Lessons Learned #1- Walking Among the Oaks, Rebuilding the Ancient Ruins

Well, Rebecca and I are wrapping up our time in Kenya, and sadly, probably wrapping up this blog as well. So as we wind up nearly 2 years worth of blogging about our time here we wanted to take some time to discuss some of the ways we've grown in our understanding of God and His world through this experience. As with many shorter-term missionaries, when we look back at our time it can be difficult to see how little we've accomplished, but we're blown away by how much Jesus has taught us. We want to share some of that with you over the next several weeks, starting today:


Friends from NCF, Magadalene (Right) is a Sudanese refugee
who runs a small craft business that employs other refugees



If anybody had asked me why I spent my senior year looking for a way to get over to Africa as a missionary, my answer would have been immediate: read Luke 4. Jesus, quoting Isaiah 61, declares that the Spirit of God has anointed Him "to preach good news to the poor . . . to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." Jesus' kingdom, I would have said, is inextricably bound up with the prophetic vision of radical justice, mercy, and blessing for the poor. If we want to follow Jesus, we'll embrace his kingdom vision and serve the poor like he did. If the gospel ain't good news for the material poor, it ain't Jesus' gospel. 

It's a good question to ask ourselves from time to time, particularly in so-called vocational ministry: why are we doing what we're doing?  Why are you going on a short-term missions trip to Africa? Why do you volunteer at the soup kitchen? Why are you on the deacons board or the outreach committee at your local church? Maybe like me, your primary answer would be something like, "Jesus loves these people. They have needs that I can help them with. This is part of God's kingdom."

If so, then I think you've got fully half of the reason why God calls us, the affluent, the "haves," to ministry to the poor, the "have-nots." Because it is 100% Biblical to say "Jesus loves the poor and so should I. I can help." But if I've learned one thing about ministry among the poor over the last year it's that this is only half the story.



Our friend Agnes and her (huge!) family



The other half comes from the rest of the Isaiah passage that Jesus' quoted.* "They (the formerly poor, brokenhearted, captives, and debtors) will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor. They will rebuild the ancient ruins . . . they will renew the ruined cities." You see, Jesus rescues the poor for a reason: he wants to use them to change the world.  It's a theme that runs the course of the Bible from beginning to end, from Yahweh's choosing of pagan-and-as-good-as-dead-Abraham to found His chosen people and stuttering-hesitant-murdering-Moses to lead His people out of bondage, to the early church era, when God in all His foolishness chose the weak things to shame the strong, the lowly and despised things to overcome the things that are.

Now where does that lead us, the materially strong, the intellectually educated, the confident and young children of privelege who go out into the world to "help those poor people?" It leads us to realize that Jesus Christ has chosen the outside of the camp as the center of His kingdom work. He chose a 13-year old pauper for his mother, podunk Nazareth for his home, blue-collar labor for his occupation, and 12 uneducated commoners for his leadership team. And therefore if we really understand the upside down nature of the kingdom, if we get God's special care and concern for the poor not just as projects but as fellow employees in His kingdom work, then we will run to the poor because that's where we'll find Jesus doing his most amazing kingdom work! It's a mystery difficult to explain, but I've come to believe that God calls people like me to serve the poor because that's the only way in today's society that I'm ever going to meet any of them, and He knows that without relationships with the poor and broken I'll never really get Him or what He's doing with the world.



One of our best group leader's with his father


Lesson 1 is simply this: if you want to understand the Jesus who spoke those words in Luke 4, you not only have to help the poor, you have to enter into real relationships with them. And through these relationships we'll find that the poor, as oaks of righteousness and rebuilders of walls, have a whole lot to teach us about Jesus. I have come to believe over here that living a Chrisitan life without relationships with the poor leaves you looking at Jesus with only one eye open. Because you miss a great deal of his ransomed-poor-transformed-to-oaks-of-righteousness work.

So why are relationships with the poor so important (besides the fact that Jesus calls us to them)? The answers are endless, but here are a few:

1. We learn what it looks like to really follow after Jesus. Truth is, for most of us, it's easy to follow Jesus, or at least to think we're following him. Not so for the poor. A few stories will illustrate the point. We have Indian friends here who are unemployed and unmarried, at least partly because by becoming Christians they lost their entire web of cultural and familial connections which would normally provide them will all sorts of support (jobs and a spouse for sure). Or what about our friend Iris, who comes to church week after week, teaches the children in Sunday School, loves and greets everybody with the love of Jesus, but goes home to a slum, to a home where her grown children (and thus grandchildren) still depend on her financially, and as often as not can't find work to put food on the table? What about our pastor friend, who takes in about 300 bucks a month, and with that runs an orphanage for 20 some-odd kids, leads the church, runs a small neighborhood school, does high intensity evangelism and discipleship? And then who has gotten car-jacked at gunpoint twice in the last 18 months for his pains? What about our young friends who live in the slums, who have no decent living anywhere on the horizon, who live in a culture where you cannot marry until you have become wealthier than they can imagine, and are trying to follow Christ's sexual ethic in their lives in a culture absolutely ravaged by infidelity and promiscuity? What, for heaven's sake, about Gabriel, the farmer that taught me to plant rice, who has ten kids of his own and takes care of five others who've been orphaned? There are stories at home as well: my friends I met through Advance Memphis, who have risked their lives to leave the gangs, or given up on all the money they could easily be making by selling drugs. Regardless, relationships with the poor force us to realize that following Jesus is costly. They shake us out of our apathy.



Rebecca chatting it up in the rice paddy



2. They help us see the deadly lies we believe. The rich young ruler walked away from helping the poor because he couldn't do without his riches. You and I justify our extravagant lifestyles by making "needs" of everything from car-per-person families, to private school education from 3 yrs to 30, to flat screen TVs. Furthermore, we often secretly believe that a) God blesses us financially if we really follow Him, and b) wealth creates happiness. If you don't think you believe those last two, here's a test: when you've visited poor families, have you ever thought, a) "Wow, these people really need Jesus. They probably have a lot to learn about Him," or b) "How can these people be so happy with so little?" Because if you have, you, like me, have bought into the health-wealth-gospel through the back door syndrome so typical of our culture. But when I think of Ezekiel or Joyce, two farmers who live on less than an acre of land in wooden or mud huts and yet who are two of the happiest, most faithful Christians I have ever met, all of these lies fade away. God does not necessarily bless the faithful financially; sometimes they suffer financially more than anybody else. But neither do riches bring happiness! Because if they did, why are so many Americans struggling with a lack of fulfilment and feeling miserable amidst all the stuff, and so many Kenyan Christians rejoicing daily in the very little the Lord has provided?

3. We participate in the body of Christ. Plain and simple, I have rarely been as challenged in my walk by the physical presence of a church community as I have been at New City Fellowship Nairobi. Why? Because both culturally and economically we're worshiping together in a much more diverse group of people than any I have encountered before. Paul says that we're the body of Christ, but too often our lives are so homogenous that we hands forget about how much we need the feet. Relationships with the poor preclude this.

4. And finally, we meet Jesus in the face of the poor. Jesus said that "whatever you do to the least of these, my brothers, you have done unto me." Mother Teresa regularly talked about meeting Jesus in the face of the poor. Of course this always sounded like garbage to me . . . until I really found myself among the poor and in relationships with them. And then I realized there is a divine mystery here, that to the poor belongs the kingdom of heaven, and for those of us who are not poor, we encounter Jesus in a special way in our relationships with them.



Rebecca with two farmer friends. We regularly sleep in their
village in one of the homes of a group member.



In all these ways and many others our relationships with poor farmers in the rural areas and poor city-dwellers at church have forced us to rethink our reason for wanting to be a part of "incarnational" ministry. Yes, we want to help those who Christ loves. Yes, we want to serve the way he served. But we also desperately long for relationships with the poor, we long to walk among the oaks of righteousness and work alongside the builders of walls. We have so much to learn about God and His kingdom through relationships with all the people that we typically treat as ministry projects, or as total resource-deficits. May God give us His eyes! May God give us His heart! May God knit together His church, founded by the blood of Jesus, and held together by the Spirit, that all people from every corner under heaven, every race and tribe, and every economic class on the planet would find themselves drawn into the great body of Christ, and so meet the Head of All Things, Jesus Himself.

Peace,

Michael

*Richard Hays has written about "echos" of the Old Testament in the New Testament, and my guess is that many who heard what Jesus read from Isaiah 61 knew how the rest of the chapter went. Besides all of this, the whole idea of Jubilee was to give back to the poor resources that would allow them to provide. This was not a soup kitchen jubilee, but a resource/capital jubilee as farmers got back their land. So regardless, I think Jesus claimed the full Isaiah 61 prophetic vision for his own ministry.