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Economic Inequality:
A Christian Response
September 21, 2003
Associate Pastor Lynne Baab
3rd in a series on “Tough Issues”
Texts:
I
want to tell you about a man named Boun. Boun lives with
his wife and son in a village in Cambodia. He grows a small
patch of vegetables for the family to use and a small amount
of sugar cane to sell. Water has been the problem.
Until
recently, the closest source of water during the rainy
season was a pond. It took more than an hour to walk roundtrip
to the pond. But when the weather turned hot, the pond
dried up. Then he had to walk two miles further to the
closest stream. His crops required more water during the
dry season, so many times Boun had to make more than one
trip. Often his son had to stay home from school to help
his father get water.
Recently
Food for the Hungry came to Boun’s village and put
in several wells. Now Boun is able to grow a larger crop
of sugar cane and increase his income. His son is now able
to go to school all the time. Food for the Hungry is a
Christian agency, and they are caring for the poor of the
world in Christ’s name.
This
is a great story, isn’t it? Yet it raises several
questions, questions that I want us to look at today.
The
first set of questions goes like this:
- Are
Christians really supposed to be caring for the poor?
- After
all, didn’t Jesus say that we will have the poor
with us always?
- Aren’t
some poor people lazy?
- If
we give them things, won’t that created dependency
and lack of responsibility?
Then
there’s a second major question:
- Isn’t
evangelism more important than caring for the poor? Isn’t it most important
to consider a person’s eternal destination rather
than their economic situation on earth?
Suppose
that we become convinced that indeed God calls us to care
for the poor. How do we do it without becoming overwhelmed?
The needs are so great. Can our paltry contributions really
make any difference?
Last
week Dan gave us guidelines as we look at the Bible to
answer difficult questions. He talked about four things
to do, and several of those things will be important to
us today as we consider these questions. Here are his four
things:
- Ask
questions. Well, I’ve already done that!
- Read
together. Consider how other Christians answer the questions.
- Read
all of Scripture. Don’t look at only
one or two verses to make a decision.
- Read
first to understand what the Scripture meant
to the people who first heard it.
Let’s
look at my first set of questions. Does God really want
us to care for the poor?
In
one verse, Jesus did say that we will have the poor with
us always. Here’s where we need to look at the whole
of scripture and not just one verse. I could take this
whole sermon to talk about the ways scholars have discussed
that verse. I’ll just say that it is a difficult
verse with many possible interpretations.
There
is a minor theme in the Old Testament that material wealth
is a blessing from God that comes to people who deserve
it. Many American Christians have looked at scriptures
supporting this idea and have come to the conclusion that
American Christians are wealthy because of God’s
blessing. Therefore we have no responsibility to those
who are not similarly blessed.
Again,
we need to look at the whole of scripture. God’s
call to care for the poor is written all over the Bible.
It is a major, major theme. God identifies himself as a
God who cares for the poor and needy. Over and over God
calls his people to care for the poor.
I
found many dozens of verses in the Old Testament about
God’s call to us to care for the poor. I’ll
give you some examples. “Those who oppress the poor
insult their maker, but those who are kind to the needy
honor him” (Proverbs 14:31). “The Lord hears
the needy” (Psalm 69:33). “God stands at the
right hand of the needy” (Psalm 109:31).
In
about two dozen places in the Old Testament, God tells
the people to care for orphans, widows, and strangers.
Here’s a place where we need to know how the original
readers understood a passage, as Dan suggested last week.
Orphans, widows, and strangers were the people most vulnerable
to poverty in the society of Old Testament times. Isaiah
(in 1:17) says, “Cease to do evil, learn to do good,
seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan,
plead for the widow.”
The
prophets are adamant about God’s desire that his
people care for the needy among them. In the dramatic reading,
you heard passages from Amos and Jeremiah. God vows destruction
on his people when they forget justice for the oppressed.
I’m
giving you a sampling of dozens of passages in the Old
Testament. Likewise, the New Testament emphasizes care
for the poor. In Jesus’ opening speech in Nazareth
in Luke 4, he says he has come to bring good news to the
poor. In their letters, James and Paul emphasize that we
are called to care for the poor.
There
is an upside-downness to the Gospels. In Mary’s prayer
in Luke 2, the one we call the Magnificat, she says the
rich will be brought low and the poor will be exalted.
Jesus says in Luke 6 that the poor will be blessed and
the rich will be cursed. The biggest upside-down picture
is Jesus himself. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 8:9, “Do
you remember the generosity of Jesus Christ, the Lord of
us all. Though he was rich beyond our telling, yet he became
poor for your sakes, so that by his poverty you might be
made rich.”
Ultimately
we are called to care for the poor because it comes from
the very character of God. Mother Teresa brought to our
attention the idea that caring for the poor is caring for
Jesus. “Whoever is kind to the poor lends to the
Lord” (Proverbs 19:17). The passage in Matthew is
bold and challenging. Jesus says that clothing and feeding
the poor is like caring for him. And if we don’t
do that, we will be excluded from his kingdom. That’s
because caring for the poor is so close to the heart of
God.
And
that brings us to our second question: Isn’t evangelism
more important?
Certainly
we are called to proclaim the gospel, to make known God’s
love. However, if you were going to judge based on total
number of Bible verses, caring for the poor would be much
more important. I certainly don’t want to say that,
but I do want to affirm Christians are called to both evangelism
and caring for the poor. The Bible calls us to both.
And
in many cases, the two go together nicely. The people who
dug wells in Boun’s village also talked about the
love of Jesus. They prayed with the villagers and volunteers.
Over time, they came to be known as the Jesus Team. Many,
many Christian agencies who bring practical help to the
poor gain the right to be heard as they talk about Jesus
because they are meeting people’s strongly felt needs.
Now
I want to move to my third set of questions. How do we
care for the poor without being overwhelmed?
About
20 years ago I read a book about various ways of helping
the poor. I had a friend then who knew a lot about world
poverty, and I got some very helpful advice from her about
how to read that book. She suggested that I pick one kind
of ministry that captured my imagination and look for one
specific program to support.
As
I read the book, I was very strongly drawn to micro credit
loans, also called micro enterprise loans. These are very
very small loans that help people start a business or expand
their business. My father was a banker in his second career,
so I was familiar with loans and money, and I felt comfortable
with the idea of loans. And I have always had a strong
passion about helping people help themselves. I don’t
want to contribute to anything that encourages people to
be dependent.
I
found out that the organization that does micro credit
the best is Opportunity International. Dave and I started
contributing to them. I read their publications. I got
speakers from Opportunity to come to the church we attended.
I encouraged the outreach committee to give money to Opportunity.
Because of all these efforts, I was invited to serve on
one of Opportunity’s boards, where I learned even
more.
The
stories are fascinating. A woman gets a loan for a sewing
machine to start a sewing business or maybe a grill to
cook tortillas which she sells from her front stoop. Or
maybe a man gets a loan for an ice cream vending cart or
a bunch of molds to make concrete bricks. The first thing
that happens is that their kids start going to school.
In many countries, there are fees associated with school,
maybe for uniforms or books. The poor can’t afford
those fees. So loans help kids go to school, which increases
literacy. Literacy is another passion of mine.
The
average Opportunity International loan is less than $100.
Opportunity provided almost a million loans last year.
And now everybody is doing micro loan, World Vision, Food
for the Hungry, etc. When we worry that our contributions
don’t make any difference, think about giving $100
to help someone start a business and enable their kids
to go to school. One family matters.
I
prepared a list for you of many ways we can help the poor. I invite you
to pray over it. Maybe one of these ministries will jump
out at you. We’ll definitely learn more about AIDS,
particularly in Africa, in the weeks to come, as our pastor,
Dan, returns from his trip to Uganda. Look up a web site
of one of the organizations listed. Instead of a specific
ministry, you might be drawn to a specific place. Just
pick one and begin praying and reading about it. You’ll
be amazed at what you learn. That’s one way to make
a helpful difference and not to feel overwhelmed by the
needs of the poor.
However,
I do want to talk for a minute about this issue of being
overwhelmed by poverty. Sometimes I think we need to spend
a little time being overwhelmed. It is horrific.
Have
you ever cried about the poor of the world? I want to invite
you to do so. I’m going to give you a couple of statistics
that I think about a lot. First, the world’s population
is 6 billion; 1.2 billion people live on less than $1 per
day. That’s 20%, one fifth, of the people on earth.
$1 per day is so low that children suffer brain damage
because they don’t get enough protein. That’s
so low that most families lose several children to death.
That’s so low that medical issues that are minor
for us, like an upset stomach, become life threatening.
Spend
some time this week thinking about what it would be like
to watch your children fail to thrive because they don’t
have enough food. Spend some time imagining being chronically
sick with no medical care. Spend some time crying.
One
more statistic. Every day, 24,000 people die from hunger-related
causes. We all cried because 3,000 people died at the World
Trade Center. That same day 24,000 people died because
they didn’t have enough to eat. That’s wrong.
That’s an affront to God. Weep about it.
Ecclesiastes
says there is a time for everything. A time to mourn and
a time to dance. That verse has been very helpful to me
as I have tried to become more aware of poverty in the
world. I want to feel the depth of wrongness at poverty,
at the right time. AND I want to dance at the right time.
Our culture tells us only to dance, but we miss the heart
of God if we don’t also mourn.
There’s
another reason to spend some time mourning about poverty.
The greatest spiritual challenge in America is the way
everyone, even Christians, tend to slide into materialism.
We are so tempted to believe the world of advertising that
we need more things in order to be happy. I have found
that learning about and praying about poverty, and contributing
to ministries that serve the poor, has done more than just
about anything else at helping me unhook from materialism.
I
want to close by telling you about two Bethany people and
the way they have connected with the poor. First is my
husband, Dave. He is a dentist who works part time. He
spends two mornings a month volunteering at Union Gospel
Mission in their dental clinic, working on homeless men
and women.
I
love those days that he goes to UGM because he comes home
with some great stories about what people have been through
-– addictions, prison, living on the streets. Many
of them have become Christians, and their stories are so
encouraging. Dave says that he gains so much from his conversations
with the folks he meets there. Serving the poor for him
is a huge blessing.
Dave’s
pattern illustrates the way someone can use their profession
to serve the poor, either here in Seattle or by doing short
term mission work. This is a great option for teachers,
for people in medical professions, even attorneys.
I
also want to tell you about a Bethany woman. We’ve
offered a couple classes based on Ronald Sider’s
excellent book, Rich
Christians in an Age of Hunger. She came to me
several months after the class ended and said,
“I’ve
been praying for months about what I should do in response
to hunger. I decided to ride the bus to work two days
a week, saving money and reducing pollution. [The poor
are always disproportionately affected by environmental
issues.]
“I LOVE riding the bus. I love it because God led me to do it. I love it
because I feel like I’m helping the poor. I love having the time to read
and pray and run errands when I change busses downtown.”
She
experiences the same thing Dave does. Taking steps to serve
and care for the poor blesses us. I believe that’s
because we are entering into God’s heart, and that’s
the best place for us to be. It’s a place of joy.
Helping the World’s Poor
Ways we can help
- clean
water
- agriculture: seeds, tools, education
- loans for very small businesses (called micro credit or micro enterprise loans)
- literacy
education
- health
education
- medical
care: hospitals, doctors, nurses
- AIDS
prevention and care for patients and orphans
- child
survival
A
few organizations --these first four have most
of the ministries listed above:
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