Set Apart- now what?
We still haven’t really talked all that much about social justice?
As we recall from last week, we discussed why it is that God sets apart certain groups of people? It’s God’s desire to redeem humanity and bring them back to worship of Him. He works through an empowered church to accomplish this. (Great Commission)
But preaching the good news and making disciples goes beyond merely talking about Christ.
Bob Lupton, a long time urban community developer in Atlanta, Georgia, said something at a symposium I attended earlier this year that blew my mind. It was something very simple, but something that made a lot of sense. He said, “You cannot skip over the Great Commandment to get to the Great Commission”
Think about that for a second- what does that mean?
Many people have been very good at trying to enact the Great Commission - ‘to evangelize’ - and call people to the altar to repent. Many however, have forgotten about the Great Commandment along the way.
I believe that you get to the Great Commission most effectively via the the Great Commandment.
Love God and Love others.
This sounds simple, but it is really powerful when we truly enact it with the guidance and assistance of the Holy Spirit.
Vision and the Holy Spirit
Pastor Mark did a great job at explaining an aspect of the Holy Spirit this past weekend. He talked about how a filling of the Spirit conjures up dreams and rustles up those things in us that cause us to see things in a different way. We absolutely need this new vision.
With this new vision, we see the world around us differently. As this continues to take root in our lives, we are unable to continue to carry on as usual, tolerating the extreme injustices that are so prevalent in our midst. Our new set apart existence has been established by God, so that with our new vision and our new identity, we will be able to bind together as the church to begin to overturn the pain and destruction of our sinful nature. The church, empowered and equipped by God, will begin to redeem, reclaim, and bring light to those places that have been overrun by darkness, evilness - greed and destruction. We must respond to these situations as we encounter them.
Often however, in our contemporary world and in the church, relief work is compartmentalized. It can be falsely labeled as something liberal- Something for good-hearted people to do- Something for our missionaries or our missions budget. And though I do think that God has assigned certain people to specific works both home and abroad, there is plenty for every Christ follower to be involved in.
As our world has become so intricately global, all of us partake in the world’s successes and failures. No one is exempt. We all participate in the global economy by way of our consumption and therefore we must be absolutely mindful of what that means for us. God will hold us accountable to our choices, and the more we know, the more we are expected to act. Only ignorance, greed, selfishness, and laziness can excuse our inaction.
Poverty/Injustice/Scripture
It is interesting the amount of Scripture that speaks to injustices that are similar to many of our contemporary situations. Most of the world today does not live like we do in the West and in the United States. More individuals in the world live off of direct agriculture than those who do not. That makes a lot of Jesus’ parables to an ancient agrarian society still quite relevant today. No major hermeneutics is necessary to try and interpret those crazy farming examples. 80 percent of the world’s population lives in a country where the gap between rich and poor is widening. 1 billion people still live on less than $1 dollar a day and 40% of the world’s population lives on less than $2 a day*. That makes the references to the rich and poor in both the Old and New Testaments intricate to our life today.
Most of the injustices in the world today are not something new either. As this is a shortened version of a much longer teaching, I will provide just a few examples of current justice issues with one accompanying Scripture reference.
Human Trafficking: UN statistics estimate that 2.5 million people are entrapped in trafficking each year*.
Revelation 18:11-13
Homelessness/Urban Poverty: DC has the highest child poverty rate in the U.S. at 32%*.
Isaiah 58:7
War/Conflict/Genocide: World Military expenditure estimate for 2006- $1204 billion*.
2 Corinthians 10:3-5
Sweatshop/Slave Labor: In major corporate factories (from Wal-mart to Nike and Disney) piece-rates increase output, and falsified documents help withhold the paying of overtime*.
James 5:4
Next week we will explore this further and move toward some of the practicalities in responding to some of these things. What can we do to change our lives?
How can we live set apart and make positive change through our peculiar, God-driven, way of living?
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