“The point being that the core and foundation of the faith of Jesus is a commitment not to an abstract justice but to the hearing of the poor in our midst — a hearing that causes us to incarnate the solution, the alleviation of the sufferings of those singled out for oppression.” – The Rev. Rich Lang.
God is on the Side of the Damned
By the Rev. Rich Lang | Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
The old man Ted, who had been the Chair of the Trustees for umpteen years but was now a bit too frail to contribute to his beloved church, rose from his pew and commented on the past Saturday’s work crew. He complimented all the outside and inside grunt work that been done (pulling weeds, cleaning up the garbage in the bushes, fixing the sign, polishing the pews, a deep clean of the kitchen, a much needed deep scrub of the floors and so on) — he signed off by saying “I love you all.” And then, after pausing just a moment, Ted said: “and for those of you who worked —I love you more!”
God is a lot like Ted. “I love you all … but my heart and my passion, my delight and my fierce determination is with the poor, and the lost, the least, the last, and those who have been damned by others.” God chooses a particular side through which to love us all.
You might feel that this is a jarring statement, it sounds heretic, and wrong particularly because we’ve been taught that God loves us all equally. But love does not mean a detached acceptance of all things. The deep truth of Christianity is the truth of incarnation – of attachment– a spirituality that believes that “this moment” has infinite importance, and that in “this moment” eternity is right now.
As Christians we embrace history, we embrace this world, this creation. To be Christian is inherently a public, political way of life. Just as God hears the cry of the poor in Exodus 2:24, so too does God hear the cry of the poor today. Just as God called forth Moses to be an incarnation of God’s spirit against the “Pharaoh-ic spirituality” that caused the cry of the poor, so too does God today call forth Christians who bear the Holy Spirit, the same spirit that was in the historical Jesus, to become incarnations of God’s love, of God’s act on behalf of the poor in our “moment”.
As it says in 1 John 3:17 “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help? Or again in 1 John 4:20, “Those who say, ‘I love God’ yet hate their brothers and sisters are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.”
The point being that the core and foundation of the faith of Jesus is a commitment not to an abstract justice but to the hearing of the poor in our midst — a hearing that causes us to incarnate the solution, the alleviation of the sufferings of those singled out for oppression. God, out of infinite mercy, compassion and benevolence, loves everyone but it is that very love that chooses sides. God loves the world from the place of damnation, and calls forth the Body of Christ to enter that Hell to set the prisoners free.
There is no disembodied spiritual connection to the God of the Bible without a personal connection with the life and sufferings of the poor. Religion without a public witness within the society in which we live is a false front. Religion without the power to embody God in the moment of “now” is a deception. Religion without an embrace of suffering is the religion of Pharaoh.
It is not the faith or spirituality of Jesus.
