I want to think with you today about poverty and that last line from today’s gospel (John 12:1-8) in which Jesus says, “You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

What do you make of that? Who are the poor Jesus is talking about? Whose faces do you see? And what does it mean to be poor?

Maybe you think of poverty as only a financial matter. Maybe it’s the people on the other side of town or the other side of the world who do not have enough; enough money, enough food, enough clothes. Perhaps poverty for you looks like the faces of children in the pictures organizations use to solicit donations. Or perhaps it’s the unemployed, refugees, migrants. Some might think of poverty as not having enough…