On February 3 we looked at the words of Jesus as he quoted the prophet Isaiah about why he came to earth. Jesus' self-described mission was to fulfill the favorable year of the Lord by proclaiming the good news, ministering to the poor, setting captives free, giving sight to the blind, and eradicating oppression. We talked about the fact that Jesus has come to restore "shalom" - which is the Hebrew word for things being fully functional and whole. Jesus has come to reconcile all things. This total salvation, shalom, or holistic mission of Jesus is broader and more comprehensive than many of us recognize.
So, on to our Scripture for this blog entry: You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrated His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him! For if, while we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to Him through the death of His Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! Not only is this so, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have received reconciliation. (Romans 5:6-11)
Christ enters into our brokenness to bring us reconciliation. Christ redeems us and makes us fit for heaven. He brings us to heaven. But, he also brings heaven to us and entrusts us to work with him in redeeming all things.
So, as Christ followers we are committed to proclaiming heaven and all of its benefits offered us in this one named Jesus who died for us while we were enemies to him so that we might one day live eternally in heaven. We are equally committed to the idea that we are saved through his life as our text reads.
The word saved in Greek is "sodzo" and it means whole - it's the equivalent of the Hebrew "shalom." Jesus' life demonstrates a wholeness that we too pursue as a new humanity in a new creation.
This is where justice enters the picture. Jesus justifies you and me and others with God and we bring justice to the people and systems around us. In the book When Helping Hurts, the authors say, Jesus' life and death brings reconciliation to every last speck of the universe, including both our foundational relationships and the systems that emanate from them. Poverty is rooted in broken relationships, so the solution to poverty is rooted in the power of Jesus' death and resurrection to put all things into right relationship again.
The very fact that Jesus came with this mission in mind is indicative of the fact that God knew there was a problem with His creation. All creation needs to be reconciled and restored to shalom.
The Scriptures tell stories that speak of a pattern that takes place in the cosmos. It is a pattern of creation, fall, and redemption.
Creation: God made the heavens and the earth and all forms of life that dwell here. God completed His creation, according to the biblical story, by saying, "It is good." He saw that is was good. The Hebrew word for good is "tov." But if you study the word tov, what it really means is functional. God's world was created fully functional, ordered, beautiful, and purposeful. Relationships were ordered and God was glorified. The state of Creations was shalom at its best. All creatures had freedom and fullness of life.
Then a second movement takes place: The fall. In the disobedience and disconnection caused by the actions of our fore-parents Adam and Eve, what was Good was shattered and shalom was vandalized. The pandemic of sin enters the creation and wreaks havoc.
Relationships between God and humanity were fractured. People denied God and did their own thing. Human beings lost their true humanity and dove into a deepening cesspool of shame. Adam and Eve tried to hide from God. Nice try kids. Relationships between humans cratered. Adam blamed Eve for the fall. Adam and Eve's son, Cain, murdered his brother Abel. Relationship with the rest of creation is broken; the land and humanity are in opposition to one another. Land is worked wrong. Species are annihilated. Pollution and global warming choke the planet.
Let me also add that these 4 key broken relationships with God, self, others, and creation create systemic states of disorder. Good systems go bad. Bad systems get introduced. The brokenness is so deep and humanity's lost-ness is so profound that there is little or no hope of fixing things on our own.
We collectively live in a perpetual state of spiritual, relational, moral, psychological, social, and economic poverty. All this brokenness is the very antithesis of shalom. And at the heart of the brokenness is layers and systems of broken relationships.
Scripture is a book about relationships between God and people.
Creation is a story of good, healthy relationships. The fall is the description of all the symptoms that point to a core diagnosis of broken relationships. And here's the real rub. We are all broken. This fall is us. It's ruin is ours. We are affected by the fall in each of these relationships: With God, with ourselves, with others, and with all of creation.
Yet, while we are indeed broken and limited, sinners and enemies of God, we often take on a god-complex where we see ourselves as fixers rather than part of the problem. Fact is, we help others in ways that actually hurt them when we try to fix.
If we don't embrace our brokenness and work really hard to correct and amend our faulty thinking and skewed world views, then we seriously limit our ability to be agents of Jesus' reconciliation and shalom. The problem might best be described in the poetry of William Butler Yeats...
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
If the story were to stop here, a brief creation ruined by a deepening fall, the most strident Nihilist would be considered an optimist. But, it doesn't stop here! There is a 3rd movement in God's symphony of grace. There is creation. There is fall, but there is also redemption. Jesus Christ inserts himself as an agent of reconciliation to repair and restore. Redemption repairs broken relationships. Redemption introduces justice. Redemption rights wrong systems.
Huge oppressive systems can emerge from one faulty thought even about our loving and gracious God who sends us Jesus. Imagine, someone assumes because there are stories of slaves in the Bible, that slavery is a "normative" institution. Look at the misery that caused - benefiting some fantastically monetarily. And, look at how this world view led to the oppression of millions, the assassinations of a US President, and the highest casualty count war in our nations history in the Civil War. One faulty thought - a world of broken relationships and misery that is still not righted in this area.
Redemption restores creation's beauty. All that is wrong is reconciled and made right. When I think of God's redeeming intention and redeeming power for creation, to me, it is like holding a beach ball underwater in a swimming pool. You strain to hold the ball under. The ball strains to break loose and shoot to the surface with force, and it will, and it does. That's what redemption in Christ is like.
I earlier described the state of the fall as a comprehensive state of poverty or injustice. Poverty and injustice vandalize the face of God's creation. They hold the ball underwater against the forces of hope and reconciliation. Because poverty is a huge issue, it is important that we examine the nature and definition of poverty. In our majority culture American thinking, we assume poverty means lack of material goods that make us happy and secure. But if you listen to the voices of those who live in poverty around the world, you hear a deeper issue. Poverty is a psychological state of despair and helplessness. Poverty is being surrounded by systems you didn't create and you don't control. These externalized systems that leave the impoverished powerless are at the heart of oppression and injustice. Poverty reduces freedom and distances it's victims from opportunity. And, along with the despair and depression, those in poverty often lack the material goods needed to survive.
A huge work Christ enlists you and I to do is walk with those suffering every level of poverty and brokenness and help create a new worldview in which people are no longer controlled by shame, inferiority, powerlessness, humiliation, fear, hopelessness, depression, social isolation, voicelessness. Tragically, there are many times when words and deeds that actually increase the magnitude of these indignities emanate from the lips, arms and legs, and notions of people who claim Jesus Christ as their Lord and who claim to worship the one and only God. And, if my biblical studies and theology are correctly located, that includes you and me.
I don't want to over-distill or be simplistic here today, but poverty and injustice can be seen as symptoms of broken relationships with God, self, others, and creation.
One of the ways in which we of Western privilege have failed in attempting to bring justice and material well being to others is that we have treated symptoms of poverty rather than addressing the disease. We give material but don't create freedom for others to discover their vocation and glorify God with their work. We play God and try to fix everything our way.
The type of deep and eternally lasting reconciliation Jesus brings us treats the real root problems of broken relationships and changes world views toward God, self, others, and creation in ways that release people from poverty.
I have made numerous trips to Central America where poverty, oppression, and injustice are out of control. Again and again, I learn from Christian leaders in Latin America that correcting faulty world views is the first and foremost place to bring transformation to society. The more I visit, the more I see that it is those of us from the North and in privilege who need our worldviews corrected. And, that we have some great teachers living in the midst of poverty and working their way out.
As we continue to work, let's be mindful that we are working always on us, and never on them. We need to fix our worldviews first and foremost.
