For a little while, God has been speaking to me about who we are as a church. I jotted these initial thoughts down before Christmas. I'd love for you to print this off, and take a quiet moment or two to read it, (it's very short), and see if it sparks anything off.
Blessings - Steve
What about the poor?
Jesus talked a lot about the poor. The most well known bit perhaps is in Matt’s gospel, ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit’. I don't always read that as talking about the poor, but for Jesus, and for the people who heard him, that would have been a large part of it.
In fact Luke goes further when talking about the same speech, and says it much more directly, ‘blessed are you who are poor’. It’s an interesting thing that the Jews equated poor in spirit and poor. At an initial glance I took it as simply one of those cultural differences, and in fact to say the same today could easily be considered patronising.
Isaiah said:
He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces and we esteemed him not. Surly he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows.
When I read that earlier, I thought about Jesus, and I also thought about my experiences of the poor in our society – those who for various reasons live a life of relative poverty financially, but who also often live a life lacking in opportunity, hope and empowerment.
I wonder if the Hebrews were very wise in equating poor in spirit with poor – certainly in our society it often seems to be the case.
It’s the last lines of that quote from Isaiah though that mobilise me into looking again at who it is we are as a church, and who we serve.
Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows.
What does it mean to be like Jesus? Jesus didn’t come to merely speak to good news, he came to embody it. He didn’t come simply to tell people about their sin, but to ‘bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, and the let the oppressed go free.’
This wasn’t a ministry simply about speaking truth, or proclaiming right and wrong, but about embodying the good news, a new deal for the oppressed in our society – there is someone on your side, there is someone who will aid you, who will speak for you, and with you. I’m sure Jesus statement had spiritual connections, but in Hebrew thought spiritual was not that different from practical – and Jesus had a very practical message.
esus came for the oppressed, and in our societies, the same as in first century Judea, that overwhelmingly means the poor.
So I’m going to make a bold statement. If we are not drawing alongside the poor and oppressed, connecting, aiding, embracing – we are missing a huge swathe of the message of Jesus, we are diluting the new deal of Jesus. To follow Jesus means to care for the poor in spirit in our society.
So let me invite you to ask yourself this question – what are we doing for the poor in spirit in our society, as a body of Jesus, one intended to embody the gospel of Jesus, what new deal are we bringing to the poor?
Jesus – thanks
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