The Prayer of Francis of Assisi

What if we all lived this out? The world would be a different place.


Lord, make me an instrument of your peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
Amen.

Check Yourself

I can recall numerous times on our journey when someone would strike up a conversation with me between church services, or at prayer meetings. It would usually start off with something along the lines of "So why do you serve the homeless?" I could usually sense some sort of agenda in the question, something that wanted to be said. There was a slice of antagonism in their voice, a dash of cynicism about the validity of serving the poor. My response spoke directly to the fact that Christ called us to, and that personally I try to see Jesus in each and every person I meet (Matthew 25:40). That usually wasn't enough, the conversation would awkwardly make a right turn and the typical generalization would be thrown out - "many of them are there because they want to be." Then the commonly heard story about the guy who makes $40,000 a year while begging for change. At the end of each day he walks around the corner to his Lexus and drives home to his $300,000 home. Usually my antagonist has either personally seen this guy get into his Lexus or he read a factual article about this specific guy. This justification for not helping the poor is rampant.

This attitude didn't end when we returned to Oregon, it is a commonly held belief (for one reason or another) amongst people, even those who profess to be Christians - the poor choose to be, if they really wanted out of poverty they could do it themselves. The thought that possibly there are institutional forces that perpetuate poverty amongst different groups is an impossibility . . . . for a white, middle-class and educated individual.

If some catastrophic event occurred to my family and I right now, would we become homeless? Ask yourself that question. No, seriouosly, right now, stop and ask yourself that question. My answer is an emphatic "NO!" Why? Because I have a middle-class safety net, I have friends and family who love us and would refuse to allow us to live on the streets. We have people in our lives who would loan us money, would bring us food, and big enough houses to give us a roof over our heads. Do the poor know people like that? Usually not, they know other folks who are impoverished, other people who are struggling to put food on the table, other folks that if asked to give help would not be able to.

Blaming the victim is a real easy way for us to abdicate our God given responsibility to love on the poor. Jesus did not say "the poor will always be with us . . . so you really don't need to love them and care for them, just blame them for their circumstances."

When Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast back in 2005 many in the media began to demonize the poor - why couldn't they get out? Why wouldn't they want to leave? Rush Limbaugh was quoted as saying on his radio show: "Why can't they [the poor] afford cars?" This is a legitimate question when you have surrounded yourself with such wealth that you don't know anyone who makes less than $30,000 a year. Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly generalized the hurricane victims as drug abusers: "Many, many, many of the poor in New Orleans. . . weren't going to leave no matter what you did. They were drug-addicted. They weren't going to get turned off from their source. They were thugs."

This attitude is so prevalent in our society that it is basically commonplace. Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote, "The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina -- with its pathetic images of desperately poor people, mostly black people, stuck in New Orleans without food, water or adequate shelter after all the affluent people had fled -- should come as no surprise. This is a natural consequence of a political and social culture that has decreed: You're poor? Why would you want to be poor? Tough luck. You're on your own."

In our economic system (capitalism) this type of political and social culture is almost understandable (as well as detestable) if for not one thing -- many of these same folks who hold this attitude also call themselves followers of Jesus. People are much more inclined to pay $3.79 and put a Jesus fish on their bumper, or buy a WWJD? bracelet to show that they are good people rather than answer the actual question - What would Jesus do? Would He ignore the poor and justify it to Himself by claiming that they are all drug users and got in their situation by the poor choices they made? Would he put a Jesus fish on his bumper as he avoids eyecontact with the homeless mother at the freeway off-ramp? You and I are surrounded by so many images and rhetoric in our affluent and comfortable lifestyles that we feel completely justified in ignoring the poor. If we do this, we run a significant risk of looking almost identical to the Pharisees that Jesus came to challenge and discredit.

I found this funny.

True Prophets

I believe that in Christian culture we have developed a distorted view of what prophecy is. I think many of us, myself included for a period of time, believed that the job of a prophet was to predict things to come, conjuring up images of Nostradamus and crystal balls. The prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures (the Old Testament) were men - and women - who spoke out against existing power structures and injustice brought on by this inequality. You could argue that the role of "prophet" in this sense went all the way back to Moses and his desire to speak out about the injustice that was being heaped upon his or her people. It is true, many prophets cited specific examples of what was to come, but always IF the people did not respond to God's call to create equality among themselves.

The prophet Isaiah:

wash and make yourselves clean.
Take your evil deeds
out of my sight!
Stop doing wrong,

learn to do right!
Seek justice,
encourage the oppressed.
Defend the cause of the fatherless,
plead the case of the widow.

Jeremiah:

But your eyes and your heart
are set only on dishonest gain,
on shedding innocent blood
and on oppression and extortion.

Micah:

Woe to those who plan iniquity,
to those who plot evil on their beds!
At morning's light they carry it out
because it is in their power to do it.

They covet fields and seize them,
and houses, and take them.
They defraud a man of his home,
a fellowman of his inheritance.

Amos:

For I know how many are your offenses
and how great your sins.
You oppress the righteous and take bribes
and you deprive the poor of justice in the courts.

Ezekiel:

Her officials within her are like wolves tearing their prey; they shed blood and kill people to make unjust gain.

Obviously there is a common theme here. The Old Testament prophets all spoke out against inequality, oppression, corruption and greed, and this is simply a short list of scripture references. For Isaiah, Jeremiah, Micah, Amos and Ezekiel, challenging the status quo and specifically to challenge the mistreatment of the lower social classes was the prophetic vision the Lord gave to them. Their vision of the future was tied completely to their view of the present; "change your ways now, or this will happen to you and your people in the future."

I'm reading the book The Politics of Jesus by Obery M. Hendricks, Jr. In it, Hendricks says that "there has never been a conservative prophet."

Thus the primary purpose of biblical prophecy is to effect social and political change in society. Prophets never uncritically support the status quo. Rather, their role is to challenge it. In our time, when many seem to think that Christianity goes hand in hand with right-wing visions of the world, it is important to remember that there has never been a conservative prophet. Prophets have never been called to conserve social orders that have stratified inequities of power and privilege and wealth; prophets have always been called to change them so all can have access to the fullest fruits of life.

Hendricks goes on to boldly state:

How can a false prophet be identified? There are two telltale criteria: (1) they are silent about issues of social justice, and (2) they function as uncritical supporters of rulers and politicians, rather than as their moral conscience and dedicated arbiters of biblical justice. Instead of challenging political regimes -- and all earthly regimes need to be continually challenged to do right -- false prophets either align themselves with them or say nothing at all.

Pastors, Christian leaders and others, although having an obvious duty to comfort those afflicted in mind, soul, spirit and body, it is also their duty to afflict the comfortable. If the pastors that have your ear -- whether that be when you are sitting in their pew, listening to them on podcast or watching them on TBN -- if they are not challenging you to love the poor, protest social inequities and stand up for those who cannot stand up for themselves, you may be listening to a false prophet, at the very least a shepherd who is not taking care of his flock.

Which "Son of God" are you following?

I struggle as I read the Beatitudes, specifically Matthew 5:9, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God." My mind instantly moves to thoughts of Hitler, or Pol Pot, the Interahamwe, or Mao Tsedong. Shouldn't the genocides perpetuated by these men be stopped, even through violence? One of the greatest theologians of the 20th century wrestled with this same question. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a pacifist throughout all of his preaching and writing was involved and eventually executed for a failed assassination attempt on Hitler. Was violence against injustice best for the greater good? Is it what God would have wanted?

Malachi 3:6 says "For I am the LORD, I do not change." Hebrews 13:8 says, "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever." And James 1:17 says, "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning." I believe this, God is the same yesterday, today and forever, but how can I reconcile this with the following scriptures:

"When the Lord your God hands these nations over to you and you conquer them, you must completely destroy them. Make no treaties with them and show them no mercy." Deut. 7:2

". . . in the cities of the nations the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them . . . as the LORD your God has commanded you." Deut. 20:16-17

"Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.'" 1 Sam. 15:2

God is the Lion. Many recognize that the above scriptures are in judgement of those nations who defiled the one true God, and Jesus doesn't avoid the topic of judgement either. In Luke 10:13-15 Jesus pronounces judgement for the cities who did not recognize and repent. Every time Jesus spoke of the Kingdom of Heaven he is implying judgement, the fact that most will not meet a happy fate, some will die horrible deaths, or worse, be cast into the depths of hades.

Jesus however, is the Lamb. Eventually every living thing will worship this Lamb:

"Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain,
to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength
and honor and glory and praise!" Rev. 5:12

John the Baptist recognized the Lamb: "The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, "Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!" John 1:29

The prophet Isaiah describes how this peaceful Lamb will be sacrificed for our sins:

He was oppressed and afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
and as a sheep before her shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth. (Isaiah 53:7)

And He didn't strike back either, or at least in a way we would have thought. He practiced what he preached from the Sermon on the Mount:

"Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also." Matt. 5:39

"Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you." Luke 6:27-28

So God is both the Lion and the Lamb. Full of both violence and peace. This is a concept I cannot fully understand, and that is OK (His ways are not our ways, and His thoughts are not our thoughts (Isaiah 55:8-9)).

An article in the Simple Way publication Conspire shed some new light on this as I read it earlier this week. The article was titled No Shortage of Messiahs and discussed the peaceful revolution of the true Messiah Jesus Christ. The article recounts the story of the hours leading up to Jesus' death, with some details that my Christian upbringing left out. There were 4 men waiting to be executed as "political insurrectionists." Jesus was accused of calling himself the Son of God, the 3 others are called "thieves" in English, but "the Greek word lestes was a term used by Rome for military revolutionaries." These men were Jewish revolutionaries, who, much like Robin Hood were bandits who had been killing and stealing from the oppressive Roman empire. One eventually rejects Jesus, the other accepts Him, but the third, Barabbas, is put beside Jesus of Nazareth for the people to choose. One will be released, one will be executed.

"There is a profound irony in that moment: The Gospels speak of Jesus as the son of God, or the "son of Abba." In Hebrew this would be bar Abbas. Barabbas. That's right: Two sons of God, presented to the people. Both on trial on the same day for the same crime. They not only share names, but they made similar claims: Both claimed to be the Christ, the messiah, the chosen one who would lead Israel out of bondage, the son of the liberating God whose judgement was imminent and whose reign would be established. And Rome reckoned both of them to be dangerous."

Ultimately, we have the same choice: which son of God will we choose? One that uses redemptive violence to achieve an earthly goal of peace. Or one that doesn't make sense to us, one that uses ways and means that are not compatible with our ways and our thoughts, and achieves a peace that is beyond our comprehension and probably out of our view.

Brennan Manning puts it this way in his book The Signature of Jesus:

Calling peacemakers "bleeding hearts," "do-gooders," and "good Samaritans" with a tone of condescension indicates an unacknowledged alienation from the gospel. When will Christians be honest enough to admit that they don't really believe in Jesus Christ? That the Nazarene carpenter must be dismissed as a romantic visionary, a starry-eyed reformer hopelessly out of touch with the "real" world of domination, aggression, and power?

When we embrace just war theology and redemptive violence as the only way to achieve peace, are we choosing Barabbas over Jesus?