“Can I shine your shoes?” asked a man with bucket and brushes in hand. I paused and looked at my supervisor, who was in midsentence discussing a work project. He looked around the crowded street, wavered, and then lifted his shoe onto the man’s stool. The man knelt down and busily began to apply black polish. As he worked he sang a hymn about baptism. I couldn’t tell if he had made it up or learned it somewhere. Over the course of five minutes, I watched this man—dirty and weathered from living on the streets—wash my boss’s feet while giving us a lesson about dying and being raised to new life in Christ.

Our spiritual lessons often come from the least, last and lost among us—the homeless, addicts, mentally ill, handicapped, or grieving. These lessons can be hidden in ordinary experiences and delivered by unlikely teachers. We often rely on our congregations’ spiritual “elite” to teach us: the people with degrees, pedigrees, and formal training. But Jesus’ teachings suggest these are not the only qualified teachers in our churches. He says,

“Happy are you poor;
the Kingdom of God is yours!
Happy are you who are hungry now;
you will be filled!
Happy are you who weep now;
you will laugh!” (Luke 6:20-21)

The Kingdom of God belongs to the poor, hungry, and mournful, making them not simply people we are called to serve, but people who can reveal God to us. While seminary, classrooms, books and committees are helpful, our most powerful lessons can come from the fringes—where Jesus is already hanging out.

So who are those at the margins of our lives, the spiritually poor among us, and how can they teach us to read Scripture?

The Center of the Gospel

We know that caring for the poor is a central teaching of Scripture for living as the people of God. Old Testament laws instructed the Israelites to care for the foreigners among them, just as they were once foreigners in distant lands (Deuteronomy 10:19, Leviticus 19:34). The law addressed forgiveness of debts, giving money to the poor, and taking care of one another economically (Deuteronomy 15).

The prophets spoke in defense of the vulnerable and weak—the poor, widows, orphans, homeless, and people who didn’t have their own land. Again and again they called the people to live out these laws, including famously: “No, the Lord has told us what is good. What he requires of us is this: to do what is just, to show constant love, and to live in humble fellowship with our God” (Micah 6:8).

Jesus’ life embodied this call to care for the poor. It wasn’t his success, power, or prestige that attracted attention. It was his teaching and actions. Through his life he taught the law and Scriptures in a way people hadn’t understood them before. He made those on the fringes the center of the gospel: “I have not come to call respectable people, but outcasts” (Mark 2:17). He spent his time with those on the margins: prostitutes, tax collectors, and Samaritans. He taught parables about widows, people who were lost, and drunks. He kept bringing in people from the fringes, giving them the seats of honor and making them honored guests.

Who are the poor in your community? Do they look the same as some of the people Jesus identified in his teaching and spent time with? What are different forms of poverty—physical, emotional, spiritual, relational, and psychological?

As we follow Jesus’ interpretation of Scripture—making the poor and outcasts the center of the gospel—we begin to read Scripture through a different lens. We don’t read it from a perspective of power, or having all the answers. Instead, we read it through the lens of our own vulnerability, and the needs of our church community.

Here are three practical ways to let people on the fringes teach us, and our congregations, about reading Scripture:

  1. Let the poor uncover your own need for the gospel. We have a host of ways to meet our own needs. We go to grocery stores for our physical hunger, doctors for our broken bones, and psychologists for our mental wellbeing. Given enough time and resources, we’ve got it all covered! But this self-reliance can mask our basic dependence on God. Jesus says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled” (Matthew 5:6 NRSV). Spending time with the poor can remind us that we all have needs—whether physical, psychological, or emotional—that only God can meet. Can you recognize your own need for God through the more evident needs of people in poverty? How does getting in touch with your own need for God affect your reading of Scripture?
  2. Learn from the poor’s interpretation of Scripture. Plan a four-week Bible study for people who are on the margins of your church community. This could be following a homeless dinner, AA meeting or another gathering at your church for people in need. Select passages where Jesus interacts with people on the fringes (Mark 5:21-43, Luke 7:36-50, Luke 19:1-10). Explain if necessary why these people were outcasts in their culture. Explore together the story of how their encounter with Jesus transformed their lives. Then turn to questions about the text that place your small group members in the story: What was the hemorrhaging woman feeling when she approached Jesus? What did the townspeople think about Zacchaeus? Who was Jesus, and why did people seek him out? Make sure the Bible study is less about teaching and more about learning together and hearing from each person’s perspective. Use the questions to help each group member personally connect with God through Scripture.
  3. Ask the poor to serve in your church. Over the last year, I helped serve meals at my church’s weekly supper for the homeless. Every time I arrived, one of the men from the homeless community was busy wrapping utensils in paper napkins and preparing for the other guests. At the end of each meal, one or two people always stayed behind to wipe down tables and stack chairs. Some weeks this created more chaos than help, but it revealed an important lesson to me. Serving the poor requires giving everyone an opportunity to serve. Jesus taught, “If one of you wants to be great, you must be the servant of the rest; and if one of you wants to be first, you must be the slave of the others” (Matthew 20:26b-27). Giving those in need the opportunity to serve gives them a valuable role in your community—it lets them be first. What are some ways you can integrate the poor into your church? Could you invite someone on the fringes to do a Scripture reading on Sunday morning? Or help administer the Eucharist? How could being served by people on the fringes, and seeing them in more visible roles, shape your church community’s reading of Scripture?

Many of us have responded wholeheartedly to Jesus’ good news for the poor, then realized how difficult it can be to live out his teaching in practice. Addictions, homelessness, mental illness, grief, broken relationships—many things associated with poverty are painful and messy. Interacting with people on the margins will be uncomfortable. It is counterintuitive to seek these people out. It is foolish to move towards suffering. But God says, “I live in a high and holy place, but I also live with people who are humble and repentant, so that I can restore their confidence and hope” (Isaiah 57:15). If God lives with those humble enough to know their own need, then we will find God where he is already living—on the fringes. We will continue to encounter God’s presence in the least, last and lost. This leads to our own transformation—happening right alongside the homeless and found within our own spiritual hunger.