Tag: poverty

Mission in the Bible 10: A Beautiful Act at the Beautiful Gate (Acts 3:1-26)

Acts 3:1-26

A retired minister friend of mine loves posting puns and one-liner jokes on Facebook. I’m sure he gets some from the comedian Tim Vine. Here are a few of his recent ones:

People say smoking will give you diseases…But how can they say that when it cures salmon?

A slice of apple pie is £2.50 in Jamaica and £3 in the Bahamas…There are the pie rates of the Caribbean.

The other day I bought a thesaurus, but when I got home and opened it, all the pages were blank…I have no words to describe how angry I am.

My friend said: “You have a BA, a Masters and a PhD, but you still act like an idiot…” It was a third degree burn.

My girlfriend said: “You act like a detective too much. I want to split up…” “Good idea,” I replied. “That way we can cover more ground.”

Why start this sermon with a series of puns? Because the episode we’ve read from Acts chapter 3 is like an extended pun. Is the story about healing or about salvation? A man is healed, but then Peter calls the crowd to repentance and faith in Jesus as a result. Which is it: healing or salvation?

We shall find the pun made more explicit in the next chapter when Peter, under interrogation, says that salvation is found in no other name than that of Jesus. Except the word translated ‘salvation’ can also be translated – guess what? – ‘healing.’

And the breadth of what is covered in our story today shows us something of God’s big story of redemption, the story we are called to share in as part of his mission. God’s kingdom is breaking in, making all things new, and in Acts chapter 3 we see some examples of that. We won’t cover everything, but there are some pointers to the comprehensiveness of God’s renewing work in Christ.

So firstly, salvation is physical:

This is straightforward in the text: the lame man is healed. There is something innately physical and material about the Christian faith. It begins with creation. It involves a Saviour who heals and feeds people. It turns on the bodily resurrection of that Saviour. Its goal is a new creation, with new heavens and a new earth.

So no wonder salvation expresses itself in physical terms, such as a healing here. God cares about all that he has made. That’s why you’ll hear me saying from time to time that at the time of a death or a funeral the popularly expressed idea that the body was just a shell for the soul and it’s only the soul that matters is an unchristian thought.

If we are going to witness to God’s salvation, one thing we are going to do is engage with their physical well-being and where that needs improvement.

Should we pray for the gift of healing and pray for people to be healed? Yes, why not? But let’s not be limited to that. There are all sorts of things we can do. This is why it’s right that Christians get involved with food banks, and it’s significant that the biggest food bank organisation in the UK, the Trussell Trust, has a Christian foundation. At the same time, it’s also right that we ask the awkward questions about what kind of nation we have become where so many people depend on food banks.

It’s why it’s right that we get involved in issues like disaster relief, be it earthquakes, famines, wars, or any other cause. And when we do so, we seek not only to bring short-term alleviation but also long-term solutions to prevent recurrences where we can.

It’s why it’s right that we get involved in combating climate change – although I prefer the more positive description of ‘creation care.’ We don’t simply do this because we need to save on our energy bills, important as that is. We do it because this is God’s creation that has been damaged and that he intends to make new again. So when this Methodist circuit starts making plans to support churches in making their buildings ‘greener’ (and the ministers’ manses, too!) then I say that’s a proper expression of our belief that salvation is physical.

There will be many other examples we can think of together that illustrate this point, but it all begins with recognising that in the six-day creation story of Genesis chapter 1, God kept looking at all that he had made and saying that it was good. We can no longer say that everything in creation is good, but we can set about partnering with God, following the example of Jesus, in bringing physical healing and restoration to his world.

Secondly, salvation is economic:

The lame man begs for money. There is no Social Security for a disabled person in this society. Yet while Peter and John say they have no silver or gold and do not give him any money, what they do lifts him out of poverty. Once he is healed, he will no longer need to beg. He will be able to work for a living.

In a way, it’s similar to when Jesus raised from the dead the son of the widow at Nain. She too would have had no fallback financially, and would have depended on her son to work for economic survival. His death would have plunged her into a spiral of poverty that could have left her starving to death. Jesus’ miracle has an economic effect for good on her.

And this is why it’s right that as part of God’s mission we in the church get involved in issues of poverty – both alleviating it and also asking the questions about why people are poor and what can be done in our society in the long term to guard against it.

Now that doesn’t mean I’m going to break my promise and give some steer on which party I think people should vote for at the General Election next month. I will remain publicly neutral on that. And I recognise that the economic situation will be challenging for whoever is in Downing Street. I would rather pose the question as a Baptist minister friend of mine couched it the other day. He wrote:

I would hope that every candidate standing for parliament in the upcoming General Election would ask themselves the question, ‘Why am I standing as a candidate in this election?’ Are they standing in order to genuinely benefit all the people in the communities they are seeking to represent… or do they have another agenda entirely? Agendas driven primarily by party politics or personal opinion rather than the good of the people?

If we want to participate as voters in this election in a Christian way, I think that is a good part of what we need to do, especially since so much of the debate is about our nation’s economy. Which candidates and which leaders have the good of the people at the heart of what they are aiming to do?

But we don’t just consider economic well-being at election time. Jesus puts it before us all the time. Blessèd are the poor, he said. Woe to the rich. Those statements are not entirely straightforward but they are still challenging. Who are we blessing economically? We need to ponder that prayerfully.

Thirdly and finally, salvation is spiritual:

Repentance and faith are central themes in the reading. The man walks and jumps, praising God – in the Temple, of all places! He’s not worried about decorum, he is so thrilled with what Jesus has done for him.

And when the crowd gathers in curiosity and amazement, Peter calls them to repentance. You were happy to get Jesus crucified, he says, but God has shown how much in the wrong you are by raising Jesus from the dead. Jesus is in the right, you are in the wrong. What are you going to do about it? He is the promised prophet, and it’s only by repentance and faith in him that you will be blessed.

Central to the whole renewal of creation is renewing the relationship between human beings and God, which is then meant to lead to changed lives. So we cannot remain silent about calling people to faith in Jesus. There may be issues about when and how we do it, but it’s the churches that are the most silent on this issue that are the fastest declining and aging.

Yes, we get nervous about this. And you know what? So do I. And sure, we don’t want a reputation as Bible-bashers, but neither can we be ashamed of the Gospel. Are we more concerned with what our friends think of us than what Jesus thinks of us? Sometimes I think that’s true.

There is an Old Testament story that I find illuminating in showing us the attitude we need to have here. In 2 Kings 7 God’s people are under siege from the Aramean army. They are gripped by famine, and thus the prices of scarce food are sky-rocketing.

A group of four lepers decides that if they do nothing they will die anyway, so they might as well go and surrender to the Arameans. If they are killed, well, they were going to die anyway. But maybe they will live.

When they go to the enemy camp, they discover that God had miraculously frightened them away in the night. They help themselves to food and drink, gold and silver, and clothing.

But then they say that this is a day of good news, and they cannot keep it to themselves. So they go into the city and tell others.

And it is from this story that the Sri Lankan evangelist D T Niles came up with his famous definition of evangelism. He said,

Evangelism is one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread.

That’s what we’re being called to do. We are just beggars who have discovered the Bread of Life. Jesus has satisfied our spiritual hunger, and we believe he will do the same for our friends.

And when people find satisfaction in Jesus, we urge them to enlist with us in his great cause, the mission of God, to make all things new.

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Harvest Festival Sermon: Christian Motivations For Giving

This week and next week my two churches celebrate Harvest Festival. One will be supporting the Whitechapel Mission, the other Woking Foodbank.

In the video, I explore 2 Corinthians 9:6-15, where Paul is appealing to his readers to support a collection for famine-hit Jerusalem Christians, to see what best motivates Christians to give, especially to the poor.

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Truth And Lies About Poverty

Truth And Lies About PovertyToday, the Joint Public Issues Team representing the Methodist, Baptist, United Reformed Churches and Church of Scotland publishes a report called ‘The Lies We Tell Ourselves: Ending Comfortable Myths About Poverty‘. It’s an important report anyway, but its publication is all the more timely in a week when the Royal Bank of Scotland has announced yet another multi-billion pound annual loss yet has managed to pay £215m in bonuses to investment bankers.

Although I left working in Social Security to study Theology in 1986, it is sobering to see that over a quarter of a century later, many of the same myths still have to be exploded. The report lists six myths that are propagated by some members of Government and parts of the media, and which are sadly swallowed by some people.

Myth 1: ‘They’ are lazy and just don’t want to work
Myth 2: ‘They’ are addicted to drink and drugs
Myth 3: ‘They’ are not really poor – they just don’t manage their money properly
Myth 4: ‘They’ are on the fiddle
Myth 5: ‘They’ have an easy life on benefits
Myth 6: ‘They’ caused the deficit

In my experience, the vast number of benefits claimants wanted to work. Their pride and self-esteem were badly hurt by unemployment or chronic sickness. Only a few had addictions. A certain number would spend their money wrongly, but not the majority: this, after all, is also the week when schools have reported children bringing in poor packed lunches such as cold chips, due to poverty. And aren’t we the society that has lived on ‘rampant consumerism’? Very few are on the fiddle, but set that against how much money is kept by the tax tricks of the rich. The idea that a benefits life is an easy life is ridiculous: you try living on that income level. And most preposterous of all is the contemporary claim that the poor caused the deficit.

The report has gone to every MP. Suggestions for action by ‘ordinary’ people can be found here: they involve contacting our MPs and our local newspapers.

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Joel Versus Poverty

I have told a story on here somewhere before about making a visit to a school with our children, where we witnessed a display in the entrance hall about a link the local community had with a Ugandan village. The local people there relied on growing and selling chillis to eke out a meagre existence. Our kids were 7 and 5 at the time, and we had to explain huge issues, because they couldn’t initially believe that people lived in such desperate straits in our world.

Later, when we got home, Mark (then 5) announced at the dinner table: “I’ve changed my mind about what I’m going to do when I grow up. I’m not going to become an author, I’m going to save Africa.”

Trying not to show considerable surprise, nor wishing to pour cold water on his noble ambition, and secretly pleased, we asked him how he proposed to do this.

“I’m going to open supermarkets all over Africa where people can buy the food they need to live.”

“But where are they going to get the money to buy the food? The people you want to help don’t have much money.”

“That’s easy,” he replied – as only a child could. “I’ll open money shops as well.”

Mark retains his passion for Africa. He still doesn’t spend much of his pocket money or other gifts he receives.
Why am I retelling this story? Because another young boy in a Christian household is doing the same. Read Joel Vs Poverty. The difference is, Joel is getting into fundraising for TEAR Fund as a result. Not only has he written ‘Poor Box’ on an old cardboard Frubes container, he has decided to do a sponsored run on 23rd June. He has a page on Virgin Money Giving where you can donate to the cause.

There is a hashtag on Twitter to help you follow what’s happening, and it’s #TeamJoel. However, the important thing is not only to do clever social media things, but to use them in the service of giving and of changing our world.

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The Bishops, The Poor And the TV Presenter

So the bishops in the House of Lords supported an amendment that defeated government plans that would have limited benefits in such a way as to penalise the children of poor families. Predictably, the government didn’t like this. It feels like 1985 again, with ministers briefing that the ‘Faith in the City‘ report is Marxist.

Into this debate weighs journalist, TV presenter and poker player Victoria Coren. In a passionate piece in today’s Observer called ‘Attacking the Church is a Cheap Shot‘ (subtitled ‘Has everyone forgotten these are men of God? It’s actually their job to stand up for the poor), she puts it like this:

It doesn’t matter whether I think they’re right or wrong; I think it’s their job to do what the Bible tells them to do, ie look out for the needy, like the innocent children on whose behalf they raised the amendment, who might otherwise get lost.

The right-wing press that is so angry with the bishops has been complaining for years that Christianity (for better or worse, our national religion) is too weak and small a voice, that its values are not fought for. Now it’s happening, they hate it.

And later:

Their hands are tied. The gospels say what they say. If their lordships wanted to support the idea that handing out bread and fish is bad for people because it demotivates them from doing their own baking and fishing, they’d really have to leave the pulpit and get a job on a tabloid.

And while the Stephen Hesters of this world, already paid 1.2 million loaves a year of arguably public bread, are being given fish factories as bonuses, the church can hardly join in with a move to reduce herring portions for the hungry. It would look ridiculous.

If this were X-Factor for journalists, Louis Walsh would be saying, “You nailed it.” The Bible calls us to be fair, but it calls us to a special concern for the poor. She therefore argues it’s unfair for the bishops to be criticised. They are only doing their job. Quite right, too.

However, it shouldn’t surprise us as Christians. Critique the powers that be and opposition will come. Jeremiah, John the Baptist, Jesus – all suffered. While being on the receiving end of criticism isn’t a guarantee of doing a good job, it may be a sign that the bishops scored a bullseye.
More worrying for me was the criticism by my former college principal, George (Lord) Carey. In an article in (of course) the Daily Mail, he seems to stereotype almost all people on benefits as being part of a dependency culture. Yes, some are, but overall – surely not! He knows all about growing up poor in the 1940s, but the pride of poor people he knew then in Dagenham still exists in many quarters, whatever else has changed. And yes, the national debt of £1 trillion is a scandal, but it was a scandal caused by the reckless folly of big business and a culture devoted to consumerism – a consumerism heavily promoted by the government that nominated him to the Queen first for Bath and Wells and then for Canterbury.

So well done the bishops, keep it up, whatever is thrown at you.

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Sabbatical, Day 45: The Gospel At The Post Office

You don’t go to our local Post Office when it opens on a Monday at 9 am. Not unless you need your benefits payment. The queue slithers out of the door and along the street. You’d better have something to occupy your mind.

For although our manse is on a prosperous estate, the nearest Post Office is across the park in a deprived area of town. It’s the only part of Chelmsford to have a tower block.

And, it turns out, you also don’t go there on a Tuesday at 9 am for the same reason. I know, I did that today. To keep things manageable in our small manse, Debbie sells toys, books and clothes the children have grown out of on eBay. She has sold about two dozen items in the last ten days, and I have been taking most of them to the Post Office for her. 

As I waited today, distracting myself with music on my MP3 player, I looked at the variety of people waiting. The tracksuited teenage couple with their toddler. Already, the mother was getting irritated by the child’s independent exploratory jaunts. The mother and adult daughter. Was one of them long term sick? The short, elderly lady immaculately turned out in a red coat far cleaner than any garment most other people were wearing. It was her public signal of dignity. The preponderance of up-to-date mobile phones, clutched by people whose demeanour suggested they couldn’t afford them.

And I thought, what is good news in a culture like this? I lived in such a place for eight years before moving here. Often, there was terrible low self-esteem there. People had been  rejected, dismissed and ignored by governments and commerce. You would have thought it were a simple case of ‘good news for the poor’.

But it wasn’t. For just as the good news is preceded by bad news as Wesley put it (preach law and then preach grace), there was the attitude that society owed them a living. 

Somewhere in between those two attitudes locally is something my local vicar friend Paul has described to me. His parish strides across half of our middle class estate and half of the deprived area. In one half, he has competent, educated, professional people who will volunteer for activities and get things done. In the other, he has people who either cannot or will not take the initiative to do things, because they swim in a culture where everything is done for them. Either they are disabled by that, or they have reason never to grow as people by taking more responsibility.

So what is the shape of the Gospel in such a place? I’m still wondering.

…………

This made me laugh: British nurse told to ‘take English test’ before she can work in Australia. The Daily Mail has gone all morally superior over another easy target case of ‘political correctness gone mad’ (™) but it is crazy. However, it does make a change from the Mail criticising people in this country who can’t speak English. 

Anyway, Happy St Patrick’s Day to you. I commend May We All Be Irish by James Emery White as a suitable Christian reflection for the day.

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Carol Service Address: Who Is Christmas For?

Luke 2:1-20

Poverty
Father Christmas has let me in on the present my parents have bought for my wife. It’s the DVD of Mamma Mia. You may have heard that this has become the fastest-selling DVD or video of all time in the UK – faster even than Titanic. Maybe it’s more than the catchy songs of Abba.

Or it might have to do with the fact that when times are hard, we look for some good old-fashioned escapist entertainment. Admittedly the current revived interest in stage musicals predates the recession, but it would be nothing new for there to be a revival of them during a recession. Certainly that was true in the nineteen thirties.

In the current climate, how many of us are spending less this Christmas? Or are we putting even more on the plastic and postponing the evil day? Could the Christmas story have a message for people whose credit is being crunched?

I think it does.

Sometimes we get the wrong image of Mary and Joseph. Some people assume that Joseph as a carpenter is some kind of self-employed businessman with a decent income – rather like the reputation of plumbers.  Then we grab hold of the attempts to book into an inn and think of them trying to get into the Bethlehem Travelodge. It’s not quite what you’d expect from people on benefits.

However, the traditional English translations that say ‘there was no room at the inn’ are almost certainly mistaken. The word translated ‘inn’ from the original Greek of the New Testament is one that means a guest room. That could be a guest room in an inn, but it could also be a guest room attached to a typical single-room Palestinian peasant dwelling.

Given the Palestinian emphasis on hospitality, that is more likely. Joseph’s relatives try to do what is expected of them and take the couple in, but all they can offer is the raised area where they keep their livestock. And hence the baby is laid in a feeding trough. This is a picture of poverty.

And later on, when the infant Jesus has to be dedicated in the Jerusalem Temple according to Jewish tradition, his parents make the lowest cost offering, the offering prescribed for the poor.

What do we have, then, in the arrival of Jesus to his mother and legal father? We have the presence of God in the middle of poverty.

The recession will mean poverty for some (although not on first century Palestinian terms), and reduced standards of living for others. But Jesus promises to turn up in the middle of difficult circumstances. Focussing on his presence – rather than presents – will make Christmas a celebration, whether we have a lot of gifts to open or not.

So if you are struggling this Christmas, invite Jesus in. He’s probably hanging around somewhere close already. Ask him to make his spiritual presence known in your time of difficulty. He’s used to that kind of situation. And his love transforms it.

Exclusion
Something else about my wife. Until she married me, she had lived all her life in the town where she was born: Lewes in East Sussex. If there is one thing for which Lewes is famous, it is the annual bonfire. Six ‘bonfire societies’ produce amazing public displays for the Fifth of November every year. You may know that historically, as a town steeped in the tradition of dissent, the Lewes Bonfire has paraded an effigy of Pope Paul V, alongside one of Guy Fawkes and of contemporary bogeymen, such as Osama bin Laden, George W Bush, Tony Blair and Ulrika Jonsson in recent years.

But you might recall the national controversy five years ago when one of the bonfire societies from the village of Firle made an effigy of gypsies in a caravan. The effigies are traditionally burned every year to the cry of ‘Burn them! Burn them!’ A group of travellers had particularly annoyed the residents of Firle that year, and hence the choice.

But several members of the bonfire society were arrested by police, and an investigation was carried out into whether criminal offences relating to racial hatred had been committed.

Why talk about Bonfire Night at Christmas? Because if you get a flavour of popular disdain for travellers and gypsies, you will get a feel for how shepherds were regarded in Palestine around the time of Jesus.

We have cuddly images of shepherds from our nativity plays, Christmas cards and perhaps from our carols, too. But the reality is that they weren’t liked that much. Oh, the Bethelehm shepherds could supply sheep for the Temple sacrifices in nearby Jerusalem, but they wouldn’t be allowed inside the Temple themselves. Popular opinion saw them as thieves.

Yet the angels show up for a group of first century pikeys. Excluded people. A group that suffered discrimination and prejudice. Were the birth of Jesus to have happened in our day, we might imagine angels showing up in a deportation centre for failed asylum seekers or an AIDS clinic.

Perhaps there is some aspect of your life that pushes you to the fringes of society. Maybe it’s a reason for people rejecting you. If so, then the Christmas message is one of Jesus coming to offer his love precisely for somebody like you.

And …
But what about everyone else? It’s very nice to say that Jesus has come for the poor and the excluded, but didn’t he come for everyone? Yes he did, and the message of the angels to the shepherds is a message for us all. The newborn baby is a Saviour (verse 11), and the angels sing that God is bringing peace on earth among those he favours (verse 14).

Now if we’ve heard the Christmas story over and over again in our lives, these references to ‘Saviour’ and ‘peace on earth’ might become part of the words that trip off our tongues without thinking. But we need to connect them to one other detail in the story. It came right at the beginning. Who issued the decree about the census? The Emperor Augustus (verse 1). Who was described as a saviour, because he had come to bring peace and an end to all wars? Augustus. Whose birthday became the beginning of the new year for many cities in the Empire? Augustus’.

Did he bring peace on earth? What do you think?

I don’t mention all this just to give you a history lesson, two days after the school term has finished. I think it has important connections today. Having talked about the poor and the excluded, let’s talk about one person who this year has been far from poor and certainly not excluded. Barack Obama.

Remember his slogan? ‘Change we can believe in.’ As one magazine said, it sounds like Yoda from Star Wars came up with it. Change was the word he kept emphasising. So much so that even his ‘change’ slogans kept changing!

The same magazine that likened his slogan to Yoda also interviewed John Oliver, the British comedian who appears on the American satirical TV programme The Daily Show. The journalist asked him, ‘How long will we be living in an Obama Wonderland?’ Three weeks, or at most four, said Oliver.

Why? Because politicians can’t deliver peace on earth. Augustus couldn’t. Obama won’t. It will be just as The Who sang, ‘Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.’

Well, you might reasonably say that Jesus hasn’t brought peace on earth, either. Sometimes the Church has made sure of that, and we have a lot for which we need to apologise. It isn’t just the wars in the name of religion (although atheism and liberal democracy have a lot to answer for, too). It’s been our attitudes in ordinary relationships.

What we the Church have departed from has been the prescription of Jesus for peace on earth. Peace on earth means not only peace with God, because Jesus would die on the Cross to bring the forgiveness of our sins. That peace requires peaceable attitudes with one another.

The Christmas message, then, for all of us, is one not of indulgence but of sacrifice. In Jesus, God descends – even condescends – in humility to human flesh and a life of poverty, blessing the poor and the excluded. The descent continues all the way to the Cross, where he suffers for all. And having done all that, we cannot presume it’s just to receive a private blessing of forgiveness. It’s so that the peace we receive from him at great cost can be shared with one and all.

May peace be with us all this Christmas. May the peace of Christ be the most precious gift we give and receive.

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Quote

It’s extraordinary to me that the United States can find $700 billion to save Wall Street and the entire G8 can’t find $25 billion dollars to saved 25,000 children who die every day from preventable diseases.

– Bono, from yesterday’s Sojourners weekly email, via The American Prospect.

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