Canticles of the Unhomed
Tuesday, December 07, 2004
The Compassionate Obligation
My buddy Chuck and I just had a pretty intense lunch. We talked about our obligation to reach out in love to the people closest to us: our church community. I have recently come to the conclusion that in my own church there is a startling amount of broken community. The past couple of weeks or so I have been talking with people almost non-stop, and I keep hearing the same story over and over and over. They do not feel supported or comforted at church. This, as a leader, bothered me and moved me to challenge our other leaders to step up and try to remedy this. Especially since in many cases it is as simple as a five minute phone call.
It has forced me to consider what is the best way for me to demonstrate love to those people in my community? What is my obligation? The more I thought about it, and as I considered the biblical record, what I kept coming back to is that it is mandatory for us to take an active role in caring for eachother. The extent and scope of that care is largely irrelevant. God, I think calls us to love as best we can.
But largely I am beginning to believe that I have no choice. God expects it, and when I do not do it, I am falling short of the mark that God has set for me. As far as I can tell, that sounds like a definition of sin to me. And I am guilty; of anyone, I above all am guilty.
I know the excuses. Different people have different love languages. We live busy lives - we get distracted. Different people are gifted in different ways. And so on. It's all a load of shit.
The fact is, Christ calls us beyond the pettiness of our lives. He calls us to move beyond the distraction of worrying about how full our plates are and showing human kindness and love to those around us. We are held to a higher standard.
I think of my buddy Jayson. I was really hurting awhile ago. I mean REALLY hurting. He and his wife took me into their house and for two whole weeks - non stop - they ministered to me. They made me feel loved and appreciated and accepted. They accepted my condition and treated me with more grace and love than I have ever felt. They brought to me the peace of Christ. In the end, they helped me heal.
Then, leaving their house and returning to my life, I realized that it was now incumbent upon me to demonstrate love to others. So I started to call people; I started to spend time with them, listening to them. I foudn out there are alot of hurting people in my church that did not feel that they could count on the church for support, and that when I offered it to them, it was the first time they had ever experienced it.
That told me something was wrong; desperately, deadly horribly wrong. If there are more people out there, within arm's reach of me, that are hurting as I hurt, and I was doing nothing about it...
Of course, it does not remove the responsibility from those that are hurting to 1) tell others that they are hurting, and 2) help others, even in their pain. The responsibility is shared; that is after all what community is about.
So we are trying to fix it. I don't know how, and I don't know if my church will survive it. But I can do nothing less.
It has forced me to consider what is the best way for me to demonstrate love to those people in my community? What is my obligation? The more I thought about it, and as I considered the biblical record, what I kept coming back to is that it is mandatory for us to take an active role in caring for eachother. The extent and scope of that care is largely irrelevant. God, I think calls us to love as best we can.
But largely I am beginning to believe that I have no choice. God expects it, and when I do not do it, I am falling short of the mark that God has set for me. As far as I can tell, that sounds like a definition of sin to me. And I am guilty; of anyone, I above all am guilty.
I know the excuses. Different people have different love languages. We live busy lives - we get distracted. Different people are gifted in different ways. And so on. It's all a load of shit.
The fact is, Christ calls us beyond the pettiness of our lives. He calls us to move beyond the distraction of worrying about how full our plates are and showing human kindness and love to those around us. We are held to a higher standard.
I think of my buddy Jayson. I was really hurting awhile ago. I mean REALLY hurting. He and his wife took me into their house and for two whole weeks - non stop - they ministered to me. They made me feel loved and appreciated and accepted. They accepted my condition and treated me with more grace and love than I have ever felt. They brought to me the peace of Christ. In the end, they helped me heal.
Then, leaving their house and returning to my life, I realized that it was now incumbent upon me to demonstrate love to others. So I started to call people; I started to spend time with them, listening to them. I foudn out there are alot of hurting people in my church that did not feel that they could count on the church for support, and that when I offered it to them, it was the first time they had ever experienced it.
That told me something was wrong; desperately, deadly horribly wrong. If there are more people out there, within arm's reach of me, that are hurting as I hurt, and I was doing nothing about it...
Of course, it does not remove the responsibility from those that are hurting to 1) tell others that they are hurting, and 2) help others, even in their pain. The responsibility is shared; that is after all what community is about.
So we are trying to fix it. I don't know how, and I don't know if my church will survive it. But I can do nothing less.
I was hungry
And you formed a humanitarian club
And you discussed my hunger.
Thank you.
I was imprisoned,
And you crept off quietly
To your chapel in the cellar
To pray for my release
I was naked,
And in your mind
You debated the morality of my
Appearance
I was sick
And you knelt and thanked God
For your health.
I was homeless
And you preached to me
Of the spiritual shelter of the
Love of God
I was lonely
And you left me alone
To pray for me.
You seem so holy;
So close to God
But I’m still very hungry
And lonely
And cold
So where have your prayers gone?
What have they done?
What does it profit a man to page through his
Book of prayers when the rest of the world is
Crying for help?
M. Lunn
:: written by Matt Thompson, 3:29 PM
2 Comments:
I didn't know they permitted religion in Canada.
I don't know - I think that it actually easier to help someone you have no connection with. Sometimes familiarity breeds contempt - it is often difficult to push past the comfort of a long friendship and be actually vunerable.
