God Wants Us All To Flourish

Reprinted With Permission From the Reverend Robert Arbogast

 

Something was not right with twenty-four year old Joshua Edwards. His family and friends were
sure of it. Those who treated him at the OSU Medical Center last summer had clinical evidence of it.
Something was not right with Joshua Edwards. Denis Hoover found that out two weeks ago, when
he answered a late-night knock and saw Edwards standing on his front porch naked. Something was
not right with Joshua Edwards, who lost his job and his health insurance after his hospitalization and
could not afford to pay for his medications. We all heard about it after Edwards’ body was found the
next day.

In a Columbus Dispatch commentary, Joe Blundo wondered about what kind of city we have
made. A city in which a man who is mentally ill can die, untreated, naked, shivering, and alone, in a
garden shed — that’s worth some sober reflection.

I’m sure you remember Jesus’ parable of the sheep and the goats. It’s a parable about
the justice by which human communities are measured. How does a community act toward hungry
people standing in line at soup kitchens? toward immigrants who haven’t melted in yet? toward sick
people who don’t have the means to look after their own care? toward repeat offenders on the street
or still behind bars? and, yes, toward people who stand naked on our front porches? How does a
community act? That’s the question. And it’s a question of justice. Justice in the sense of a
community doing what’s right. And justice in the sense of a community being condemned for failing
to do what’s right.

Whatever the details, whatever the chains of causation, too much in Joshua Edwards’ story is just
not right. That upsets us. It makes us angry. It stirs up a hunger and a thirst within us, a hunger and a
thirst that have never been satisfied, a hunger and a thirst for justice, for what’s right in place of
what’s wrong.

Jesus said, “Those who are hungering and thirsting for what’s right are blessed” (Matthew 5:6). It’s a holy hunger that churns in our gut, when we hear Joshua Edwards’ story or when we hear other stories, right here in Columbus, of people homeless, hungry, cold, sick, out of work, and with nowhere to turn. We know in our souls that God has something better in  mind. We know that God wants all the people of our city to flourish, not just the people in the suburbs. We know that God wants the rules to be fair, that God wants everyone to have a fighting chance at a decent life.

And deep in our gut, we hunger for a city that fits with God’s vision. A city in which children are
always loved and given every opportunity to thrive. A city in which old people can live out their years
in dignity, without fear of poverty or violence or substandard care in an overcrowded nursing home.
A city in which all the people can make a life for themselves and their loved ones by honest work.
That’s what we yearn for, instead of a city of failing schools, crippled neighborhoods, and
shrunken dreams. And that’s a proper yearning. God always wants his people to seek the welfare of
the city where they live. And it’s a yearning that one day will be satisfied. Jesus said, “Those who are
hungering and thirsting for what’s right are blessed, because they will be satisfied.”

That’s the future God has planned, the future God has promised, a future in which
everything, at last, is right. There’s a picture of it in the book of Revelation. In chapter 21, John
recounts his vision of the heavenly city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God
and resting upon the earth. The city he sees is perfection itself, perfect in all its dimensions,
complete in all its appointments, the home of light and of life that flourishes forever.

The book of Revelation up to that point is filled with so much wrong: with beasts and blood,
with disasters and destruction, with plagues and with death. But the future, the future that the saints
of God hunger for and pray for, that future has been guarded, has been protected from all the
turmoil, has been kept whole in heaven. And in the end that future comes down from heaven to
earth, and the deepest longing of the children of God is satisfied. Everyone who hungers and thirsts
for what’s right will be satisfied, because in a great and final act of divine justice, everything wrong
will be supplanted by everything right.

And now? What happens in the time between the present and the final future? Our country’s
conservative movement helps us here. For years now, “conservatives” have chided “liberals” for
having a vision of equality and prosperity that they keep talking about, while they wait for someone
else to make it happen.

“Liberals” expect the government to create jobs and prosperity. And they expect rich people to
be robbed to take care of poor people who can’t manage to take care of themselves. “Conservatives,”
on the other hand, promote an ethic of energetic responsibility. Don’t pine away for a better day,
wringing your hands while you wait for someone else to make it happen. Be proactive. Be an
entrepreneur. Be a mover and a shaker. Be a creator, a producer. Be an actor on the social, political,
and economic stage.

When it comes to justice, when it comes to a community doing what’s right, that “conservative”
approach is on target. Justice is not something for us to wish for, something for us to wait for,
something for us to pine away for. Justice is something for us to take action for, to be proactive
about, to be movers and shakers toward, to be creators of.

Listen to the prophet Micah. “This is what the LORD requires of you: To do what’s right and to
love what’s kind and to be careful to walk with your God” (Micah 6:8).

The problem in Micah’s time was that the community of Israel was doing the exact opposite.
God had always shown kindness to them.  But they disregarded the plight of the needy, counting them only when making cost-benefit calculations. God had always done right by them. But they exploited the poor and the vulnerable. They were liars in business, champions of crooked deals, experts at taking advantage of every situation.And as far as being careful to walk with God, they had made a mess of that, too. They had reduced piety from a change of attitude and action to an attempt to buy off God’s anger and to get out from under God’s judgment, whether it cost pools of blood, rivers of oil, or even the life of a firstborn child!

But it’s all of a piece. Religious practice cannot be separated from the attitudes and actions of a
community, especially toward the vulnerable, especially toward people who don’t get to write the
rules, but only to feel their weight.

So here we are in Columbus. Here we are in a city where public school officials remove kids
from school with too little concern about where those kids end up. Here we are in a city where
community leaders can’t seem to muster the moral resources to deal with abandoned properties.
Here we are in a city where a drug court can hardly gain traction, while the road to prison gets
resurfaced every year.

Now, we can sit back and wish for things to change. We can hope and pray for things to get
better. We can pine away for a city that will look like the new Jerusalem. But the conservative
movement has a better way. If you want to see justice, then do justice. If you want your community
to do what’s right, then take action to make that happen, to change business as usual. Be proactive.
Be movers and shakers. Be entrepreneurs of justice.

Here’s the bottom line. Justice is not an option. Justice is a priority with God. Justice is central
to Christian faith. People who hunger and thirst for justice, for what’s right, are blessed. Blessed
because, in the end, they will see all that they have yearned for finally realized in the perfect city of
God. But blessed also along the way through a partnership with God, a careful walking with God, by
doing what’s right and loving what’s kind. Of which there is no better example than our Lord
himself, who not only announced the kingdom, but acted to heal the sick, to feed the hungry, and to
put right what had been wrong for so long.

When we take action to do what’s right, it may not prevent another Joshua Edwards from dying
naked, cold, and alone. But then again, maybe it will. And we at least have to try, don’t we? — try in
the name of the one who came to announce and to embody good news for the poor, freedom for
captives, healing for the sick, and so much more.

When Discouragement Invades

A Repost from 2009.

It is imperative that we recall God's goodness to us throughout our lives. Otherwise we'll focus on the negatives, on the negatives in life, on the negatives in our current situation. When we are discouraged, our eyes are quickly drawn to the darkness. Amazingly, it is the human way (sin) to be discouraged or discontent even when in paradise. If we find ourselves in that situation, it could mean something is off spiritually. But we can give ourselves to God, prayerfully read Scripture and prayerfully recall all the ways in which he has blessed us, never abandoned us, and it will give us perspective. If we are in a slump, such recollection will reorient us. Also, we should let friends or godly people know what is afflicting us. That way they can speak truth to us, pray for us, and help to give us the right perspective. Also, even if we are not in the mood, serving others will help them as well as us. It gets our eyes off of ourselves. Do not dwell in discouragement alone. May you be encouraged by God dear brothers and sisters.

Busy Service For Christ Keeping Us From Living Like Jesus?

There are many people--children, women, and men . . . who are being abused, and mistreated--oppressed all around us. We can all prayerfully do something for those who are oppressed. Right now, my heart is focused on those who are undocumented workers in the U.S. Close to where I live, many are being robbed and taken advantage of because the perpetrators know they can't/won't go to the police for fear of deportation. How would God have you prayerfully act wherever you are?

The Church has often been guilty of failing to act and speak out when it should. In fact, many times its because she  ignorantly tows the political party line. Those who do act on issues of justice or who sound the alarm are denounced as liberals and demonized. I fear this is the case in America. Although many have said that in the U.S. that immigration is the new Civil Right's issue, the majority of Americans and even those in the American Church seem to be on the wrong side yet again. It's a complicated issue, yes, but sometimes doing that right thing can be complicated. That doesn't mean we shouldn't do it.

 Most of those in the German Church also towed the party line during World War II. And some live to regret it.  Read this account by a German Christian who was there. It is found in Erwin Lutzer's book, Hitler's Cross:

I lived in Germany during the Nazi Holocaust. I considered myself a Christian. We heard stories of what was happening to the Jews, but we tried to distance ourselves from it, because, what could anyone do to stop it? A railroad track ran behind our small church and each Sunday morning we could hear the whistle in the distance and then the wheels coming over the tracks. We became disturbed when we heard the cries coming from the train as it passed by. we realized it was carrying Jews like cattle in cars!

Week after week the whistle would blow. We dreaded to hear the sounds of those wheels because we knew that we would hear the cries of the Jews en route to a death camp. Their screams tormented us.

We knew the time the train was coming and when we heard the whistle blow we began singing hymns. By the time the train came past our church we were singing at the top  of our voices. If we heard the screams, we sang more loudly and soon we heard them no more.

Years have passed and no one talks about it anymore. But I still hear the train whistle in my sleep. God forgive me; forgive all of us who called ourselves Christians yet did nothing to intervene.

Erwin Lutzer goes on to say, "That story, which speaks so pointedly to the weakness of the church in Germany, speaks also to us: Do we hear the train here in America--the cries of the pre-born children in our abortion clinics, the abused child across the street, or the minorities who are daily discriminated against in the normal course of their existence? Or does our busy service for Christ drown out these muffled cries?

pp. 99-100

Extending Grace . . . A Culture of Grace.

This is from Chris Rice's Reconcilers Blog. I thought it important enough to link to. There are so many people who can say things much better than me. Do read it and ingest it for your benefit. Blessings to you.

 

http://reconcilers.wordpress.com/2011/01/27/the-culture-of-grace/

Waiting Around For God

Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. Exodus 3:1

I think of Moses out in the desert wilderness tending sheep. Day in and day out, year after mundane year, for forty years,  he endured the blazing hot sun. His smooth kingly skin turned leathery. Worn out. His best friends--the sheep and the jackals that roamed about. His family--his sole comfort. He had nothing to look forward to. Day after day, as he sat in whatever shade he could find, he most likely reflected on his time in Egypt. Was he crazy to think that he was to deliver the Hebrew people? He must have been. It all ended so badly. So, so, badly. He was only trying to deliver the Hebrew from the oppressive Egyptian overseer when he killed the overseer. That action, instead of inciting the support of the Hebrews ended in him fleeing the wrath of his grandfather Pharaoh. He knew his grandfather and others would see it as rebellion; it meant his certain death should he remain. He had to go.

And while he loved his nomadic wife and family, and his father-in-law Jethro, he couldn't help but wonder what life might've been like in the Egyptian palace. If only he hadn't followed his hair-brained notion, what he thought to be a calling from God, he might not find himself here in the desert of Sinai. In Egypt, he had promise. Here he was a nobody. A shepherd once a prince. Nothing great, nothing much to report of his desert years. That is until the burning bush.

I often think about what it might've been like for Moses during those forty years in the desert. From Moses' vantage point, his dream of helping the Hebrew people was a lost cause. How could he deliver his people from the Egyptian desert? I am sure the desert caused him to question everything he was so certain of before. If he were to be their deliverer, why'd he spend forty years in the desert?  Surely Yahweh had forgotten him. Or maybe he had never heard from Yahweh in the first place. I am sure Moses thought that his long duration in the desert was proof positive that there was nothing to his notions of being the Hebrew's deliverer or defender.

When we're in the desert, waiting around for God, we lose hope because we don't see any evidence of God's presence or movement in our lives. We feel like we're pointlessly tending sheep. And while we might be able to see him in the world or moving in the lives of others, we feel like his goodness and faithfulness are reserved for everyone else but us. It seems that like Moses, we've endured forty years of silence. We've grown old and worn.

Might I encourage you and myself? God will show up. He will. He always does in a way we can perceive him. Hold on, ask others to hold you if you can't. That's what the body of Christ is for. God always shows up. He always comes. Most often unexpectedly--in ways and at a times we can't forsee. If you are like Moses right now--waiting--waiting--waiting on God--tending sheep--feed on him in places you do see him--even if you're convinced he has personally abandoned you (yet Hebrews 13:5-6 he says never will he leave us nor forsake us).

Pour out your life for him and for others. And remember Isaiah 64:4, "Since ancient times no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who acts on behalf of those who wait for him." And also Psalm 84:11, "For the LORD God is a sun and shield; the LORD bestows favor and honor; no good thing does he withhold from those whose walk is blameless."

Prayers for you brothers and sisters. Remember me too.

You're In My Jurisdiction

In Tattoos On The Heart (one of my recent most favorite non-fiction books), Father Greg Boyle tells the story of  shirtless Junior, who'd, with beer in hand, greet Father Greg everyone morning when Father went into work. One day, Father Greg, lost in his thoughts, oblivious to all around him fails to acknowledge Junior. Junior notices and yells, "LOVE YOU G-DOG." Father Greg stops in his tracks--overcome by the love shown to him. He notes that in the barrio, everyone tells each other they love one another. They don't hold it back. Then he goes on  with the story:

"'Thank you, Junior. That was a very nice thing to say.' Junior waves me on, as if papally blessing me as my day begins. 'Oh, come on now, G, you know," he says, spinning his hand in a circular motion, 'You're in my . . . jurisdiction.'

I can't be entirely sure what Junior meant. Except for the fact that we all need to see that we are in each other's 'jurisdictions,' spheres of acceptance--only, all the time. And yet, there are lines that get drawn, and barriers erected, meant only to exclude. Allowing folks into my jurisdiction requires that I dismantle what I have set up to keep them out. Sometimes we strike the high moral distance of judgment--moving our protected jurisdictions far from each other. This is also, largely, the problem in the groupthink of gangs. They just can't seem to see one another as residing in the same jurisdiction. 'We are the guys who hate those guys' is the self-defining assertion of every gang. The challenge is to get them to abandon the territory of their gang and replace it with a turf more ample, inclusive, and as expansive of God's own view of things."

Later on, Father Greg says that God's jurisdiction is " an expansive location . . . a place of endless love."

pp. 130 and 145.

Life-filled Death

Age creeps over my face

Its happening

beauty is fleeting                                                                    

the universe expanding

my life hurdling away

from childhood memories

incarnate friends and relatives

mere phantoms

of memory

who cease to exist

on earth

How long shall I live

here?

Still I find

I grow young

in my Father's kingdom

Life

scintillating life

bedazzles me

leaks out of me

Re enters me

Life creeps over me

Its happening

I'm being reborn

Soul an adolescent shoot
abundant eternal life

streaming in

perpetually streaming in

His life

within my veins

makes me a child again

And I live

I live!