Last week, we looked at the location of Jesus’s upbringing: the unremarkable province of Nazareth. While Jesus might have been looked down on for being from such a small and politically unimportant town, there was another thing working against Jesus among the Jewish people: he came from a poor family.

We know Jesus’s family were poor because of the kinds of offerings they presented at the temple in Luke 2: not a lamb, but a pair of birds— a meager offering which the law allowed for families who couldn’t afford more lavish sacrifices. Jesus wasn’t born into privilege. He was born into poverty, just like the majority of human beings are today. He was the stepson of a layman (a carpenter), and we’re told there was little remarkable about his appearance and social standing. Jesus was a poor Jew from Nazareth in an era when being a poor Jew from Nazareth meant you had no influence whatsoever.

And yet,
this man (who likely wouldn’t have had access to classical education)
was able to enter the synagogue in Luke 4 and open the scroll of Isaiah and read:

The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

The Son of God came as a poor man
to deliver good news to the poor.
He would be imprisoned and oppressed,
and yet, his mission was to proclaim joy and freedom.
He grew up in abject poverty.
Even as an adult, he probably didn’t have a denarius to his name,
as he actually had to ask for one to use as a teaching aid in Matthew 22,
and what little money the disciples had was kept by Judas, not Jesus (John 13).

But just as money doesn’t buy happiness,
poverty does not always equate to sorrow,
for from this penniless itinerant rabbi
(a man who knew great suffering and hardship)
came the greatest joy humanity has ever known.

This series is heavily influenced by Howard Thurman’s Jesus and the Disinherited. For a deeper dive into the life of Jesus and what it means for people who are suffering, outcast, and downtrodden (not to mention a thoughtful exploration of racism and authoritarianism in the U.S.), I cannot recommend this book enough.