Mat 26:11 For you have the poor always with you; but me you have not always.
Alternative: For all times you have beggars with you, but me you do not have at all times.

There are two statements here, both very interesting. The first is about beggars and the second about Christ's presence with us: will he always be with us or not?

While Christ is commonly declared a champion of "the poor," the heroes in his parables are often rich and almost always productive. The word translated here as "the poor" more precisely means a "beggar." Christ uses it a number of times, and through it he gives a clear sense of the role that beggars play in the world.

The first time he uses the word is it in the context of being "beggars of spirit,"that is, lacking spirit in the Beatitudes and throughout the Gospels, Christ separates beggars into two types: those who are spiritually afflicted and those that are physically incapacitated. Christ describes himself as healing those who are physically afflicted--the blind, the lame, the lepers like Lazarus, and the deaf--but he has come to teach those who are spiritually afflicted. (Mat 11:5, Luk 4:18, Luk 7:22).

Christ sees money as a stumbling block for the wealthy, but everything he describes as "beautiful" (including here) is a productive act, not begging. The rich who are ensnared by the comfort and desires of earthly things are better giving their wealth to the beggars (Mat 19:21), but those actions are suggested for the good of the souls of the wealthy not for the beggars. Instead, Christ describes beggars as pawns who are used by those who want to criticize the productive acts of others (as suggested in the previous verse) or use the money for themselves (Jhn 12:6). Even today, most people's interest in the poor fall into one of these two categories.

Beggars a featured as the heroes in two of Christ's parables. The beggar and leper Lazarus (Luk 16:20), is rewarded with heaven. In this parable, it is the beggar's suffering that earns him a reward, assumable because he never lost his faith. The other is the parable of the beggar widow (death being another physical affliction) who gives her last two cents as an offering. The point of this parable is that it is the relative size not the absolute size of any sacrifice that matters. Both of these beggars are used as a comparison, illustrating the flaws of the rich in their stories.

Christ does not see begging (or if you will, poverty) as a problem that can be solved by the rich, which is what he states clearly here. His view is more practical. We can work to heal the physical afflictions as Christ did and as modern science does and we can teach those who are spiritually afflicted a more productive way to live. Giving money to the poor does not solve the problems of the poor, but it does help the givers when they are enslaved to their wealth.

In the case of Christ's presence, his statement in this verse seems to contradict Mat 28:20, the last words of Christ in Matthew, where he says," I will be with yours all days, even to the end of the age," (a more literal translation than KJV). Is there a real contradiction?

First, since I am mostly concerned with translation, I have to point out that very different terms are used in these two verses. In this verse, the word that Matthew has Christ using comes closer to meaning "throughout" or "at every moment." The pronoun used here is yourselves (heautou), which specifically means the group he is addressing. In the verse at the end of the gospel, the phrase used is "all days until the end of the age," which doesn't mean at every possible moment and the pronoun used means "with yours" (genitive case) as in "with your descendants."

For me the difference is clearly the distinction between Christ's physical presence with the people he lived with on a daily basis, which was a temporary phenomena and Christ's spiritual presence among those who share in his spirit. One of Christ's main themes is how the life moves from the spiritual to the physical and back again. The point is that those states are different, though part of the same cycle. This verse was spoken while he was still in his physical body. The later verse was spoken while he was in his resurrected body. Christ here says that a spiritual presence among the living doesn't have the same continuity as a physical presence. We can make contact with the spirit every day, but even a saint is not spiritual every moment in the same way we are physical every moment.

I find myself going back to the first part of this verse about the poor. The poor are a continual physical presence even though all of our physical lives, rich and poor are temporary. Christ is a intermittent spiritual presence among the living, but that presence is permanent, just as all of our spiritual lives are permanent. Everyone you have ever met is immortal, but only spiritually. Our physical presence with each other is a temporary thing that we should use are productively as we can.

"Always" is from pantote (pantote), which means "always," literally breaking down into "all when."

"Poor" is from ptôchos (ptochos), which means "beggar," "beggar-woman," and "beggarly."