In whose name do I receive the hurting I know?
In my name, my family name, in the name of church or country?
In the name of empire?
In the name of humanity?
In the name of religion?
In the name of heaven or earth?
In whose name do I receive the hurting I know?
The name in which I was received when hurting
The name of Jesus, lowly Jesus, hurting Jesus
exalted Jesus
No other name
Saturday, December 8, 2012
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
Changing Neighbourhoods
The words of the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem...
So I again considered all the oppression that continually occurs on the earth. This is what I saw:
The oppressed were in tears but no one was comforting them; no one delivers them from the power of their oppressors. Ecclesiastes 1:1, 4:1
There is no consolation in these verses. From the Teacher's perspective oppression is as unalterable as the sun’s rising in the east and setting in the west. It has not and will not change.
His viewpoint is fatalistic, an excuse to do nothing, to ‘let it be’ and accept oppression as a fact of life that no one can change.
We stir up oppression and rebellion; we tell lies concocted in our minds. Justice is driven back; godliness stands far off. Honesty stumbles in the city square and morality is not even able to enter. Honesty has disappeared; the one who tries to avoid evil is robbed. The Lord watches and is displeased, for there is no justice.
He sees there is no advocate; he is shocked that no one intervenes. So he takes matters into his own hands; his desire for justice drives him on.
He wears his desire for justice like body armour, and his desire to deliver is like a helmet on his head. He puts on the garments of vengeance and wears zeal like a robe. He repays them for what they have done, dispensing angry judgment to his adversaries and punishing his enemies. Isaiah 59:13-18
On one level, the prophet agrees with the teacher. No one is rescuing the oppressed. Injustice is everywhere and those in positions to do something about it lie to themselves. Rather than combat oppression, they stir it up; rather than concede to the demands of justice they resist those demands and then lie to themselves by calling the evil they do, good!
But the prophet, unlike the teacher, isn't fatalistic. On God’s behalf, he is shocked that no one intervenes. He sees the hungry, the thousands within the city without a home. He sees those in authority refusing to intervene for the oppressed, going about their business as though nothing is wrong. Rather than address the injustice, they cater to it. In doing so, they disobey the Lord who demands of them honesty, morality, justice, and godliness.
Isaiah insists there is no justice because his people have given up being just. The measure of their ungodliness is they talk about injustice but then do nothing about it.
Instead of declaring war on poverty, they declared war on poor people robbing them of the little they have to increase their own wealth and security.
Is that really any different than what we do?
We’d sooner purchase a second property than use that money to help those without a home.
Our pension plans invest in companies which sell billions of dollars worth of lethal weapons to the very same countries we are denying food and other essential aid to.
We are closing our borders to refugees unless they can pay their own way. Some we are sending back to imprisonment, and some others to die.
God looks for someone to intervene but to his amazement finds no one.
So God intervenes.
Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and the regaining of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”
Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to tell them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled even as you heard it being read.” Luke 4:16-21
Jesus is God’s intervention. He is the end of oppression. Driven on by justice he preaches good news to poor people, release to those imprisoned, vision to those without sight, and freedom for the oppressed. In his coming God’s Jubilee begins, the end of which all debt is forgiven and his love reigns.
God’s desire for justice propels Jesus to the cross. He frees the oppressed from their fear of death which is the root of all oppression.
Here is my servant whom I have chosen, the one I love, in whom I delight;
I will put my Spirit on him and he will proclaim justice to the nations.
He will not quarrel or cry out; no one will hear his voice in the streets.
A bruised reed will he not break and a smouldering wick he will not snuff out, till he leads justice to victory.
In his name the nations will put their hope. Isaiah 42:1-4, Matthew 12:18-21
Jesus leads justice to victory. This is the hope of all nations.
To follow Jesus means we are driven by the same desire to see justice prevail.
Once a religious leader asked Jesus this question: “Good Teacher, what should I do to inherit eternal life?”
“Why do you call me good?” Jesus asked him. “Only God is truly good. But to answer your question, you know the commandments: ‘You must not commit adultery. You must not murder. You must not steal. You must not testify falsely. Honor your father and mother.’”
The man replied, “I’ve obeyed all these commandments since I was young.”
When Jesus heard his answer, he said, “There is still one thing you haven’t done. Sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
But when the man heard this he became very sad, for he was very rich.
When Jesus saw this, he said, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the Kingdom of God! In fact, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God!”
Those who heard this said, “Then who in the world can be saved?” He replied, “What is impossible for people is possible with God.” Peter said, “We’ve left our homes to follow you.”
“Yes,” Jesus replied, “and I assure you that everyone who has given up house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the Kingdom of God, will be repaid many times over in this life, and will have eternal life in the world to come.” Luke 18:18-30
To enter the Kingdom of God is to embrace its values and objectives. It is to move from complicity to engagement, from fatalism to activism, from this world’s way of doing things to God’s way.
As much as we balk about selling all we have to bless the poor to follow Christ, it is for his kingdom’s sake. Installing his kingdom here on earth cost the king his life. We can't be surprised if it costs us everything as well!
To follow Jesus as
he leads justice to victory, we must persevere as he did, endure
opposition as he did and be among the people he was. To follow him is to
deliver the oppressed from the power of their oppressors, to intervene
where injustice is and to labour to prevail.
What began as a question from a rich man about how he might attain eternal life, ends up with an answer from Jesus that it will cost him everything. The rich man came with a theological question about what eternity costs and Jesus responded with what justice costs and the requirement of the rich man to part with everything he had.
The rich man wasn’t willing and frankly neither are we! The kingdom's advance in our lives is choked by our predisposition to possessions and selfish pursuit. The kingdom advances for the most part without us, advancing with them willing to pay the price to see justice prevail.
Peter’s response is a telling one: “We’ve left our homes to follow you.”
It is both genuine and ironic. Genuine in that the disciples to follow Jesus had given up their homes and ironic that Peter seemingly doesn't recognize that Jesus' quest for justice had cost him his home as well.
The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood. John 1:14
Jesus never asks of us what he hasn’t asked of himself. To initiate God’s justice here on earth, Jesus changed neighbourhoods.
Perhaps that was the real cost which had stymied the rich young man from following him.
He would have to change neighbourhoods. No longer could he belong to the same golf course or vie for the fanciest car on the street. No longer could he compare stock portfolios with his buddies at the Granite Club nor compete for making the biggest donation made at the next fundraising gala.
He’d have to give all that up to befriend some unschooled fishermen, a reformed tax collector and some ‘ex’ sex-trade workers. This to follow someone who did not back down from challenging those in power, some of whom the rich man would have grown up with, some of whom he knew personally were scheming to kill him.
He couldn't give that up!
Nor can many of us.
To follow Jesus means changing neighbourhoods. That what’s justice costs.
We can’t possibly remain ‘within our own’ and know anything about real oppression. Those with privilege can't possibly know what it is to be without privilege. Otherwise we would not remain silent!
We can’t possibly advocate for someone hemmed down by injustice, unless we are in the neighbourhoods where injustice prevails.
We can’t possibly know what Jesus means when he says - present tense - ‘blessed are the poor’ unless we are living among the poor.
We can’t advance his kingdom without doing our part to lead justice to victory in the places where injustice and oppression currently prevail.
So I again considered all the oppression that continually occurs on the earth. This is what I saw:
The oppressed were in tears but no one was comforting them; no one delivers them from the power of their oppressors. Ecclesiastes 1:1, 4:1
There is no consolation in these verses. From the Teacher's perspective oppression is as unalterable as the sun’s rising in the east and setting in the west. It has not and will not change.
His viewpoint is fatalistic, an excuse to do nothing, to ‘let it be’ and accept oppression as a fact of life that no one can change.
We stir up oppression and rebellion; we tell lies concocted in our minds. Justice is driven back; godliness stands far off. Honesty stumbles in the city square and morality is not even able to enter. Honesty has disappeared; the one who tries to avoid evil is robbed. The Lord watches and is displeased, for there is no justice.
He sees there is no advocate; he is shocked that no one intervenes. So he takes matters into his own hands; his desire for justice drives him on.
He wears his desire for justice like body armour, and his desire to deliver is like a helmet on his head. He puts on the garments of vengeance and wears zeal like a robe. He repays them for what they have done, dispensing angry judgment to his adversaries and punishing his enemies. Isaiah 59:13-18
On one level, the prophet agrees with the teacher. No one is rescuing the oppressed. Injustice is everywhere and those in positions to do something about it lie to themselves. Rather than combat oppression, they stir it up; rather than concede to the demands of justice they resist those demands and then lie to themselves by calling the evil they do, good!
But the prophet, unlike the teacher, isn't fatalistic. On God’s behalf, he is shocked that no one intervenes. He sees the hungry, the thousands within the city without a home. He sees those in authority refusing to intervene for the oppressed, going about their business as though nothing is wrong. Rather than address the injustice, they cater to it. In doing so, they disobey the Lord who demands of them honesty, morality, justice, and godliness.
Isaiah insists there is no justice because his people have given up being just. The measure of their ungodliness is they talk about injustice but then do nothing about it.
Instead of declaring war on poverty, they declared war on poor people robbing them of the little they have to increase their own wealth and security.
Is that really any different than what we do?
We’d sooner purchase a second property than use that money to help those without a home.
Our pension plans invest in companies which sell billions of dollars worth of lethal weapons to the very same countries we are denying food and other essential aid to.
We are closing our borders to refugees unless they can pay their own way. Some we are sending back to imprisonment, and some others to die.
God looks for someone to intervene but to his amazement finds no one.
So God intervenes.
Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and the regaining of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”
Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to tell them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled even as you heard it being read.” Luke 4:16-21
Jesus is God’s intervention. He is the end of oppression. Driven on by justice he preaches good news to poor people, release to those imprisoned, vision to those without sight, and freedom for the oppressed. In his coming God’s Jubilee begins, the end of which all debt is forgiven and his love reigns.
God’s desire for justice propels Jesus to the cross. He frees the oppressed from their fear of death which is the root of all oppression.
Here is my servant whom I have chosen, the one I love, in whom I delight;
I will put my Spirit on him and he will proclaim justice to the nations.
He will not quarrel or cry out; no one will hear his voice in the streets.
A bruised reed will he not break and a smouldering wick he will not snuff out, till he leads justice to victory.
In his name the nations will put their hope. Isaiah 42:1-4, Matthew 12:18-21
Jesus leads justice to victory. This is the hope of all nations.
To follow Jesus means we are driven by the same desire to see justice prevail.
Once a religious leader asked Jesus this question: “Good Teacher, what should I do to inherit eternal life?”
“Why do you call me good?” Jesus asked him. “Only God is truly good. But to answer your question, you know the commandments: ‘You must not commit adultery. You must not murder. You must not steal. You must not testify falsely. Honor your father and mother.’”
The man replied, “I’ve obeyed all these commandments since I was young.”
When Jesus heard his answer, he said, “There is still one thing you haven’t done. Sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
But when the man heard this he became very sad, for he was very rich.
When Jesus saw this, he said, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the Kingdom of God! In fact, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God!”
Those who heard this said, “Then who in the world can be saved?” He replied, “What is impossible for people is possible with God.” Peter said, “We’ve left our homes to follow you.”
“Yes,” Jesus replied, “and I assure you that everyone who has given up house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the Kingdom of God, will be repaid many times over in this life, and will have eternal life in the world to come.” Luke 18:18-30
To enter the Kingdom of God is to embrace its values and objectives. It is to move from complicity to engagement, from fatalism to activism, from this world’s way of doing things to God’s way.
As much as we balk about selling all we have to bless the poor to follow Christ, it is for his kingdom’s sake. Installing his kingdom here on earth cost the king his life. We can't be surprised if it costs us everything as well!
To follow Jesus as
he leads justice to victory, we must persevere as he did, endure
opposition as he did and be among the people he was. To follow him is to
deliver the oppressed from the power of their oppressors, to intervene
where injustice is and to labour to prevail.What began as a question from a rich man about how he might attain eternal life, ends up with an answer from Jesus that it will cost him everything. The rich man came with a theological question about what eternity costs and Jesus responded with what justice costs and the requirement of the rich man to part with everything he had.
The rich man wasn’t willing and frankly neither are we! The kingdom's advance in our lives is choked by our predisposition to possessions and selfish pursuit. The kingdom advances for the most part without us, advancing with them willing to pay the price to see justice prevail.
Peter’s response is a telling one: “We’ve left our homes to follow you.”
It is both genuine and ironic. Genuine in that the disciples to follow Jesus had given up their homes and ironic that Peter seemingly doesn't recognize that Jesus' quest for justice had cost him his home as well.
The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood. John 1:14
Jesus never asks of us what he hasn’t asked of himself. To initiate God’s justice here on earth, Jesus changed neighbourhoods.
Perhaps that was the real cost which had stymied the rich young man from following him.
He would have to change neighbourhoods. No longer could he belong to the same golf course or vie for the fanciest car on the street. No longer could he compare stock portfolios with his buddies at the Granite Club nor compete for making the biggest donation made at the next fundraising gala.
He’d have to give all that up to befriend some unschooled fishermen, a reformed tax collector and some ‘ex’ sex-trade workers. This to follow someone who did not back down from challenging those in power, some of whom the rich man would have grown up with, some of whom he knew personally were scheming to kill him.
He couldn't give that up!
Nor can many of us.
To follow Jesus means changing neighbourhoods. That what’s justice costs.
We can’t possibly remain ‘within our own’ and know anything about real oppression. Those with privilege can't possibly know what it is to be without privilege. Otherwise we would not remain silent!
We can’t possibly advocate for someone hemmed down by injustice, unless we are in the neighbourhoods where injustice prevails.
We can’t possibly know what Jesus means when he says - present tense - ‘blessed are the poor’ unless we are living among the poor.
We can’t advance his kingdom without doing our part to lead justice to victory in the places where injustice and oppression currently prevail.
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Quibbling with The Teacher
 |
photo by Michael Deacon - inspired by Ecclesiastes 1:7
"Everything is meaningless," says the Teacher, "completely meaningless!"
What do people get for all their hard work under the sun? Generations come and generations go, but the earth never changes. The sun rises and the sun sets, then hurries around to rise again. The wind blows south, and then turns north. Around and around it goes, blowing in circles. Rivers run into the sea, but the sea is never full. Then the water returns again to the rivers and flows out again to the sea. Everything
is wearisome beyond description. No matter how much we see, we are
never satisfied. No matter how much we hear, we are not content.
History merely repeats itself. It has all been done before. Nothing under the sun is truly new. Sometimes people say, “Here is something new!” But actually it is old; nothing is ever truly new.
We
don’t remember what happened in the past, and in future generations, no
one will remember what we are doing now. Ecclesiastes 1:2-11
In
reflecting on the photo our son Michael took of the sun setting over
the Bay of Fundy, I had concluded something other than meaningless.
If
by everything the Teacher means everything, I would have to disagree.
What God does is never meaningless! Waterfalls and sunsets are Exhibits A
&B of a God filled with meaning, purpose, elation, and joy beyond
description.
If by everything the Teacher means the things we do, he's got a point.
 |
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Going 'missional'
Copy of a letter written to a dear friend who is also a pastor, who by his own admission spends a lot of time in his office preparing sermons...
I have been reflecting on your response to my earlier dictum 'a congregation can only go where you yourself are going' (or however it was I said it).
Your response is typical for the situation most people in church find themselves in. Their family and extended family commitments are just too huge to sacrifice additional 'personal' time to fit 'missional' responsibilities in.
I agree. The time has to come from somewhere other than 'personal/family' time.
As busy as Jesus was in his ministry, it would appear from a superficial reading of the gospels that his ministry and mentoring, his being 'out there' for the sake of others - was during working hours (i.e. '9 am to 6 pm' as opposed to '6 pm to 9 am'). There were exceptions to that rule (i.e. his encounter with Nicodemus in John 3 and of course his crucifixion) but for the most part his being out there was 9 to 6. The rest was personal time and most especially devotional time...
So you're being 'missional' by example, in activity as well as in word - would have to happen during office hours.
As you know I am speaking from experience. My relationship with homeless and street people happens at the expense of office time, during my 'peak efficiency' hours, ie. the hours in which I am being paid to work at insurance!
As you know, it started slowly. It was an hour here, an hour there. It was gradual not only for my sake but the sake of those 'strangers' who in befriending would have to endure their own issues in learning how to relate with me.
Do you remember that 'Third Wave' message we heard at one of the recent Willowcreek Summits?
The minister talked about the allocation of his work time 70/30 - how it used to be that he'd spend 70% of his time preparing for the Sunday services and 30% of his time 'out there mentoring' and how those proportions had been reversed so that 70% of his time was being spent 'out there mentoring' and 30% on sermon preparation?
I remember you coming to me afterwards admitting to being really challenged by that message and asking me to help you move in that direction.
This is my response, albeit nearly 4 years later, delayed in part because of some necessary learning on my part...
For you to reverse the 70/30 to 30/70 (ratio of sermon prep to mentoring - which in your case a different % might apply):
It has to be local and yet outside your usual church responsibilities. It has to be outside your comfort zone but not too far outside your comfort zone. That will come later.
An example - visiting the local bank will give you occasion to connect with people who struggle to survive. It is a great way to meet immigrants, individuals who for reasons of culture or religion are church adverse. Going to a church based food bank other than our own also builds inter-church relations which is essential for the church (both ours and theirs) to have any meaningful social impact.
The rule of thumb is to do things you're not paid to do. And using your work hours, your best hours, your usual 'in the office' hours to do it. A hour will be enough some days, other days it may stretch into two. What you are aiming for is something easily replicated by those who follow you. For our real teaching is in getting people to imitate what we are ourselves are doing.
Again, thinking of the congregation, the most they will be able to give initially to 'missional' activity will be an hour here, an hour there. It may start with the weekly commitment to spend their lunch hour befriending a street person, or visiting a person in hospital who is outside their faith and family, or engaging in a conversation with a perfect stranger at Tim Horton's.
They'll only do it if they see their leader doing it. From my life-long church experience and in other instances since in social agency settings, people only go as far as they are lead. There are exceptions, like a Stephen (Acts 7), but they are all too rare...
There is very little you or I can do within the confines of our office which is replicable. By staying in our offices we give those who follow us nothing to imitate. This is contrary to the example of Jesus. It was what he did 'outside' that gave his disciples something to replicate. That is how we teach, that is how we mentor.
Not that you have to talk about it. You are not doing this for the sake of boasting, you are doing it for the sake of obedience. For biblical living is the end result of obedience, indeed an obedience which for the most part we are commanded to do in secret. So if anything, you are doing it not to talk about it but to give authority and credence to your words when you ask others to do the same.
I tell you in all confidence and humility, most of what I do, nobody knows about. It doesn't show up on a blog, it is literally hidden. Where it becomes visible is in situations when I have to ask the same of others, or in situations which call for public activity i.e. speaking at a rally, giving a talk to high school students, leading a discussion group involving only marginalized people, or encountering a street person as the two of us did in a Windsor coffee shop on our way back from Chicago.
For you to reverse the 70/30 to 30/70 will not happen overnight. It may not get beyond 50/50. No matter.
The rest I pass on, friend to friend, simply because essential to your transition is how it will impact the relationships that matter most in your life.
My own experience with poor people has actually affected my closest relationships for the better. Without exception. It helps me connect with my kids in conversations of substance - not only about social issues, but also about faith, Jesus and what obedience to God looks like. They go no further than the way I live my life to get a glimpse of what Jesus calls us to. It adds a vital ingredient to all meaningful relationships - PERSPECTIVE.
Even more than that, it has helped our marriage - once I got beyond the stage of talking about homelessness all the time! I still talk about it far too much but in general, the more I do, the more it is known about me, and the less that needs to be said. It's as though one becomes marked by it...
From an insurance standpoint, it has increased my work efficiency and may even have affected its quality for the better. I don't know, in this I may be deluded. It seems that way.
There are things it affects the other way as well, but that would take another epistle.
Love,
John
I have been reflecting on your response to my earlier dictum 'a congregation can only go where you yourself are going' (or however it was I said it).
Your response is typical for the situation most people in church find themselves in. Their family and extended family commitments are just too huge to sacrifice additional 'personal' time to fit 'missional' responsibilities in.
I agree. The time has to come from somewhere other than 'personal/family' time.
As busy as Jesus was in his ministry, it would appear from a superficial reading of the gospels that his ministry and mentoring, his being 'out there' for the sake of others - was during working hours (i.e. '9 am to 6 pm' as opposed to '6 pm to 9 am'). There were exceptions to that rule (i.e. his encounter with Nicodemus in John 3 and of course his crucifixion) but for the most part his being out there was 9 to 6. The rest was personal time and most especially devotional time...
So you're being 'missional' by example, in activity as well as in word - would have to happen during office hours.
As you know I am speaking from experience. My relationship with homeless and street people happens at the expense of office time, during my 'peak efficiency' hours, ie. the hours in which I am being paid to work at insurance!
As you know, it started slowly. It was an hour here, an hour there. It was gradual not only for my sake but the sake of those 'strangers' who in befriending would have to endure their own issues in learning how to relate with me.
Do you remember that 'Third Wave' message we heard at one of the recent Willowcreek Summits?
The minister talked about the allocation of his work time 70/30 - how it used to be that he'd spend 70% of his time preparing for the Sunday services and 30% of his time 'out there mentoring' and how those proportions had been reversed so that 70% of his time was being spent 'out there mentoring' and 30% on sermon preparation?
I remember you coming to me afterwards admitting to being really challenged by that message and asking me to help you move in that direction.
This is my response, albeit nearly 4 years later, delayed in part because of some necessary learning on my part...
For you to reverse the 70/30 to 30/70 (ratio of sermon prep to mentoring - which in your case a different % might apply):
It has to be local and yet outside your usual church responsibilities. It has to be outside your comfort zone but not too far outside your comfort zone. That will come later.
An example - visiting the local bank will give you occasion to connect with people who struggle to survive. It is a great way to meet immigrants, individuals who for reasons of culture or religion are church adverse. Going to a church based food bank other than our own also builds inter-church relations which is essential for the church (both ours and theirs) to have any meaningful social impact.
The rule of thumb is to do things you're not paid to do. And using your work hours, your best hours, your usual 'in the office' hours to do it. A hour will be enough some days, other days it may stretch into two. What you are aiming for is something easily replicated by those who follow you. For our real teaching is in getting people to imitate what we are ourselves are doing.
Again, thinking of the congregation, the most they will be able to give initially to 'missional' activity will be an hour here, an hour there. It may start with the weekly commitment to spend their lunch hour befriending a street person, or visiting a person in hospital who is outside their faith and family, or engaging in a conversation with a perfect stranger at Tim Horton's.
They'll only do it if they see their leader doing it. From my life-long church experience and in other instances since in social agency settings, people only go as far as they are lead. There are exceptions, like a Stephen (Acts 7), but they are all too rare...
There is very little you or I can do within the confines of our office which is replicable. By staying in our offices we give those who follow us nothing to imitate. This is contrary to the example of Jesus. It was what he did 'outside' that gave his disciples something to replicate. That is how we teach, that is how we mentor.
Not that you have to talk about it. You are not doing this for the sake of boasting, you are doing it for the sake of obedience. For biblical living is the end result of obedience, indeed an obedience which for the most part we are commanded to do in secret. So if anything, you are doing it not to talk about it but to give authority and credence to your words when you ask others to do the same.
I tell you in all confidence and humility, most of what I do, nobody knows about. It doesn't show up on a blog, it is literally hidden. Where it becomes visible is in situations when I have to ask the same of others, or in situations which call for public activity i.e. speaking at a rally, giving a talk to high school students, leading a discussion group involving only marginalized people, or encountering a street person as the two of us did in a Windsor coffee shop on our way back from Chicago.
For you to reverse the 70/30 to 30/70 will not happen overnight. It may not get beyond 50/50. No matter.
The rest I pass on, friend to friend, simply because essential to your transition is how it will impact the relationships that matter most in your life.
My own experience with poor people has actually affected my closest relationships for the better. Without exception. It helps me connect with my kids in conversations of substance - not only about social issues, but also about faith, Jesus and what obedience to God looks like. They go no further than the way I live my life to get a glimpse of what Jesus calls us to. It adds a vital ingredient to all meaningful relationships - PERSPECTIVE.
Even more than that, it has helped our marriage - once I got beyond the stage of talking about homelessness all the time! I still talk about it far too much but in general, the more I do, the more it is known about me, and the less that needs to be said. It's as though one becomes marked by it...
From an insurance standpoint, it has increased my work efficiency and may even have affected its quality for the better. I don't know, in this I may be deluded. It seems that way.
There are things it affects the other way as well, but that would take another epistle.
Love,
John
Friday, May 25, 2012
If you want to build a ship
If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood
and don't assign them tasks and work. Rather teach them to long for the
endless immensity of the sea. Antoine De Saint Exupery
If the Son set you free, you are free indeed. John 8:36
You are either alive and proud or you are dead,
And when you are dead, you don't care anyway.
And your method of death can itself be a politicizing thing.
So you die in the riots.
For a hell of a lot of them, in fact, there's really nothing to lose -
almost literally, given the kind of situations they come from.
So if you can overcome the personal fear of death,
which is a highly irrational thing, you know,
then you're on the way. Steve Biko
Following God is spoken of in two very contrasting ways.
It is an invitation to come and die and an invitation to come and live.
It is an invitation to forsake all and an invitation to living abundantly.
It is to live in obedience to only One and it is to be a servant to those around you.
Most of us live as though it is one or the other.
Few of us live longing for 'the endless immensity' of God.
Without such longing, our religion is false and our witness to His Presence lifeless.
If the Son set you free, you are free indeed. John 8:36
You are either alive and proud or you are dead,
And when you are dead, you don't care anyway.
And your method of death can itself be a politicizing thing.
So you die in the riots.
For a hell of a lot of them, in fact, there's really nothing to lose -
almost literally, given the kind of situations they come from.
So if you can overcome the personal fear of death,
which is a highly irrational thing, you know,
then you're on the way. Steve Biko
Following God is spoken of in two very contrasting ways.
It is an invitation to come and die and an invitation to come and live.
It is an invitation to forsake all and an invitation to living abundantly.
It is to live in obedience to only One and it is to be a servant to those around you.
Most of us live as though it is one or the other.
Few of us live longing for 'the endless immensity' of God.
Without such longing, our religion is false and our witness to His Presence lifeless.
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Renegades
Renegades.
People who go against the current, defy gravity, mess with the majority, seek peace in the midst of war, are suspicious about power, distrust privilege, advocate for the despised, don't let up fighting for the underdog, contrarian because their conscience won't let them be otherwise.
They're not hard to find in the Bible - I've been reading the minor prophets, and they're all renegades. Even Jonah, allowing that his renegading was against God.
But renegades in church? Give them a pulpit and the congregation shrinks. We're more likely to ask them to take their protest elsewhere!
So where do we start?
By talking with those outside our circle, whose persuasions are contrary to ours. With the aim to understand and not alienate. If you're pro-life, speak to a pro-choicer, if you're straight to someone who's gay, if a Christian to someone who is Muslim, if a church insider, to someone outside. If you're old to someone who's young, if you're young to someone who's old. If you're a rebel to someone who's not, if you're status quo talk to someone who isn't.
Around the table Jesus ate at were tax collectors, zealots, fishermen, firebrands and commoners. I dare say they could agree on anything other than who they were following - a renegade if there ever was one but truly unlike any other.
Hear a renegade and one hears the Lord. Not because a renegade and the Lord say the same thing but because both are inclined to say things we'd rather not hear about ourselves, about the church and the impact we could be making when we refuse to water down what Jesus asks of us.
People who go against the current, defy gravity, mess with the majority, seek peace in the midst of war, are suspicious about power, distrust privilege, advocate for the despised, don't let up fighting for the underdog, contrarian because their conscience won't let them be otherwise.
They're not hard to find in the Bible - I've been reading the minor prophets, and they're all renegades. Even Jonah, allowing that his renegading was against God.
But renegades in church? Give them a pulpit and the congregation shrinks. We're more likely to ask them to take their protest elsewhere!
So where do we start?
By talking with those outside our circle, whose persuasions are contrary to ours. With the aim to understand and not alienate. If you're pro-life, speak to a pro-choicer, if you're straight to someone who's gay, if a Christian to someone who is Muslim, if a church insider, to someone outside. If you're old to someone who's young, if you're young to someone who's old. If you're a rebel to someone who's not, if you're status quo talk to someone who isn't.
Around the table Jesus ate at were tax collectors, zealots, fishermen, firebrands and commoners. I dare say they could agree on anything other than who they were following - a renegade if there ever was one but truly unlike any other.
Hear a renegade and one hears the Lord. Not because a renegade and the Lord say the same thing but because both are inclined to say things we'd rather not hear about ourselves, about the church and the impact we could be making when we refuse to water down what Jesus asks of us.
Get out
I thought it compelling that our pastor reminded us that at our inception we had committed
ourselves to becoming a 'church without walls', a 'movement' rather
than just another way of doing church.
I have been thinking about that ever since and have wondered what it would take for that to be true of us.
Recently my wife and I saw the documentary 'Soundtrack from the Revolution' capturing on film the civil rights movement of the 60's and the pivotal role music had (particularly spirituals) in driving the movement forward.
One thing I learned from the documentary: until the Rosa Parks incident, Martin Luther King was just another 'negro' preacher. He was renowned as a dynamic up and coming suburban preacher, but when Rosa Parks refused to sit in the back in the bus, she triggered something in Martin that got him out from behind his pulpit and into the street. Had Rosa Parks not taken a stand where segregation and bigotry prevailed, King would have never left his pulpit to lead the civil rights movement.
Jesus was God getting out from behind his pulpit, from behind his 2 stone tablets of the Law, out from behind the temple veil and out into the street. He led his disciples and those intrigued by him into the streets of Capernaum, Nazareth and Jerusalem. Only the Pharisees and religious leaders stood in his way, insisting God could only be found in His Temple and only through them. In the end Jesus prevailed, though it cost him his life.
So too King led his followers into the streets of Birmingham and Selma into the places where the opposition was the most fierce. He too prevailed though it would cost him his life.
If we are to ever to become a movement (and we will by no means be alone) we will have to get out from behind our pews, our pulpits, our office desks, our homes, our comfort zones, our church programs, our privileges and into the streets where God is at work. It will mean church gatherings which are about becoming trained, encouraged, inspired and provoked to go out. It will mean going to the places where the needs are greatest and where the opposition is fierce.
When we started, we talked about becoming a movement. It had me excited. I had been doing church for 30 years and I was ready for something brand new, something without walls, something that would have us out on the street where the people and Jesus are.
But we've stalled, become somewhat set in our ways, preferring 'propriety over prophetic action', predictable, an institution rather than a movement.
We have to get out.
I have been thinking about that ever since and have wondered what it would take for that to be true of us.
Recently my wife and I saw the documentary 'Soundtrack from the Revolution' capturing on film the civil rights movement of the 60's and the pivotal role music had (particularly spirituals) in driving the movement forward.
One thing I learned from the documentary: until the Rosa Parks incident, Martin Luther King was just another 'negro' preacher. He was renowned as a dynamic up and coming suburban preacher, but when Rosa Parks refused to sit in the back in the bus, she triggered something in Martin that got him out from behind his pulpit and into the street. Had Rosa Parks not taken a stand where segregation and bigotry prevailed, King would have never left his pulpit to lead the civil rights movement.
Jesus was God getting out from behind his pulpit, from behind his 2 stone tablets of the Law, out from behind the temple veil and out into the street. He led his disciples and those intrigued by him into the streets of Capernaum, Nazareth and Jerusalem. Only the Pharisees and religious leaders stood in his way, insisting God could only be found in His Temple and only through them. In the end Jesus prevailed, though it cost him his life.
So too King led his followers into the streets of Birmingham and Selma into the places where the opposition was the most fierce. He too prevailed though it would cost him his life.
If we are to ever to become a movement (and we will by no means be alone) we will have to get out from behind our pews, our pulpits, our office desks, our homes, our comfort zones, our church programs, our privileges and into the streets where God is at work. It will mean church gatherings which are about becoming trained, encouraged, inspired and provoked to go out. It will mean going to the places where the needs are greatest and where the opposition is fierce.
When we started, we talked about becoming a movement. It had me excited. I had been doing church for 30 years and I was ready for something brand new, something without walls, something that would have us out on the street where the people and Jesus are.
But we've stalled, become somewhat set in our ways, preferring 'propriety over prophetic action', predictable, an institution rather than a movement.
We have to get out.
The way forward
In hearing the Sunday sermon yesterday on the children of Israel’s
reticence to enter the promised land, I wondered if that same reticence
hinders us.
In our context, I interpret the promised land to be people of other cultures, races, faiths, and economic realities whose lives God is calling us to engage with.
We have Calebs and Joshuas among us, perhaps as few in number proportionally as they were in Moses day. Probably more among the youth than among the boomers.
As a boomer, inclined to cling to the status quo as much as anyone, I have these observations as to the way forward for our church.
Those for going forward will be fewer than those wanting to stay put.
It will take a clean break from Egypt.
To linger will only extend our stay in the wilderness.
It may not be Moses who can take us there.
It may not be us but our children who cross over.
In our context, I interpret the promised land to be people of other cultures, races, faiths, and economic realities whose lives God is calling us to engage with.
We have Calebs and Joshuas among us, perhaps as few in number proportionally as they were in Moses day. Probably more among the youth than among the boomers.
As a boomer, inclined to cling to the status quo as much as anyone, I have these observations as to the way forward for our church.
Those for going forward will be fewer than those wanting to stay put.
It will take a clean break from Egypt.
To linger will only extend our stay in the wilderness.
It may not be Moses who can take us there.
It may not be us but our children who cross over.
Holy Discontent
This entry was written in the Spring of 2010. The drop-in eventually opened in November 2010 and has exceeded everyone's expectations:
There were 5 of us in a circle near the altar at the front of All Saints Anglican, a church committed to being a home for the homeless.
Barb Todd who leads the group was in tears. She has a heart for young women caught in the sex trade and how desperate their need is for a drop-in centre.
One young prostitute named Nancy had dropped by the church on Sunday, 17 years old, her face disfigured by the man who 'owned' her. Screaming from the pain of a broken jaw, she disrupted the Sunday service knowing she'd find Barb there.
Had she gone to the police they would have, based on past experience, threatened her with arrest unless she had conceded to 'certain favours'. Regrettably the shelters she knew were no shelter from the traffickers keeping her and others like her enslaved.
Barb had brought her idea of providing a private refuge for prostitutes to the rest of the church staff. She was willing to volunteer what little free time she had and open the church at 5 am to meet up with the women after they 'come off their shift'. For at least a few hours she could provide them with refuge.
But the staff voted against it. In fairness to them, they are stretched to the max and they don't have the resources to do it.
But I thought I heard her, WHY CAN'T WE BE THE RESOURCE SHE NEEDS?
Never again will they hunger, never again will they thirst...for the Lamb will be their shepherd, he will lead them to springs of living water. And God will wipe every tear from their eyes.' Rev 7:16,17
As this passage was read during our prayer time, the lament that followed was palpable.
Do these women have to wait until heaven before they receive any comfort, before they experience the love of someone who really cares? Are they left to wander into our churches broken, only to receive sympathetic gestures from good-hearted people who have no idea the living hell these young women are trapped in?
As I left I found myself lamenting my pre-occupation with finding my own peace, with my not being more open to being disturbed, distraught, provoked into doing what we could to bring 'the kingdom of heaven' near for these women.
A spiritual person tries less to be godly than to be deeply human. WS Coffin
To be deeply human is to intentionally marry oneself to the particulars of human suffering and to do what one can to alleviate it. Honestly confronted, it doesn't make for peace, it makes for what Bill Hybels calls a 'holy discontent'.
May God provoke in us such discontent, that the last thing we'll desire is to be immune from it.
There were 5 of us in a circle near the altar at the front of All Saints Anglican, a church committed to being a home for the homeless.
Barb Todd who leads the group was in tears. She has a heart for young women caught in the sex trade and how desperate their need is for a drop-in centre.
One young prostitute named Nancy had dropped by the church on Sunday, 17 years old, her face disfigured by the man who 'owned' her. Screaming from the pain of a broken jaw, she disrupted the Sunday service knowing she'd find Barb there.
Had she gone to the police they would have, based on past experience, threatened her with arrest unless she had conceded to 'certain favours'. Regrettably the shelters she knew were no shelter from the traffickers keeping her and others like her enslaved.
Barb had brought her idea of providing a private refuge for prostitutes to the rest of the church staff. She was willing to volunteer what little free time she had and open the church at 5 am to meet up with the women after they 'come off their shift'. For at least a few hours she could provide them with refuge.
But the staff voted against it. In fairness to them, they are stretched to the max and they don't have the resources to do it.
But I thought I heard her, WHY CAN'T WE BE THE RESOURCE SHE NEEDS?
Never again will they hunger, never again will they thirst...for the Lamb will be their shepherd, he will lead them to springs of living water. And God will wipe every tear from their eyes.' Rev 7:16,17
As this passage was read during our prayer time, the lament that followed was palpable.
Do these women have to wait until heaven before they receive any comfort, before they experience the love of someone who really cares? Are they left to wander into our churches broken, only to receive sympathetic gestures from good-hearted people who have no idea the living hell these young women are trapped in?
As I left I found myself lamenting my pre-occupation with finding my own peace, with my not being more open to being disturbed, distraught, provoked into doing what we could to bring 'the kingdom of heaven' near for these women.
A spiritual person tries less to be godly than to be deeply human. WS Coffin
To be deeply human is to intentionally marry oneself to the particulars of human suffering and to do what one can to alleviate it. Honestly confronted, it doesn't make for peace, it makes for what Bill Hybels calls a 'holy discontent'.
May God provoke in us such discontent, that the last thing we'll desire is to be immune from it.
Monday, March 19, 2012
Theocon Politics
Theoconservatism is a political label referring to members of the Christian right, particularly those whose ideology is a synthesis of elements of American conservatism, Conservative Christianity and social conservatism, expressed through political means. This term first appeared in 1996 in a The New Republic article entitled "Neocon v. Theocon" by Jacob Heilbrunn, where he wrote that "[T]he neoconservatives
believe that America is special because it was founded on an idea—a
commitment to the rights of man embodied in the Declaration of
Independence—not in ethnic or religious affiliations. The theocons, too, argue that America is rooted in an idea, but they believe that idea is Christianity.
from Wikipedia
Theocon (THEE.oh.kawn; TH as is thin) n. A conservative who believes that religion should play a major role in forming and implementing public policy. Also: theo-con. from WordSpy
I remember this woman who was hounded by some guy who insisted that God had told him they were to marry. The experience made her suspicious of both him and God.
We have reason to be suspicious of anyone claiming to speak on God’s behalf whenever it is to their own advantage.
If Theocon politics (theoconversatism) were about those having two coats giving to those having none, an immigration policy that welcomes strangers, the elevating the interests of other nations above one’s own, and the response to acts of terrorism by turning the other cheek; they’d sound like Theo, a political Amen to the Sermon on the Mount.
But Theocon politics are the very opposite of the Sermon on the Mount. So much so that one has good reason to be suspicious not only of the politics but of its god.
from Wikipedia
Theocon (THEE.oh.kawn; TH as is thin) n. A conservative who believes that religion should play a major role in forming and implementing public policy. Also: theo-con. from WordSpy
I remember this woman who was hounded by some guy who insisted that God had told him they were to marry. The experience made her suspicious of both him and God.
We have reason to be suspicious of anyone claiming to speak on God’s behalf whenever it is to their own advantage.
If Theocon politics (theoconversatism) were about those having two coats giving to those having none, an immigration policy that welcomes strangers, the elevating the interests of other nations above one’s own, and the response to acts of terrorism by turning the other cheek; they’d sound like Theo, a political Amen to the Sermon on the Mount.
But Theocon politics are the very opposite of the Sermon on the Mount. So much so that one has good reason to be suspicious not only of the politics but of its god.
Friday, March 16, 2012
Resurrection and Vindication
text of a sermon in March, 2008
Resurrection and Vindication
When I was 16 years old one of my closest friends was the caretaker at Rosedale United Church.
Bill Cranston was a gem of a guy, Scottish, a great sense of humour; one of the few adults in my life at the time that I could really talk to. He took me under his wing as his right hand guy and out of respect for our friendship and my ability to stack chairs after church functions, he gave me a key to the church.
So on Sunday afternoons, when the church would be empty, I would used to go to church, make my way into the pulpit and open the massive Bible that was on the lectern to Matthew Chapter 5. And to an imaginary congregation I would read aloud all three chapters of the Sermon on the Mount – to the point where I almost knew it all by heart.
They were wonderful words to read aloud – the noblest words ever spoken…
Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of God
Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted
Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth…
The words would captivate me. They were at complete odds with the world I lived in, but there were times in which they seemed like the only words that mattered. They represented the kind of world I wanted to live in.
And when I’d get to the part about God so caring for the birds of the air that he feeds them and so cares for the flowers of the field that he clothes them…that to read God loves us even more - such that we should never worry about where our next meal is coming from or what we’re going to wear…it all seemed so idyllic, and yet so utterly possible.
It would be another 7 years before I became a Christian but even at 16 years of age, these words had a profound effect on me.
Let me say this. If the only reason you are sitting here in church this morning is because your parents made you, I am going to ask you to do something that I promise you will make this service something other than a waste of time.
I want you to find a modern translation of the New Testament, I want you to turn to Matthew Chapter 5 and in a place where nobody else can hear you, and there is nothing else to distract you – computer, MP3 player whatever; I want you to read aloud Chapters 5, 6 and 7 of Matthew’s gospel. I want you to read as though you first objective is not to understand the words, nor even to believe what it is you’re reading – I want you to get accustomed to the sound of the words, get some feel for how different they are and how powerful and how incredible they are. Don’t be shocked at their power – they have had a profound effect not only on Christians like Martin Luther King and Mother Theresa, but non-Christians like Mahatma Gandhi.
I am thoroughly convinced that before we can say yes to Jesus, we must experience him. Going to church is great, making Christian friends is great, helping the poor is great but to experience Jesus you must first experience the power of his words. They must resonate in you like an echo resonates within you when you are standing in a cave and yell ‘is there anyone in there?’
For fundamental to becoming a Christian – not just for a day but for the rest of your life – is to hear Jesus for yourself. For there will come a day where to follow Jesus will mean being courageous when everyone around you has chickened out; standing beside someone and calling them ‘your friend’ when everyone else has abandoned them; it will mean seeking justice for others and foregoing privileges for yourself.
But before you can go there, you must experience the echo of Christ’s words. To read his words aloud is very much like standing in a cave and asking God ‘is there anyone out there’ and having God answer ‘YES’.
But as I mentioned before it was another 7 years before I became a Christian. I stopped reading the Sermon on the Mount. I probably stopped when they changed the locks on Rosedale United Church.
But for some reason, the words became too fantastic to believe. I went to university, I got a job - I became schooled in how the world really operates where the race is won by those who can afford the best running shoes, and where the tough guys beat up the weaklings and the words of Jesus seemed out of touch, naïve.
I became skeptical. I saw the church as society’s way of keeping us all in line, but good for little else.
But deep down inside, there was the echo of Jesus’ words – faint, but still there.
Deep down inside I still longed for the kind of world Jesus spoke of, where the poor would be blessed, and the efforts of peacemakers would be blessed…but they seemed so pie in the sky. In the late 1960’s when I was in my late teens, the war in Vietnam was killing so many needlessly. But to advocate for peace at the time was tantamount to treason, of being willing to surrender to the Communists.
Some Christians I knew at the time told me – Don’t worry, Jesus is coming back – he’ll sort this whole mess out. Let the world go to hell in a handbasket, it’s enough to simply believe.
I found such talk to be abhorrent – I still do – the notion that the kind of world Jesus talked about in the Sermon on the Mount would have to wait until after Jesus came back again seemed escapist and fatalistic. What good is God if his only answer to the world’s problems is: ‘don’t worry – I’ll get it right the next time!’
Now – just so you don’t misunderstand me. I do believe Christ will return. I believe it because I believe in the resurrection. As Paul writes to the Corinthian Church:
Christ has been raised from the dead. He is the first of a great harvest of all who have died. So you see, just as death came into the world through a man, now the resurrection from the dead has begun through another man. Just as everyone dies because we all belong to Adam, everyone who belongs to Christ will be given new life. But there is an order to this resurrection, Christ was raised as the first of the harvest; then all who belong to Christ will be raised when he comes back.
After that the end will come, when he will turn over the Kingdom over to God the Father, having destroyed every ruler and authority and power. For Christ must reign until he humbles all his enemies under his feet. And the last enemy to be destroyed is death. For the scriptures say, ‘God has put all things under his authority. (I Corinthians 15:20-27a)
Can you hear what he is saying here? He is saying it as much to us as he was saying it to the Corinthians. When Christ returns, he will be turning over the Kingdom to God the Father.
What kingdom you ask? Why of Kingdom of God – the Kingdom that Jesus is talking about in the Sermon on the Mount. The Kingdom where the poor are blessed and those in mourning are comforted and the meek inherit the earth.
The resurrection of Jesus is not simply some after this life consolation prize; it is the vindication of everything Jesus stood for – it is the vindication of everything he ever preached – it is the vindication of who he said he was, the vindication of who he said God was…the proof that God is loving and merciful and true and ever present in this world. It is the vindication that God’s kingdom reigns and has been reigning ever since that glorious Easter morning when God raised Jesus from the dead. No wonder among the last words Jesus said to his disciples before he ascended to heaven were: ‘I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth’ (Matthew 28:18)
I looked up the word vindication and learn that it comes from the verb ‘to vindicate’. To vindicate means to justify by evidence or argument, to clear of suspicion, to establish the existence or merits or justice of one’s veracity, courage, conduct, character and assertion’.
An example would really help.
As of this morning’s paper, the Toronto Maple Leafs are 8 points out of a playoff position, in 12th position in a division of 15 teams. They have 12 games left in the regular season to catapult over 4 teams to gain the 8th and final playoff position. A tall order to say the least, but not impossible.
Now if you listen to the Sports Station like I do, or read the Sports pages, practically everyone is saying the Leafs are in dire need of an overhaul – that they are years away from winning the Stanley Cup. They are poorly managed, the executives at Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment could care less about ever winning the Cup, they making money by the boatload; the players are a bunch of has beens with no trade clauses who are selfish and more concerned about lining their pocket book than about doing whatever it takes to be on a Stanley Cup contender.
But what if – on June 6th, 2008 – you were to open your Toronto Star newspaper – and there is the Headline – ‘The Leafs Win the Cup’.
All that talk about the Leafs needing an overhaul is out the window. Mats Sundin is a hero for having stuck it out with Toronto – even though mere months ago, pundits were calling him a selfish ‘so and so’ not to waive his no trade clause.
VINDICATION!
To be vindicated means that whatever you put your life on the line for has been justified– validating one’s veracity, courage, conduct and assertion.
Vindication is a big theme throughout the Bible. Joseph has dreams of assuming a place of authority where even his own father and 11 brothers bow before him. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego defy King Nebuchadnezzar’s edict to fall down and worship his golden idol and are thrown into the fiery furnace only to come out unscathed.
When the religious leaders charge Jesus with blasphemy after he tells a man who is paralyzed ‘Your sins are forgiven’. Jesus responds: Is it easier to say to the paralyzed man ‘Your sins are forgiven’ or ‘Stand up, pick up your mat and walk? So I will prove to you that the Son of God has the authority on earth to forgive sins.’
Then he turned to the paralyzed man and said: Stand up, pick up your mat and go home!’
Jesus’ claim to forgive is vindicated by his power to heal.
His resurrection vindicates everything he stood for – the poor, the hurting, the hungry, the stranger, the outsider. It vindicates His Kingdom.
His resurrection vindicates everything he taught about forgiveness, loving one’s enemies, selling one’s possessions to provide for others, turning the other cheek, seeking peace and not war.
His resurrection vindicates everything he claimed about himself – his being one with God the Father, of his being the Son of Man, of his being the friend of sinners, of his power to forgive and to restore us.
But it is also the vindication of those willing to believe in God enough that they rely on him for their daily needs – for employment, for food and shelter, for his direction in their lives. It is the vindication of all those who seek God’s honour regardless of being ridiculed. It vindicates those of child-like faith who resist the temptation to be skeptical of God’s love; who live their lives as though they really are in God’s hands regardless of what they suffer.
The resurrection is the vindication of those who instead of hitting back turns the other cheek; the vindication of the one who sacrifices the ‘good life’ to ensure the hungry are fed. It is the vindication of the one who seeks peace with the terrorist even if it costs him his life.
I hope that strikes you as naïve. It does me. And so it would seem naïve to many Christians.
In an address called ‘Christianity was never designed as a tool for war’ the American Religious history professor Richard T Hughes observed:
At the outset of the war in Iraq, Charles Stanley, pastor of the First Church in Atlanta affirmed: ‘we should serve the war effort in any way possible…God battles with those who oppose him and fights against him and his followers’. Others including Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham and Marvin Olasky, editor of World Magazine suggested the war would open a whole new field for converting Muslims to the Christian faith. Tim LaHaye, co-author of the Left Behind series of end-time books suggested that by virtue of the way, ‘Iraq would become the focal point of end-time events’. With preaching like that, it is hardly surprising to learn that one month after the United States launched its pre-emptive strike against Iraq, the decision to invade drew support from an astounding 87 percent of all white evangelical Christians.’
How is this possible when Jesus clearly taught that to live by the sword is to die by it; that we are to love our enemies which presumably means we’re not to bomb them? How is this possible when the Apostle Paul clearly taught that our enemies are not flesh and blood but evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world (see Ephesians 6:12) against which cruise missiles and shock and awe tactics are of no use.
And so I ask you as I ask myself – do we really believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ? Do we really believe that what he taught and the way he lived is the way we are meant to live?
Or are we living lives which confess belief in the resurrection but who deep down inside believe his teaching as totally impractical for our time, too naïve to be worth repeating?
There is a scene from the movie Gandhi where Gandhi and an Anglican priest are on a street in South Africa. As they are walking together they realize that in their path is a gang of white thugs, from whom they can expect a beating.
As they approach, the priest suggests to Gandhi that they turn around and go another way. But Gandhi says – ‘But doesn’t Christ teach us that when are confronted by our enemies, we are to turn the other cheek?’
The Anglican priest affirms that indeed Jesus did say those words, but that he was pretty sure that Jesus meant that we treat these words as metaphorical, subject to interpretation. The Hindu, Gandhi disagrees – insists that he believed Jesus meant what he said to be lived out literally – recognizing that the most effective way of combat violence is to turn the other cheek.
I wonder how many of us have become like the Anglican priest – we treat Jesus words as though they are metaphorical, subject to interpretation – rather than to be simply lived out as he instructed?
It reminds me of something Soren Kierkegaard once wrote:
The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the moment we understand it, we are obliged to act accordingly.
Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. ‘My God’, you will say, ‘if I do that, my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world?’
Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian Scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close.
Oh priceless Scholarship – what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the Living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.
That seems a little harsh and I apologize to all the Christian scholars who tirelessly work to strengthen our faith in biblical truth. But there is more than a grain of truth in what he says…otherwise why is it that most people outside the church, especially people under 30, can’t see much of a difference between the world and the church?
Another way of saying the same thing is to say that what we really believe isn’t what we can recite from the Bible. What we really believe is reflected in the lives we lead…
It was GK Chesterton who wrote : The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.
If we truly believe in the resurrection, then we must be willing to try…
But with this one very huge proviso. With Moses came the Law, but with Jesus comes grace and truth. More than once Jesus repeated those incredible words from the prophet Hosea ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice’. God is not interested in the sacrifices we make to serve him, he desires mercy…he desires that we learn mercy in discovering he is merciful with us; he desires mercy in our being merciful with others. ‘Blessed are the merciful, Jesus said in his sermon from the mount, for they will find mercy’.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the vindication of mercy over judgment.
This should fundamentally affect the way we see things. If the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the vindication of mercy over judgment, then so too will His return to judge us all be the vindication of mercy over judgment.
I say again, this should fundamentally affect the way we see things.
When I take off my glasses to look at you, to see you with my own eyes, everything is a blur. But when I put my glasses on, I can see each and everyone of you clearly..
When I look at the world through my own eyes, I see violence, the ruthless pursuit of power, extravagance and vengeance. And I can justify it…it’s what’s needed to survive. And I can justify my indifference to my neighbour’s welfare and giving God no more than lip service.
But when I/we look through the lens of the resurrection, we see the world Jesus spoke of when he said ‘blessed are the poor’. We see the exaltation of humility and the need to advocate for those who can’t speak for themselves. We see the imperative for simple living, unburdened by the weight of material possessions. We see forgiving those who hate us, and loving our enemies, even if they’re terrorists. We see death swallowed up by life. And mercy prevailing over judgment.
For some of us we may have to re-think our interpretation of the Book of Revelation. Others may decide to behind the ‘Left Behind’ series of books and embrace the God sized dimensions of a mercy Paul so beautifully captures in Romans Chapter 11:32-36
For God has imprisoned everyone in disobedience so he could have mercy on everyone.
Oh, how great are God’s riches and wisdom and knowledge!
How impossible it is for us to understand his decisions and his ways!
For who can know the Lord’s thoughts?
Who knows enough to give him advice?
And who has given him so much that he needs to pay it back?
For everything comes from him and exists by his power and is intended for his glory.
All glory to him forever!
Amen.
Resurrection and Vindication
When I was 16 years old one of my closest friends was the caretaker at Rosedale United Church.
Bill Cranston was a gem of a guy, Scottish, a great sense of humour; one of the few adults in my life at the time that I could really talk to. He took me under his wing as his right hand guy and out of respect for our friendship and my ability to stack chairs after church functions, he gave me a key to the church.
So on Sunday afternoons, when the church would be empty, I would used to go to church, make my way into the pulpit and open the massive Bible that was on the lectern to Matthew Chapter 5. And to an imaginary congregation I would read aloud all three chapters of the Sermon on the Mount – to the point where I almost knew it all by heart.
They were wonderful words to read aloud – the noblest words ever spoken…
Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of God
Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted
Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth…
The words would captivate me. They were at complete odds with the world I lived in, but there were times in which they seemed like the only words that mattered. They represented the kind of world I wanted to live in.
And when I’d get to the part about God so caring for the birds of the air that he feeds them and so cares for the flowers of the field that he clothes them…that to read God loves us even more - such that we should never worry about where our next meal is coming from or what we’re going to wear…it all seemed so idyllic, and yet so utterly possible.
It would be another 7 years before I became a Christian but even at 16 years of age, these words had a profound effect on me.
Let me say this. If the only reason you are sitting here in church this morning is because your parents made you, I am going to ask you to do something that I promise you will make this service something other than a waste of time.
I want you to find a modern translation of the New Testament, I want you to turn to Matthew Chapter 5 and in a place where nobody else can hear you, and there is nothing else to distract you – computer, MP3 player whatever; I want you to read aloud Chapters 5, 6 and 7 of Matthew’s gospel. I want you to read as though you first objective is not to understand the words, nor even to believe what it is you’re reading – I want you to get accustomed to the sound of the words, get some feel for how different they are and how powerful and how incredible they are. Don’t be shocked at their power – they have had a profound effect not only on Christians like Martin Luther King and Mother Theresa, but non-Christians like Mahatma Gandhi.
I am thoroughly convinced that before we can say yes to Jesus, we must experience him. Going to church is great, making Christian friends is great, helping the poor is great but to experience Jesus you must first experience the power of his words. They must resonate in you like an echo resonates within you when you are standing in a cave and yell ‘is there anyone in there?’
For fundamental to becoming a Christian – not just for a day but for the rest of your life – is to hear Jesus for yourself. For there will come a day where to follow Jesus will mean being courageous when everyone around you has chickened out; standing beside someone and calling them ‘your friend’ when everyone else has abandoned them; it will mean seeking justice for others and foregoing privileges for yourself.
But before you can go there, you must experience the echo of Christ’s words. To read his words aloud is very much like standing in a cave and asking God ‘is there anyone out there’ and having God answer ‘YES’.
But as I mentioned before it was another 7 years before I became a Christian. I stopped reading the Sermon on the Mount. I probably stopped when they changed the locks on Rosedale United Church.
But for some reason, the words became too fantastic to believe. I went to university, I got a job - I became schooled in how the world really operates where the race is won by those who can afford the best running shoes, and where the tough guys beat up the weaklings and the words of Jesus seemed out of touch, naïve.
I became skeptical. I saw the church as society’s way of keeping us all in line, but good for little else.
But deep down inside, there was the echo of Jesus’ words – faint, but still there.
Deep down inside I still longed for the kind of world Jesus spoke of, where the poor would be blessed, and the efforts of peacemakers would be blessed…but they seemed so pie in the sky. In the late 1960’s when I was in my late teens, the war in Vietnam was killing so many needlessly. But to advocate for peace at the time was tantamount to treason, of being willing to surrender to the Communists.
Some Christians I knew at the time told me – Don’t worry, Jesus is coming back – he’ll sort this whole mess out. Let the world go to hell in a handbasket, it’s enough to simply believe.
I found such talk to be abhorrent – I still do – the notion that the kind of world Jesus talked about in the Sermon on the Mount would have to wait until after Jesus came back again seemed escapist and fatalistic. What good is God if his only answer to the world’s problems is: ‘don’t worry – I’ll get it right the next time!’
Now – just so you don’t misunderstand me. I do believe Christ will return. I believe it because I believe in the resurrection. As Paul writes to the Corinthian Church:
Christ has been raised from the dead. He is the first of a great harvest of all who have died. So you see, just as death came into the world through a man, now the resurrection from the dead has begun through another man. Just as everyone dies because we all belong to Adam, everyone who belongs to Christ will be given new life. But there is an order to this resurrection, Christ was raised as the first of the harvest; then all who belong to Christ will be raised when he comes back.
After that the end will come, when he will turn over the Kingdom over to God the Father, having destroyed every ruler and authority and power. For Christ must reign until he humbles all his enemies under his feet. And the last enemy to be destroyed is death. For the scriptures say, ‘God has put all things under his authority. (I Corinthians 15:20-27a)
Can you hear what he is saying here? He is saying it as much to us as he was saying it to the Corinthians. When Christ returns, he will be turning over the Kingdom to God the Father.
What kingdom you ask? Why of Kingdom of God – the Kingdom that Jesus is talking about in the Sermon on the Mount. The Kingdom where the poor are blessed and those in mourning are comforted and the meek inherit the earth.
The resurrection of Jesus is not simply some after this life consolation prize; it is the vindication of everything Jesus stood for – it is the vindication of everything he ever preached – it is the vindication of who he said he was, the vindication of who he said God was…the proof that God is loving and merciful and true and ever present in this world. It is the vindication that God’s kingdom reigns and has been reigning ever since that glorious Easter morning when God raised Jesus from the dead. No wonder among the last words Jesus said to his disciples before he ascended to heaven were: ‘I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth’ (Matthew 28:18)
I looked up the word vindication and learn that it comes from the verb ‘to vindicate’. To vindicate means to justify by evidence or argument, to clear of suspicion, to establish the existence or merits or justice of one’s veracity, courage, conduct, character and assertion’.
An example would really help.
As of this morning’s paper, the Toronto Maple Leafs are 8 points out of a playoff position, in 12th position in a division of 15 teams. They have 12 games left in the regular season to catapult over 4 teams to gain the 8th and final playoff position. A tall order to say the least, but not impossible.
Now if you listen to the Sports Station like I do, or read the Sports pages, practically everyone is saying the Leafs are in dire need of an overhaul – that they are years away from winning the Stanley Cup. They are poorly managed, the executives at Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment could care less about ever winning the Cup, they making money by the boatload; the players are a bunch of has beens with no trade clauses who are selfish and more concerned about lining their pocket book than about doing whatever it takes to be on a Stanley Cup contender.
But what if – on June 6th, 2008 – you were to open your Toronto Star newspaper – and there is the Headline – ‘The Leafs Win the Cup’.
All that talk about the Leafs needing an overhaul is out the window. Mats Sundin is a hero for having stuck it out with Toronto – even though mere months ago, pundits were calling him a selfish ‘so and so’ not to waive his no trade clause.
VINDICATION!
To be vindicated means that whatever you put your life on the line for has been justified– validating one’s veracity, courage, conduct and assertion.
Vindication is a big theme throughout the Bible. Joseph has dreams of assuming a place of authority where even his own father and 11 brothers bow before him. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego defy King Nebuchadnezzar’s edict to fall down and worship his golden idol and are thrown into the fiery furnace only to come out unscathed.
When the religious leaders charge Jesus with blasphemy after he tells a man who is paralyzed ‘Your sins are forgiven’. Jesus responds: Is it easier to say to the paralyzed man ‘Your sins are forgiven’ or ‘Stand up, pick up your mat and walk? So I will prove to you that the Son of God has the authority on earth to forgive sins.’
Then he turned to the paralyzed man and said: Stand up, pick up your mat and go home!’
Jesus’ claim to forgive is vindicated by his power to heal.
His resurrection vindicates everything he stood for – the poor, the hurting, the hungry, the stranger, the outsider. It vindicates His Kingdom.
His resurrection vindicates everything he taught about forgiveness, loving one’s enemies, selling one’s possessions to provide for others, turning the other cheek, seeking peace and not war.
His resurrection vindicates everything he claimed about himself – his being one with God the Father, of his being the Son of Man, of his being the friend of sinners, of his power to forgive and to restore us.
But it is also the vindication of those willing to believe in God enough that they rely on him for their daily needs – for employment, for food and shelter, for his direction in their lives. It is the vindication of all those who seek God’s honour regardless of being ridiculed. It vindicates those of child-like faith who resist the temptation to be skeptical of God’s love; who live their lives as though they really are in God’s hands regardless of what they suffer.
The resurrection is the vindication of those who instead of hitting back turns the other cheek; the vindication of the one who sacrifices the ‘good life’ to ensure the hungry are fed. It is the vindication of the one who seeks peace with the terrorist even if it costs him his life.
I hope that strikes you as naïve. It does me. And so it would seem naïve to many Christians.
In an address called ‘Christianity was never designed as a tool for war’ the American Religious history professor Richard T Hughes observed:
At the outset of the war in Iraq, Charles Stanley, pastor of the First Church in Atlanta affirmed: ‘we should serve the war effort in any way possible…God battles with those who oppose him and fights against him and his followers’. Others including Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham and Marvin Olasky, editor of World Magazine suggested the war would open a whole new field for converting Muslims to the Christian faith. Tim LaHaye, co-author of the Left Behind series of end-time books suggested that by virtue of the way, ‘Iraq would become the focal point of end-time events’. With preaching like that, it is hardly surprising to learn that one month after the United States launched its pre-emptive strike against Iraq, the decision to invade drew support from an astounding 87 percent of all white evangelical Christians.’
How is this possible when Jesus clearly taught that to live by the sword is to die by it; that we are to love our enemies which presumably means we’re not to bomb them? How is this possible when the Apostle Paul clearly taught that our enemies are not flesh and blood but evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world (see Ephesians 6:12) against which cruise missiles and shock and awe tactics are of no use.
And so I ask you as I ask myself – do we really believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ? Do we really believe that what he taught and the way he lived is the way we are meant to live?
Or are we living lives which confess belief in the resurrection but who deep down inside believe his teaching as totally impractical for our time, too naïve to be worth repeating?
There is a scene from the movie Gandhi where Gandhi and an Anglican priest are on a street in South Africa. As they are walking together they realize that in their path is a gang of white thugs, from whom they can expect a beating.
As they approach, the priest suggests to Gandhi that they turn around and go another way. But Gandhi says – ‘But doesn’t Christ teach us that when are confronted by our enemies, we are to turn the other cheek?’
The Anglican priest affirms that indeed Jesus did say those words, but that he was pretty sure that Jesus meant that we treat these words as metaphorical, subject to interpretation. The Hindu, Gandhi disagrees – insists that he believed Jesus meant what he said to be lived out literally – recognizing that the most effective way of combat violence is to turn the other cheek.
I wonder how many of us have become like the Anglican priest – we treat Jesus words as though they are metaphorical, subject to interpretation – rather than to be simply lived out as he instructed?
It reminds me of something Soren Kierkegaard once wrote:
The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the moment we understand it, we are obliged to act accordingly.
Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. ‘My God’, you will say, ‘if I do that, my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world?’
Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian Scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close.
Oh priceless Scholarship – what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the Living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.
That seems a little harsh and I apologize to all the Christian scholars who tirelessly work to strengthen our faith in biblical truth. But there is more than a grain of truth in what he says…otherwise why is it that most people outside the church, especially people under 30, can’t see much of a difference between the world and the church?
Another way of saying the same thing is to say that what we really believe isn’t what we can recite from the Bible. What we really believe is reflected in the lives we lead…
It was GK Chesterton who wrote : The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.
If we truly believe in the resurrection, then we must be willing to try…
But with this one very huge proviso. With Moses came the Law, but with Jesus comes grace and truth. More than once Jesus repeated those incredible words from the prophet Hosea ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice’. God is not interested in the sacrifices we make to serve him, he desires mercy…he desires that we learn mercy in discovering he is merciful with us; he desires mercy in our being merciful with others. ‘Blessed are the merciful, Jesus said in his sermon from the mount, for they will find mercy’.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the vindication of mercy over judgment.
This should fundamentally affect the way we see things. If the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the vindication of mercy over judgment, then so too will His return to judge us all be the vindication of mercy over judgment.
I say again, this should fundamentally affect the way we see things.
When I take off my glasses to look at you, to see you with my own eyes, everything is a blur. But when I put my glasses on, I can see each and everyone of you clearly..
When I look at the world through my own eyes, I see violence, the ruthless pursuit of power, extravagance and vengeance. And I can justify it…it’s what’s needed to survive. And I can justify my indifference to my neighbour’s welfare and giving God no more than lip service.
But when I/we look through the lens of the resurrection, we see the world Jesus spoke of when he said ‘blessed are the poor’. We see the exaltation of humility and the need to advocate for those who can’t speak for themselves. We see the imperative for simple living, unburdened by the weight of material possessions. We see forgiving those who hate us, and loving our enemies, even if they’re terrorists. We see death swallowed up by life. And mercy prevailing over judgment.
For some of us we may have to re-think our interpretation of the Book of Revelation. Others may decide to behind the ‘Left Behind’ series of books and embrace the God sized dimensions of a mercy Paul so beautifully captures in Romans Chapter 11:32-36
For God has imprisoned everyone in disobedience so he could have mercy on everyone.
Oh, how great are God’s riches and wisdom and knowledge!
How impossible it is for us to understand his decisions and his ways!
For who can know the Lord’s thoughts?
Who knows enough to give him advice?
And who has given him so much that he needs to pay it back?
For everything comes from him and exists by his power and is intended for his glory.
All glory to him forever!
Amen.
Orphans
The text of a sermon given is July, 2006
Orphans
In wrath O Lord, remember mercy
In wrath O lord, remember mercy.
A boy looks up into a war torn sky
His mother and father are gone
His home destroyed, he is all alone
Where can he turn for help?
O God, he cries
Don’t leave me here alone
O God, he cries
Where can I turn for help?
A man looks up into a blackened sky
He is innocent but he’s condemned to die
Proclaimed as the One who would bring us peace
He’s forsaken, despised and scorned
O God he cries
Why have you left me here alone?
O God he cries
Into your hands I commit myself.
In wrath O Lord, remember mercy
In wrath O Lord, remember mercy
This past week has been a week of alarming Headlines:
Middle East on the verge of War
More than 200 killed by a Tsunami in Indonesia
Attack kills dozens in Iraqi Market
Police Identify Explosives Used in Mumbai Attack
Seven Days, Seven People Killed in Toronto with no Arrests
AIDS orphans in sub-Saharan Africa: a looming threat to future generations
Admittedly, many of us come to church to escape the news. It’s just too depressing; too overwhelming…we long to be rid of the tragedy that surrounds us. We long for heaven right here on earth.
This is quite natural – indeed commendable, that we should long for a world where ‘God himself will wipe away every tear from our eyes – where there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain’ where ‘the old order of things has passed away’. (see Rev 21:4)
But that is not the world we live in and until it is, every morning we wake up to the news.
In the Gospels, we only have one account of how Jesus dealt with Headline News, which can be found in the first 5 verses of Luke’s 13th chapter. Jesus is in the midst of preaching to crowds of people, when someone interrupts him to ask him if he has heard the latest:
Luke 13:1-5
About this time Jesus was informed that Pilate had murdered some people as they were offering sacrifices at the Temple.
‘Do you think those Galileans were worse sinners than all the other people from Galilee?’ Jesus asked. ‘Is that why they suffered? Not at all? And you will perish, too unless you repent of your sins and turn to God.
And what about the eighteen people who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them? Were they the worst sinners in Jerusalem? No, and I tell you again that unless you repent, you will perish too.”
I want you to think for a moment of how you would have responded were you in Jesus shoes and someone had just given you the news that some of your countrymen had been murdered. If you have an ounce of social activist blood in you, you’d probably be organizing a march to protest the ruthless dealings of a foreign tyrant, responsible for the deaths of innocent people you knew and grew up with, whose only crime was to express openly their devotion to God.
On the other hand, if you were a pious moralist, you probably would have deduced that somehow these worshipers had it coming – that in some way, they had provoked God’s righteous anger and for reasons known only to God, God used Pilate to wipe them out. Maybe they had come to the temple bringing their electric guitars…
If you were a Union foreman, witness to the collapse of a building which killed 18 of your fellow workers, you’d be organizing a strike to protest the Contractor’s blatant disregard for building codes. Or again, if you’re a moralist – as all of us indeed are, you’d be doing what we all do when we hear of such disasters – we’d be looking for someone to blame, some explanation why it was they who died and not us.
To both the pious moralist and the social activist, the response of Jesus is mystifying if not outright offensive. To both disasters his answer is the same – ‘unless you repent and turn to God, you will perish too’.
Let’s put that in contemporary context. A man smuggles a bomb into a church and blows up the church killing the janitor and six members of a single moms group, who were meeting together to support one another in their struggle.
Anderson Cooper and his camera crew from CNN interrupt Jesus as he is speaking to a crowd about 10 miles from where this tragedy takes place.
Jesus is telling the crowd ‘When you see clouds beginning to form in the west you say, here comes a shower.’ And you are right. When the south wind blows, you say ‘Today will be a scorcher.’ And it is. You fools! You know how to interpret the weather signs of the earth and sky but you don’t know how to interpret the present times.’ (Luke 12: 54-56)
Anderson interrupts Jesus to inform him about the bombing and having heard Jesus’ remark about the importance of rightly interpreting the present time asks Jesus how he’d interpret the tragedy that’s just occurred.
No doubt, Anderson is expecting some word of comfort to the bereaved families, or a vehement denunciation of the cowardly act committed by the terrorist. Anderson is expecting as we all would – that Jesus would condemn the evildoer and decry the wrong committed against the innocent.
But instead Jesus says: ‘unless you repent, you will perish too.’
What is going on here? At the very moment we expect Jesus to judge one party right and the other wrong – one good and the other evil - he is calling us to repent…as if the wrong committed is our fault, as if the evil committed is our own. It’s as though he means we interpret all news of tragedy as cause for us to repent.
But why?
Because in Jesus’ eyes, the one role we can’t assume in watching the daily news is that of bystander or judge…as though what’s happening is in a world other than our own.
The apostle Paul in his letter to the Romans put it this way:
1You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. 2Now we know that God's judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. 3So when you, a mere man, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God's judgment? 4Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God's kindness leads you toward repentance?
Romans 2:1-5
Whether the news is about a tsunami in South-East Asia, or an AIDS pandemic through the sub-Saharan countries in Africa, or the genocide of 400,000 people in Darfur; in Jesus’ eyes, we are not meant to see ourselves anywhere but right in the thick of it.
Boy – doesn’t that change our relationship to the news! Instead of sitting back in our easy chairs, watching the CTV news and weighing disasters as though they’re contestants on American Idol – Jesus would have us watching the news from our knees.
That would make Enron just another story about what happens when our greed runs wild.
That would make cruise missiles just another story about how we try to get rid of people we don’t like without getting personally involved.
That would make the Orphan crisis in Africa just another story about the millions of children we are prepared to sacrifice just to retain the wealth we have.
There is a story involving Mahatma Gandhi that helps us understand why Jesus would insist that our first response to a tragic event is to repent.
Early in his adult life, Gandhi was a part-time high school teacher. He noticed that one boy was being picked on and bullied by his classmates, so Gandhi befriended the boy, and did his best to encourage him as well as protect him from his classmates.
One day when Gandhi wasn’t at the school, a gang made up of the boy’s classmates brutally beat up the boy, leaving the boy badly injured.
Gandhi when he learned of the news was devastated. But rather than punish or judge the students, he repented as though he had committed the crime. He fasted, he prayed and as he did, he began to see in the guilt of the students, his own guilt, his own lack of love, patience and truthfulness. In his humiliation, he discovered a truth that would mark him for life…that repentance is the first step before any crisis can be resolved. It’s the old adage – that before you can solve a problem, you have to realize that some part of the problem is you.
This is what the Lord meant when he said: You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.’ (Matthew 7:5)
By now you must be asking yourselves: ‘But what does this have to do with orphans?’
Orphans are headline news. Especially AIDS orphans. The World Health Organization estimates there are 15 million AIDS orphans in the world, a number they are projecting will increase to 25 million within 4 years. That’s 5 million more than the entire population of Australia.
In the face of this overwhelming crisis, the reason we are inclined to identify ourselves as bystanders, or as informed observers, or as discriminating benefactors or as too compassion fatigued to get involved – is to keep ourselves from feeling guilty. We are adamant to insist that the way we live has nothing to do with this crisis. The orphans are too far away from us, on the other side of the globe, and what can we do about the situation? How can we be held responsible? No wonder we get offended with Jesus when he tells us we are the ones who must repent.
But to repent is not the same as feeling guilty. Feeling guilty would be a good thing if all it did were make us feel bad every time we did something wrong. But guilt when it settles in is immobilizing. If it stays around too long, it denies us the courage it takes to ask for God’s mercy. It’s disabling. Guilt can never turn us around.
But repentance can. It has the power to turn our whole lives around. Repentance is both a decision we make to change direction as well as the evidence of God’s kindness working in our lives. When we respond to the Holy Spirit’s revealing both our wrong actions and our defective thinking, God empowers us to make things right.
The Apostle Paul in his first letter to the church in Corinth had to correct them for some highly inappropriate behaviour: complacency, sexual impropriety, lack of love – the kind of things preachers still speak to their congregations about.
Fortunately, the church took Paul’s words to heart and repented. In his follow-up letter Paul commends them for their response. He writes:
And now, isn't it wonderful all the ways in which this distress has goaded you closer to God? You're more alive, more concerned, more sensitive, more reverent, more human, more passionate, more responsible.
2 Cor 7:11 (The Message)
And so when we consider the world’s orphans – orphans because of war, or disease, or poverty, or abuse, or famine - we repent of our indifference, we repent of our greed, we repent of trying to save ourselves at the expense of helping others, we repent for devising exit strategies from the sufferings of others, we repent, we turn around, we want to do what we can to make things right. And in so doing, we become in Paul’s words ‘more alive, more concerned, more sensitive, more reverent, more human, more passionate, more responsible’.
For truly the issue of orphans is distressing and mandates our involvement in whatever way we can.
Can you imagine for just one moment – what you as a parent would be feeling, if you were on your deathbed, with your spouse having already predeceased you – looking into the faces of your 3 children ages 11, 8 and 4 - and realizing within the next day or so, your 3 children are going to be completely on their own?
Can you imagine the look of fear in their eyes?
Stephen Lewis, the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa tells of this experience:
In Zambia, we were taken to a village where the orphan population was described as out of control. As a vivid example of that we entered a home and encountered the following: to the immediate left of the door sat the 84 year old patriarch, entirely blind. Inside the hut sat his two wives, visibly frail, one 76, the other 78. Between them they had given birth to nine children; eight were now dead and the ninth, alas, was clearly dying. On the floor of the hut, jammed together with barely room to move or breathe, were 32 orphaned children ranging in age from two to sixteen…it is now commonplace that grandmothers are the caregivers for orphans.
The grandmothers are impoverished, their days are numbered, and the decimation of families is so complete that there’s often no one left in the generation coming up behind. We’re all struggling to find a viable response, and there are of course, some superb projects and initiatives in all countries, but we can’t seem to take them to scale.
In the letter of James to the churches, he defines true religion that God considers pure and blameless is to ‘look after orphans and widows in their distress.’ (James 1:27) Another way of saying that might be – the purest, most genuine expression of our faith in God is when we take care of widows and orphans.
Psalm 68:5 says that God is the father of the fatherless. Which means those of us who likewise think of God as our Father are to see orphans as family, our brothers and sisters.
In one real sense, we are all orphans. We all know the experience of being in a room with hundreds of people in it and feeling entirely on our own. As Daelle Stacey puts it: ‘we all struggle with orphan hearts’, this sense of not belonging, of being disengaged from what’s really meaningful in life.
Indeed that’s the reason Christ came – to adopt us into God’s own family where God becomes our Father, and we His dearly loved children!
That probably explains why the church has cared for orphans throughout its history.
To give you some historical perspective on how the church has taken the lead role in the care and protection of orphans:
In the Roman Empire of Jesus’ day, there was no provision made for widows and orphans.
But as the church began to infiltrate Roman life, this changed. The Roman Emperor Antonius Pius in the middle of the 2nd century established relief agencies for children in response to what Christians were doing.
It was the church that required its ministers in the 5th Century to ‘protect orphans that they may not be oppressed by strangers after the death of their parents’.
It was the church in the early 6th Century that inspired, the Roman Emperor Justinian, to enact legislation, which relieved those who were willing to care for orphans from all other civic duties.
It was the church under the leadership of the French Monk Guy de Montpellier in 1100 AD which established the Order of the Holy Spirit to look after orphans.
It was the church in the early 1600’s through the work of St. Vincent de Paul which developed an infrastructure of care for literally thousands of orphans in Paris and surrounding cities, mostly orphans under the age of 7 years old. He was also the founder of ‘The Sisters of Charity’, who by the time of the French Revolution had over 400 houses dedicated to the care of orphans.
George Mueller of Bristol England, renown for his prayer life and his love for orphans, by 1874 had built a network of orphanages, which cared for over 2000 orphans.
When a cholera epidemic broke out in London, England in 1866, Dr. Thomas John Bernardo, a committed Christian, was overwhelmed by the number of homeless and destitute children. Soliciting funds from everyone he knew, the first of what were later called the Bernardo homes was built in 1870. By the time of his death in 1905, there were 112 district ‘homes’. These institutions searched for and received orphans – ‘to cloth, educate and where possible, to give an industrial training suitable to each child.’ Today Bernardo homes help about 100,000 children annually.
In 1950 Dr. Bob Pierce began World Vision to help children orphaned in the Korean War. The organization has grown well beyond its child-assistance roots to facilitating the transformation of entire communities with water programs, health care education, agricultural and economic development, and strategic Christian leadership activities in 103 countries around the world.
In 1992 Rev. Angelo D’Agostino, a Jesuit priest from the United States, found himself face to face with one of the many ugly consequences of AIDS in Africa. When parents die of AIDS, they leave behind children, many of whom also carry the virus that causes AIDS. With the stigma toward the disease so great, the orphans are often left to live and die on the street.
At the time, ‘Father DAG’ as he is now called, was on the board of a large orphanage in Nairobi Kenya, which would not allow HIV positive children into their programs. So he resigned from the Board in protest and rented an apartment where he looked after 3 children who had HIV.
This expanded into an orphanage named NYUMBANI, which means ‘home’ in Swahili. The orphanage currently looks after 85 orphans, a small dint in the estimated 1.5 million AIDS orphans in Kenya alone.
Funerals are a fact of life as the small cemetery behind the orphanage’s playground attests to. But there are fewer deaths now than in the early days. With some children on anti-AIDS drugs and with an adjoining health clinic in operation, the children are living longer.
When Bishop John Rucyahana assumed responsibility for a diocese of northeast Rwanda in 1997, he returned home to a devastated country. Addressing Rwanda’s estimated 400,000 orphans and decimated education system, Bishop John founded the Sonrise School to be a ‘light on a hill’ to demonstrate to everyone in Rwanda what is possible. Started initially through the Anglican Church and now supported by various Christian denominations, it has a population 450 students, and is a visible example of how with love and education, the country’s neediest children are redeemable and can be developed into leaders. The majority of the students are either genocide or AIDS orphans.
In Malawi, one of Africa’s poorer countries, the number of children orphaned by AIDS is nearly half of the country’s total orphan population of 1.1 million.The life expectancy in Malawi is 36 years and with orphans representing nearly 10% of the population and the average per capita income less than $2 per day, the resources simply aren’t there to handle this crisis.
The government has responded with the promotion and support of community based programs to cope with the escalating crisis. In many villages orphan committees have been established to monitor the local situation and take collective action to assist those in need. But as important as these initiatives are, they are crippled by the fact that the country neither has the monetary resource nor the people resource to deal with the problem. In a country where the mortality rate for women between the ages of 19 and 26 is nearly 40% - it’s not just mothers who are dying. These women are also Malawi’s teachers and nurses and social workers and civil servants. AIDS is decimating the entire infrastructure of care, which wasn’t that strong to begin with.
As one UN observer noted about the conditions in Malawi: ‘Orphans have little food, few clothes, no bedding and no soap…and as a whole, community care because of HIV/AIDS is overwhelmed and breaking down’.
Tim Dunham, who attends this church, spent 4 weeks this past spring in Malawi and I have asked him to share something from his experience there…
Tim is one of several people I know of from the church who has or who are presently working with orphans. Rachel Seilern and her cousin Natasha Szauter are with an organization called SOS International and are working with orphans in northern Italy.
Ruth Anne Valkenburg is currently in Camden New Jersey with an agency Called Urban Promise – working with children in one the US’s most impoverished inner cities.
What inspired me to speak about orphans in the first place was a visit I had with a life-long friend Chuck Stephens.
For most of his life Chuck has been in relief work – helping set up water irrigation systems in Angola and distributing food aid in Mozambique – that kind of thing.
7 years ago he and his wife Heather took the lead in setting up a campus in White River South Africa – dedicated to the training of African leaders involved in church and humanitarian work.
More recently because of the AIDS crisis, Chuck and Heather have been connecting with local schools and are seeing first hand the impact the epidemic is having on students. In some schools as many as 50% of the students are ‘single’ orphans and 15% ‘double orphans’.
In response to this crisis, Chuck and Heather have run a support camp during school holidays devoted to teaching AIDS orphans leadership skills, who because both their parents have died, are now responsible to provide for and raise their younger siblings.
The theme of the camp is “I have a future”.
There are two stigmas for an AIDS orphan to overcome – the first is the stigma attached to the disease itself – for which ostracism, rejection, discrimination and avoidance are common. Part of this discrimination regrettably is attributable to those of us who were Christians in the 1980’s – who saw AIDS as a gay disease. Rather than care for the early victims of this illness, we judged them, insisting that this illness was God’s judgment on their lifestyle. And by doing so, we forfeited the place Christians have historically assumed in crises like these. We were no longer on the caring edge. We became judges instead. As a result, and quite understandably, there is a lot of animosity gays still have for Evangelicals.
Given our Lord’s longstanding compassion for tax collectors, prostitutes, lepers and others who would not be welcome in most homes, it would be accurate to say that we couldn’t have behaved less like Jesus in our response to the first AIDS victims.
One reason to repent – if you’re still looking for one.
But for orphans there is a 2nd stigma to overcome…that of being an orphan in the first place. Orphans are typically seen as ‘non-persons’. If taken in by other families – they are typically treated like slaves, as something less than their own children by families who adopt them. Many orphans choose to be ‘home alone’ rather than be adopted by relatives – it’s one way they can retain whatever possessions their parents leave them.
At the facility the Stephens run, Orchard Camp, the orphans are provided with 3 different types of program to build inner ‘resilience’ and confidence.
Incorporating worship, prayer and play into all 3 program streams the kids are given obstacle courses as a means of helping to problem solve, to teach them how to work through the life mazes they find themselves in. The highlight is a climbing wall.
They are also provided with grief counseling. Most orphans because of their immediate crisis they face with their parents’ death don’t have opportunity to mourn the loss of their parents. The camp gives them room to mourn and to be comforted by those who care.
Finally the camp gives orphans skills training – ranging from labour un-intensive gardening to nutrition; from making pottery to developing strategic thinking to help them beyond their current predicament.
I mention these programs because they parallel the kind of assistance we all need whenever our world collapses…assistance the church is uniquely equipped to provide.
We all need to be told we have a future. We need a caring community who give us room to mourn our losses, but who are also there to laugh and worship with us, among whom we can grow up to face head on the hard challenges life brings us. And the church is also the place to develop skills, especially caring skills. We are to be the hotbed of innovative, impactful, caring ventures. We are to be the pioneers of mercy.
The prophet Jeremiah, in a letter to the exiles who had been taken into Babylon, many of whom ‘orphaned’ not only from the land they knew but also the families they had grown up in, wrote:
For I know the plans I have for you, declared the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future’. Jeremiah 29:11.
It is the church’s place to take the lead in giving orphans a ‘hope and a future’. Indeed, they are our future.
Some concluding remarks that I hope you will take home, talk about and do something about:
Dedicate a specific day some portion of which you will pray, even fast for orphans. As to which day of the week, I have a suggestion which requires some explanation- a suggestion that originates with my friend Chuck.
Do you remember from the Christmas story – how the wise men before they visited Jesus, went first to Jerusalem to ask King Herod ‘where is who has been born King of the Jews?’ Herod after consulting with the priests, who told him that according to Old Testament prophecy, the promised king was to be born in Bethlehem. Herod then asked the wise men that on their return visit they tell him where they had found him so that he too might come worship him.
But the wise men ended up going home another way; while Joseph, Mary and Jesus secretly stole off to Egypt, both being warned in dreams that King Herod’s real intentions were to murder the new born king. (see Matthew 2:13-18)
Herod was furious when the wise men didn’t return and ordered the killing of all male children under the age of 2 in Bethlehem and the surrounding region. In remembrance of those innocent children killed, the early church would celebrate a kind of Remembrance Day on the 3rd day after Christmas every year to remember all the innocents killed by war, by famine, by disease. They called the Day – the 28th of December – Childermas.
This year the 28th day of December falls on a Thursday, so consider devoting whatever time you can – every Thursday – to praying for orphans. If you are up to fasting for say a meal or two, do so. Of the nearly 26 million people who have died of AIDS in the 25 years since it was first diagnosed, over 5 million have been children. To remember those along with other children who have died because of civil war, famine or genocide – not only will soften our hearts to do what we must do – but also heighten our responsibility and care for the children we live with.
Remember that children are our future – even those children we are not the parents of. As you assume responsibility for orphans, remember that we too are orphans having been adopted into God’s family by Jesus Christ.
Canada – as wealthy as we are – has never reached the 0.7% of GDP benchmark the G8 countries pledged to third world relief. We need to remind our leaders of our responsibility to share our wealth with the desperately poor.
Only 5% of those children infected with AIDS in Africa have access to drug treatment. Again with lobbying, there must be some way to substantially improve this response.
If nothing else – REPENT. We have all had a part in this problem. Repentance opens to us the promise of having a part in the solution.
If I might close with some observations from the United Nations special envoy Stephen Lewis from his book ‘Race Against Time’.
It begins with these eerie words:
I have spent the last four years watching people die.
Near the end of his book he writes:
As I've moved from country to country over the last four years, it's been clear, inescapably clear, that as the pandemic evolves, children orphaned by AIDS are becoming the single most intractable and painful legacy. There are no equivalent precedents. Nothing in historical experience has prepared us for two generations of children rendered desperate, lonely, sad and bewildered by sheer circumstance…
I think that the pandemic of HIV/AIDS forces us; all of us, to speak out when we think transgressions are being committed.
If Colin Powell was right when he was secretary of state – and I believe he was – to say that AIDS was the most significant threat in the world, greater even than weapons of mass destruction, then I believe the assertion of principle must replace the reliance on niceties.
Even after we have repented for our part, it is easy to be overwhelmed. That’s why Jesus tells us to repent and TURN TO GOD. It is in God that we find courage and resource to do our part.
For it is God, as the psalmist writes, who is the Father of the fatherless, the One who settles the solitary in homes.
He is the stronghold of the oppressed, the One who is always there in times of trouble. He does not forget the cry of the afflicted…He hears them, he strengthens their hearts…he intervenes to do justice on their behalf.
Indeed it was to all orphans Jesus said:
“All that the Father gives me will come to me and whoever comes to me I will never cast out…This is the will of Him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of that he’s given me but raise them up on the last day”
John 6:37,39
May God help us to do our part.
In wrath O Lord, remember mercy
In wrath O lord, remember mercy.
A boy looks up into a war torn sky
His mother and father are gone
His home destroyed, he is all alone
Where can he turn for help?
O God, he cries
Don’t leave me here alone
O God, he cries
Where can I turn for help?
A man looks up into a blackened sky
He is innocent but he’s condemned to die
Proclaimed as the One who would bring us peace
He’s forsaken, despised and scorned
O God he cries
Why have you left me here alone?
O God he cries
Into your hands I commit myself.
In wrath O Lord, remember mercy
In wrath O Lord, remember mercy
This past week has been a week of alarming Headlines:
Middle East on the verge of War
More than 200 killed by a Tsunami in Indonesia
Attack kills dozens in Iraqi Market
Police Identify Explosives Used in Mumbai Attack
Seven Days, Seven People Killed in Toronto with no Arrests
AIDS orphans in sub-Saharan Africa: a looming threat to future generations
Admittedly, many of us come to church to escape the news. It’s just too depressing; too overwhelming…we long to be rid of the tragedy that surrounds us. We long for heaven right here on earth.
This is quite natural – indeed commendable, that we should long for a world where ‘God himself will wipe away every tear from our eyes – where there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain’ where ‘the old order of things has passed away’. (see Rev 21:4)
But that is not the world we live in and until it is, every morning we wake up to the news.
In the Gospels, we only have one account of how Jesus dealt with Headline News, which can be found in the first 5 verses of Luke’s 13th chapter. Jesus is in the midst of preaching to crowds of people, when someone interrupts him to ask him if he has heard the latest:
Luke 13:1-5
About this time Jesus was informed that Pilate had murdered some people as they were offering sacrifices at the Temple.
‘Do you think those Galileans were worse sinners than all the other people from Galilee?’ Jesus asked. ‘Is that why they suffered? Not at all? And you will perish, too unless you repent of your sins and turn to God.
And what about the eighteen people who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them? Were they the worst sinners in Jerusalem? No, and I tell you again that unless you repent, you will perish too.”
I want you to think for a moment of how you would have responded were you in Jesus shoes and someone had just given you the news that some of your countrymen had been murdered. If you have an ounce of social activist blood in you, you’d probably be organizing a march to protest the ruthless dealings of a foreign tyrant, responsible for the deaths of innocent people you knew and grew up with, whose only crime was to express openly their devotion to God.
On the other hand, if you were a pious moralist, you probably would have deduced that somehow these worshipers had it coming – that in some way, they had provoked God’s righteous anger and for reasons known only to God, God used Pilate to wipe them out. Maybe they had come to the temple bringing their electric guitars…
If you were a Union foreman, witness to the collapse of a building which killed 18 of your fellow workers, you’d be organizing a strike to protest the Contractor’s blatant disregard for building codes. Or again, if you’re a moralist – as all of us indeed are, you’d be doing what we all do when we hear of such disasters – we’d be looking for someone to blame, some explanation why it was they who died and not us.
To both the pious moralist and the social activist, the response of Jesus is mystifying if not outright offensive. To both disasters his answer is the same – ‘unless you repent and turn to God, you will perish too’.
Let’s put that in contemporary context. A man smuggles a bomb into a church and blows up the church killing the janitor and six members of a single moms group, who were meeting together to support one another in their struggle.
Anderson Cooper and his camera crew from CNN interrupt Jesus as he is speaking to a crowd about 10 miles from where this tragedy takes place.
Jesus is telling the crowd ‘When you see clouds beginning to form in the west you say, here comes a shower.’ And you are right. When the south wind blows, you say ‘Today will be a scorcher.’ And it is. You fools! You know how to interpret the weather signs of the earth and sky but you don’t know how to interpret the present times.’ (Luke 12: 54-56)
Anderson interrupts Jesus to inform him about the bombing and having heard Jesus’ remark about the importance of rightly interpreting the present time asks Jesus how he’d interpret the tragedy that’s just occurred.
No doubt, Anderson is expecting some word of comfort to the bereaved families, or a vehement denunciation of the cowardly act committed by the terrorist. Anderson is expecting as we all would – that Jesus would condemn the evildoer and decry the wrong committed against the innocent.
But instead Jesus says: ‘unless you repent, you will perish too.’
What is going on here? At the very moment we expect Jesus to judge one party right and the other wrong – one good and the other evil - he is calling us to repent…as if the wrong committed is our fault, as if the evil committed is our own. It’s as though he means we interpret all news of tragedy as cause for us to repent.
But why?
Because in Jesus’ eyes, the one role we can’t assume in watching the daily news is that of bystander or judge…as though what’s happening is in a world other than our own.
The apostle Paul in his letter to the Romans put it this way:
1You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. 2Now we know that God's judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. 3So when you, a mere man, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God's judgment? 4Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God's kindness leads you toward repentance?
Romans 2:1-5
Whether the news is about a tsunami in South-East Asia, or an AIDS pandemic through the sub-Saharan countries in Africa, or the genocide of 400,000 people in Darfur; in Jesus’ eyes, we are not meant to see ourselves anywhere but right in the thick of it.
Boy – doesn’t that change our relationship to the news! Instead of sitting back in our easy chairs, watching the CTV news and weighing disasters as though they’re contestants on American Idol – Jesus would have us watching the news from our knees.
That would make Enron just another story about what happens when our greed runs wild.
That would make cruise missiles just another story about how we try to get rid of people we don’t like without getting personally involved.
That would make the Orphan crisis in Africa just another story about the millions of children we are prepared to sacrifice just to retain the wealth we have.
There is a story involving Mahatma Gandhi that helps us understand why Jesus would insist that our first response to a tragic event is to repent.
Early in his adult life, Gandhi was a part-time high school teacher. He noticed that one boy was being picked on and bullied by his classmates, so Gandhi befriended the boy, and did his best to encourage him as well as protect him from his classmates.
One day when Gandhi wasn’t at the school, a gang made up of the boy’s classmates brutally beat up the boy, leaving the boy badly injured.
Gandhi when he learned of the news was devastated. But rather than punish or judge the students, he repented as though he had committed the crime. He fasted, he prayed and as he did, he began to see in the guilt of the students, his own guilt, his own lack of love, patience and truthfulness. In his humiliation, he discovered a truth that would mark him for life…that repentance is the first step before any crisis can be resolved. It’s the old adage – that before you can solve a problem, you have to realize that some part of the problem is you.
This is what the Lord meant when he said: You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.’ (Matthew 7:5)
By now you must be asking yourselves: ‘But what does this have to do with orphans?’
Orphans are headline news. Especially AIDS orphans. The World Health Organization estimates there are 15 million AIDS orphans in the world, a number they are projecting will increase to 25 million within 4 years. That’s 5 million more than the entire population of Australia.
In the face of this overwhelming crisis, the reason we are inclined to identify ourselves as bystanders, or as informed observers, or as discriminating benefactors or as too compassion fatigued to get involved – is to keep ourselves from feeling guilty. We are adamant to insist that the way we live has nothing to do with this crisis. The orphans are too far away from us, on the other side of the globe, and what can we do about the situation? How can we be held responsible? No wonder we get offended with Jesus when he tells us we are the ones who must repent.
But to repent is not the same as feeling guilty. Feeling guilty would be a good thing if all it did were make us feel bad every time we did something wrong. But guilt when it settles in is immobilizing. If it stays around too long, it denies us the courage it takes to ask for God’s mercy. It’s disabling. Guilt can never turn us around.
But repentance can. It has the power to turn our whole lives around. Repentance is both a decision we make to change direction as well as the evidence of God’s kindness working in our lives. When we respond to the Holy Spirit’s revealing both our wrong actions and our defective thinking, God empowers us to make things right.
The Apostle Paul in his first letter to the church in Corinth had to correct them for some highly inappropriate behaviour: complacency, sexual impropriety, lack of love – the kind of things preachers still speak to their congregations about.
Fortunately, the church took Paul’s words to heart and repented. In his follow-up letter Paul commends them for their response. He writes:
And now, isn't it wonderful all the ways in which this distress has goaded you closer to God? You're more alive, more concerned, more sensitive, more reverent, more human, more passionate, more responsible.
2 Cor 7:11 (The Message)
And so when we consider the world’s orphans – orphans because of war, or disease, or poverty, or abuse, or famine - we repent of our indifference, we repent of our greed, we repent of trying to save ourselves at the expense of helping others, we repent for devising exit strategies from the sufferings of others, we repent, we turn around, we want to do what we can to make things right. And in so doing, we become in Paul’s words ‘more alive, more concerned, more sensitive, more reverent, more human, more passionate, more responsible’.
For truly the issue of orphans is distressing and mandates our involvement in whatever way we can.
Can you imagine for just one moment – what you as a parent would be feeling, if you were on your deathbed, with your spouse having already predeceased you – looking into the faces of your 3 children ages 11, 8 and 4 - and realizing within the next day or so, your 3 children are going to be completely on their own?
Can you imagine the look of fear in their eyes?
Stephen Lewis, the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa tells of this experience:
In Zambia, we were taken to a village where the orphan population was described as out of control. As a vivid example of that we entered a home and encountered the following: to the immediate left of the door sat the 84 year old patriarch, entirely blind. Inside the hut sat his two wives, visibly frail, one 76, the other 78. Between them they had given birth to nine children; eight were now dead and the ninth, alas, was clearly dying. On the floor of the hut, jammed together with barely room to move or breathe, were 32 orphaned children ranging in age from two to sixteen…it is now commonplace that grandmothers are the caregivers for orphans.
The grandmothers are impoverished, their days are numbered, and the decimation of families is so complete that there’s often no one left in the generation coming up behind. We’re all struggling to find a viable response, and there are of course, some superb projects and initiatives in all countries, but we can’t seem to take them to scale.
In the letter of James to the churches, he defines true religion that God considers pure and blameless is to ‘look after orphans and widows in their distress.’ (James 1:27) Another way of saying that might be – the purest, most genuine expression of our faith in God is when we take care of widows and orphans.
Psalm 68:5 says that God is the father of the fatherless. Which means those of us who likewise think of God as our Father are to see orphans as family, our brothers and sisters.
In one real sense, we are all orphans. We all know the experience of being in a room with hundreds of people in it and feeling entirely on our own. As Daelle Stacey puts it: ‘we all struggle with orphan hearts’, this sense of not belonging, of being disengaged from what’s really meaningful in life.
Indeed that’s the reason Christ came – to adopt us into God’s own family where God becomes our Father, and we His dearly loved children!
That probably explains why the church has cared for orphans throughout its history.
To give you some historical perspective on how the church has taken the lead role in the care and protection of orphans:
In the Roman Empire of Jesus’ day, there was no provision made for widows and orphans.
But as the church began to infiltrate Roman life, this changed. The Roman Emperor Antonius Pius in the middle of the 2nd century established relief agencies for children in response to what Christians were doing.
It was the church that required its ministers in the 5th Century to ‘protect orphans that they may not be oppressed by strangers after the death of their parents’.
It was the church in the early 6th Century that inspired, the Roman Emperor Justinian, to enact legislation, which relieved those who were willing to care for orphans from all other civic duties.
It was the church under the leadership of the French Monk Guy de Montpellier in 1100 AD which established the Order of the Holy Spirit to look after orphans.
It was the church in the early 1600’s through the work of St. Vincent de Paul which developed an infrastructure of care for literally thousands of orphans in Paris and surrounding cities, mostly orphans under the age of 7 years old. He was also the founder of ‘The Sisters of Charity’, who by the time of the French Revolution had over 400 houses dedicated to the care of orphans.
George Mueller of Bristol England, renown for his prayer life and his love for orphans, by 1874 had built a network of orphanages, which cared for over 2000 orphans.
When a cholera epidemic broke out in London, England in 1866, Dr. Thomas John Bernardo, a committed Christian, was overwhelmed by the number of homeless and destitute children. Soliciting funds from everyone he knew, the first of what were later called the Bernardo homes was built in 1870. By the time of his death in 1905, there were 112 district ‘homes’. These institutions searched for and received orphans – ‘to cloth, educate and where possible, to give an industrial training suitable to each child.’ Today Bernardo homes help about 100,000 children annually.
In 1950 Dr. Bob Pierce began World Vision to help children orphaned in the Korean War. The organization has grown well beyond its child-assistance roots to facilitating the transformation of entire communities with water programs, health care education, agricultural and economic development, and strategic Christian leadership activities in 103 countries around the world.
In 1992 Rev. Angelo D’Agostino, a Jesuit priest from the United States, found himself face to face with one of the many ugly consequences of AIDS in Africa. When parents die of AIDS, they leave behind children, many of whom also carry the virus that causes AIDS. With the stigma toward the disease so great, the orphans are often left to live and die on the street.
At the time, ‘Father DAG’ as he is now called, was on the board of a large orphanage in Nairobi Kenya, which would not allow HIV positive children into their programs. So he resigned from the Board in protest and rented an apartment where he looked after 3 children who had HIV.
This expanded into an orphanage named NYUMBANI, which means ‘home’ in Swahili. The orphanage currently looks after 85 orphans, a small dint in the estimated 1.5 million AIDS orphans in Kenya alone.
Funerals are a fact of life as the small cemetery behind the orphanage’s playground attests to. But there are fewer deaths now than in the early days. With some children on anti-AIDS drugs and with an adjoining health clinic in operation, the children are living longer.
When Bishop John Rucyahana assumed responsibility for a diocese of northeast Rwanda in 1997, he returned home to a devastated country. Addressing Rwanda’s estimated 400,000 orphans and decimated education system, Bishop John founded the Sonrise School to be a ‘light on a hill’ to demonstrate to everyone in Rwanda what is possible. Started initially through the Anglican Church and now supported by various Christian denominations, it has a population 450 students, and is a visible example of how with love and education, the country’s neediest children are redeemable and can be developed into leaders. The majority of the students are either genocide or AIDS orphans.
In Malawi, one of Africa’s poorer countries, the number of children orphaned by AIDS is nearly half of the country’s total orphan population of 1.1 million.The life expectancy in Malawi is 36 years and with orphans representing nearly 10% of the population and the average per capita income less than $2 per day, the resources simply aren’t there to handle this crisis.
The government has responded with the promotion and support of community based programs to cope with the escalating crisis. In many villages orphan committees have been established to monitor the local situation and take collective action to assist those in need. But as important as these initiatives are, they are crippled by the fact that the country neither has the monetary resource nor the people resource to deal with the problem. In a country where the mortality rate for women between the ages of 19 and 26 is nearly 40% - it’s not just mothers who are dying. These women are also Malawi’s teachers and nurses and social workers and civil servants. AIDS is decimating the entire infrastructure of care, which wasn’t that strong to begin with.
As one UN observer noted about the conditions in Malawi: ‘Orphans have little food, few clothes, no bedding and no soap…and as a whole, community care because of HIV/AIDS is overwhelmed and breaking down’.
Tim Dunham, who attends this church, spent 4 weeks this past spring in Malawi and I have asked him to share something from his experience there…
Tim is one of several people I know of from the church who has or who are presently working with orphans. Rachel Seilern and her cousin Natasha Szauter are with an organization called SOS International and are working with orphans in northern Italy.
Ruth Anne Valkenburg is currently in Camden New Jersey with an agency Called Urban Promise – working with children in one the US’s most impoverished inner cities.
What inspired me to speak about orphans in the first place was a visit I had with a life-long friend Chuck Stephens.
For most of his life Chuck has been in relief work – helping set up water irrigation systems in Angola and distributing food aid in Mozambique – that kind of thing.
7 years ago he and his wife Heather took the lead in setting up a campus in White River South Africa – dedicated to the training of African leaders involved in church and humanitarian work.
More recently because of the AIDS crisis, Chuck and Heather have been connecting with local schools and are seeing first hand the impact the epidemic is having on students. In some schools as many as 50% of the students are ‘single’ orphans and 15% ‘double orphans’.
In response to this crisis, Chuck and Heather have run a support camp during school holidays devoted to teaching AIDS orphans leadership skills, who because both their parents have died, are now responsible to provide for and raise their younger siblings.
The theme of the camp is “I have a future”.
There are two stigmas for an AIDS orphan to overcome – the first is the stigma attached to the disease itself – for which ostracism, rejection, discrimination and avoidance are common. Part of this discrimination regrettably is attributable to those of us who were Christians in the 1980’s – who saw AIDS as a gay disease. Rather than care for the early victims of this illness, we judged them, insisting that this illness was God’s judgment on their lifestyle. And by doing so, we forfeited the place Christians have historically assumed in crises like these. We were no longer on the caring edge. We became judges instead. As a result, and quite understandably, there is a lot of animosity gays still have for Evangelicals.
Given our Lord’s longstanding compassion for tax collectors, prostitutes, lepers and others who would not be welcome in most homes, it would be accurate to say that we couldn’t have behaved less like Jesus in our response to the first AIDS victims.
One reason to repent – if you’re still looking for one.
But for orphans there is a 2nd stigma to overcome…that of being an orphan in the first place. Orphans are typically seen as ‘non-persons’. If taken in by other families – they are typically treated like slaves, as something less than their own children by families who adopt them. Many orphans choose to be ‘home alone’ rather than be adopted by relatives – it’s one way they can retain whatever possessions their parents leave them.
At the facility the Stephens run, Orchard Camp, the orphans are provided with 3 different types of program to build inner ‘resilience’ and confidence.
Incorporating worship, prayer and play into all 3 program streams the kids are given obstacle courses as a means of helping to problem solve, to teach them how to work through the life mazes they find themselves in. The highlight is a climbing wall.
They are also provided with grief counseling. Most orphans because of their immediate crisis they face with their parents’ death don’t have opportunity to mourn the loss of their parents. The camp gives them room to mourn and to be comforted by those who care.
Finally the camp gives orphans skills training – ranging from labour un-intensive gardening to nutrition; from making pottery to developing strategic thinking to help them beyond their current predicament.
I mention these programs because they parallel the kind of assistance we all need whenever our world collapses…assistance the church is uniquely equipped to provide.
We all need to be told we have a future. We need a caring community who give us room to mourn our losses, but who are also there to laugh and worship with us, among whom we can grow up to face head on the hard challenges life brings us. And the church is also the place to develop skills, especially caring skills. We are to be the hotbed of innovative, impactful, caring ventures. We are to be the pioneers of mercy.
The prophet Jeremiah, in a letter to the exiles who had been taken into Babylon, many of whom ‘orphaned’ not only from the land they knew but also the families they had grown up in, wrote:
For I know the plans I have for you, declared the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future’. Jeremiah 29:11.
It is the church’s place to take the lead in giving orphans a ‘hope and a future’. Indeed, they are our future.
Some concluding remarks that I hope you will take home, talk about and do something about:
Dedicate a specific day some portion of which you will pray, even fast for orphans. As to which day of the week, I have a suggestion which requires some explanation- a suggestion that originates with my friend Chuck.
Do you remember from the Christmas story – how the wise men before they visited Jesus, went first to Jerusalem to ask King Herod ‘where is who has been born King of the Jews?’ Herod after consulting with the priests, who told him that according to Old Testament prophecy, the promised king was to be born in Bethlehem. Herod then asked the wise men that on their return visit they tell him where they had found him so that he too might come worship him.
But the wise men ended up going home another way; while Joseph, Mary and Jesus secretly stole off to Egypt, both being warned in dreams that King Herod’s real intentions were to murder the new born king. (see Matthew 2:13-18)
Herod was furious when the wise men didn’t return and ordered the killing of all male children under the age of 2 in Bethlehem and the surrounding region. In remembrance of those innocent children killed, the early church would celebrate a kind of Remembrance Day on the 3rd day after Christmas every year to remember all the innocents killed by war, by famine, by disease. They called the Day – the 28th of December – Childermas.
This year the 28th day of December falls on a Thursday, so consider devoting whatever time you can – every Thursday – to praying for orphans. If you are up to fasting for say a meal or two, do so. Of the nearly 26 million people who have died of AIDS in the 25 years since it was first diagnosed, over 5 million have been children. To remember those along with other children who have died because of civil war, famine or genocide – not only will soften our hearts to do what we must do – but also heighten our responsibility and care for the children we live with.
Remember that children are our future – even those children we are not the parents of. As you assume responsibility for orphans, remember that we too are orphans having been adopted into God’s family by Jesus Christ.
Canada – as wealthy as we are – has never reached the 0.7% of GDP benchmark the G8 countries pledged to third world relief. We need to remind our leaders of our responsibility to share our wealth with the desperately poor.
Only 5% of those children infected with AIDS in Africa have access to drug treatment. Again with lobbying, there must be some way to substantially improve this response.
If nothing else – REPENT. We have all had a part in this problem. Repentance opens to us the promise of having a part in the solution.
If I might close with some observations from the United Nations special envoy Stephen Lewis from his book ‘Race Against Time’.
It begins with these eerie words:
I have spent the last four years watching people die.
Near the end of his book he writes:
As I've moved from country to country over the last four years, it's been clear, inescapably clear, that as the pandemic evolves, children orphaned by AIDS are becoming the single most intractable and painful legacy. There are no equivalent precedents. Nothing in historical experience has prepared us for two generations of children rendered desperate, lonely, sad and bewildered by sheer circumstance…
I think that the pandemic of HIV/AIDS forces us; all of us, to speak out when we think transgressions are being committed.
If Colin Powell was right when he was secretary of state – and I believe he was – to say that AIDS was the most significant threat in the world, greater even than weapons of mass destruction, then I believe the assertion of principle must replace the reliance on niceties.
Even after we have repented for our part, it is easy to be overwhelmed. That’s why Jesus tells us to repent and TURN TO GOD. It is in God that we find courage and resource to do our part.
For it is God, as the psalmist writes, who is the Father of the fatherless, the One who settles the solitary in homes.
He is the stronghold of the oppressed, the One who is always there in times of trouble. He does not forget the cry of the afflicted…He hears them, he strengthens their hearts…he intervenes to do justice on their behalf.
Indeed it was to all orphans Jesus said:
“All that the Father gives me will come to me and whoever comes to me I will never cast out…This is the will of Him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of that he’s given me but raise them up on the last day”
John 6:37,39
May God help us to do our part.
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Speaking to a Grade 10 class
from a talk given to a Grade 10 'Philanthropy Class' in May 2009
Recently I attended a reception hosted by George Smitherman, who is the Deputy Premier of Ontario.
The reception was to celebrate Carmel Hili ‐ someone who had dedicated the last 35 years of his life working with Toronto’s poor and homeless communities, especially in the area of Regent Park.
Incredible tributes were given by people Carmel had worked with, politicians from both City Hall and the provincial government, but the most memorable speech was made by someone named John Caveney.
John is your vintage street person. When he gets up to speak people get a little worried. He can quickly turn a well‐ordered event into something chaotic.
He began his remarks by saying: ‘we have heard flowery speeches by some important people, politicians ‐ but what would God say about Carmel Hili?
Here’s what He would say:
I was hungry and you fed me
I was thirsty and you gave me a drink
I was a stranger and you invited me into your home
I was naked and you gave me clothing
I was sick and you cared for me
I was in prison and you visited me...'
Matthew 25:34-36
What you people have done in connecting with the various agencies of care in the Markham area is a good thing ‐ for both the agencies and for you. It can be one of those experiences that can be a ‘once only’ thing or it could be the beginning of something that shapes you for the rest of your life.
How many of you know what a gated community is?
Is every one welcome in a gated community?
Living here in Markham, do you live in a gated community ‐ not so much because there are actual gates protecting it, but the community has some unspoken rules to make sure that only a certain kind of people live here?
Are there any group homes on your street for those who have AIDS or live with mental health issues?
Would you describe the place you live, the club you belong to, the church or mosque you go to ‐ a gated community?
Each of us has our own reference points for understanding issues like poverty, homelessness, civil and religious wars, world hunger, foreign debt and the like.
Each of us are assisted in our understanding of these issues by our religious beliefs, or by humanitarian convictions or by people who for whatever reason ‘speak into our lives’ ‐ people like Obama, or Gandhi, or Oprah, or Bono from U2.
Since I come from a Christian church, it should come as no surprise to you that my reference points for understanding issues like poverty, homelessness, world hunger, is the life and teaching of Jesus.
Would you be surprised to learn that 2000 years ago, he spoke of ‘gated communities’?
In a parable he tells of a certain rich man who was splendidly clothed in Hugo Boss and fine linen, who lived every day in luxury.
Outside his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus who was covered in sores. As Lazarus lay there longing for scraps from the rich man’s table, the dogs would come and lick his open wounds. (see Luke 16:19‐21)
A couple of things to notice from the parable.
Only the poor man is given a name. Lazarus.
The rich man remains nameless.
From the vantage point of the story‐teller, only one name is worth remembering.
The name of the poor man.
Second ‐ although the story is about wealth and homelessness ‐ i.e. the indifference of the wealthy to the plight of the poor, Jesus reduces the issue to one rich guy and one poor guy.
Why?
Because whether we talking about poverty or world hunger, or the hoarding of the rich at the expense of the poor ‐ these issues are too big and overwhelming to take on if we try to take them on ‐ en masse ‐ rather than one person at a time.
Each of us has to start somewhere. Each of us has to find our own Lazarus and allow Lazarus to affect the way we live...
This is why I hope that your involvement in this Youth Philanthropy Initiative becomes more than a once only occurrence.
Some of you in the course of your career may make enough money to build hospital wings, institutions for the mentally ill and help fund affordable housing for people who otherwise couldn’t afford their own place to live.
But most of you will probably have enough trouble just making sure you have enough to provide for those you care for. You won’t have that much to give...
But you do.
If philanthropy is merely an exercise to helping the less fortunate by giving them money ‐ it is no more than a social welfare exercise which fosters dependence rather than self‐reliance, indignity rather than dignity...
If you have ever had the experience of standing in line at a food bank, or in a government office for social assistance, you know what a de‐humanizing experience that can be. Whether we are talking about clothing or money, hand me downs are no replacement for personal face to face contact with people in need.
Jesus didn’t tell the story of the rich man and Lazarus in the hope he could get rich people in the future to fund food banks and women shelters. That wasn’t his primary intent.
His primary intent was to get us to invite the poor people to eat at the table we eat at. He wants us to invite the homeless into our homes, the mentally ill into our communities...in other words ‐ to invite the Lazarus outside our gates into the privileges we enjoy, into the communities we live, into our circle of friends.
I remember sitting at a breakfast of business people and we were sharing with each other what our business objectives were.
The typical things were said ‐ I want to be a millionaire before I’m forty; I want to complete my doctorate in astrophysics; I want my teenage kids to like me; I want to retire before I’m sixty ‐ that kind of thing.
When it came for me to speak at first I didn’t know what to say. I had just quit my job at a big insurance company to work with my 3 brothers in the insurance business, and I was really having a tough go of it. I had just moved from a job where I got a regular salary to a job where it was commission only and frankly after 6 months on the job I had only made one sale which had generated a commission cheque of $400. Every day I was drawing on my line of credit and every day I was deeper in debt.
But I had also the emerging experience of making friends with some homeless people who hung outside Union Station ‐ guys named Karl and Harry, and a real off the wall guy called the Straw Man whose real name was Bruno.
There was an older man named Pops, who 10 years before had lost his wife and two kids in a car accident and had been living on the street ever since.
So turning to the others around the table, I said something which really surprised me at the time but has been my life ambition ever since ‐
‘I want to be so well known among the poor and homeless people, that they know me by name,
that they know me as someone who doesn’t walk pass them, who gives them more than spare change,
someone they know as a friend, as a guy who cares, so much so that they think me as ‘one of them’.
I share this story in the hope that it might also be your story...that regardless of whether you make millions or hundreds ‐ your primary objective in life will be to make certain that Lazarus ‐ the guy outside your gates ‐ knows you by name, is welcome at your table and has a chance to speak into your life in such a way that he or she not only affects where you give your money to, but who you devote your life to.
Recently I attended a reception hosted by George Smitherman, who is the Deputy Premier of Ontario.
The reception was to celebrate Carmel Hili ‐ someone who had dedicated the last 35 years of his life working with Toronto’s poor and homeless communities, especially in the area of Regent Park.
Incredible tributes were given by people Carmel had worked with, politicians from both City Hall and the provincial government, but the most memorable speech was made by someone named John Caveney.
John is your vintage street person. When he gets up to speak people get a little worried. He can quickly turn a well‐ordered event into something chaotic.
He began his remarks by saying: ‘we have heard flowery speeches by some important people, politicians ‐ but what would God say about Carmel Hili?
Here’s what He would say:
I was hungry and you fed me
I was thirsty and you gave me a drink
I was a stranger and you invited me into your home
I was naked and you gave me clothing
I was sick and you cared for me
I was in prison and you visited me...'
Matthew 25:34-36
What you people have done in connecting with the various agencies of care in the Markham area is a good thing ‐ for both the agencies and for you. It can be one of those experiences that can be a ‘once only’ thing or it could be the beginning of something that shapes you for the rest of your life.
How many of you know what a gated community is?
Is every one welcome in a gated community?
Living here in Markham, do you live in a gated community ‐ not so much because there are actual gates protecting it, but the community has some unspoken rules to make sure that only a certain kind of people live here?
Are there any group homes on your street for those who have AIDS or live with mental health issues?
Would you describe the place you live, the club you belong to, the church or mosque you go to ‐ a gated community?
Each of us has our own reference points for understanding issues like poverty, homelessness, civil and religious wars, world hunger, foreign debt and the like.
Each of us are assisted in our understanding of these issues by our religious beliefs, or by humanitarian convictions or by people who for whatever reason ‘speak into our lives’ ‐ people like Obama, or Gandhi, or Oprah, or Bono from U2.
Since I come from a Christian church, it should come as no surprise to you that my reference points for understanding issues like poverty, homelessness, world hunger, is the life and teaching of Jesus.
Would you be surprised to learn that 2000 years ago, he spoke of ‘gated communities’?
In a parable he tells of a certain rich man who was splendidly clothed in Hugo Boss and fine linen, who lived every day in luxury.
Outside his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus who was covered in sores. As Lazarus lay there longing for scraps from the rich man’s table, the dogs would come and lick his open wounds. (see Luke 16:19‐21)
A couple of things to notice from the parable.
Only the poor man is given a name. Lazarus.
The rich man remains nameless.
From the vantage point of the story‐teller, only one name is worth remembering.
The name of the poor man.
Second ‐ although the story is about wealth and homelessness ‐ i.e. the indifference of the wealthy to the plight of the poor, Jesus reduces the issue to one rich guy and one poor guy.
Why?
Because whether we talking about poverty or world hunger, or the hoarding of the rich at the expense of the poor ‐ these issues are too big and overwhelming to take on if we try to take them on ‐ en masse ‐ rather than one person at a time.
Each of us has to start somewhere. Each of us has to find our own Lazarus and allow Lazarus to affect the way we live...
This is why I hope that your involvement in this Youth Philanthropy Initiative becomes more than a once only occurrence.
Some of you in the course of your career may make enough money to build hospital wings, institutions for the mentally ill and help fund affordable housing for people who otherwise couldn’t afford their own place to live.
But most of you will probably have enough trouble just making sure you have enough to provide for those you care for. You won’t have that much to give...
But you do.
If philanthropy is merely an exercise to helping the less fortunate by giving them money ‐ it is no more than a social welfare exercise which fosters dependence rather than self‐reliance, indignity rather than dignity...
If you have ever had the experience of standing in line at a food bank, or in a government office for social assistance, you know what a de‐humanizing experience that can be. Whether we are talking about clothing or money, hand me downs are no replacement for personal face to face contact with people in need.
Jesus didn’t tell the story of the rich man and Lazarus in the hope he could get rich people in the future to fund food banks and women shelters. That wasn’t his primary intent.
His primary intent was to get us to invite the poor people to eat at the table we eat at. He wants us to invite the homeless into our homes, the mentally ill into our communities...in other words ‐ to invite the Lazarus outside our gates into the privileges we enjoy, into the communities we live, into our circle of friends.
I remember sitting at a breakfast of business people and we were sharing with each other what our business objectives were.
The typical things were said ‐ I want to be a millionaire before I’m forty; I want to complete my doctorate in astrophysics; I want my teenage kids to like me; I want to retire before I’m sixty ‐ that kind of thing.
When it came for me to speak at first I didn’t know what to say. I had just quit my job at a big insurance company to work with my 3 brothers in the insurance business, and I was really having a tough go of it. I had just moved from a job where I got a regular salary to a job where it was commission only and frankly after 6 months on the job I had only made one sale which had generated a commission cheque of $400. Every day I was drawing on my line of credit and every day I was deeper in debt.
But I had also the emerging experience of making friends with some homeless people who hung outside Union Station ‐ guys named Karl and Harry, and a real off the wall guy called the Straw Man whose real name was Bruno.
There was an older man named Pops, who 10 years before had lost his wife and two kids in a car accident and had been living on the street ever since.
So turning to the others around the table, I said something which really surprised me at the time but has been my life ambition ever since ‐
‘I want to be so well known among the poor and homeless people, that they know me by name,
that they know me as someone who doesn’t walk pass them, who gives them more than spare change,
someone they know as a friend, as a guy who cares, so much so that they think me as ‘one of them’.
I share this story in the hope that it might also be your story...that regardless of whether you make millions or hundreds ‐ your primary objective in life will be to make certain that Lazarus ‐ the guy outside your gates ‐ knows you by name, is welcome at your table and has a chance to speak into your life in such a way that he or she not only affects where you give your money to, but who you devote your life to.
Luke 16:1-14
Luke 16:1-14
Jesus told this story to his disciples:
“There was a certain rich man who had a manager handling his affairs. One day a report came that the manager was wasting his employer’s money. So the employer called him in and said, ‘What’s this I hear about you? Get your report in order, because you are going to be fired.’
“The manager thought to himself, ‘Now what? My boss has fired me. I don’t have the strength to dig ditches, and I’m too proud to beg. Ah, I know how to ensure that I’ll have plenty of friends who will give me a home when I am fired.’
“So he invited each person who owed money to his employer to come and discuss the situation. He asked the first one, ‘How much do you owe him?’ The man replied, ‘I owe him 800 gallons of olive oil.’ So the manager told him, ‘Take the bill and quickly change it to 400 gallons.’
“‘And how much do you owe my employer?’ he asked the next man. ‘I owe him 1,000 bushels of wheat,’ was the reply. ‘Here,’ the manager said, ‘take the bill and change it to 800 bushels.’
“The rich man had to admire the dishonest rascal for being so shrewd. And it is true that the children of this world are more shrewd in dealing with the world around them than are the children of the light.
Here’s the lesson:
Use your worldly resources to benefit others and make friends. Then, when your earthly possessions are gone, they will welcome you to an eternal home.
“If you are faithful in little things, you will be faithful in large ones. But if you are dishonest in little things, you won’t be honest with greater responsibilities. And if you are untrustworthy about worldly wealth, who will trust you with the true riches of heaven? And if you are not faithful with other people’s things, why should you be trusted with things of your own?
“No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”
I have wrestled with this parable as much as any.
On the one hand the Lord commends the shrewdness of the dishonest manager; and then insists that we refrain from such dishonesty. He expects us to be honest 'in the little things'. If we are trustworthy in the nickel and dime stuff, we can be entrusted with the high ticket matters like caring for others.
Why would Jesus commend in his own parable something he refutes in his 'take home' application?
There is a contrast that is key to interpreting the passage. The children of this world versus the children of light.
I think what he's driving at is how we as children of light are to relate to the children on this world - in the areas where the children of this world are more advanced than we are.
It's as though he's saying - admire the ingenuity of a crook, but don't imitate him. Befriend a crook, heck even visit him in his home, just don't become one.
In part it is a mercy thing. Jesus doesn't want his children looking down at anyone - most especially people entrenched in the ways of this world.
But it is also an understanding how life works thing. Jesus' ways are clearly contrary to the way the world works - but he insists we not be blind nor naive to how the world works. We wants us in the world but not of it, he wants us to befriend its children and in some way 'to give them their due' without imitating their wrong-doing. It's a repeat of the Caesar and God thing - give to Caesar his due and to God his - allowing that for the children of light, only one is to be Lord and it ain't Caesar. Just don't sweat with Caesar about the small stuff. Don't try to rub his face off your pocket change. It could kill you. Needlessly. So give Caesar his due. Sure there will be times to take issue with the way he does things. But the imprint of his face on a coin isn't one of them...
Which gets me to the life lesson repeated through scripture. Sometimes God uses the people of this world to rescue the children of light. Joseph, Mary and Jesus escape to become refugees in Egypt to escape the wrath of the Jewish tyrant, King Herod. David hides among the Philistines in order to escape the wrath of Saul. Moses hides for 40 years among the Midianites to escape both the Jews and the Egyptians. Joseph is saved from his brothers...at times God uses the children of this world to save his people from themselves.
Through Jeremiah God tells the Jews in Babylon to 'work for the peace and prosperity of the city where I have sent you into exile'. We are not to be a 'stick with our own only' community. We are to be out there...not just for our sakes but for the peace and prosperity of those we live with, regardless of who they are...
And maybe this is the connecting point between the parable and its application. Part of the trustworthiness Christ expects of us is to respect those who are not children of light. Eat with them, learn from them, love them, 'give them their due' - there will be times in life when they will rescue us because of their shrewdness or because they're more advanced in the ways of this world than we are. Sometimes they are the very break we need when our fellow children of light are killing us.
But we aren't to refrain from being 'children of light' among them. Not only do they help us, we help them. God has entrusted them to us. They are our parish. We are to gain their trust in the things that matter to them in the hope of gaining their trust in the areas that ultimately matter to all of us i.e. faith, love, mercy, justice, kindness and truth...
Jesus told this story to his disciples:
“There was a certain rich man who had a manager handling his affairs. One day a report came that the manager was wasting his employer’s money. So the employer called him in and said, ‘What’s this I hear about you? Get your report in order, because you are going to be fired.’
“The manager thought to himself, ‘Now what? My boss has fired me. I don’t have the strength to dig ditches, and I’m too proud to beg. Ah, I know how to ensure that I’ll have plenty of friends who will give me a home when I am fired.’
“So he invited each person who owed money to his employer to come and discuss the situation. He asked the first one, ‘How much do you owe him?’ The man replied, ‘I owe him 800 gallons of olive oil.’ So the manager told him, ‘Take the bill and quickly change it to 400 gallons.’
“‘And how much do you owe my employer?’ he asked the next man. ‘I owe him 1,000 bushels of wheat,’ was the reply. ‘Here,’ the manager said, ‘take the bill and change it to 800 bushels.’
“The rich man had to admire the dishonest rascal for being so shrewd. And it is true that the children of this world are more shrewd in dealing with the world around them than are the children of the light.
Here’s the lesson:
Use your worldly resources to benefit others and make friends. Then, when your earthly possessions are gone, they will welcome you to an eternal home.
“If you are faithful in little things, you will be faithful in large ones. But if you are dishonest in little things, you won’t be honest with greater responsibilities. And if you are untrustworthy about worldly wealth, who will trust you with the true riches of heaven? And if you are not faithful with other people’s things, why should you be trusted with things of your own?
“No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”
I have wrestled with this parable as much as any.
On the one hand the Lord commends the shrewdness of the dishonest manager; and then insists that we refrain from such dishonesty. He expects us to be honest 'in the little things'. If we are trustworthy in the nickel and dime stuff, we can be entrusted with the high ticket matters like caring for others.
Why would Jesus commend in his own parable something he refutes in his 'take home' application?
There is a contrast that is key to interpreting the passage. The children of this world versus the children of light.
I think what he's driving at is how we as children of light are to relate to the children on this world - in the areas where the children of this world are more advanced than we are.
It's as though he's saying - admire the ingenuity of a crook, but don't imitate him. Befriend a crook, heck even visit him in his home, just don't become one.
In part it is a mercy thing. Jesus doesn't want his children looking down at anyone - most especially people entrenched in the ways of this world.
But it is also an understanding how life works thing. Jesus' ways are clearly contrary to the way the world works - but he insists we not be blind nor naive to how the world works. We wants us in the world but not of it, he wants us to befriend its children and in some way 'to give them their due' without imitating their wrong-doing. It's a repeat of the Caesar and God thing - give to Caesar his due and to God his - allowing that for the children of light, only one is to be Lord and it ain't Caesar. Just don't sweat with Caesar about the small stuff. Don't try to rub his face off your pocket change. It could kill you. Needlessly. So give Caesar his due. Sure there will be times to take issue with the way he does things. But the imprint of his face on a coin isn't one of them...
Which gets me to the life lesson repeated through scripture. Sometimes God uses the people of this world to rescue the children of light. Joseph, Mary and Jesus escape to become refugees in Egypt to escape the wrath of the Jewish tyrant, King Herod. David hides among the Philistines in order to escape the wrath of Saul. Moses hides for 40 years among the Midianites to escape both the Jews and the Egyptians. Joseph is saved from his brothers...at times God uses the children of this world to save his people from themselves.
Through Jeremiah God tells the Jews in Babylon to 'work for the peace and prosperity of the city where I have sent you into exile'. We are not to be a 'stick with our own only' community. We are to be out there...not just for our sakes but for the peace and prosperity of those we live with, regardless of who they are...
And maybe this is the connecting point between the parable and its application. Part of the trustworthiness Christ expects of us is to respect those who are not children of light. Eat with them, learn from them, love them, 'give them their due' - there will be times in life when they will rescue us because of their shrewdness or because they're more advanced in the ways of this world than we are. Sometimes they are the very break we need when our fellow children of light are killing us.
But we aren't to refrain from being 'children of light' among them. Not only do they help us, we help them. God has entrusted them to us. They are our parish. We are to gain their trust in the things that matter to them in the hope of gaining their trust in the areas that ultimately matter to all of us i.e. faith, love, mercy, justice, kindness and truth...
Monday, February 6, 2012
Benediction
Jesus had so much more in mind as to what His church should be in the world than we can possibly imagine.
The Pharisees and teachers of the law thought it was enough that the church be a place where one could thank God with clean hands.
But Jesus spoke of a church where men and women contaminated by evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony and slander could become clean and thank God with clean hearts.
The Pharisees and the teachers of the law saw the church as an institution where God's word could be safeguarded; the sacred sheltered from the common; where traditions could be preserved from the ravages of time.
But Jesus saw something more. He saw the church as something living, so affected by the eternal vibrancy and life of the Holy Spirit that the poor, the hurting, indeed all those who thirst would come running in. Not only was the church to have the sound and appearance of a wedding feast, she was to have a table big enough to feed all who come.
Here lies one of the great paradoxes of God's love. Although Christ himself was denied mercy and deprived of justice when he was in the world, his church is to be his instrument of mercy and justice to that same world, the world he loves.
So go out in his name as his instruments of mercy and justice, not only for the world's sake, but for yours and most of all, for His.
The Pharisees and teachers of the law thought it was enough that the church be a place where one could thank God with clean hands.
But Jesus spoke of a church where men and women contaminated by evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony and slander could become clean and thank God with clean hearts.
The Pharisees and the teachers of the law saw the church as an institution where God's word could be safeguarded; the sacred sheltered from the common; where traditions could be preserved from the ravages of time.
But Jesus saw something more. He saw the church as something living, so affected by the eternal vibrancy and life of the Holy Spirit that the poor, the hurting, indeed all those who thirst would come running in. Not only was the church to have the sound and appearance of a wedding feast, she was to have a table big enough to feed all who come.
Here lies one of the great paradoxes of God's love. Although Christ himself was denied mercy and deprived of justice when he was in the world, his church is to be his instrument of mercy and justice to that same world, the world he loves.
So go out in his name as his instruments of mercy and justice, not only for the world's sake, but for yours and most of all, for His.
Relationships
The whole of the Christian gospel is centred on relationships.
How we treat our neighbour says everything about how we treat God.
We are obliged to two commandments which are inseparable from each other.
We are to love God and
We are to love our neighbour as ourselves.
If we can walk past a person in need without offering help
then our entire confession of love for God is suspect.
But love we know, without exception,
starts small and grows bigger.
It must be exercised.
The will to love must see its way into action.
Love grows with action.
In this we must first be tested:
We must learn to forgive
We must learn to be forgiven.
On this, the entire blessing of the Lord's prayer rests.
It is for this ministry alone that God gives us his Holy Spirit -
that we forgive and are forgiven by one another.
There is not a Christian commandment - to pray, to give, to worship, to forbear
to endure, to care for, to provoke, to gain, to lose
that does not involve relationship.
Relationship with God.
Relationship with each other.
The great diagnosis of our condition from the Scriptures is:
'You can't do this on your own.'
The great remedy of the Scriptures is:
'You are not alone, God loves you' -
the experience of which
is Christian fellowship.
To be faithful to God
to participate in his remedy
God gives us community.
Community among people who know themselves to be flawed.
Community among people who hunger to be accepted as they are.
Community among people who will carry one another in their thoughts
and by extension in their prayers.
Community among people who confess their sins to find healing and forgiveness.
Community among people with whom, when courage and liberty allow,
I too would confess and find healing and forgiveness.
I expect that in Christian community
I will become in word and action what I profess to be:
A Christian, a Christ one
to walk as Jesus walked
To live as he lived
and lives
in community.
How we treat our neighbour says everything about how we treat God.
We are obliged to two commandments which are inseparable from each other.
We are to love God and
We are to love our neighbour as ourselves.
If we can walk past a person in need without offering help
then our entire confession of love for God is suspect.
But love we know, without exception,
starts small and grows bigger.
It must be exercised.
The will to love must see its way into action.
Love grows with action.
In this we must first be tested:
We must learn to forgive
We must learn to be forgiven.
On this, the entire blessing of the Lord's prayer rests.
It is for this ministry alone that God gives us his Holy Spirit -
that we forgive and are forgiven by one another.
There is not a Christian commandment - to pray, to give, to worship, to forbear
to endure, to care for, to provoke, to gain, to lose
that does not involve relationship.
Relationship with God.
Relationship with each other.
The great diagnosis of our condition from the Scriptures is:
'You can't do this on your own.'
The great remedy of the Scriptures is:
'You are not alone, God loves you' -
the experience of which
is Christian fellowship.
To be faithful to God
to participate in his remedy
God gives us community.
Community among people who know themselves to be flawed.
Community among people who hunger to be accepted as they are.
Community among people who will carry one another in their thoughts
and by extension in their prayers.
Community among people who confess their sins to find healing and forgiveness.
Community among people with whom, when courage and liberty allow,
I too would confess and find healing and forgiveness.
I expect that in Christian community
I will become in word and action what I profess to be:
A Christian, a Christ one
to walk as Jesus walked
To live as he lived
and lives
in community.
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