I struck up a conversation the other day with a local pastor who belongs to a more conservative denomination than my own. I'd overheard him talking with another colleague about the other's successful new church start. We somehow came to the topic of missionaries he'd visited in India. He traveled there and worked with them for a couple weeks. The mission of these missionaries, a husband and wife team, was to literally pick up the handicapped of the under caste off the streets, bring them into their home and feed them. Once they established a relationship, they taught these "outcasted" computer skills. These once casted out human beings were eventually able to obtain employment and bring income to the very families that had left them in the streets. This rehabilitation was inconceivable, primarily because no one else would have risked investing the time, energy, compassion, and love into these folks for them to know their potential.
This other pastor and I paused after he finished his story. Both of us shook our heads when we compared this ministry to the institutional ministries we led. That missionary work is where Jesus would have been we agreed. That work in India was a place where Jesus' words, "well done, my good and faithful servants" would have been heard.
We acknowledged that we each knew enough about the other's denomination that if we had gotten into a discussion over doctrine, church governance, stances on abortion or homosexuality, we would have disagreed bitterly. However, both of us agreed a successful, flourishing new church start was a good and beautiful thing. We both agreed that subverting India's caste system by welcoming the stranger, feeding the hungry, and caring for (dare I say healing) the sick were good and beautiful things.
Why does it seem ironic to me that we - both liberal and conservative - could agree about Jesus' teachings? Certainly this conversation would not play out the same in all situations. But surely both literalists and those who aren't, can agree on how Jesus asked us to treat the poor? It's right there in the text. Why do we spend so much time on everything else? Perhaps we have too much at stake? Perhaps we are not as willing to take risks as these missionaries?
However we answer these questions, it seems the key to this ecumenical interaction was Jesus. Particularly how Jesus asks us to live our lives in relation to the poor. My experience is that Jesus also gets the attention of the unchurched, de-churched, and secular humanists, folks of all generations (even the generations missing in our churches). Not the died for your sins Jesus, not just be nice and mind your manners Jesus, but the radical boundary crossing, counter-cultural, love and compassion at any cost Jesus.
Ecumenism, pluralism, church growth, and spiritual growth can all begin with this Jesus.
How long will we make these things about something else?
How long will we make these things about something else?
No comments:
Post a Comment