Living Out Christ’s Love for the Needy

Luke 10: 25-37

March 12, 2006

Dr. Rich Peterson

Twenty years ago I pastored a small, struggling congregation in the heart of central city Dallas.

Everyday this seemingly insignificant group of God’s people engaged in the very significant ministry to the marginalized of the community.

Everyday was a battle. Some days were harder than others. There were many defeats and relatively few victories.

Everyday for 5 ½ years we would strive against all odds to live out Christ’s love for the needy.

The larger issues of such a ministry included multigenerational misunderstandings, multiethnic (Hispanic, Laotian, African-American, Vietnamese and Anglo) miscommunications, lack of resources, poor educational options, generational welfare, chronic joblessness, a large population of homosexuals with AIDS (at one point a nearby church, more liberal in its theology was performing 2-3 funerals a week for members of their congregation dying from AIDS), prostitution, drug dealers, crime, vandalism of church property, depressed economic area that felt like a war zone, abandoned houses, children playing in dirt lots littered with broken beer bottles.

But as large as these issues were (are), the things I remember most are the faces of the needy.

The little Hispanic girl with the intelligence to go to college who never did because of an out-of-wedlock pregnancy. When asked what happened, she answered by saying that she didn’t want to be left out, that all of her friends were pregnant and she didn’t want to be different. Anna represented the sick, upside-down morality of this kind of status symbol.

The face of the nine year old African-American boy who when asked what he wanted to be when he grew up said, “I don’t have to be anything – I’ll just wait for the check from the government – like Mama and Grandma.”

The face of the 40 year old neighborhood drunk who saved my life one day in his warnings not to approach a “crack house” on Vegas Street, saying only – “they the kind of folks who shoot first, and ask questions later.”

The face of the Vietnam vet with one leg and one arm standing at the entrance to the church begging for money to feed his addiction, because the only relief he knew from the physical and emotional pain he experienced everyday was when he was high.

When someone asks me, “Who are the poor?” I think of these I’ve just described. When someone asks me whether the church of Jesus Christ should be involved in issues of social justice – I think of these. When someone asks what do you think the church should do for the least, the last and the lost – I think of these.

So, when nearly two years ago the pastoral staff of SGC started asking what we, as a church needed to be doing in the area of compassion and social justice – I thought of these.

When our pastor stated as a new ministry objective for our church that we would make a strategic, significant and sustained investment of time and money, individually and corporately, both locally and internationally to minister to the needs of the poor and oppressed – I thought of these.

The problems of poverty, oppression, injustice, prejudice, and inequality are such huge issues that I (like many of you) can barely get my head around it all.

But as large as all of these issues may be – it seems that in each case we begin with the individuals God places before us. The faces of those in our sphere of influence, and we start someway, somehow to make a difference for them.

Some will be called to voluntarily engage in governmental programs and movements in an attempt to use their gifts in a ministry to the marginalized. Others will be called from the church to voluntarily impoverish themselves for the sake of those less fortunate. But each of us must, at the very least, heed the call to “care” in some tangible, personal, dare we say, relationally incarnational fashion.

“The poor you will always have with you.” A call to turn our backs or a call to turn our attention to living our lives out of the love Christ has for the least and the last?

There have always been a few prophets living among the people of God and usually these folks don’t fit into anything of a predescribed mold.

Prophets simply put are “strange.” They say things that madden and sadden most of us; they wear strange clothing like “animal skins and leather” or no clothes at all to make their counter-culture points. They come from all walks of life – herdsman, cupbearers, and rock and roll musicians.

Not all in this room would enjoy the music of the rock group U2, but few would argue that the group’s lead singer, Bono (most all rock stars have only one name – Cher, Elvis, Madonna, Sting) – none would argue that Bono isn’t saying things that sound like a prophet during his remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast on February 2, 2006.

In addressing an audience of national leaders, including the President of the United States, Bono spoke passionately about equality and social justice. Listen to some of what this modern day prophet had to say about these matters:

“Look, whatever thoughts you have about God, who He is or if He exists, most will agree that if there is a God, He has a special place for the poor. In fact, the poor are where God lives.

Check Judaism. Check Islam. Check pretty much anyone.

I mean, God may well be with us in our mansions on the hill…I hope so. He may well be with us as in all manner of controversial stuff…maybe, maybe not…But the one thing we can all agree, all faiths and ideologies, is that God is with the vulnerable and poor.

God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house…God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both of their lives…God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war…God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them. “If you remove the yolk from your midst, the pointing of the finger and speaking wickedness, and if you give yourself to the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then your light will rise in the darkness and your gloom will become like midday and the Lord will continually guide you and satisfy your desire in scorched places.”

It’s not a coincidence that in the Scriptures, poverty is mentioned more than 2,100 times. It’s not an accident. That’s a lot of airtime, 2,100 mentions. [You know that the only time Christ is judgmental is on the subject of the poor.] ‘As you have done it unto the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me’ (Mt. 25:40). As I say, good news to the poor.

Here’s some good news for the President. After 9-11 we were told America would have no time for the world’s poor. America would be taken up with its own problems of safety. And it’s true these are dangerous times, but America has not drawn the blinds and double-locked the doors.

In fact, you have doubled aid to Africa. You have tripled funding for global health. Mr. President, your emergency plan for AIDS relief and support for Global Fund – you and Congress – have put 700,000 people onto life-saving anti-retroviral drugs and provided 8 million bed nets to protect children from malaria.

But here’s the bad news. From charity to justice, the good news is yet to come. There’s much more to do. There’s a gigantic chasm between the scale of the emergency and the scale of response.

Because in the end, it’s not about charity…It’s about justice.

And that’s too bad because you’re good at charity. Americans are good at it. We like to give, and we give a lot, even those who can’t afford it.

But justice is a higher standard. Africa makes a fool of our idea of justice. It makes a farce of our ideas of equality. It mocks our pieties, it doubts our concern, it questions our commitment.

6,500 Africans are still dying everyday of a preventable, treatable disease, for lack of drugs we can buy at any drugstore. This is not about charity; it is about justice and equality.

Because there is not way we can look at what’s happening in Africa and, if we’re honest, conclude that deep down, we really accept that Africans are equal to us. Anywhere in the world, we wouldn’t accept it. Look at what happened in South East Asia with the Tsunami. 150,000 lives lost in that misnomer of all misnomers, “Mother Nature.” In Africa, 150,000 lives are lost every month. A tsunami every month. And it’s a completely avoidable catastrophe.

It’s annoying but justice and equality are mates. Aren’t they? Justice always wants to hang out with equality. And equality is a real pain.”

E. Stanley Jones once wrote, “An individual gospel without a social gospel is a soul without a body, and a social gospel without an individual gospel is a body without a soul. One is a ghost and the other is a corpse.”

In recent years the church of Jesus has become increasingly willing to see real, whole persons – not just ghosts.

Our own Evangelical Free Church of America in its most recent attempt to revise an outdated Statement of Faith has added an entire new section dealing with this very thing: “God commands us to love him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and our neighbor as ourselves, acting with compassion toward the poor and needy, seeking justice for the oppressed.”

Art Beals, a relief and development specialist, who served nine years as executive director for World Concern believes that, “There are two legs to the gospel – evangelism and social action. If we don’t walk or run on both legs, we have a lopsided gospel.” Not everyone agrees as many continue to maintain “to elevate Christian social action to a place of importance equal with evangelism is to diminish the gospel.”

This kind of discussion takes me back to my work among the poor and a paper I wrote for a doctoral seminar about “persons with AIDS.” Of the 15 men in the classroom, including the instructor, only one, a missionary to Africa grasped the balance of what I was trying to reach between the care for a person’s soul and care for the person’s physical needs.

I could really have used the statement released by the Consultation on the Relationship between Evangelism and Social responsibility which reads:

“Evangelism and Social responsibility are inseparable fruits of the gospel and basic to its mission of the church…Evangelism and social action belong to each other, like two blades of a scissors or the two wings of a bird.”

The report continued by stating that “social action should be the consequence of evangelism, it can be a bridge to evangelism, and social action must always be the partner of evangelism…. Seldom if ever should we have to choose between satisfying physical hunger and spiritual hunger, or between healing bodies and caring for souls since an authentic love for our neighbor will lead us to serve him or her as a whole person.”

Did you catch that last line? Since an authentic love for neighbor will lead us to service.”

Love for neighbor is just what Jesus is getting at in his dialogue with the lawyer in Luke 10:25-37.

Is there anyone, even in our biblically illiterate society today that is not at least somewhat familiar with Jesus’ most famous story?

Here in this story we see and experience Jesus’ amazing ability to turn an abstract theological discussion into a discourse on real life issues. Jesus’ encounter with the scholarly lawyer reveals how he does not allow distinctions to be made when it comes to the treatment of people.

Be warned: there are no easy escapes for failing to serve and be a neighbor.

The whole affair leading up to Jesus’ famous story starts innocently enough.

A sincere teacher of the law had come to Jesus with a fundamental question. “How can one inherit eternal life?”

Love God and love your neighbor they both agree.

Good question – great answer. “Do this and you will live.”

At this point the lawyer should have left it at that, but he didn’t.

“Wanting to justify himself,” the lawyer asked, “and who is my neighbor?”

Oops! Bad question. Wrong question.

Bad question because it says more about the man asking it then it says about the question itself. The lawyer wants a precise, theologically thoughtful, narrow and safe answer that will provide a justified escape for not doing the very thing Jesus desires him to do – love his neighbor without limits!

The lawyer wants Jesus to establish the limits (and perhaps thinks further that Jesus should do so using sound theological constructs), instead Jesus tells a story.

Now it’s obvious that this particular teacher wasn’t present when Jesus preached his first sermon (he didn’t even bother getting a CD of the sermon before meeting with Jesus). Because if he heard that first sermon he might not have been so brash in his question about neighbor, Jesus having already clearly established his priorities in the opening days of his ministry.

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19).

Jesus made his ministry agenda clear from the outset. Even a review of the sermon’s main points should have enabled this lawyer to realize – “neighbor” in the dictionary of Jesus was going to be different from any proceeding definitions.

The concept of “neighbor” was enlarged in that first sermon to include folks like the poor, the prisoner, the blind, and the oppressed. In other words, this good news is now proclaimed to a whole new set of “new” neighbors including people you would never have thought beforehand to include.

This good news is now proclaimed with special concern and meaning for the poor. That Greek term used in the New Testament to describe a person who is bowed down, one who occupies an inferior position in society, an outcast. The person without means of livelihood, who must beg in order to survive. The poor – neighbor is Jesus’ first priority.

This is good news proclaiming freedom for the prisoners and healing for the physically disabled. When the prophet Isaiah first spoke these words they were to a nation of people who “grieve in Zion.” We shouldn’t miss the importance of these words to those who were victims of oppression and injustice one the one hand, and troubled by great physical needs on the other. The gospel is “good news” precisely because it has a message of hope and healing and deliverance.

This is good news because it carries with it the call “to release the oppressed.” The liberation of people from their sins, their guilt, the injustice of their life situations involves encounters with “the powers,” And Jesus gave his disciples power and authority, power to drive out evil spirits, power to liberate neighbors from human oppression, power to challenge authorities by the final authority of God’s Word and the presence of the Holy Spirit.

“Who is my neighbor?” is a bad question because it asks for the limits that may legitimately restrict our duty to neighbor, so Jesus tells us straight up that as his disciples love for neighbor knows no limits!

“Who is my neighbor” is also the wrong question.

Wrong because in Jesus’ “redirect” he asks, “Which of these three men do you think was a neighbor?”

The question isn’t – who is my neighbor – but instead, “How can I be a neighbor?” And neighbor as redefined by Jesus and his telling this great story is “anyone” who out of love for God meets need with love.

The question then is a very personal one. How can one be a neighbor? How do we (I) meet need with God’s love?

When it comes to the large issues like poverty, generational homelessness, hunger, human pain and suffering because of war, injustice, inequality, prejudice and crime we often cry out in despair. Despair because the problems are too big and we are too small to do anything about them. The problems and enormous and many and we are only one.

Senator Mark Hatfield tells of his day in 1974 with Mother Teresa in Calcutta, India.

“As my family and I toured Calcutta with Mother Teresa, we visited the orphanage filled with crippled children, the co-called “House of Dying,” where the sick and diseased are cared for in their last days, and the dispensary, where the poor line up by the hundreds to receive badly needed basic medical attention. Mother Teresa ministered to these people, feeding and nursing the sick and elderly, loving them when others had left them to die. I was overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the suffering and the utter impossibility of the tasks to which Mother Teresa and her coworkers face daily. ‘How can you bear the load without being crushed by the impossibility of the task?”

My dear Senator,” replied Mother Teresa, “I am not called to be successful; I am called to be faithful.”

Faithful compassion: “when Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion on them….” (Mt. 9:36).

Not pity – compassion.

For pity weeps and walks away,

Compassion comes to help and stay.

Pity is an emotional response; compassion is an action response.

Pity touches on feelings; compassion engages our will.

Pity often produces the tears that help us keep a safe distance from another’s problems; compassion provides a bridge that helps us move from our own background and experiences to embrace the hurts and cares of another.

Pity understands that there are hundreds of million severely malnourished children in our world; compassion recognizes the opportunity we have to live with a little less so others might live.

Pity rails against the injustice of discrimination; compassion alters life-styles in order to focus personal resources which can be used in caring for disadvantages people.

Pity observes human suffering; compassion suffers with those who suffer.

So what?

So what does this great lesson of Jesus teach us? How are we and how will continue to make strategic, significant and sustained investments of ourselves in ministry to the needs of the poor and oppressed?

From the simple story three concepts ring true:

1. Our investments must be practical.

“He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine” (Luke 10:34). No inquiry as to the man’s religious beliefs or preferences. No gospel tract offered with an attempt to convert. Just a simple, straightforward, practical response to an evident human need.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German churchman who was later to lose his life at the hands of the Nazis, wrote from his prison cell: “It is not enough that the church simply proclaim to the world, she must actually get down into the dirt and grime of history and participate in the task of remaking the world into God’s kingdom.”

2. Our investments must reflect a relationally compassionate spirit.

The Samaritan placed the man on the back of his donkey, making it necessary to shoulder the burdens that the pack animal had been carrying for him. He took the hurting stranger to the local Holiday Inn, and there personally remained to care for him.

Relational compassion is costly – both to the individual and the church. It cost to become involved in helping those in need. It costs us the inconvenience of disrupted plans, the diversion of resources which were to be spent on our own needs and wants, and the commitment of time and personal involvement.

3. Our investments must be thorough.

The assistance given by the Samaritan was not just a quick “band-aid” response by the side of the road…not a short overnight in the inn…this man provided for the wounded traveler until he could resume care for himself. He gave him cash and then left his Israeli Express card with the innkeeper with instructions to charge everything needed against his account.

The marginalized of our world need not so much a handout as they need a helping hand. We need to understand their problems and then work with the individuals affected by the problems to help them find a solution. That involves a commitment thorough enough to produce results.

Living out Christ’s love for the needy is an attitude long before it is an action. Living out this love of Christ for the needy may never yield success, but than again, we are not called to be successful, we are called to be faithful.