Sermon: Conspiracy of Kindness #3: Good News for the Poor

Conspiracy of Kindness: Good News for the Poor
August 3-4, 2007
by Don Bromley

[Day of Kindness update]

This weekend I’m giving the third and final sermon in our Conspiracy of Kindness series. We’ve been examining how kindness and compassion can demonstrate the love of God more persuasively than words can.

I’d like to show a little video clip that to me really demonstrates the Kingdom of God invading the Earth through an awesome act of kindness and compassion.

Jason McElwain video clip – about 5 minutes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngzyhnkT_jY

I love that clip. I love the way Jason’s teammates and the crowd are so wildly enthusiastic for this kid to make a basket and have his chance to shine. So wonderful.

I think that what we’re watching in this clip is evidence of the incalculable worth of a single life. It’s an idea that sometimes gets lost in our world.

This is a little group of people, and they give this one guy, who’s likely to be passed over or overlooked, a chance to belong and a chance to contribute and a moment to shine.

I think this clip moves us because it’s a little picture of the way that God intended for human beings to relate to one another. I think it moves us, because in God’s Kingdom, nobody is left out. In God’s Kingdom, nobody is overlooked. In God’s Kingdom, nobody gets passed over. In God’s Kingdom, everybody matters. God wants to point to everybody and say: I want you and you and you and you to play a role in my Universe for good and great things.

Now, in this kingdom, in this world, not so much. So, today as I talk about kindness and compassion—about God’s love for justice and mercy to prevail in human relationships—I’m going to talk about one of the greatest pictures of the Kingdom of God in the Bible. It’s so rich. It’s the Old Testament picture of what was called the “Year of Jubilee.” It’s kindness and compassion done on a huge scale.

As you know, in the Old Testament, the number seven was considered to be a kind of divine number. Every seventh day was to be sacred to God–a Sabbath Day. Every seventh year was to be a “Sabbath Year” —a sabbatical year—in which the land was to rest. It was an expression of God’s concern for his creation and of God’s concern for the poor.

Then, after seven times seven years came the really big deal—a particular year. In Leviticus, God says:

“Count off seven sabbath years—seven times seven years—so that the seven sabbath years amount to a period of forty–nine years. Then have the trumpet sounded everywhere on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the Day of Atonement sound the trumpet throughout your land. Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you; each of you is to return to your family property and to your own clan.

(There’s a bell in Philadelphia—the Liberty Bell—that’s to remind us of freedom and liberty, and it has the inscription of this verse on it.)

Jubilee was a very rare word. It was the Hebrew word for a ram’s horn. The Jews were instructed to fashion a trumpet out of the horn of a wild ram, and this was to be so sacred that it was to be played only once every fifty years. Then there would be Jubilee. During Jubilee, three things would happen.

First, all debts were canceled. Anyone who had been living under bondage of debt would be freed. This expressed God’s heart for the poor. Usually, in the kingdom of this earth, we give preferential treatment to people we think we can get money from. We want to get them “in debt” to us.

I received a letter this week. I get them periodically, and so do you. I told you about one of them a couple of years ago. This is a new one:

Dear Mr. Bromley,

The road to financial success has many milestones marking how far you’ve come. You have just reached one milestone.

You are pre-approved for our card. (I’m not just approved. I’m pre-approved! I haven’t even done anything yet, and they already approve of me. My own mother doesn’t pre-approve of me, but they do.) You should know pre-approval status is not easily achieved, but with your history, our decision was really very simple. We want you as a card member. (They want me. They don’t want you. They want me.)

Now, what are the odds that if they get me, and I get into debt with them big time, they would write me another letter and say “Jubilee” on the outside of the envelope? Or go on to say:

We love you. We care for you so much that we’re canceling your debt. We want you to know this is the year of Jubilee for you.

What are the odds that that will happen? I’ll wait a long time for one of those letters, won’t I?

In this world, generally the way that it works is preferential treatment goes to people we all think already have money and have power.

In the Jubilee Year, God says there will be a fresh start for those who are poor—for those who are likely to be sitting on the sidelines. In case anybody missed the intent, or might try to circumvent it, or think it was just a matter of mechanics, God goes on:

If anyone is poor among your people in any of the towns of the land that the LORD your God is giving you, do not be hardhearted or tightfisted toward them. Rather, be openhanded and freely lend them whatever they need. Be careful not to harbor this wicked thought: “The seventh year, the year for canceling debts, is near,” so that you do not show ill will toward the needy among your people and give them nothing. They may then appeal to the LORD against you, and you will be found guilty of sin. Give generously to them and do so without a grudging heart; then because of this the LORD your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to. (Deut 15:7-10)

In the Jubilee Year, debt is forgiven.

The second thing that happens in the Jubilee Year is all prisoners are released. Now, in our day, this doesn’t sound like good news, because we think of people who are in prison for really bad things, and we’re not sure we would want them all to be released. In the Old Testament days, about the only thing they locked you up for was debt. For almost anything else, they would stone you. (If you talked back to your mom and dad, they’d get the stones out.) Jubilee Year meant the prisoners were going to go free.

Third, in the Jubilee Year, all the land was supposed to go back to its original owner. Now in the ancient day, far more than in our day when economics are much more complex, wealth was tied to land. If you were in a family where your dad or your grandfather had become sick, or done something wrong, or made a mistake, or been the victim of injustice and your family lost its ability to own land, that was it. You were out of luck. Jubilee meant hope for the poor.

You might wonder, what was the rationale for all of this? This is what God says:

The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine and you reside in my land as foreigners and strangers. (Leviticus 25:23)

We don’t like to think of ourselves as “foreigners and strangers.” We like to think of ourselves as owners. We’ve worked hard. But God has this pesky idea that just because he thought of the Earth and made it and sustains it and gave his Son to redeem it, it all belongs to him.

Injustice and greed and apathy and turning a blind eye to the poor kind of tick him off. It kind of makes him mad.

The Torah declared that there should be a Jubilee Year. The Torah was good news for the poor.

Where else in the ancient world do you find an idea like this Jubilee Year? Nowhere else. It’s unprecedented. Only Torah ...only in Israel. Before the Israelites go into the Promised Land, God is laying out the plan, and he says something remarkable:

However, there should be no poor among you, for in the land the LORD your God is giving you to possess as your inheritance, he will richly bless you, if only you fully obey the LORD your God and are careful to follow all these commands I am giving you today. (Deut 15:4-5)

Now remember, they were coming out of Egypt as impoverished, oppressed slaves. They knew what it was to be poor and enslaved. We forget the full dimensions of that. And God says:

However, there should be no poor among you, for in the land the LORD your God is giving you to possess as your inheritance, he will richly bless you, if only you fully obey the LORD your God and are careful to follow all these commands I am giving you today. (Deut 15:4-5)

Imagine a community where there are no needy people. This is good news for the poor.

There is only one problem with the Jubilee Year. They never actually observed it. The best we can tell, it was never actually observed. For some reason, when people get a hold of stuff, they just get kind of grabby. It doesn’t make us happy being grabby. There isn’t any jubilation in it. It just kind of scares us to think of letting go. We forget that we are “foreigners and strangers,” and that it all belongs to God, and that we just manage it for a little while.

So, they never actually observed Jubilee. But when the Prophets would speak to the people, they would say: “You know, God hasn’t given up on this Jubilee idea yet. It’s a good idea. It’s God’s idea. We can’t pull it off ourselves, but it’s going to happen. It’s going to happen when Messiah comes. When Messiah comes, he will proclaim the Jubilee, and he will make it stick.”

For instance, the Prophet Isaiah wrote that the Messiah would say:

The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me (That’s Messianic language. The Messiah is simply “The Anointed One.”) to proclaim good news to the poor…to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor (Isa 61:1-2a)

That’s Jubilee! When Messiah comes, then Jubilee is coming!

And they waited. Year after year, decade after decade, century after century ...they waited.

Finally, this rabbi named Jesus comes. He’s going to give his very first sermon. He goes back to his hometown and enters the synagogue. The people are all gathered; they’ve known him since he was a little kid. He takes the scroll, turns to these words in Isaiah 61, and then he reads them to the people:

The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor ... to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. (Luke 4:18-19)

Then he rolls up the scrolls. The Scripture says that all eyes are fixed on him. Then he sets them aside. He sits down, because that’s what rabbis did. He says:

Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. (Luke 4:21)

What he’s saying is: Jubilee is finally here, and I’m it. It’s arrived on this planet, first of all in me ... in my body. And it’s come in some unexpected ways. Not only is it here for Israel. He makes it really clear that it’s also here for their enemies, the Gentiles.

Jubilee has come. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.

Jesus is good news for the poor. Jesus talks a lot about the poor. In one story, Jesus says that if you want to look for him, then you have to get around the least of these ... the poor.

Jesus says that when you embrace the poor—when you give clothes to someone who is destitute, when you go to prison and visit somebody who is alone, when you give food to someone who is hungry and they don’t have anything to eat, or something to drink to somebody who is thirsty and their village doesn’t even have water—when you do these things, Jesus says:

Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me. (Matthew 25: 40)

He talks about this, and then he forms a little community. There has never been a community like this. Some of them are fishermen; some of them are slaves; some of them are tax collectors; some of them have some wealth, some resources; some of them have nothing at all. He teaches them, and he pours his life into them. He goes to the Cross, and he dies for them. Then he’s resurrected and the Holy Spirit is poured out on them.

Then look at what it says in the Book of Acts about this community. There’s never been a community like this:

There were no needy persons among them. (Remember the promise God made back in Deuteronomy?) For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need. (Acts 4:34-35)

What’s that sound like? It sounds kind of like Jubilee, except he’s gotten the idea into people’s hearts. Jesus said that it was coming. And it came. And it was good news for the poor, just as he said it would be. There’s never been a community like this.

Paul gives instructions to Christ’s followers in Corinth about the needy people in Jerusalem, a long way away from them ... people they had never seen. Paul says:

On the first day of every week, each one of you should set aside a sum of money in keeping with your income (1 Cor 16:2)

Ordinary people of no great wealth were to systematically gather what they could and send it to people they didn’t know, were not related to ... not even of the same ethnicity ... who Paul calls “brothers and sisters.”

A Yale scholar by the name of Wayne Meeks as he writes about this says that in the ancient world this had never been done—ordinary people systematically saving to give to those they were not related to . . . who were not even of the same ethnic group. Jesus was good news for the poor.

This so overwhelmed the ancient world that an Emperor in the 300’s named Julian the Apostate, who was not a Christian (hence the name) and who was concerned that Christianity was spreading so rapidly felt the need to try to stop it. He wrote to a priest of Roman paganism and said it would be necessary for those who followed Roman religions to create “hostels for immigrants and foundations for the poor,” because “the Christians have by such means won their present dominance.”

Yes, we’re talking about money and resources. I know, talking about money in church—yuck. I actually ran across a church website where they proclaimed “At our church we don’t talk about money.” I get where they’re coming from—I don’t like it when other people talk about me and my money.

But Jesus talked about money all the time. Jesus, the one whom we follow, says:

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for the rich to enter the kingdom of God. (Matt 19:24)

There’s just something about money. I know that tug, and I know that you know it too. There’s just something about it that wants to be God. Jesus said that it takes a miracle of God to be free of its pull.

The One we follow said:

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matt 6:19-21)

The question about money is: Where do you want your heart to be?

Let’s say that you’re going on vacation. Wherever you end up at, you decide to stay at a Motel 6. You’re going to stay at a Motel 6, and the rule is that anything you get for your room at the Motel 6, you can’t take with you when you leave. It has to stay at the Motel 6. You can’t take anything with you. How likely would you be to take all your money and spend it decorating your motel room? With Van Gogh’s, or velvet paintings of Elvis, or whatever you’d like to have up on the walls? How likely is it you would spend your money decorating your room at the Motel 6?

You’re not going to do that. Why not? Because it’s not home. You’re only going to be there a little while, and then it will stay there, but you’ll be going home. You want your stuff to be available at home.

This ain’t home. This is Motel 6. You’re just here a little while. Jesus says:

For crying out loud! Enjoy it. Enjoy the beauty of it. If you have a home and you love it, that’s a good thing. But don’t stay up nights thinking about better and better and better and bigger and nicer and newer and more expensive ways to fix up Motel 6!!

The one we follow says: “For crying out loud, store up your treasure in what is eternal! And what lasts is God and people.”

Some of you are really good with money. That’s great! Make it! Make lots of it! Stay up nights thinking about ways to release it, so that the Gospel of Jesus becomes once again Good News for the poor. Think about ways of liberating it and spreading it around so it doesn’t create dependency, so it doesn’t dis-empower people, so it creates strength and points to people who are sitting on the bench right now and says: “OK. You and you and you and you, get in the game.”

God will help us with this. God will change our hearts.

----

You know, sometimes when we look at the Kingdom of God and see the beauty of what it is that God intended, and then they look at how things are going down on this earth, we get mad. I love the old King James translation of the Jubilee:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me …To preach the acceptable year of the Lord. (Luke 4:18a, 19)

Now, if the Jubilee year is the acceptable year of the Lord, then what is every other year? Unacceptable. Just the way that things are running on this earth: materialism, greed, envy, selfishness. Jubilee people look at this gap between the Kingdom of God where God’s will is done, and then how things are on earth where his will is not done. They get mad, not in a self-righteous or judgmental way, but in a way that makes them just want to get up out of their chairs and do something about things! It makes them want to just say: “This is not acceptable!”

The Gospel of Jesus is not the Minimal Entrance Requirements for Getting Into Heaven After You Die. The Gospel is that through Jesus—no other way—through his life, through his teaching, through his death, through his resurrection, through his Spirit, the Kingdom of God is coming to this world.

And God will make you into the kind of person who will change the world into the kind of place he intended it to be when he created it.

People who pray:

Your Kingdom come Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. (Matthew 6:10)

In other words, we can become agents of Jubilee. One of the ways that you can know where God is calling you is that, not in a self-righteous way, you will get all fired up inside. You need to pay attention to that. Oftentimes, God is speaking to you through that.

First, Jubilee people get free from bondage to money. They make a decision somewhere along the line: “You know, I’m not going to invest most of my treasure fixing up Motel 6.”

Second, Jubilee people get mad when they see the gap between God’s Kingdom and the way things are. An anger that moves to action.

And third, Jubilee people have joy, because they have Jesus. This is very, very important. You can’t have Jubilee without Jesus. Without Jesus, the church turns into a social services agency. Social service agencies are great, we need them—but they’re no substitute for a Spirit-infused church. Here’s why…

You may have noticed from the text that we read together at the beginning of this message. Jubilee was proclaimed on a particular day once every fifty years. Jubilee was proclaimed on the Day of Atonement. It was proclaimed when the forgiveness of sins was proclaimed. When people recognized their need for a sacrifice to be right with a just and holy God. If God doesn’t come to clean up the mess inside me, he cannot use me to clean up the mess in the world all around me.

Jesus is Jubilee. Jesus is the Day of Atonement. If you’ve never become his follower ... if you’ve never invited him to become the forgiver and leader of your life, you can do that today. This can be the Day of Atonement and the Day of Jubilee for you.

How do you do that?

Jesus of Nazareth, I acknowledge before you my thirst for what you have to give. I surrender myself--whole and entire, what was, and is, and is to come--to you. Plunge the wrongs I have done and the wrongs done to me in your fathomless mercy. Receive me as I am today, and make of me what I am meant to be, and let me walk in the path of your new creation.

Without Jesus, there can be no Jubilee. Only Jesus can clean up a human heart. He can do that for you, and he can do that for you today. You can’t have Jubilee without Jesus. You can’t have Jesus without Jubilee. Without Jubilee, the church just turns into one more religious group trying to win an argument, and the world has enough of those. But our Jesus came, and he said:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18-19)

This is Jubilee time. We are a Jubilee community. You are called to live a Jubilee life.

[Ministry Invitation. Communion. Worship]