Jesus' invitation list

Tim Chester was previously Research and Policy Director for Tearfund UK, a Christian relief and development organisation that is definitely worth supporting. When he was working at Tearfund, he wrote a book ‘Awakening to a World of Need: The Recovery of Evangelical Social Action’ which tells the story of the growth of evangelical social concern from the 1960s to the 1990s. He is now involved in The Crowded House, a church-planting (house churches) initiative in Sheffield, England. Here is an excerpt from one of his books that has challenged my thinking about the church’s responsibility toward the poor:

Notice the language that James uses to describe the poor: ‘Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress…’ (Jas. 1:27). James is not only interested in widows and orphans; he is concerned about other needy people as well. James is using widows and orphans to describe all those who are vulnerable because of their marginalized status. In doing so James is picking up the language of the Old Testament. Widows, orphans and aliens (immigrants) are often used in the Old Testament to describe all those in poverty. God himself ‘watches over the alien and sustains the fatherless and the widow’ (Ps. 146:9). Joel Green explains how in Jesus’ time ‘poor’ was a term for ‘those of low status, for those excluded from the normal canons of status honour’. This low status might arise because of economic disadvantage, but status was also defined by ‘education, gender, family heritage, religious purity, vocation, economics and so on’. (Joel Green, The Gospel of Luke, NICNT [Eerdmans, 1997], p.211.) The poor are those of low status – the excluded.

… Poverty is about the lack of income and resources – both an absolute lack and a relative lack. But these things are symptoms of underlying issues. At root, poverty is about broken relationships: relationships with God, within and between communities and with the environment. Poverty is social as well as economic. God made us as stewards of creation to contribute to community life, but the poor become non-contributors. They are forced to be passive. The result is a loss of dignity, confidence and hope that in turn become significant factors keeping them in poverty. So poverty is about marginalization, vulnerability, isolation and exclusion. And so the Bible refers to the widow and orphan to represent those who are vulnerable because of their marginalized status.

… Recognizing that poverty is about marginalization and exclusion presents a clear opportunity for the church. At a poverty hearing organized by Church Action on Poverty, Mrs. Jones, a mother who has lived in poverty all her life, described the experience of poverty like this: ‘In part it is about having no money, but there is more to poverty than that. It is about being isolated, unsupported, uneducated and unwanted. Poor people want to be included and not just judged and “rescued” at times of crisis.’ (Cited in Paul Vallely, ‘Mrs. Jones has Something to Say,’ The Independent [7 August 1996].) So the first responsibility of the church in terms of social involvement is to be a community of love and inclusion – to be the church. We are to offer welcome and belonging to people, especially people who are marginalized by society.

Jesus made a point of including the marginalized and sinners. The religious people of his day despised him for it. In Luke 7 Jesus says the religious leaders are like children who cannot be pleased. They complained that John the Baptist fasted too much. Now they complain that Jesus feasts too much. ‘The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, “Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and ‘sinners’!”’ (Luke 7:34). The Son of Man is a reference to the one who comes in glory to rule all things (see Dan. 7:13-14). But ‘the Son of Man has come eating and drinking’. It echoes Isaiah 25:6-8 and 55:1-2 in which Isaiah describes God’s promised future as a great feast of provision and enjoyment, acceptance and friendship. The religious leaders have no problem with this. They do not take exception to the coming of God’s messianic feast – that was what they longed for. What they object to is the invitation list. Jesus feasts with the wrong sort of people. In Jesus’ day eating with someone was a sign of acceptance and inclusion. This is why Jesus got into such trouble when he partied with the socially marginalized of his day. By eating with ‘sinners’, Jesus modelled the radical grace of God. In response to the accusation that Jesus is ‘a glutton and a drunkard, and a friend of the worst sort of sinners’, Luke tells a story that shows that the accusation is true (7:36-50)! He shows that Jesus does feast and drink and that he is a friend of the worst sort of sinners.

It is striking that in the New Testament there is no talk of social projects, nor for that matter is there much on evangelistic methods. Instead the New Testament talks about the church being the church: a caring, gracious and inclusive community with a message to proclaim. We are to include the poor in the network of believing relationships. In this way we offer them dignity, belonging and inclusion. They are no longer isolated, but people with connections and people with a contribution to make. I remember a woman with an alcoholic husband and two disruptive children. What she liked about coming to our church was that we did not ‘tut tut’ when her children played up. We welcomed her and her children along with the disruption they brought. It was decisive in her Christian experience. Many people suggest that the main factors behind the phenomenal growth of Pentecostalism among the poor of the world is that their approach to spiritual gifts and ministry means everyone’s contribution is valued irrespective of education, status and wealth. In other denominations the clergy perform the religious activities. In Pentecostalism anyone can speak the word of God to the congregation. They offer a sense of family and the support of family to people displaced and disoriented by a move to the city or by the complexity of modern life.

The church has often had a presence in a local community for years. That means that it is both well placed to work with the poor, and also that its work is likely to be sustainable in the long-term. As Gladys Wathanga, a Tearfund worker, says, ‘I know that when I go back to Kenya my church will still be there, but I don’t know whether my development organization will be. They are in today and could be out tomorrow, but the local church is there for years.’ (Cited in Tulo Raistrick and Tim Chester, ‘The Church and its Role in Development’ [unpublished paper, 1999].) Sustainable Christian development requires sustainable Christian communities. In other words, while it is possible to have sustainable development without local churches, you cannot have sustainable Christian development – development that is distinctly Christian – without sustainable Christian communities. This means that Christian development must be accompanied by church planting where no churches exist.

… We are not simply talking about inviting the poor to come to church on Sunday mornings. Often there is a significant gap between the church and outsiders, and between the culture of the church and the culture of the marginalized. I have friends who began working with a local church in a poor area of Mexico City. The members of the church were more affluent and came from outside the area in which the church building was located. The church wanted to reach people from the local area and initially welcomed the help they received. The couple began to reach prostitutes and drug addicts, befriending them, ministering to their needs and sharing the gospel with them. Much of the work was funded with their own money. They started to see some of the prostitutes and drug addicts coming to the meetings of the church. The couple were excited about the ways things were developing and the opportunities that were opening up to reach marginalized people. But one Sunday morning they turned up to find the building locked. The members of the church felt they did not want prostitutes and drug addicts corrupting their children. They had decided to move elsewhere without telling the couple. The ministry collapsed overnight. The culture gap between the church and the marginalized had proved too big for the church members.

… If we are going to offer a place of inclusion to the poor then we have to make the Christian community a community of welcome and belonging… We need to take the gospel and the church out of our ghetto and into the world around us. The inclusion of the Christian community does not have to take place in a church building. It is about relationships, not about institutions. A house group may be a place to begin.

A minister in Scotland was once standing outside his church when a drunk walked past. ‘Why don’t you come in?’ he asked. ‘I will,’ said the drunk, ‘when I get my life sorted out’. The minister was quick-witted enough to question whether this was likely. But he was left with a more fundamental question: ‘Whoever gave him the impression that church was for people who had got their lives sorted out?’ To be a place of welcome for the marginalized, we have to be honest about our own brokenness. And even more importantly, we need to be communities of grace. My life may be more sorted out than someone else’s, but that is not a testament to my effort or initiative. It is a testament to God’s grace – perhaps over years and even over generations. It is only by celebrating grace, proclaiming grace and living by grace that we will attract marginalized sinners as Jesus did (Luke 15:1-2).

(Tim Chester, ‘Good News to the Poor’ [Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 2004], pp. 123-35.)