The Gospel

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised.”      (Luke 4:18)

  

Jesus came to deliver the poor from the injustice of poverty, to free those being persecuted, to heal the sick and wounded, and to adopt into God’s family all those who’d been abandoned by the world. Jesus came to bring them all together into God’s kingdom. “This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world.” (Matt 24:14)

This message was truly revolutionary because in Jesus’ day, it was the more affluent and the religious authorities who were considered God’s chosen people. It’s why his disciples were “exceedingly astonished” when he told them, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God.” (Matt 19:23-26)  They’d taken it for granted that the rich, who already seemed blessed, would also be the first to inherit God’s Kingdom.

But that wasn’t how Jesus saw it.

Those who were honored, wealthy, and enjoying all the pleasures of life – they didn’t need to be rescued and didn’t intend to forfeit their advantages. At best, they were like the rich young ruler who, though well-intentioned and moved by Jesus’ words, he refused to share his wealth with the poor. (Luke 18:20-24) It’s not that God has prevented the wealthy from hearing the Gospel - but like the seed that was lost along the way, they are unable to receive it  and so tend to distort and misinterpret the Gospel message. (Matt 13:18-19)

To say that Jesus preached the Gospel to the poor meant that, by in large, they were the ones willing to accept it on the terms that God offered it.

That being the case, it’s understandable why more affluent Christians would need to reduce the Gospel to a series of legalistic beliefs when the alternative might be to forfeit their material and social advantages. The young ruler would have preferred to go the route of many contemporary Christians – retaining all his wealth while following Jesus along the much broader, fundamentalist path. (Matt 7:13-14)

But it was then, and still is, impossible.

Not that forfeiting our social and material advantages is a legalistic precondition for all Christians - though the first Christian church at Jerusalem did require new converts to give all their wealth and worldly possessions to the church and those in need. (Acts 2:45) Still, we need to be honest with ourselves: In what sense are we a Christian if we’re always striving for material things? And how can we claim to be persecuted for our beliefs if we are the ones denying others the same rights and opportunities?

We can’t follow Jesus so long as our allegiance is still focused upon maintaining our advantage over others. We can’t follow the Lord while always keeping up with the Joneses. The Good News isn’t about our willingness to transform the Gospel into a set of fundamentalist beliefs so that we can continue neglecting the poor while persecuting those who are different from us. We can’t serve both God and mammon, though we can always pretend to have successfully pulled it off.

It’s not that God favors the poor over the affluent, because “God is no respecter of persons.” (Acts 10:34)  But when someone is poor, their life is already defined by all that they’ve lost: loss of respect, loss of any voice in their government, loss of the justice the affluent can afford - loss of decent housing, fair wages, basic health care, safe neighborhoods, an equal education … and on and on.

When someone is lesbian, gay, or transgendered, it’s been much the same way: loss of respect, loss of family and friends, loss of equal opportunities in the workplace, loss of basic human rights, loss of any support from your church - and more recently, the loss of some of your closest friends to AIDS.

The Good News is that however great our loss - God has intervened to help through the love of Jesus Christ. His yoke is easy and his burden light; and we can exchange the world’s burden for his, to lead a rich and victorious life. (Matt 11:28-30)  When your life is already defined by all that you’ve lost, there’s nothing more you need lose. Though you might need to rid yourself of any anger, resentment, jealousy, or self-pity, since holding onto these things might also hold you back from experiencing the joy of God’s Kingdom right now.  

When Jesus said that he was sent to preach the Gospel to the poor, the Greek word used for poor, ‘ptochos,’ meant the destitute: those without any visible means of support. It meant the begging poor. The modern equivalent would be homeless people: those pushing shopping carts, sleeping in their cars, living under bridges, and eating out of dumpsters. That was his target audience.

It might also include many gays and lesbians who were emotionally abandoned and left to fend for themselves – the teens who were kicked out of their homes after they told their parents they were gay; those who were abandoned by their friends, beaten up and ridiculed at school; those who’ve been slandered, scapegoated, and rejected by their own churches. It was specifically for these folks that Jesus came to preach the Gospel – not because they’re any better than other folks, but because they’re most in need of hearing the Good News, and consequently, most able to receive it with joy. (James 2:5)

We tend to look at poverty and oppression as two separate issues, though the Bible interprets poverty as another form of oppression and the result of breaking God’s law. (Deut 15:7-9) By preaching the Gospel, Jesus was responding to a socio-economic crisis that had grown much more appalling during his lifetime. The heavy taxes collected by Rome, to fund their colonial expansion, had been especially onerous on the working poor. They often lost the small plots of land that had been in their family for generations; many became homeless and started begging in the streets.

The immediate object of Jesus’ ministry was to establish a measure of social and economic justice. God is much more concerned about how we are living together and treat one another than He cares about all our various theologies and particular styles of worship. How we are worshiping God is a reflection of how we are treating one another – they’re two sides of the same coin. It’s impossible to worship God correctly while ignoring the plight of the poor and oppressed.

Jesus directly confronted the suffering and injustice all around him by healing the sick and injured wherever he went and by preaching the ‘Good News’ that was intended to liberate the poor and persecuted. It wasn’t the sort of freedom that comes through violence or by waging cultural wars; it was the freedom that comes by loving our enemies and praying for those who persecute us. Jesus demonstrated the power of love and forgiveness – how it can free and make us stronger than those who hate and persecute us. When we know God’s love, we become richer than those who only seem to be wealthy. And as we forgive those who persecute us, we become stronger than those who must resort to hatred and violence. Jesus came to tell the poor and the persecuted that God had chosen them to inherit God’s Kingdom – right now.

When our life seems broken - his gentleness can revive us and his tenderness gives us new strength. 

Jesus’ compassion towards the poor and oppressed was the motivating factor behind the Gospel. It’s not only that he came to save the world, but that he intended to redeem humanity by transforming the lives of the least amongst us. It’s a mistake to reduce Christ’s ministry to an abstract theological mission to save sinners by dying on a cross. It was certainly that too, but it was also so much more than that.

Jesus was not immediately motivated by a legalistic imperative, but by his genuine love and compassion for the poor and oppressed. God had not only humbled Himself as a man, but made Himself a poor and homeless man to draw closer to the desperately poor. “The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.” (Matt 8:20) And he died on the cross in the same way that thousands of poor and oppressed human beings perish every day - not because of any crime they’ve committed, but because we live in a world that doesn’t care how brutally it treats them.

Jesus came to demonstrate that God does care. He died so that we would never have to die; and he gave his life so that we could experience a much more abundant life while on earth.

It’s impossible to live in Christ and not have the same love and compassion for the poor and oppressed. It’s impossible to follow Christ and not be motivated towards the same end. To give up striving for material gain and social advantage isn’t a legalistic requirement; it’s the inevitable consequence of having that same love, that same compassion, and that same identification with the poor and oppressed. “Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.” (James 2:17-18)

Following Jesus doesn’t mean holding to certain theological beliefs, or having a ‘personal relationship’ that’s always focused upon my selfish interests. That’s not the liberty Jesus was talking about. (John 8:36) It’s impossible to identify with the plight of the poor - as Jesus did - while striving for material possessions derived from economic institutions that defraud the poor. And it’s impossible to say that you feel compassion for oppressed social outcasts - as Jesus made a point of demonstrating - while excluding homosexuals from our churches.

Jesus said that to properly worship God we must first become reconciled towards those whom we’ve wronged. “First be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift (to God).” (Matt 5:24) The injustice that divides rich from poor, and persecutors from those they discriminate against, must no longer divide us as Christians. It doesn’t mean that we are to convert the poor while maintaining them in poverty - or direct homosexuals to psychological charlatans so that you can continue using them as scapegoats.

How can God bless our life if we’ve helped to curse the lives of others? How could the Lord’s blessings come through material goods derived from slave wages or child labor? Was it God’s will that hundreds of millions of children should be denied the most basic necessities so that more luxuries could be lavished upon us? Did He decide that 18,000 impoverished children should perish of hunger every day so that more of His resources could be channeled into producing video games for affluent children? And how could God’s righteousness come by denying gays and lesbians their basic human rights  (which are like basic necessities that people need) especially when it was God who gave us our unalienable rights?

When we steal from the poor to make ourselves seem blessed or scapegoat our neighbors to make ourselves appear religious – how could that be a blessing from God? His blessings aren’t the consequence of the unfair advantages that we scrupulously maintain; His blessings come by forfeiting those advantages for the sake of others. They come once we relinquish our right to whatever worldly advantage we may seem to have to receive God’s blessings instead.

Those receiving the world’s blessings are those who’ve conformed to the world; while those receiving God’s blessings are those doing His will. And God’s will is that we neither take advantage of the poor nor oppress other people.

Nevertheless, He is not eager to condemn the affluent or to judge religious hypocrites. He is just and He is also merciful. Since He is just, the poor and persecuted can receive the joy and peace of God’s Kingdom right now through the love of Jesus Christ, and one day they’ll be honored in heaven. (Luke 6:20-24) And because He is also merciful, He continues being patient with those who take advantage of them so that some may yet change their mind. Although more often than not, they seem to mistake His patience for a blessing, inasmuch as they’ve reduced His blessings to material things. And since they don’t possess the same quality of mercy, they will often try to prove they are religious by condemning and comparing  themselves to others. Yet in seeking to condemn and exclude others from God’s Kingdom, they’ve condemned and excluded themselves. (Luke 6:37)

That’s not to say that every Christian must forfeit all their worldly possessions - to be a monk, missionary, or charity aid worker. Not everyone has been blessed with that level of faith. Though we all need to look at whether, and to what degree, our lifestyle may be part of someone else’s problem. We need to examine who’s really paying the price for the affluence we enjoy. Many Christians have limited their social responsibility to opposing abortion and the homosexual lifestyle. They are careful to define their faith by things that will never cost them anything. But by neglecting the poor and making intolerance their most distinctive quality, they’ve turned the Gospel completely on its head. 

According to the gospel preached in many churches today, Jesus made a serious error: Rather than taxing the wealthy young job-creator to create another entitlement for the shiftless poor, he should have inquired as to whether he opposed the homosexual lifestyle. The ‘Good News’ that was originally intended for the poor and oppressed has been completely transformed into great news for the greedy and homophobic: permission to continue defrauding the poor so long as they bash homosexuals.