Below is a FB conversation that I have moved over here so that others can participate in it.  Feel free to comment and get in the conversation.  It stemmed from the quote below.

Max ‎”When I fed the poor, they called me a saint. When I asked why the poor had no food, they called me a communist.” – Dom Helder Camara, Archbishop of Sao Paulo

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Person One now that is killer….

Person Two Wow! This will make you think!

Person Three Don’t you love Beck’s (I think it was him) comment that Obama is a Liberation Theologian.

Person Four when you rock the boat you know you are doing the right thing

Max

‎@Person Three – the only Beck I pay attention to is Jeff Beck. That being said, Liberation Theology tied its cart too tightly to socialism. I think Mao and Jesus make very strange bed-fellows. I don’t know what the solution is. But I do think …we need to encourage courageous conversation about why few have much and many have nothing. I don’t think that increasing disparity is really God’s plan of redemption. Like Carson Brisson used to say, “Don’t give in to the lie that says that this world isn’t broken. And don’t give in to the other lie that says that God is finished with it.”See More

Person Three Like Carson’s thoughts.

Person Five oooo, i like jeff beck

Max Hmm, does that mean that Carson is really Jeff Beck?!?!

Person Six This idea occurred to me last year in my AP Comparative Government class: Mao’s brand of communism/totalitarianism wasn’t what Marx wrote about in the Communist Manifesto. Likewise with Lenin and Stalin.

Max

‎@Person Six – Thanks for jumping into this. You really are making me think this morning. You are right in saying that Mao, Lenin, and Stalin all co-opted Marx’s theories on industrial economics and imposed them on essentially rural, agrarian …societies. Even though that is true, I think Marx and Jesus would also make strange bedfellows. Marx said that religion is the opiate of the masses. Marx believed in an externally imposed paradigm. Jesus said that the Kingdom of God is within. Marx said that industrial Capitalism would collapse because of its own internal inconsistencies and contradictions, and would eventually and inevitably be replaced with a “communist” utopia. Marx never took into account the realm of the spiritual. The spirit, Marx believed, is an invention of those in power that is used to create a false consciousness among the masses. Jesus taught that we ARE a soul or a spirit – we are made spiritually in the image of God, and that the things of this world will pass away and will reveal God’s present Kingdom. Jesus spoke of a Kingdom of God where conscience rules, and that nothing of this world will ever be fixed or made whole until every knee bows and every heart is surrendered to God. Jesus believed and taught that only God can rule this world or any world justly.

Marx seems to believe that the right economic system will lead to utopia. The correct economic system will bless all of humanity. I believe that God alone blesses humanity. Jesus believed that goodness lived out on earth will transcend any economic system – right or wrong. For Jesus, it wasn’t about being “right”. It was about being “good”. The problem in the Gospels wasn’t this system or that system. That was the thinking of the zealots and the Pharisees who saw all of their problems as stemming from Roman Imperialism – a precursor to capitalism. Jesus taught that the problem lies, not in the Romans, but in the hearts of humanity. Hearts surrendered rightly to God are filled with grace and compassion, and goodness flows out from them. The problem with Marxism is that no matter how you spin it, fallen and sinful people who reject the presence of God are always leading the revolution. The problem for Marx was broken economic policy. The problem for Jesus was broken relationship with God.

No matter how you spin it, in Marxism humanity is always storming heaven and taking the revolution away from God and making it happen themselves, usually with great bloodshed and tremendous loss of life. Marx espouses the proletariat beating their plowshares into swords. Jesus taught that those who live by the sword shall die by the sword. Those who overthrow shall be overthrown. Jesus espoused all people beating their swords into plowshares. Marx taught that the least should rise up and make themselves great through revolution. Jesus taught that the least are already the greatest, and that the path to salvation leads straight through humility and surrender. That dissonance cannot exist in the same space. And as long as humanity (be it guided by Marx or Pancho Villa or Mao or Pol Pot or the Tea Party) is the author of revolution, the poets will always fall in love with the Marxists. The Marxists will overthrow the dictators. And the Marxists will become dictators themselves. “All pigs are equal, but some pigs are more equal than others.” (Orwell – Animal Farm) I am attaching my cart to God’s revolution and to the Way of Jesus knowing that I will not see utopia in my lifetime except in brief glimpses of the present Kingdom of God. It is about a Kingdom of Conscience or it is about nothing.See More

Max

Here’s two quotes that Marx would definitely choke on:

“You know that the rulers in this world lord it over their people, and officials flaunt their authority over those under them. But among you it will be different. Whoever wants to be a l…eader among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must be the slave of everyone else. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:42-45)

“My Kingdom is not an earthly kingdom. If it were, my followers would fight to keep me from being handed over to the Jewish leaders. But my Kingdom is not of this world.” (John 18:36)

Now all of this being said, Jesus also commanded his disciples: “You give them something to eat.” and “Feed my sheep”. Jesus said, “When I was hungry you fed me. When I was naked you clothed me…” So how do we get better at caring for the dispossessed and hungry and vulnerable in a Kingdom that is not of this world…that is governed by God in spite of people who claim that throne, knowing full well that the poor will always we with us?

WHAT DO YOU ALL THINK?  PLEASE JUMP IN.  I LEARN FROM EVERYBODY AND FROM EVERY PERSPECTIVE.

‎”When I fed the poor, they called me a saint. When I asked why the poor had no food, they called me a communist.”– Dom Helder Camara, Archbishop of Sao Paulo

Jesus said, “The poor will always be with you.”  And at the same time that I embrace that reality, I can’t help but ask if we can’t do better at making the Kingdom of God more evident in the here and now.  My mission occupies two spaces, and a part of that mission is trying to bring those two spaces into closer relationship because each space holds the keys to the Kingdom for the other.

In one space, I serve Christ among the poor.  I find the face of Christ among what society considers the least of these every day of the week.  I have very few illusions left about the poor in my mission field.  Not all of them are “victims of the system”.  Many, if not most, are consumed by the demons of addiction and instant gratification.  I say this without judgment because there but by the very grace of God go I.  But these addictions and illusions and irresponsibilities do not occur in a vacuum…they are not learned on a level playing field.  The values that sustain poverty are often self-perpetuating.  When you don’t have enough, and you have no hope for ever having enough, instant gratification makes sense in your paradigm.  When gangs and drugs and teenage pregnancy are three and four generations deep in a family, where are the fruits of an alternative evident enough to be motivation to live differently?  And even in midst of that, I have to ask, why are the poor poor?  Why don’t they have food? If it were so simple as to just work harder, does anyone with a serious mind really think that the problem of poverty wouldn’t already be solved by now?

And in another space, I serve Christ among the most financially-blessed demographic in my area. I find the face of Christ among people of incredible giftedness and blessing who nonetheless humble themselves before God and personally know God’s grace in their lives.   And yet here among the most financially-well off and socially powerful people, there is a poverty, too.  It comes in two forms.  The first comes in the hell that is created when a person doesn’t realize that the only real wealth is in knowing that what you have is enough.  And so there is a constant need to consume and yet a constant and overwhelming hunger for more.  Coupled with the half-truth that you get what you deserve in life, and that the future is in your hands, the door to that hell can be very hard to unlock.  There are more kids in the high school in the suburb that use drugs and alcohol than there are that don’t.  They have never found what is means to have “enough”…enough meaning, gratification, excitement, importance, control, or whatever.  And they have become numb because they have forgotten that what it means to be important has nothing to do with your athletic or intellectual giftedness or who is on your arm come prom night.  It has to do with your connectedness to things at stake in this world that are more important than you are.

The second poverty is a poverty of security – a fear that streams just under the surface of everything.  The fear is that there are “alligators” out there that are hungry and are looking to take what they have worked so hard for.  That fear is a constant hell, a constant fear, a constant insecurity.  Many of these people sit in churches every Sunday thinking that if they get their faith just right, then God will protect them from the alligators.  Most can’t even name what the alligators are, but I think I can name some of them.  Among them are ignorance, violence, unimportance, and poverty.

Many profess a trust in God but are working as hard as they can to feed other people’s children to the alligators in the hopes that the alligators will get full before they get to their children.  We seem to not realize that alligators never get full.  It is their nature to consume and consume and consume.  It is what they do.  Just like literal alligators; ignorance, violence, unimportance, and poverty consume people…it is what they do.  These alligators are real, and they are hungry.  The trouble is that in order to save our own kids, the solution is not to feed other people to them, but rather to kill the alligators.  I watch well-meaning people throw other kids under the bus and feed them to the alligators in order to gain an advantage for their own kids in school, in sports, and even in church youth groups.  It’s insane.  Throwing other kids to the alligators won’t save anyone.  In a way, it just tells the alligators where to come to get fed…like breadcrumbs that lead to the bakery.

The same people who work so hard to make sure that the alligators are fed well enough with other people’s kids to leave their children alone, send their kids to work their first jobs in fast-food restaurants and convenience stores.  Those places are robbed are gunpoint by the very young people who have been thrown to the alligators to keep them at bay.  It is these very suburban kids who are robbed and murdered while buying drugs on the Southside by the kids who were thrown to the alligators and are selling those drugs chasing the very same illusion of what it means to have “enough”.

Until we reduce ignorance to whatever degree we can, the ignorant will seek the blessings of others thinking that that is the path to blessing. They will not know that blessings can only come from God, and that God blesses everyone according to God’s purposes.  Until we deal with the reality that many people do not have enough food to eat or clothes to wear, those that do not have enough will seek to take from people who do have enough…sometimes by violent means.  Until we embrace the Kingdom of God where every single person is important to God, then those that society deems to be unimportant will seek to gain social gratification through destructive behaviors like gang participation and drug dealing.  And, by the way, the drugs that are bought and sold in the suburban school that aren’t stolen from parents who use, are bought and sold on the streets of the inner city where the money goes to support prostitution and gambling and addiction, and to buy bullets that kill kids on our streets nearly every week.  Tragically, and all to often, what connects my two mission fields are the two ends of a gun.  The connection of both mission fields is undeniable, but the only connection that yields life on both ends is God’s Kingdom.

Some of the most spiritually alive and committed people in our missions live and work in the suburbs.  They give from the bounty of their blessing, not just to keep the alligators at bay, but to find creative ways to kill them off.  And yet, in the same breath and moment, a bitter irony of life in my mission field is that many of the people who donate funds and goods to the greatest degree and upon whom we rely in order to do what we do, are giving to our missions as a means of feeding the alligators.  The unspoken motivation is that, “If we just keep them fed for a day, then maybe they’ll stay down in the slum neighborhoods and hell-holes of the inner city and won’t come out to feed on the suburbs”.  I am grateful for the generosity of everyone who gives even a dollar to our missions.  And I, nonetheless, pray for the souls of even huge givers who have missed the point of the present Kingdom of God.  I pray for them because the fear that is always just beneath the surface of every conversation and interaction is still a subtle master in their lives and fear causes tremendous anxiety and suffering.  I pray for them because I love them and God loves them.  It is frustrating, though, that every time I speak to them about addressing the root problems of poverty, homelessness, and real justice; I immediately become suspect to them. It is as if I immediately become a threat.  By simply asking why the poor do not have food, it is as if I become one of the alligators.

Finding “a way” is a Part of Finding “The Way”

Man it’s crazy-frustrating when everything comes apart in a mission and the mission doesn’t have the dollars or people to fix it.  Believe me, I know in a very visceral way.  And if it’s happened to you, I definitely feel your pain. It used to be that when ministries and missions needed funds and people to work them, faith communities went to within their walls to find both.  And when one or both could not be found there, faith communities rung their hands and comforted themselves with the idea that God must not want them to be involved in mission because God had not provided the community with the funds and people to do them.  And then the community goes right back to just looking out for itself.  While there is some truth in the idea that God guides by closing and opening doors, it is only a half-truth.  The idea can never be an excuse for not living out the Gospel.  A half-truth is a lie by any other name.  Matthew 25:32-40 makes no such exception for communities struggling with resources.  Heck, any community worth its salt is always struggling with resources.  I will tell you now, we don’t have enough of anything to heal this world any more than the disciples did when Jesus told them to quit whining and making excuses and to go and find a way to feed those five thousand people.

Matthew 25:32 All the tribes will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, 33 and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. 34 Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; 35 for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ 37 Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? 38 And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? 39 And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ 40 And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’

In these hard economic times, no congregation has enough money or people to carry out this mission.  We will be held accountable for whether or not we lived out these imperatives.   I worship and carry out my ministry and mission in a community of working people who give until it hurts to give.  Our people have had their hours cut at work or lost their jobs altogether.  A good portion of our community lives below the poverty line and cannot give any more than they give of either time or money.  Many of our people who serve in our missions are also served BY our missions.  Every person who has a stake and vote in our community is already engaged physically and financially in these missions – that is definitional for us.  There are no “name-only” or “worship-only” people here who vote on decisions that determine our way forward.  So what do we do?  What do leaders do? Do we wring our hands and look for a job in a wealthier community that can better provide for our needs? I wonder what Jesus would have said about that?  Did a verse in Matthew get dropped that read, “When I was hungry, you fed me until it got hard to feed me, and then you jumped ship and went to a larger congregation.”?

These hard times require a new paradigm for leadership and maybe a different kind of leader than what was required thirty years ago.  Since every penny has to count and every moment spent in ministry has to bear as much fruit as possible, leaders have to draw closer to scriptural teachings about how to handle foot-dragging and divisive behavior within their communities.  Those kind of things might be an inconvenience in an endowed church, but in a church that gives every penny it has to further the Kingdom, these things cost our people their livelihood and we have a responsibility to make sure they are shepherded and protected from being wasted on silliness inspired by the same Satan who is most threatened by what we do.  There is no longer a time or place for repeated nonsense, and destructive or negative behavior.  When a community really begins to storm the Gates of Hades along with Christ, and to pull people out of hell, then we are stealing from the “strong man” who has bound them and wants to keep them for his own. That theft will not go uncontested by Satan. Anything that creates a stumbling block to what Christ is calling his Body to do in this reading from Matthew must be immediately confronted and addressed scripturally so Satan can’t get a hold of it and run your community out of time, resources, and dollars.

And leaders have to be far more resourceful in terms of getting what’s called for to complete the mission.  First of all, congregations have to free their leaders up to be creative, to work outside the congregation at least half of the time and probably more.  Congregations have to free their leaders up to be creative in drawing in resources that may have been outside of the imagination even ten years ago.  Leaders have to be willing and able to network and build alliances with a wide variety of resources and communities.  Leaders have to be willing to do a lot of things that are way outside of traditional job descriptions because the only job description that matters is found in Matthew 25:32-40, and that is reiterated in the Great Commission in Matthew 28.  The mission doesn’t care who gets the credit, and it doesn’t care where the dollars come from.  The mission is no respecter of denomination or any other line of discrimination.  Hungry people don’t read the label on the food you give them.  They don’t worry about whether the Gospel is delivered by a Baptist, an Episcopalian, or – God forbid – a Zoroastrian.

We have a saying in our community: “The mission always has to pay for itself”.  We have solidified this by telling our missions that they may only draw one-third of their funds or personnel from within our community.  If the mission becomes skewed and begins to draw too heavily upon already existing resources, the leaders of that mission will be assisted in finding other sources, and if sources cannot be found, that mission is no longer supported by the community.  Two-thirds of all dollars and all staffing have to come from the same mission field that the mission is trying to reach.  That means that we invite secular organizations to partner with us.  That means we hustle for hours every week raising funds from people who have no idea what the Kingdom of God is.  By having resources from the mission field support the mission, those people and dollars are already participating in God’s Kingdom before the mission even gets up and running.  Isn’t the point to make disciples – people who live out the Kingdom of God?  Well, as soon as a dollar is given by a secular resource, that dollar is being used by God, and that donor is participating in the Kingdom.  Where the backside goes, the heart and mind usually follow soon after.

Is this a harder way to do things? Yes.  Do leaders have to work more than fifty hours per week? Yes.  Will this take every bit of effort and creativity that a community can identify, muster, and empower? Yes.  Do leaders need skills and abilities other than church and theological knowledge? You bet.  Is there another way forward in these tough economic times? No.  We are not handed a way to live this out.  We are gifted and supported by the Holy Spirit so that we might use every God-given gift to find a way to do what we are called to do.  Finding a way is now part of finding The Way.  Actually, it always has been.  May each of you find a way in your missions and ministries this week.  Lives and souls are at stake, and every power in heaven and on earth is backing and inspiring our efforts.