A Commonwealth of Care

We come into life not by self circumstance and act but by circumstance and act of others. We are not born to be dependent, yet we are born dependent. I was born dependent. The person next to me was born dependent, as was the person far from me. On whom do I depend? On whom do they depend? On each of us. On all of us. Hence, we are born to care, to care for each of us, for all of us. We come into life not facing self but facing another, needing another, to care for one another. From beginning to end, we are born to live in a commonwealth of care. And so we should.

Who Will Be in the Kingdom?

I had better accustom myself to the truth that there will be people in the kingdom of God I think should not be there; people I do not want to be there. If I cannot acknowledge that this will be true, then I have simply made the kingdom over in my own image. If however, by grace, I come to the point where I can admit that this will be true, I had better start now learning how to love, in the cruciform not sentimental sense, beyond my own reflection. For the full humbling depth of this truth is that some other person in this world must grow accustomed to the prospect that I may well be among those in the kingdom of God, even though that person thinks I should not be there, that person does not want me there. How can this be? In the end the inclusion of at least some we consider the unlikely, the unliked, is likely, as it is God’s kingdom, not ours; and he lovingly embraces, in the cruciform sense, where and when we do not. This we must account as grace and mercy, as good news; for if we look truly within, we must sooner or later realize, however excruciatingly, there is no deserving of residence in that kingdom.

A Measure for the Day

Considering the world around me -- near and far, today and tomorrow -- how can I live daily in greatest benefaction and least detriment, in even the smallest things?

The Disordering and Healing of Love

God is love. Hence, love is good. Yet, in our sin, we often turn love from a good to a wrong. How does love become disordered in us? We love that which we ought not love. And where we love what we ought, we love in ways we ought not. At the very core of our being then, where what ought to be most good goes most wrong, we need the cruciform grace of salvation, of healing, to order love rightly, as God is love.

Some Thoughts on James 2:1-13

Jesus summed up the way his followers should live in a twofold love commandment: Love God with the entirety of your being; love your neighbor as yourself. The first love begets the second love. The second love reflects and expresses the authenticity of the first love.

James assumes and applies this twofold love commandment in writing to the community of Jesus-followers in those first years after the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus. “You believe in Jesus as Messiah and Lord,” he says, “then love your neighbor as yourself.”

That sounds grand, but how do we love our neighbor as our self? James gives us one concrete, highly practical way to love our neighbor: Do not show favoritism to those who are rich in worldly terms. Success and wealth as measured in terms of our worldly culture – money, clothes, jewelry, property, popularity, physical appearance, and so on – are not God’s marks of favor. God favors those who are poor in worldly terms. He lavishes them with richness of faith – with trust, hope, and love. These are their assets. These are true riches. (Compare Matthew 5:3 and Luke 6:20.)

Clearly even in James’s time, so close to Jesus’ sojourn on earth, the love commandment was a challenge. When believers gathered for worship, they tended to show favor to the wealthy and disdain for the poor. James warned that this pattern of thinking and behaving contradicted the twofold love commandment of love for neighbor and love for God.

Do we show this kind of favoritism today? In what ways? Why might we do this? I suspect that we do it because – in too many ways shaped as much as by our culture as by the kingdom of God – we desire to possess the cultural marks of favor for our self. We envy worldly riches in others because we want them for our self. Consciously or unconsciously, we betray this cultural pattern of thinking and behaving when we show favoritism to those who possess worldly riches.

Yet God wants to humble us in order to exalt us with true richness – richness of trust, hope, and love in him. When we possess true riches, the riches of the kingdom, we will lavish not envy and favoritism but love on our neighbor, no matter their circumstances in worldly terms.

A Community of Service

Introduction

A prayer attributed to Saint Francis

“Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to be console as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.”

There is great need in the world. Yet it appears that much of the need in the world is ignored or inadequately addressed. So much of the attention and resources of people, communities, organizations, companies, societies, and countries is focused and directed in other directions.

We find a contrast in the nature of God and the pattern of God’s activity in the world, from creation through redemption. We find that God has a passionate and active concern for those in need, for those on the margins of life, for the neglected and the lost. We find that God goes to extraordinary lengths to love and to serve people.

Where do we stand in all of this? Saint Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome:

“I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect.”[1]

There is great need in the world

There are so many needs requiring so many resources and so many people in response. Whether through personal experience, through family or friends, or through awareness of contemporary conditions in this country and other countries, we all are acquainted with many of these needs.

However, the world seems to ignore these needs to a large degree, or to address them inadequately. There may be many reasons why this is the case, but an appraisal of various realities makes it hard to conclude otherwise. Consider where we put our money and other resources, how we spend our time, where we put people in need, how we raise our children, and many other indicators of how we organize and direct our “time, talent, and treasure.”

In view of all of this, the world needs a revolution. For a great many people in the world, the current system is not working.

In fact, the world has had such a revolution. It was a revolution like no other in human history, and the central figure of that revolution wants his followers to live out the revolution. The central figure was Jesus of Nazareth, and his revolution consists of salvation through suffering love. He is molding his followers – the Church – to be the vanguard of his revolution. He wants the Church to be characterized fundamentally and comprehensively by suffering or sacrificial love.

A consideration of God’s nature and his presence in the world up to and including Jesus shows us the revolution that God seeks in the world.

The nature of God and the pattern of God’s activity

Central themes in creation are God’s love and the goodness of creation. The goodness of creation roots in and stems from God’s love and God’s goodness.

However, as we noted, the world is in great need. Creation is fractured, marred, twisted, rebellious. It ought not to be this way – for God did not create people and the world to sin and to suffer – yet it surely is.

In response to the world’s need, the pattern of God’s activity is deep, recurring love for his creatures. This pattern of God’s love and activity constitutes “good news.” It is not sentimental, simplistic good news. The good news of God comes through suffering love. We see it epitomized in the Old Testament in the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53, and in the New Testament we see it incarnated in Jesus.

While there are many, many threads of God’s good news (which consists of suffering, sacrificial love, and which is incarnated in Jesus) throughout the Old and New Testaments, here is a list of some key texts. Individually and collectively, they make a profoundly spiritual study for us.

• Exodus 22:21-22 (God’s care for the alien, the widow, and the orphan)
• Isaiah 25 (God as a refuge for the poor and needy; and the messianic banquet)
• Isaiah 35 (people made whole in an eschatological vision)
• Isaiah 53 (the Suffering Servant who heals by his sufferings)
• Isaiah 58:6-14 (a holy fast is to overcome injustice, to assist the needy, to keep the Sabbath)
• Isaiah 61:1-4 (to proclaim good news to the oppressed) – see Jesus in Luke 4:16-21
• Matthew 25:31-46 (serving Jesus in “the least of these”)
• Luke 10:25-37 (the good Samaritan)
• Luke 16:19-31 (the rich man and Lazarus)
• Luke 22:14-27 (the Last Supper and the dispute about who would be greatest)
• John 13:1-17 (the Last Supper, footwashing, servanthood)
• Philippians 2:1-11 (encouragement to love and serve because Jesus took the form of a slave)

Do not be conformed…be transformed

As Saint Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome, we are not to be conformed to the world. We are to be transformed, from the inside out.

We are to be transformed by the Holy Spirit and empowered by the Holy Spirit.

We are to be transformed into the image of Jesus – imitatio Christi. Our transformation is to be modeled on the example or pattern of Jesus.

We are to be transformed into faithful servants. See John 13:1-17. To paraphrase 1 John 4:19, “We serve because he first served us.”

This is not the status the world seeks or offers, nor is it the transformation intended by the myriad of self-help and self-potential programs that are popular today. Yet faithful servanthood embodies the character and role intended and incarnated for us by Jesus.

Becoming transformed

The question then for us is this: How can we become more like Jesus today than we were yesterday?

There are at least a few fundamental ways whereby we can grow as a community of service, more and more into the image of Jesus.

Growing in servanthood begins and ends in worship and prayer: worship of our loving and life-transforming God; prayer for others; and prayer for ourselves (e.g., for our ability to serve in love, and for our strength to serve faithfully).

In the power of the Spirit, through our prayer and obedience, we can reconceive and reinvent – transform – our regular perspectives and activities into instruments and opportunities of service. Everything we do can be done in service.

We can train our children to be people of service, to be servants. We can provide homes and a church with the servant values of Jesus. We can provide examples of service through our lives, and we can provide opportunities of service through volunteer efforts. We can encourage them to seek relationships, families, and careers built on loving service rather than self-centered competition and self-aggrandizement.

Another way – a possible way – represents more of a strategic option for a local church. This could involve focusing on certain service needs as a congregation or community. As individuals, we would still practice the two fundamental and general or comprehensive ways of service mentioned previously. But a local church could have a strategic focus for congregational service through a particular program or programs.

Conclusion

We have been trying to “paint a picture” of the Church, of what the Church looks like, or should look like. We have been trying to paint this picture because we must ask what kind of people God is creating, what kind of community God is forging. And we must ask so that we can grow more and more into that kind of community.

We know that the Church fundamentally lives in two directions. In one direction we live from God and for God. In another direction we live from other people and for other people. When we are living in God’s Spirit, these two directions are characterized by service. Hence, the Church in the Spirit is a community of service in a truly fundamental and essential sense. It is a servant community.

Consider these statements and petitions from the Litany of Penitence in the Ash Wednesday liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer.

"We have not loved you with our whole heart, and mind, and strength. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves."

"We have been deaf to your call to serve, as Christ served us. We have not been true to the mind of Christ. We have grieved your Holy Spirit."

"Accept our repentance, Lord, for the wrongs we have done: for our blindness to human need and suffering, and our indifference to injustice and cruelty…."

"Accomplish in us the work of your salvation;
That we may show forth your glory in the world."

What would it look like for a church to be known – to God, to the people around it, and to its own people – as a community of service? How would that please God, and how would it bear witness to those who do not know God of the sublime worthiness of God and the inestimable love that he shows us in Jesus and pours into our hearts through the Holy Spirit?

Let us pray for this to occur in our Christian communities. The prayer attributed to Saint Francis marks a good beginning for us.

“Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.”

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[1] Romans 12:1, 2. (All citations from Scripture refer to the New Revised Standard Version, unless otherwise noted.)

Good News of Great Joy for All People?

This is the story of one person searching for wisdom in this season, in this astonishing, amazing event, the birth of a child.

I work in the office of a small church in a congested, semi-suburban setting. Often enough people come to the church office seeking assistance with money or other needs. Their presence creates a dilemma, familiar to most who work in church offices, and familiar to those who live and work in urban and surrounding areas.

Can I be sure of the need? How should I respond?

The dilemma presented itself to me one recent Christmas season quite concretely. Early in the morning, shepherding the bulletin, I saw a man approach the church door. He entered and explained his need for assistance for him and his family. Out of work, he could not provide shelter, food, or Christmas presents for his family, which included two young boys. They were living in the family car, and the nights were cold. “Can you help?”

What to do with this man before me?

“Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. Do to others as you would have them do to you.” So commanded Jesus (Luke 6:30-31; NRSV), to those who would follow him.

It seems to me Jesus does not give much warrant for concerning ourselves with the question, “Can I be sure of the need?” Jesus does not give us much room for escaping open-handed action to the question, “How should I respond?”

Yet we go through prudential calculations and advice, as if they represent the sum and substance of Christian ethical thought and response to the questions, to the need, to the person. And the Church has thus given over this kind of assistance to procedures and governmental structures.

We tell the person in need we do not have money on hand. We know that the church’s resources are collected through established procedures on Sunday and through the mail, then tidily deposited away in bank vaults. Then the resources are allocated to planned, budgeted items — building, cleaning, salaries, and some charity programs; and paid out by check on a regular basis, controlled and guarded by generally accepted financial procedures.

We refer the person to the county or state social services. In the end our biggest service comes in the form of telling the person the correct government offices to seek, or perhaps even in making the referring phone calls.

Good news of great joy only for those with means to buy and sell? Or good news of great joy for the poor and broken-hearted, the blind, oppressed, and captive?

Good news of great joy for all people. So announced the angel of the Lord to shepherds in fields and to the entire world (Luke 2:10).

Can I be sure of the need? How should I respond? What to do with this man before me?

These questions are not easy, and I certainly do not propose easy answers. I squirm at the questions. I grow silent in seeking answers. But then, asking easy questions and providing easy answers do not seem to be the sum and substance of a child, center of the universe, born by the wayside.