Last April, at the Mobilization to End Poverty in Washington, DC, I was in a post-conference panel discussion on theology and social justice. One woman, who worked in a medical clinic for the poor in the US, asked (with a great deal of angst) about the ethics of sharing our faith with the people that we are giving aid to. She voiced an issue that I hear a lot from those who serve the poor: “Is foisting our beliefs on those who are in need what we are supposed to do?” “People have come to us looking for food, good health, a job, a place to live; they didn’t come to be preached at!” “There is a power imbalance in social services. We have what they want--do we force them to listen to our sermon before we give it to them?” These are good questions.
Jesus, in his first public words in Luke’s gospel, quotes from Isaiah 61:
"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." (Luke 4:18-19)
This is widely seen as Jesus' mandate for ministry and his mandate for the Kingdom he is proclaiming. If this is Christ’s mandate, then it is also the Christian’s mandate. Then why is it so hard to proclaim good news to the poor?
I think that one of our difficulties is that we have been exposed to a “sales model” of evangelism. When we are selling a product to someone, we first need to convince them of their need for the product. We follow a paradigm like this: “You may not know it, but you could have gingivitis! Gingivitis is bad; it could kill you, or worse, give you bad breath! Our product cures gingivitis. You need to buy our product.” We have been "selling Jesus" the same way that Johnson and Johnson sells mouthwash! The thing is, “you are a sinner in danger of the fires of hell” doesn’t sound much like good news – even if you are not poor.
Jesus doesn’t use the sales model of evangelism. He doesn’t try to convince the poor of their need for God. The only people he does try to convince are the religious rulers. He assumes that the poor already know their need.
Maybe those of us who serve the poor would have less of a problem proclaiming good news to the poor if our gospel sounded like good news to the poor! More on that to come…
