As gross as the weather has been this past week, we all know that sooner or later, Spring will eventually sashay through the door, dressed in pastels and sweet-smelling flowers. Happens every year. But in Kentucky—as we’ve seen recently—we rarely have a good idea about when that will be.

We have another annual rite of seasonal passage here in Kentucky. Of course, with this particular ritual, we have more certainty. We know precisely when it will happen. It comes every year when May pops up on the calendar.

You know what I’m talking about, right?

That’s right, the annual attempt to incentivize the houseless to disappear from the Metro Louisville landscape. In anticipation of the Kentucky Derby, the city elders—fronted by the police—take pains to “beautify” the downtown by aggressively inviting houseless people to find someplace else to set up their tents. Apparently, we don’t like the idea that thousands of tourists will come to our city and see how we treat our neighbors who can’t afford shelter. So, we try to keep them out of sight.

Every year. After the Dogwoods bloom, it’s time for the annual cleansing of the “undesirables.”

I know the stated reason is that we want tourists to our lovely city to be able to take in all the wonders of Louisville without the unsightly distraction of struggling human beings coloring outsiders’ opinions of us.

But equally compelling—though rarely uttered aloud—is that moving the houseless out of the public spaces helps prevent us from confronting the shame of how we allow people to be treated in our name, people we’ve convinced ourselves are disposable.

Why do so many in our community care so much that the city removes our neighbors who struggle every day just to stay alive?

Because there are so many houseless people, we can’t un-see them. Their presence among us is a constant reminder that though we talk about being a “Compassionate City,” we’ve got a long way to go to make that a reality.

This annual rite of Spring reminds us of our failure to live up to the story we tell ourselves about ourselves. I guess maybe that’s why recently we’ve had such a string of politicians heartlessly rationalizing policies that would take food out of the mouths of our poorest people, healthcare away from our most vulnerable, and money out of the pockets of our elderly by casually explaining, “Poverty is a bad thing. But it’s just like the Bible says, ‘The poor you will always have with you.’”

Every time I hear someone justify cruelty by distorting Jesus that way, I think, “See, this is what you get when you let just anyone roam around in Scripture without adult supervision.”

Ever hear somebody say this?

I know.

What I want to holler back at the T.V. is, “When Jesus said ‘the poor you will have with you always,’ he wasn’t expressing a preference.”

“Okay, professor smarty-pants, if he didn’t mean that, what did he mean?

Well, I’m glad you asked.

This well-known passage in John opens at the home of his friend, Lazarus—who he’s just raised from the dead. The text says they’re six days from the Feast of the Passover; that information hits John’s readers like ominous music in a John Carpenter movie. Because everybody knows what happens during Passover.

Dun-dun-dun!

Anyway, apparently, Lazarus and his family are really grateful to Jesus for raising him from the dead because they throw a big barbeque in his honor in the backyard. And while everyone’s kicked back in their lawn chairs with a can of Bud Light and a plate of potato salad, Lazarus’s sister, Mary, busts open some expensive perfume and starts rubbing it all over Jesus’ feet.

This turns out to be kind of a big deal because the perfume was expensive. Judas—who apparently has a good nose for this kind of unconscionable waste—tells the D.J. to turn down the Kenny G tribute block and says, “Um, not to be that guy, but did anybody think that maybe we could have put that expensive perfume on E-bay and bought some groceries for the poor?”