Exodus 20:22-27, Matthew 25:31ff, and James 2:14-17: The poor need equal rights! Freedom must be for all; not just the rich!
If something is a right, it is incumbent upon a society to provide that right.
Psalm 82:3 - 'Give justice to the weak and the orphan; maintain the right of the lowly and the destitute. '
Proverbs 31:8-9 - 'Speak out for those who cannot speak, for the rights of all the destitute. Speak out, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy.
Psalms 69:32-33: “Let the oppressed see it and be glad; you who seek God, let your hearts revive. For the Lord hears the needy, and does not despise his own who are in bonds”
Psalms 140:12: “I know that the Lord maintains the cause of the needy, and executes justice for the poor”
1 John 3:17: If someone who has worldly means sees a brother in need and refuses him compassion, how can the love of God remain in him?
Last week I wasn’t here. I was at the Summer Rain Christian Music Festival. I spoke on the Saturday night. I mentioned that all the messages in past years at Summer Rain have been about evangelism and Salvation. I began my time by asking people to raise their hands if they knew Jesus as their Lord and Saviour. They all raised their hands (or should have). I then asked if there was anyone in the crowd who wasn’t yet saved, who wasn’t yet a Christian, who didn’t know Jesus as their Lord and Saviour. No one. Everyone present was already a Christian. I then said. ‘Wow, that must be a new record. I preached at an evangelistic meeting for 1 minute and everyone was saved; so, everyone can go home now’. I preached anyway.
The previous time I spoke here (2 weeks ago) we spoke about Joseph being trafficked as a domestic servant. I shared about the Vietnamese workers at San Group who were staying in deplorable which –thankfully- we were able to be a part of helping them flee. I used the same illustration in my message last week at the Summer Rain Christian Music Festival. I did so, this time, in the context of James 2:14-17:
“What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.”
I told the story of how 15 of the 16 workers were saved for now and we hope and pray that God will send someone to provide them the opportunity to be saved forever. I encouraged us all to be available for the Spirit to use to save people for eternity and also for the here and now. Why would we want to go through all of life’s problems without God’s support when His love and encouragement is readily accessible to each and every one of us? I encouraged the congregation to think of people they could help and point to Salvation for forever and now and exhorted them to avail themselves of the opportunities provided in the upcoming week to do just that. I asked them to see who God placed on their heart and pray for them. We then prayed.
After I finished speaking about Salvation in the here and now and for eternity, drawing heavily on the example of the Vietnamese workers, I walked through the crowd and was directed to a specific lady – Loan. Loan is a Christian lady; Loan is from Vietnam; Loan is a God-fearing Christian lady. She knows the freed workers. She has been praying for them. She had been witnessing to them. She is already following up with them so that they can be freed not only for now but also forever. She was teary-eyed that this message was an encouragement for her from God – speaking specifically about what she was praying about. How could I know that she -or anyone- who could follow up the now salvation with the message of eternal salvation with these workers would be present at the Summer Rain Christian music festival? We met again on Tuesday. She told me how she just happened to go to Summer Rain. That wasn’t her plan. It was God’s. God then used her further as after our conversation on Tuesday we was able to reach out to our MP and TSA in Victoria again and help get the ball moving again so these workers can hopefully get an open Visa and Loan shared with me how she is continuing to be a witness to the workers so that they me be saved forever – like was said at Summer Rain.
This is important: both the ‘forever’ salvation and the ‘now’ Salvation has been really on my heart lately. I do think that the two are inextricably linked. Salvation isn’t only about the future – it is about the future. But it isn’t only about the future! It is also about the now. Our salvation is at hand. This can have a couple of different repercussions.
it means that since life isn’t always as planed here; when we are saved to a salvific relationship with Christ, we can draw on His strength, His peace, His forgiveness, His love in our time of need and share that with everyone we know and
it really means - like James 2:14-17 encourages us and as Matthew 25:31ff warns us - that as Christians it is our God-given responsibility to help save people here and now. God saves people unto eternity. We need to look after the poor, the widow and the immigrant; the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, those needing clothes, those who are sick, and those who are imprisoned. We must. If we are saved, we will.
I have been thinking about this a lot and I think we can used by God to ‘save’ others in the ‘now’ sense, from serious situations - like human trafficking, like, poverty, like discrimination, and exploitation – in a number of different ways:
We can do this on our own, helping others as the Lord presents people and opportunities to us;
We can donate to organizations such as The Salvation Army that seek to help people everyday;
We can volunteer for organizations such as The Salvation Army that seek to do this;
We can live out our salvation by lobbying the government or otherwise organize our society to save people in need!
Baptist Minister and Saskatchewan Premier Tommy Douglas introduced Medicare to Saskatchewan after he almost lost his leg as a child due to injury, infection, and poverty. Medicare has been one wonderful way of taking care of the poor and the marginalized in our society. I can go to the hospital tonight and not have to be concerned about whether or not I can afford it. Even our poorest and most marginalized members of society can go to a doctor anytime they need and they can be saved from much turmoil and suffering because of that.
In my lifetime there has been much debate about the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in Canada. In my lifetime, that superseded the Bill of Rights. In my lifetime, the courts have weighed, and the population and politicians have debated, over and over again what is a right and what is a privilege. I submit that everything that a society deems as a right, it is incumbent upon that society to provide(!) otherwise we are actively denying people what we declare to be their rights! Everything that is a privilege, however, let the rich and the powerful charge the rest of us whatever they want and suffer the eternal consequences of becoming more rich and more powerful – but really(!) everything that a society declares a right, we as a society have the responsibility to provide that right to everyone regardless of race, religion, creed, or – especially as a Christian, socio-economic status. That is what it means that something is a right! Rights are not for sale. Freedoms are supposed to be free! Freedom should not only be available to the wealthy. A society is measured by how it treats its most vulnerable members.
Earlier this summer I read a book, Seeking Social Democracy: Seven Decades in the Fight for Equality, by Ed Broadbent, now deceased, former leader of the NDP in Canada. He introduced me to a word that I was not familiar with, ‘decommodification’. Decommodification in this context means that if something is meant for everyone than we shouldn’t be able to withhold it from people who don’t have money. A prime example of how this can work is Medicare – every Canadian citizen (not our guests or foreign workers with closed visas tragically) has a right to go to the hospital and to see a doctor. They don’t need x amount of dollars or the correct kind of medical coverage. Every person (who is a citizen) regardless of anything – even funds – has access to medical care. Education until Grade 12: When what was required to be a productive member of society, receive gainful employment, and real opportunities in life was a grade 12 education; our society decided to provide that for everyone. In my lifetime every Canadian was granted access to kindergarten – not $10 a day kindergarten, not cheques to people hoping they will spend it on kindergarten – everyone no matter how rich or poor was allowed to go to kindergarten. Now that university is needed for many jobs, as Christians we should probably lobby for the decommodification of university education and probably (given the number of single parent or dual income families) daycare as well. If it is a right; it is only right that we provide it. If it is a freedom, it needs to be freely accessible. If we are Christians, we must not, we cannot, we will not further marginalize the poor!
In my own life I have worked a lot with people in the courts and people in the prisons. You know one thing that people in the courts to some extent and in the prisons to a large extent have in common – they are poor.
I have worked in the circuit courts in Nipawin, Tisdale, Swift Current, and Maple Creek, Saskatchewan. I have sat in court rooms with people in Toronto, Victoria, and Vancouver. I have worked with Restorative Justice in Nipawin, Swift Current, and here in the Alberni Valley. We even ran the Alternative Measures programs for adults and youth in Southwest Saskatchewan, hosted free legal clinics, and ran a transition through incarceration program where during the up to six years I was involved in the program we only had one repeat offender. I have visited people in prisons in BC and SK and volunteered at Stony Mountain federal penitentiary for 2 years in Manitoba with The Salvation Army when I was in Training College.
The Bible tells us that justice needs to be applied evenly. It tells us that favouritism must not be shown to the wealthy. Our legal system needs to be de-commodified. And instead of focussing on punishment which only leads to resentment, an education in criminality, and a high rate of recidivism; from the moment a person is sentenced to whatever they are sentenced, we need to take into account that they are going to be released back into society after x amount of time, decide what we want them to be like when they are released and work to make that a reality – for them AND for everyone else.
Right now prisons produce more hardened criminals who make new criminal connections while in prison. When a person is given a time-out from society why aren’t we providing them with job training and then releasing them to jobs, so they don’t need to steal or sell drugs or rely on welfare? When a person is convicted why don’t we provide them with detox, rehab, and stabilization for the 2 years, 10 years, 6 months, 2 weeks, however long they are sentenced to serve? Why don’t we let them work off their debts to their victims and let their victims experience the healing and wholeness that comes from forgiveness – instead of asking the victims to harm themselves by harbouring hatred and unforgiveness for victim impact statements as we do today?
And referring again to decommodification, why do we discriminate against the poor? I have met many single dads who cannot afford a lawyer, so they have to quit their jobs in order to get legal aid. And then the legal aid assistance they get in many communities is so substandard that they might as well just throw themselves on the mercy of the courts and hope for the best. But the rich person can hire a team of 6 to 8 dedicated lawyers and in that way buy their freedom, assure themselves preferential treatment, and avoid the punishment by-and-large that is meted out on the poorer member of society.
It is the same with dental care.
It is the same with universities.
It is the same with housing.
It is the same with visas.
It is the same with childcare.
If something is a right, it is incumbent upon a society to provide that right. As Christians we are told to not discriminate against the poor. It is important and it is necessary that as part of our salvation we work towards this. For each of us, as individuals, James 2:14-17:
“What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.”
And for us as a society, Matthew 25:41-46:
41 “Then He will say to [THE NATIONS] on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’
44 “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
45 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
46 “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
For, Matthew 25:40, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
May we be among the righteous.
Let us pray.
Exodus 22:20-27:
You shall not oppress or afflict an immigrant or a foreigner, for you were once foreigners residing in the land of Egypt.
You shall not wrong any widow or orphan. If ever you wrong them and they cry out to me, I will surely listen to their cry. My wrath will flare up, and I will kill you with the sword; then your own wives will be widows, and your children orphans.
If you lend money to my people, the poor among you, you must not be like a money lender; you must not demand interest from them. If you take your neighbour’s cloak as a pledge, you shall return it to him before sunset; for this is his only covering; it is the cloak for his body. What will he sleep in? If he cries out to me, I will listen; for I am compassionate.
Comments
Post a Comment