So last week we began our subseries in Luke called "Jesus Loves the Poor" by looking at the Exodus and discussing how that is decisive for how we understand who God is and who he calls his people to be.
Last night we brought things back to Luke and began to take this whole matter of caring for those who are on the underside of power and relate it to the question of discipleship. What we found was that Luke's vision of discipleship to Jesus has as a crucial and indispensible component sustained generosity towards the poor.
Some examples from Luke might include:
1 - Luke 10:25ff - The Good Samaritan: we come to find that "your neighbor" is anyone who has fallen into trouble that you have the capacity to help. And apparently loving the Lord your God and loving your neighbor in the sense just described are the ways in which Luke's Jesus thinks people orient themselves towards and in fact receive "eternal life" or "the life of the age [to come]" (10:25).
2 - Luke 11:37-41 - "When Jesus had finished speaking, a Pharisee invited him to eat with him; so he went in and reclined at the table. 38But the Pharisee, noticing that Jesus did not first wash before the meal, was surprised.39Then the Lord said to him, "Now then, you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. 40You foolish people! Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also? 41But give what is inside the dish to the poor, and everything will be clean for you." Whoa. Apparently only one thing will break the back of greed and wickedness, cleansing the soul of the Pharisee: almsgiving.
3 - Luke 14 - Participating in the great eschatological feast of God depends on our making space in our lives for the "poor, the blind, the lame, and the crippled."
We could go on and on. The point is that in the Lukan vision of discipleship to Jesus, there are some things that do not and cannot happen in the human person except by virtue of concrete acts of kindness and generosity done to the poor. And even more than that, there are some things that the human person cannot receive (i.e., "eternal life", ouch!) apart from such magnanimity. Jesus' disciples can't receive the kingdom from him when their hands are clutching worldly possessions.
It's not that he's being unfair or unkind to them. It's that it's an impossibility. He cannot force the kingdom upon those who have no space in their lives for it. And apparently, when it comes to money, possessions ("stuff"), the only way to create space for it is by building consistent, sustained generosity towards the poor (not building programs: though there is a place for that elsewhere in the Scriptures) into the fabric of our lives.
So it would appear that Jesus' disciples need the poor as much as (and I might argue more than) the poor need them. They help us see and experience the reign of God in Christ.
Perhaps this was put best by Mother Theresa when she said, "Only in heaven will we see how much we owe to the poor for helping us to love God better because of them."
Well said, Theresa.
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2 comments:
In light of the Catholic theology being brought into the conversation by means of Mother Teresa, I thought it would be interesting to reflect on part of Pope Benedict's first Encyclical, "Deus Caritas Est."
He states:
"Love of neighbor is thus shown to be possible in the way proclaimed by the Bible, by Jesus. It consists in the very fact that, in God and with God, I love even the person whom I do not like or even know. This can only take place on the basis of an intimate encounter with God, an encounter which has become a communion of will, even affecting my feelings. Then I learn to look on this other person not simply with my eyes and my feelings, but from the perspective of Jesus Christ. His friend is my friend. Going beyond exterior appearances, I perceive in others an interior desire for a sign of love, of concern. This I can offer them not only through the organizations intended for such purposes, accepting it perhaps as a political necessity. Seeing with the eyes of Christ, I can give to others much more than their outward necessities; I can give them the look of love which they crave. Here we see the necessary interplay between love of God and love of neighbor which the First Letter of John speaks of with such insistence. If I have no contact whatsoever with God in my life, then I cannot see in the other anything more than the other, and I am incapable of seeing in him the image of God. But if in my life I fail completely to heed others, solely out of a desire to be “devout” and to perform my “religious duties”, then my relationship with God will also grow arid. It becomes merely “proper”, but loveless. Only my readiness to encounter my neighbor and to show him love makes me sensitive to God as well. Only if I serve my neighbor can my eyes be opened to what God does for me and how much he loves me. The saints—consider the example of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta—constantly renewed their capacity for love of neighbor from their encounter with the Eucharistic Lord, and conversely this encounter acquired its real- ism and depth in their service to others. Love of God and love of neighbor are thus inseparable, they form a single commandment. But both live from the love of God who has loved us first. No longer is it a question, then, of a “commandment” imposed from without and calling for the impossible, but rather of a freely-bestowed experience of love from within, a love which by its very nature must then be shared with others. Love grows through love. Love is “divine” because it comes from God and unites us to God; through this unifying process it makes us a “we” which transcends our divisions and makes us one, until in the end God is “all in all” (1 Cor 15:28) [18]."
Furthermore, he goes on to state this powerful word that would seem to undue much of what we in America now understand the task of the "church" to be about:
"Love of neighbour, grounded in the love of God, is first and foremost a responsibility for each individual member of the faithful, but it is also a responsibility for the entire ecclesial community at every level: from the local community to the particular Church and to the Church universal in its entirety. As a community, the Church must practise love. Love thus needs to be organized if it is to be an ordered service to the community. The awareness of this responsibility has had a constitutive relevance in the Church from the beginning: “All who believed were together and had all things in common; and they sold their possessions and goods and distributed them to all, as any had need” (Acts 2:44-5). In these words, Saint Luke provides a kind of definition of the Church, whose constitutive elements include fidelity to the “teaching of the Apostles”, “communion” (koinonia), “the breaking of the bread” and “prayer” (cf. Acts 2:42). The element of “communion” (koinonia) is not initially defined, but appears concretely in the verses quoted above: it consists in the fact that believers hold all things in common and that among them, there is no longer any distinction between rich and poor (cf. also Acts 4:32-37). As the Church grew, this radical form of material communion could not in fact be preserved. But its essential core remained: within the community of believers there can never be room for a poverty that denies anyone what is needed for a dignified life [20]."
... come on!!! After that, who of you doesn't want run to your nearest catholic church and become re-baptized... Ok, maybe that's a little too zealous, but we as protestants have so far to go in our understanding of social ethics. Perhaps, you as group could use this conversation as a means to enter into ecumenical dialog with the catholic church in Tulsa... just a thought.
--dan
That's good stuff, Dan ... And exactly to the point that Luke seems to be making over and over and over again in his theological outlook: that coming into the Messianic reality means participating in the shape and texture of that reality: i.e., to love the Messiah is to enact and extend his Jubilary announcement into the world.
It's been fascinating to see some of the results of this teaching emphasis not only in our c/c community, but in the wider PC community. Two brief examples. (1) After the message last Sunday we took up a church-wide collection to help another ministry here in town pay for turkeys for their thanksgiving outreach. We collected an amazing $3200!
More to the point that you make in your Benedict quote, (2) One of the small groups at PC decided after hearing last Sunday's message that they wanted to adopt a single mom to provide her and her kids with food and presents for Christmas. Their kindness will go to a lady in our congregation who has two little girls, works full time, is going to school to get her teaching degree and has recently confided to one of the staff members a real financial need over the holidays.
The Nazareth Manifesto enacted is beautiful to behold ...
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