Preaching is More than Words
Ruth Ann Stites, Staff Writer
I have had a courtside view of the church in action for the last couple of years as a dear friend, her family, and their church came alongside a number of low-income residents in an apartment complex in Fayetteville. Last spring the building was sold, and the new owners raised the rent for all residents. While still under the state cap for their low-income tenants, this was a major blow to many. Since her disabled parents were among those facing a rent increase, my friend started digging into the situation and soon she and her husband brought it before their church leaders as a ministry opportunity. Rather than saying, “Well, that’s a secular matter,” this group of believers reached out to others in the community to see what they could do to help the residents. At present they and two other churches are cooperating to feed the hungry in this place, both physically (with regular food deliveries from a local church’s food pantry) and spiritually (with worship and devotional meetings each month). These churches are reaching out in love to those in their community, both believers and non-believers, with practical help demonstrating the truth of the gospel month after month to those who need it.
There are two reasons we, the church, should be involved in outreaches like this. First, Jesus said that God loved the people of this world so much He sent Jesus to save those who would believe. Second, we are to share that message. Paul put the mission of outreach, of sharing the Gospel quite clearly in 1 Corinthians 9:19-23. He reached out to people where they were with the gospel so that “by all possible means I might save some.”
Quite frankly, it’s hard to hear a sermon when you are hungry, hurting, or haunted by worry and fear. What you need most is obscured by the deafening screams of your circumstances. Showing our concern for their problems helps people hear the great good news that comes with the helping hand. So, since our goal is to imitate Jesus, let’s look at what He had to say about helping the needy. It’s always good to remember that, while we usually think of physical need, there are many kinds of poverty in people’s lives.
Jesus famously said, “The poor you will always have with you” (Matt. 26:11a). Taken out of context, this statement can be seen as making light of the plight of the poor. But a closer look at this incident in the Master’s life, found in both Matthew 26:6-13 and John 12:1-11, presents a far different case. First, consider the second half of Matthew 26:11, “but you will not always have me.” Knowing He would shortly be arrested, tried, and executed for crimes He never committed, Jesus’s rebuke is directed at worshiping Him with a gift rather than giving to the poor. They would always have the opportunity to help the poor, but their opportunities to show Him the worship He deserved were limited.
You may remember the account in Luke 4:14-30 of Jesus’s visit to His hometown of Nazareth. He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath as was His custom. Honoring a visiting Rabbi, they gave Him the scroll of Isaiah to read. Jesus chose the following:
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (verses 18-19).
After sitting back down, He said, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing” (verse 21).
That put “the cat among the pigeons” as an old saying goes. As a result, those who heard Him, many having known Him as carpenter Joseph’s son, tried to kill Him. The Lord walked away announcing that a prophet has no honor in his hometown. But, for our purposes, look at what He read and claimed as true of Himself. That tells us a lot about the way the mission Jesus came to earth to fulfill was to be carried out. When you look at the actions Jesus performed over the three years of His ministry on earth, you will see the poor of the land flocking to hear him and being fed, prisoners being set free, the blind seeing again as well as many other kinds of healing, the forgiveness of those oppressed by sin, and the kingdom of the Lord announced. [1]
Harold Attridge wrote: “At the heart of the Good News that Jesus preached and that his evangelists recorded is…a proclamation of the coming reign of God, a state of affairs in which justice and peace would be the norm, when the promises found in the prophets of Israel would be realized. The proclamation involved both a message of hope and also a trenchant critique of the world as it is.”[2]
The early church, with the conversion of Constantine, had a unique opportunity to shape philanthropy in the late Roman Empire from a “practice of the wealthy, who contributed to the well-being of society” to “Christians [who] were charged to be ‘lovers of the poor,’…. Such care constituted a major change in ‘social imagination.’” [3] Harking back to passages of the Old Testament like the one Jesus read that Sabbath day in Nazareth, Walter Brueggemann continues quoting Peter Brown:
The sustained effort to care for the poor that came to characterize the church is derived,…from “an ancient Near Eastern model of justice” mediated through the church’s liturgical use of the Old Testament. The Old Testament tradition accented the legitimate “cry” of the poor that elicited a response of “justice” from the powerful.[4]
The opportunity for the church in early 21st century America to be a force for a new “social imagination” is as great as it was in early 4th century Rome. The question remains, are we willing to fulfill the Master’s radical program as was the early church?
(Photo credit: R. A. Stites, Lake Atalanta trail, Rogers, AR)
[1] While Jesus didn’t have a “prison ministry” He went about seating people free as with the demon-possessed man in Matthew 8:28-34 (also Mark 5:1-20 and Luke 8:26-39).
[2] Early Christians and the Care of the Poor | Reflections by Harold W. Attridge.
[3] “How the Ealy Church Practiced Charity” by Walter Brueggemann. This article is a review of Peter Brown’s book, Poverty and Leadership in the Late Roman Empire.
[4] Ibid.
