeks out those who are excluded.

And according to theology, what is the Church? It is the mystical body of Christ and if Christ were here what do you think he would do?

Let me end with that question. If Christ were alive today, what do you think he would do? I think he would be out there, eating with the rich, getting himself invited to homes of sinners and actively seeking out those who are excluded from society.