Brerah

Changed

I am writing about something that has been working its way through my mind and heart for the last 6 months or so. I wanted to write about it last week, but my computer wasn't working, so here it is now.

Do you remember being in junior high or maybe even high school, when people used to tell someone, 'You've changed.' What they might have well said was, you are Satan. By this little phrase, what was meant was that person A did not like person B anymore, and person A believes it is because person B has changed. I can remember girls telling this to guys when they wanted to break up. No, it didn't happen to me, because if you will remember, I was the chubby pre-pubescent kid in 7th and 8th grade with an abridged list of guy friends, and a non-existing list of those from the opposing sex. well, thats not completely true, i had a girlfriend for 1 day in 8th grade, and she broke up because on day 2 of our relationship, i said that I loved her. I don't think i loved her, actually i'm quite sure i didn't. I think i had probably seen a movie and seen some guy say that to a girl, and all of a sudden they were so happy. Its really funny when i look back at the fact that i even liked this girl, because she was what the guys might have considered to be a little bit 'skanky.' But lo, we barely talked, we didn't kiss, actually i'm really not even sure we talked, but I did say I love you, which has to count for something. all of this is a nice intro to something completely different that I actually wanted to talk about....

A few Sundays ago, I went to a church service in Nashville at a church called CityChurch. it is a plant of Christ Community Church PCA, and it is in east Nashville, which has the most diverse demographic of any part of Nashville. Several of the members of the worship team were black, one hispanic, and I think one white girl sitting down playing the mandolin. The crowd that night was predominately white, but there were a few of varying race, and many from different financial spheres I would assume. In an introduction to his sermon, the pastor that night was talking about how if we are ever to love the poor and the oppressed, and the marginal people of this world, we have to have relationships with them. He argued that we can't simply show up and throw food and money at them and think that we are loving them, for all that is is a dressed up form of pity, and people see right through that from miles away. If Christ came to redeem the whole man, then why do we think that we can just care for the physical aspects of some people and think that we have fulfilled our mandate and call to show mercy and love to those around us. I didn't like hearing this, and I didn't like it to the point that I knew it was true.

Earlier this semester, I led a Bible study with RUF over the book of James. One thing I noticed in James, and really, throughout the whole of scripture, but specifically in James, is the idea that we need to be careful about calling ourselves Christians if we are doing nothing to care for the marginal people of this world. Christ was so familiar with this work, that it characterized much of his ministry here on earth. One thing that I noticed this spring is that the Bible goes to great lengths, even devoting entire chapters, to tell about wealthy/powerful men such as Zacchaeus or Nicodemus coming to faith and then seemingly in the several verses following, the Scriptures talk about thousands of poor people coming to Christ and trusting him. This is a theme. It is hard for the rich to understand the gospel (the rich young ruler, prime example), and if you are reading this, then you are rich. We have so much to learn, the pastor said, from those who are poor. Perhaps they have been privvy to seeing kingdom work that we have no idea what it looks like.

To further these thoughts in my mind, I have made friends with a Sudanese guy here in Nashville named Folena , and subsequently with his roomate Goker (pronounced joker) by teaching English lessons to him. I was eating dinner with them the other night, and Goker was talking about growing up in Sudan. Yall, it was unbelievable what they went through growing up!!! Dictators would come in and just annihilate whole people groups and tell them that if they didn't convert to Islam, then they could not get jobs, and basically starve to death. Now I know this is not directly related to the poor, but this is all of the same stuff. I had no idea that this happened, I have no idea what it means to love those less fortunate(at least as is concerning physical goods) why? Probably because I was out playing golf, or because I was wondering if I was having steak or chicken at night. Now before I swing the pendulum completely too far to that extreme, I just want to make this point: I am thankful for what I have. I am thankful for what the Lord has provided me with. I am thankful for my parents provision and their raising me. But I am in love with myself, my comforts, my country, and people who look like me. What does it really mean to repent of the American dream(as Derek Webb sings of it)? I think we stop too short in saying that we refuse to let money drive us. I think that it means that we have to stop seeing ourselves as the only significant people in our worlds. Scoff all we want, but that is what we do. When was the last time we actually prayed for the poor people around us? I would guess, given his actions, that Jesus did this all the time!!!!

So as I was talking to the friend that night in the car after church, we talked, and then there was silence. I asked her what she was thinking, and she said that she was just thinking as to what she could do around her to love these kind of people. In my mind, that is where this gets hard. I mean, are we just supposed to roll up right in the middle of ghetto nashville and start talking to people? Maybe so? Do we need to go through some type of ministry or agency? Maybe so? How do rich white people love those around us who aren't the same without merely showing them pity? Maybe we should move into their neighborhoods? Lots of people I know of in Nashville have done this very thing, and guess what, they know tons of poor people. Maybe we should attend church or heaven forbid maybe even join a church in an area that is different from our normative demographic. I dont' know.

I do know that the way that I see some things has changed though, but I fear my love of what is easy will keep me from desiring continued change. Lord, please that it would not be so. What would it look like if Christians were to humble ourselves to actually love the marginalized people, instead of acknowledging that our church supports a ministry that helps them. Blessed are those who are poor in Spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. This scares me, and I'm sure if you think about it, it will you too. Les Newsom, the RUF campus minister at Ole Miss, was teaching through the book of Mark and and parables, and he came to the rich young ruler, and he said something that I haven't forgotten since. Right after he finished talking about the rich man going through the eye of the needle, he looked around the room and said something to this effect, "guys, 99% of you in here are the rich man. it is hard, if not impossible for us to enter the kingdom of heaven, because we don't see our need." and this is what stunned me, "so do you want to know what our hope of being saved is? do you want to know how it is that so many of the people in this room can call Jesus savior? predestination. that's it, predesination. the P word. that God comes down and chooses people who would never acknowledge Him on their own, and brings them into the family."

I really don't see my need of Jesus like I should because I have so many things that cloud my view. I think that is why the poor flocked to Jesus. They didn't have the clouds in the way, they had a clear view of who He was. When He began to talk about being adopted into his family and made partakers of his great wedding banquet, people's gloom was turned to joy, because to them(and I would suspect many people today) this was an invitation to a life that seems too good to be true. Isn't that it though, the gospel is too good to be true. Jesus calls poor and rich alike to eat together with Him, so why don't we?

posted by corbs @ 10:53 PM