Value 2: Ministry to the Marginalized Part III - The New Testament

The New Testament

Like the Old Testament before it, the New Testament is not silent on the issue of the poor. The New Testament continues to affirm God’s love for the marginalized as being foundational and that His people are to incorporate caring for them into their lifestyle. In the ministry of Jesus we see his care for the marginalized as a sign of the in breaking of His Kingdom.

Let’s read the words of Jesus as he is getting ready to set out on his public ministry.

When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

LK 4:18 "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captive
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
LK 4:19 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

LK 4:20 And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 Then he began to say to them, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."

Jesus said that the Spirit of God was empowering him to proclaim the message of the Kingdom through both word and deed to those who had been marginalized. He is to preach the good news that God has remembered the plight of the poor. He is to heal those who have been crippled, restoring them to the worshiping community of Israel. He is to release those who have been enslaved, and proclaim to the debtors that their debts have been canceled, and that is exactly what He did.

Jesus came to an impoverished world in poverty through his birth. Think about it, he was born the child of a teenage peasant in ancient Israel. He was born in a barn! He grew up like any other average child in Israel going to synagogue school and learning the trade of his earthly father. He did not grow up in the metropolitan hustle and bustle of Jerusalem. He grew up in the sticks. He was probably considered a country preacher with a rural accent. They made the same jokes about where he was from that we do about north Georgia or Kentucky here in Tennessee.

Yet these experiences gave him an ability to identify with the common people of Israel. They gave him the background he needed to communicate deep truths to them in a way they could grasp and understand. Just think about how many of his parables pertain to farming, fishing, family, and weddings, topics the ordinary people of his day would be familiar with. Jesus was one of the least, the last, the lost, and the lonely. Yet he was full of the Kingdom of God, and wherever he went he brought hope and life with him.

In his public ministry he healed the sick, related to prostitutes, tax collectors, and lepers. These were outcasts; people who were outside the worshipping community of Israel. Every time Jesus touched one of these people lives it was an object lesson in how his Kingdom operates. The good news is proclaimed to the poor, the sick and diseased are healed, the captives are set free, and debts are forgiven. Those who were outside were invited in, because Jesus’ kingdom is accessible to all.

I bet as you read this you are saying to yourself, “Yes and amen!”, after all this is what Jesus does and as His followers we should be doing the same. Not so quick. Do you understand what this looks like? I remember when we first started feeding the homeless in Miller Park. One of our members began to really invest in the people that they were feeding. He attended our small group and began to bring some of the people to whom he was ministering. These folks might not have had a shower for several days and they smelled really bad. They were hungry and would absolutely devour all the snacks, and they didn’t really know how to appropriately interact with people. This was an uncomfortable experience and I really wrestled with it. What are you going to do if the outcasts are invited to the party? Do you think you could handle it? I really struggled and honestly I still would.

We’ve been reaching out to a middle school where many of the children have been raised with a different set of values than a bunch of suburban white kids. What if all of a sudden fifty of those kids decided to start coming to our youth ministry? What would you do? Would you pull your kids from the youth ministry? Would you think the Vineyard is just not what it used to be, and quietly slip out to the church down the street where you don’t have to wrestle through the same uncomfortable feelings? Does Jesus really desire for us to be an invitational people and love the poor?

Being an incarnational presence in the schools is just the first step. If you think the wooden seats in the auditorium are uncomfortable, just wait until we start making serious head-way into our mission. I’m not saying this to scare you, but I’m asking are you really willing to follow Jesus wherever he might lead?

Jesus loves the poor. He loves the least, the last, the lost, and the lonely. He has commissioned his church to do the same.

When we read about the New Testament church, we read about a group of people who continued to love those no one else was willing to love. One of the first things the early church did was minister to the poor. They organized a feeding ministry for widows and orphans in Jerusalem. God blessed this ministry by empowering the followers of Jesus to do many signs and wonders as they blessed the poor and marginalized. In the letters of Paul, we read of him encouraging the church to remember the poor. Paul writes a whole letter in the Bible on behalf of a slave. The early church was marked by a love for the poor. This love for the marginalized permeates the New Testament scriptures and is always a sign pointing to what Jesus will one day do all in all.

One of the ways the early church grew was due to their care for the marginalized. The Roman culture had a practice called exposure. When parents or a person had a baby that they did not want they would take the child and place it on the city walls so that the child would die of exposure. This was a very common practice in the ancient world. Christians, however, believed that every life was sacred, even the lives that nobody else wanted. The Christians would go to the city walls at night and rescue the exposed infants and raise them as their own. Many of these children became the backbone of the church as they grew.

In the name of Jesus, the church has championed the cause of the marginalized for two millennia. The first hospitals were started by the church to take care of the sick. The church built orphanages to care for children without parents. The church started public education so all might have the opportunity for a better life and people could read the Bible for themselves. The church has faced down infanticide twice in its history. The church abolished the slave trade once, and as it raises its ugly head again, it is the entity on the frontlines of modern abolition. I cannot even begin to list the difference the church has made in the lives of the least, the last, the lost, and the lonely over the last two thousand years. Why has this been part of the church’s historic witness to the world? It is because God loves the poor, Jesus loves the poor, and his church has loved the poor. These are all signs of the future Jesus is bringing. The question for us is are we willing to follow Jesus and love the poor as well?