i am a theological student to be and a current Ryerson University Social Work student. i have also not been “called” in the typical Biblical way that you have explained yet i feel a strong push in the direction of ministry regardless of my own reluctance. i agree with the comment explaining that we are all called to follow Christ and i think that you have a excellent understanding of what Christ was trying to tell us, with his life and his death.
i too believe that the commission that he gives to us is to live with not only the poor but the marginalized and the stigmatized. this would even mean that we would be living with, advocating for all those who are even persecuted and excluded by “Christians”. to what ends do we go, i do not know. perhaps if we follow Christ and his teaching’s, we would go as far as advocating for those and fighting for those who we would least expect to be with Christ.
i fear for the Christian faith that we may fail God’s will for us and become the modern day Pharisees. It is not our duty as Christians to judge and be self-righteous, but rather humble ourselves as you have done and attempt to live in harmony as God would want us to live.
i really agree with your comment about equity, where people who are privileged may seem as though they are living in poverty if they were to equally distribute resources. until the rich and powerful are ready to give these privileges up, poverty, inequality and injustice will always be present in this world.
i apologize to all the readers for such a long comment and although i want to add more i will stop by saying i think that you are on the right track and i am inspired by your post.

Exactly. It is this privatised notion of ‘calling’ that I am rejecting in order to affirm what we are all called to as Christians and as human beings (so, it’s still correct to say that I was never ‘called’… in that privatised way… plus that makes for a more catching title… which apparently makes some people think).

Every one has a gifting and we need each other and cannot do without each other. “How can the hand say to the eye I don’t need you!” Whether we choose to work and live with the poor, we need those who work in other areas of life to fund that work. We need those who work in government, or on farms, or as fishermen, or as whatever. But whatever it is that we do…the call is to follow Jesus and be about the Father’s work in our daily lives.

So while I agree with you, I can’t stop there. And with all those examples I see Jesus not so much as telling us to “hang out with them” as much as he is telling us that we are them. If we truely are them then we stop making distinctions like the above at all.

I think there are different ways for us into discipleship. For some, we will begin developing a more humble way of life (with less money, stuff, insurances, bank accounts etc) as a result of our meeting with the poor. But I also think that for others, our fed up-ness with mammonism and longing for the kingdom of God will lead us to resistance, giving away our things to the poor etc even before we have had journeyed much with the poor, but I think this will also lead us to come closer to the poor. The lastway has happened to be mine.

Sometimes I get the feeling that you and Claiborne and a handful of other people seems to imply that there are certain steps that should be taken in a certain order, the first being hanging out with the home-less and stuff. But I don´t think it will happen that way for all of us. If you, like me, are married and have two small children, the first thing to do is not to bring home-less people into your home, for example. There are other aspects of a life seeking God´s kingdom than our relationship to the poor.

Nathan. You seem to imply that “poor” is simply a category in our heads. But I think that we need to look at this in terms of structure and material conditions, and not make it become a question of only “attitude” or internal stuff. Jesus was, after all, attacking the rich and comforting the poor, so he was not trying to break down this way of speaking (Lk 6).

i wonder if our attempts to journey with “poor people” really misses out on the realization of our own poorness. The more I read Jesus the more I”m starting to see Jesus trying to level the playing field in our head by assuring us we are no better or better off rather than encouraging us just to be around them.

I don’t think Jesus pushes us to spend time with the poor because they have no friends but because he wants us to see that we are those people. Poorness is where the kingdom is found, its not that we need to become poor but realize we are poor (in whatever sense of the word).