The Confronting Way of Love

 

 

Years ago at a youth camp we had a guest speaker whom the minister invited. I suspect the his intention was to wake-up this group of fairly conservative young people and expose them to something of the real world beyond church. The speaker was somewhat provocative. She egged us on, provoked us and raised issues that were squarely not on our agenda of important issues of faith. It felt like heresy at best, to most of us. Our belief systems were challenged, our sense of being among ‘God’s favourites,’ the right sort of people with the right beliefs and so on, came under question.

We were confronted with social justice writ large and to top it off the speaker quoted the Bible to back it up! We were exposed to real world experiences and issues of real people and we were ignorant that such existed! We felt confusion and anger as biblical texts were used to confront our society, our world and especially our belief systems and lifestyles! In the small group discussions and around morning tea there was trench warfare, especially the morning she raised issues of wealth and money! Some of our number, those now earning decent salaries or whose families were doing quite well, were ropable at the suggestions that the rich were expected to give up their wealth to help the poor! Passages like Luke 6:24 (Woe to the rich…) felt like the last straw. By the end of the long weekend, there was a revolt happening. Some went away disgusted, ropable and ready lynch the speaker – metaphorically speaking.

Most crowds, most groups don’t think of themselves as ‘bad’ or wrong and quickly turn against the voice of one who offers critique or speaks the truth in some bold manner.  When Martin Luther King Jr raised the issues of racism and injustice and presented the picture that all was not just, fair, right or good in USA, many people were against him.  Death threats, violence, imprisonment, rejection, were all part of the response and ultimately, he was shot dead.  King is one of a long line of people who have incurred the wrath of the ‘crowd’ and rejected an unwanted truth.

Australians do not like to hear that as a nation, we are not as egalitarian or inclusive and just as we would like to perceive ourselves to be.  The ‘fair go for all’ is not really a reality.  Many quickly hurl the critique back in violent invective that casts blame on the other, often stereotyping and generalising from the lowest common denominator of a people group.  As we typecast people into neatly defined boxes and reject them for being ‘like this,’ we can ease our minds that we are alright and don’t need to change ourselves.

When people raise the deeper and darker truths, such as the treatment of Aboriginal people, treatment of refugees/asylum seekers, response to environmental crises and changing climate, levels of support for those who are impoverished and struggling (both here and across our world – especially our near-neighbours), or our obsession with acquisition and gaining more and more money and material possessions… we might switch off or outright reject their words.

Groups of people, crowds, families, communities, nations, are happy to own the positive elements of their common life and exclude that which disrupts, challenges, confronts or invites growth and transformation towards deeper compassion, inclusivity, generosity and justice. Such is the experience of Jesus in this week’s story from Luke’s story of Jesus when he returns home to Nazareth (Luke 4:21-30 – the rest of last week’s story).  He preached in the Synagogue and the people liked his words – initially.  They recognised him as Joe’s boy who grown up among them.  There were friends, relatives and towns people who knew him as a boy.  They had heard the growing range of stories around what he’d been doing in other villages – and they felt they deserved even more of the blessing and miracles, healing and anything else.  Jesus began well but then took a sharp turn in his rhetoric.  Understanding their tribal pride, their desire to own and define him and what he would/should do, he challenged them at the very point of their exclusive, ego-driven pride and expectation.  He told them that God rarely acted in ways that people expected or easily defined.  Whenever humans try to limit God’s actions to their tribe, their belief system, their in-group, God moved outside and worked elsewhere.  He quoted a couple of well-known stories from their tradition – a gentile widow who shared the little she had with one of God’s prophets and was blessed for her generous, inclusive love and faith.  Naaman was another Gentile, a leader and he was healed of leprosy.  Both of these were outside the expected groups.  They were outcasts, marginal people and God was expected to work within the in-group of the Jewish faithful, not among these but that was exactly where God was to be found.

Jesus confronted his home-town crowd with this uncomfortable truth – just because you know me and believe you should be God’s favourites, doesn’t make it so.  Whilst ever you want to contain God, faith, love, compassion, mercy, forgiveness and justice to your own group and deny others, God will always work outside in other places where love, justice, grace and compassion is inclusive and generous towards all people – whether they are Jewish (or Christian!) or not! God will confront and challenge such comfortable and simplistic faith, calling for love and justice because that is what the heart of God is about.

We returned home from that young adult camp relieved that we could return to normal and cast aside this erroneous heresy. The trouble was, for me at least and I suspect a few others, something happened that weekend that I couldn’t ignore. I got a taste of God’s justice and not only was it uncomfortable, I recognised it as having more than a grain of truth to it. I knew, as soon as I heard it, that there was something in what the speaker said. Try as we might we couldn’t remove it from the pages of the Bible, the Old Testament prophets, Jesus or even Paul!

Somehow everywhere I now looked there was some example of what the speaker had said. It became impossible to ignore things that previously I was oblivious to. I saw poor people abused, used and cast aside. I saw marginalised people pushed farther to the edges. I saw unfairness in the very systems I had trusted. I even saw how we were consuming resources far too rapidly and the earth was losing the fight to maintain equilibrium. Injustice was all around!

Sometimes it is like this – we need to be belted over the head until we are angry and stirred up before we change. Sometimes we need to be confronted until we react, resist, challenge, fight… before we are ready to hear something new. I’m not sure who, if any in Jesus’ hometown, changed but his words and ministry remained focussed on God’s justice and love towards all people. He calls us into new ways of life and being that are grounded in love and justice for all – regardless of what it costs! Will you follow?