The Good News and Broken Spirits

Last winter, some friends gave me the Lenten guide, Forward to Freedom: From Exodus to Easter, by David Adam, Vicar of Holy Island, Northumberland.  The book brought to my attention something I’ve never noticed before in the Exodus story.  In Exodus 6, Moses brings a message from God to the people of Israel enslaved in Egypt.  God says, “I am the Lord, and I will free you from the burdens of the Egyptians and deliver you from slavery to them.  I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgement.  I will take you as my people, and I will be your God, who has freed you from the burdens of the Egyptians. I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; I will give it to you for a possession.  I am the Lord.”

This is amazingly good news!  God has come to take them out of slavery and into a promised land to call their own.  He is going to draw them into a deep and intimate relationship with himself!  But verse 9 says that the people “would not listen to Moses because of their broken spirit and their cruel slavery.”

We Christians have this amazingly good news from God as well: that He is here to free people from their heavy burdens and deliver them from slavery to the “world”, sin, and self, and bring them into the Kindom of Heaven. He is here to draw them into a deep and intimate relationship with Himself! 

When people won’t hear the good news we proclaim, we often respond like a scorned lover and blame them: “They won’t listen because they have some sin they want to hold on to; they are arrogant in their unbelief; they are rebellious against the God who made them and loves them.”  It’s true that there are people who reject the good news for these reasons, and there are others who can’t accept the good news because of intellectual or moral difficulties with the message.  But It occurred to me that there are many people who cannot hear the good news because of their broken spirit and their cruel slavery.

People’s spirits get broken through the hardships of life and harm received from others.  Sadly, some people’s spirits have been broken by Christians and the Church.  While modern day slavery is a terrible problem, people are also enslaved to their own sin and others’ sin.  People feel trapped by economic systems, debt, illness and addiction.  There are people today, especially those who are marginalized, who can’t hear the good news because they can’t even imagine a way out.

God responds to the Israelites’ rejection of the good news by going into battle against Pharaoh and the Egyptian gods who were oppressing the people.  He brings the people into freedom even when they can’t even imagine it.

Jesus responds to the broken-hearted by opposing the religious and political leaders that are oppressing the people, and by healing, freeing and embracing the marginalized.  He describes his ministry by quoting the prophet Isaiah (Luke 4:18-19 The Message):

God’s Spirit is on me;

    he’s chosen me to preach the Message of good news to the poor,

sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and

    recovery of sight to the blind,

to set the burdened and battered free,

    to announce, “This is God’s year to act!”

Today, as people who want to proclaim the good news in a way that people can hear and accept, we need to take our cues from Moses and Jesus, not blaming those who are too broken-hearted to hear, but instead working and praying for their healing, freedom, and trust.  We need to hear their cry, believe their story, and present a vision of true freedom and healing in the arms of a loving God.

 

Praying with the Publican

We’ve been running God at the Pub at our neighbourhood pub for six or seven years now. Through all this time, the pub owner (let's call her Lydia) has been our host.

In the first session we did, the pub was having a rough time. The smoking bylaws were in flux; while Lydia was (at great expense) renovating the upstairs of the pub as a smoking area, the law changed again and the bylaw officer told her she could not allow smoking in that space. Meanwhile, two large pubs in the neighbourhood were allowed to have smoking areas, so all the smokers were going there. As Arthur and I cleaned up one night, Lydia told us that she was having trouble making the rent. Arthur asked if we could pray for her; she said that she would really appreciate that, and we put our hands on her shoulders and prayed that business would turn around. I think that God was so surprised to hear a Baptist pastor and elder praying for the prosperity of a pub that He couldn’t say no! Soon after, the smoking laws changed so that no pubs could allow smoking, and "our" pub came out with a new menu. Now Lydia is run off her feet and doesn’t have any worries about making the rent!

We’ve become good friends over the years. She will sometimes sit in on a session if she isn’t too busy. And every once in a while she mentions with fondness the time that Arthur and I prayed for her -- and how things turned around so quickly after that!



A few months ago, Lydia was in a lot of pain from shingles. We told her that the following week was the Alpha healing evening and suggested that maybe she’d like to come. When the healing evening rolled around, I had forgotten completely about her shingles or our invitation. While we were praying for others for healing, Lydia came upstairs and was puttering around the bar while we were praying. I thought it was strange – normally she tries to be extremely quiet while we are having discussions or praying. (Okay, I’m slow.) We were going a bit late, and I thought she wanted me to settle the tab so she could go home. As I got up to pay, Linda Ruth suggested I ask Lydia if we could pray for her. I paid and asked if she would like prayer – she said that she would, but that she was late to meet someone. I said that it was okay and we could pray for her without her there. She said, “No, I really like it when you put your hands on me to pray!” So she stayed and the small group of us laid hands on her and prayed that God would heal the shingles, take away the pain and let her get some rest. You could tell that she was deeply touched – we all were. And I’m still praying madly that God will show himself to her through healing.


I wrote the above last spring. God gave Lydia immediate relief from her pain and she is now completely healed. At the end of the course, she came to our final Alpha evening in one of the leader's homes. She knows that God had a hand in her healing, but she still has some hurdles to get over before she makes that step into the Kingdom - keep praying!

Proclaiming the Kingdom in 2010

"Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you." And with that he breathed on them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of anyone, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven." – John 20:21-23

N.T. Wright, in his book “The Challenge of Jesus,” is trying to understand how we apply this passage to our lives 2,000 years later

He says this:

The human race has been in exile; exiled from the garden, shut out of the house, bombarded with noise instead of music. Our task is to announce, in deed and word, that the exile is over: to enact the symbols which speak of healing and forgiveness, to act boldly in God’s world in the power of the Spirit. As I suggested earlier, the proper way to expound the parables today is to ask: what should we be doing in God’s world that would call forth the puzzled or even angry questions to which parables like these would be the right answer?

At the risk of trespassing in areas I know little or nothing about, let me simply hint at some ways in which this might work out. If you work in information technology, how is your discipline slanted? Is it slanted towards the will to power or the will to love? Does it exhibit the signs of technology for technology’s sake, of information as a means of disadvantaging those who don’t have access to it by those who do? Is it developing in the service of true relationships, true stewardship, and even true worship, or is it feeding and encouraging a society in which everybody creates their own private, narcissistic, enclosed world? Luther’s definition of sin was “homo incurvatus in se:” humans turned in on themselves. Does your discipline foster that, or challenge that? You may not be able to change the way the discipline currently works. You may be able to take some steps in that direction, given time and opportunity, but that isn’t necessarily your vocation. Your task is to find the symbolic ways of doing things differently, planting flags in hostile soil, setting up signposts which say that there is a different way to be human. And when people are puzzled at what you are doing, find ways, fresh ways, of telling the story of the return of the human race from its exile, and use those stories as your explanation.

Or suppose you work in fine art, or music, or architecture. Is your discipline still stuck in the arrogance of modernity? Or, more likely, is it showing all the signs of the postmodern fragmentation, the world which declares that all great stories, all overarching systems, are power-plays? Is your discipline run by people with a strong political agenda, so that (say) unless you’re a committed Marxist they don’t think you can be a serious artist? Your calling may be to find new ways to tell the story of redemption; to create fresh symbols which will speak of a home for the homeless, the end of exile, the re-planting of the garden, the rebuilding of the house. I knew a young artist who became a Christian at Oxford, and struggled with tutors who despised him for it. His answer, to his own surprise, was to start painting abstract icons. They were spectacular and deeply beautiful. He didn’t tell his tutors what they were until they had expressed their surprise and delight at this new turn in his work, drawing forth from him quite fresh creativity which they couldn’t help but admire. Then, when they asked what was going on, he told them the story.

So we could go on. If you are to shape your world in following Christ it isn’t enough to say that being a Christian and being a professional or an academic (to address these worlds particularly for the moment) is about high moral standards, using every opportunity to talk to people about Jesus, praying for or with your students, being fair in your marking and assessment, and honest in your speaking. All that is vital and necessary, but you are called to something much, much more. You are called, prayerfully, to discern where in your discipline the human project is showing signs of exile, and humbly and boldly to act symbolically in ways which declare that the powers have been defeated, that the Kingdom has come in Jesus the Jewish Messiah, that the new way of being human has been unveiled; and to be prepared to tell the story which explains what these symbols are all about. And in all this you are to declare, in symbol and praxis, in story and articulate answers to questions, that Jesus is Lord and Caesar isn’t; that Jesus is Lord and Marx, Freud and Nietzsche aren’t; that Jesus is Lord and neither modernity nor postmodernity are. When Paul spoke of the gospel he wasn’t talking primarily about a system of salvation, but about the announcement, in symbol and word, that Jesus is the true Lord of the world, the true light of the world.

From N.T. Wright, “The Challenge of Jesus” p.143-4

Good News!

If “convincing people of their need” is not our first step in proclaiming good news to the poor, what is the first step? (See last post) I think that there are two answers to that.

First, I do believe that everyone needs the Gospel, and when we listen to people, sooner or later they might explain to us when and how the Gospel sounds like good news to them. I remember in a discussion in university, Don Posterski said, “Evangelism is listening.” I think that he was right: evangelism is about listening to our friends, and listening to the Spirit to hear where the Good News sounds like good news. This kind of listening is hard to do among the poor if we continue in a power-imbalanced relationship with them. We need to be with the poor to listen to them. We serve with and among the poor. We cannot listen if we are only providing a service to the poor (as "benefactors") and then stepping back again, out of relationship.

The second starting point is not just a proclamation but a demonstration of the Gospel. I’ve been musing about Paul & Silas’ interaction with the jailer in Philippi as described in Acts 16. Paul & Silas are beaten and jailed for negatively impacting some businessmen’s bottom line by freeing a slave girl from a demon. In chains, they sing praises to God. God shakes the jail so that the doors fly open. In those days, if a jailer lost his prisoners, he would suffer the sentence of the prisoner or he would be killed. Paul & Silas’ jailer sees that the doors have been opened and he pulls out his sword to kill himself rather than die at the hands of an executioner. Paul calls out, "Don't harm yourself! We are all here!" The jailer got a torch and ran inside. Badly shaken, he collapsed in front of Paul and Silas. He led them out of the jail and asked, "Sirs, what do I have to do to be saved?" Aren’t those the words that we’d all love to hear? “What must I do to be saved?” That is when the Gospel becomes good news to the ears of the listener.

How does the jailer get to that question? He is a pagan jailer – any understanding that he might have of the One God, or of Jesus Christ, would have come through possibly hearing the content of Paul & Silas’ hymns of praise. He comes to the question because of encountering the power of God and the kindness of Christians. The only thing that he knows about the God of Paul & Silas is that He can open jail cells. The only thing that he knows about Jesus’ followers is that they just saved his life by sacrificially staying in the open prison. Knowing these two things, he wants "in" – he wants to follow, too.

I believe that if we bring our friends to a place where they can encounter the power of God & the sacrificial kindness of Christians, they are much more likely to ask that question, “What must I do to be saved?” In ministry to the poor, this means that we need to express all the gifts of the Spirit with them – God shows His power through healing, prophesy, words of wisdom and knowledge, Spirit-empowered help and encouragement. If nothing else, we can introduce people to the powerful presence of God through prayer. It also means that our kindness to the poor must go beyond charity. We must learn to “spend ourselves on behalf of the poor.” (Isaiah 58:10) Paul reminds us in Romans 2:4 that it is God’s kindness that leads us to repentance. Most people will experience God’s kindness through the kindness of Christians.

Good News?

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…