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Sunday, January 16, 2005
Rev.
Dr. Harold E Kidd
MARTIN'S GIFT
TO THE CHURCH
"The
Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to
the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of
sight to the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the
Lord's favor." Luke 4: 18-19
(NIV)
We want this morning, as we
are on this weekend celebrating the birthday of the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr., to lift up this reflective thought, What is Martin's Gift to the Church? Very early in the dawn of the
Civil Rights movement Dr. King encountered a tremendous challenge. The
challenge was the inertia of the church. He was criticized by some because of
their position that the church should have no dealings with politics.
He was challenged in that he
encountered a lack of unity among the leaders of the people. He was challenged
in that many were more concerned about their own individual circumstances than
the circumstances of their neighbors. And so in his autobiography - Stride Toward Freedom - I would like to
read you an excerpt which Dr. King
cites that came very early in the Montgomery Bus Boycott:
"Certainly, otherworldy concerns have a deep
and significant place in all religions worthy of the name. Any religion that is
completely earthbound sells its birthright for a mess of naturalistic pottage.
Religion at its best deals not only with man's preliminary concerns but with
his inescapable ultimate concern. When religion overlooks this basic fact it is
reduced to a mere ethical system in which eternity is absorbed into time and
God is relegated to a sort of meaningless figment of the human imagination.
But a religion true to its nature must also be
concerned about man's social conditions. Religion deals with both earth and
heaven, both time and eternity. Religion operates not only on the vertical plan
but also on the horizontal. It seeks not only to integrate men with God but to
integrate men with men and each man with himself. This means, at bottom, that
the Christian gospel is a two-way road. On the one hand it seeks to change the
souls of men and thereby unite them with God; on the other hand, it seeks to
change the environmental conditions of men so that the soul will have a chance
after it is changed. Any religion that professes to be concerned with the souls
of men and is not concerned with the slums that damn them, the economic
conditions that strangle them, and the social conditions that cripple them is a
dry-as-dust religion. Such a religion is the kind the Marxists like to see - an
opiate of the people."
When you read Luke 4, Jesus
was a Jew, Jesus practiced Jewish custom, and on this occasion Luke informs us
that Jesus went to the synagogue as was his custom for worship, opens the
scroll of sacred scripture, and reads from the prophet Isaiah, "The Spirit
of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach good news to the
poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of
sight to the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the
Lord's favor." He then rolls up the scroll, gives it back to the attendant
and sits down. He says to those in the church, "Today this scripture is
fulfilled in your hearing."
He then leaves the church
and begins what Matthew, Mark, and Luke describe as his public ministry. His
ministry is not in the synagogue. His ministry is not within the walls of
organized religion of Judaism. No, his
ministry is out there in the fertile fields of humanity. He feeds the hungry,
he clothes the naked, he gives recovery of sight to the blind. He sits with
publicans, winos, and women of the night. He offers friendship to those who
have been marginalized and ostracized by Jewish religion and culture.
His ministry is outside the
context of institutionalized religion. The Lord recognizes that there is
something wrong with the religion of his day, and so he moves outside its
dry-rotted boundaries. He shares with us in Luke 10 the parable of the Good
Samaritan. When you read Luke 10 in its entirety, you'll notice that the
majority of the chapter deals with the theme of being sent. The church is
missional in purpose.
In the beginning of Luke 10,
verses 1 – 24, the Lord sends out his disciples two by two. He sends out the
seventy. Then he comes to the parable of the Good Samaritan. Religion, Judaism
if you will, has become an opiate in this parable. You know the story well. A
man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho when he fell into the hands of
robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him, and went away, leaving him
battered, bloodied, and half dead. In our day and times we might say he got jacked or mugged by some street thugs. A priest who in our day we'd say was a
preacher came upon the scene and saw this beaten child of God. He hurriedly passed by, as though he had not
seen what he had seen. He was a preacher, I mean priest, more interested in
show than substance. His religion had become an opiate.
I wonder how many of us
preachers have ignored the cries from within our own communities, preferring
non-involvement to confronting the demonic powers that be. Preferring the role
of priest to that of prophetic voice.
Likewise, a Levite -- let's
say in our own day and time a good church elder, deacon, or steward, someone in
the pew -- later was traveling that same road and when he saw this scene, did
just as the priest or preacher -- hurriedly passed on by, as though he did not
have the time to stop and investigate to see if this fellow needed help. This
Levite had, as well, allowed his religion to become an opiate. His religion had
become so internalized and privatized that when he saw this beaten child of
God, he ignored the cry for help and passed by on the other side.
We have to be careful, we
have to challenge ourselves to move beyond our comfort zones, when we hear and
encounter people and circumstances crying out for our involvement. Because
there is always the temptation, as cited by Dr. King, for our faith to become
like an opiate. It serves our needs. It makes us feel good. It might make us
feel as though we are better than another. It might serve like a cosmetic
make-over to cover up our own sense of weakness and insecurity. But whatever
the case, it has no transforming power in the world in which we live.
Religion becomes like an
opiate when we drive in on Sunday morning and drive out on Sunday afternoon,
but the living of our days is no different. Religion becomes like an opiate
when we come to church looking for an emotional or intellectual fix, but it does move us to be
ambassadors for Christ in the settings where the Lord has placed us and given
us access.
Who is the Samaritan? He or she is you and I, the persons who
themselves have encountered racism, or classism, or sexism, economic or social
injustice. Who is the Samaritan? He or
she is you and I, persons who themselves have been viewed has having baggage
that society says "we don't want no
part." The Senior Citizen. The child or adult living with AIDS. There
is a laundry list today of those who have been marginalized because of who they
are.
Let me suggest that those
who have experienced what it means to be marginalized or ostracized or to face
discrimination ought to be the first to show compassion on those who suffer
similar experiences in life. Our
religion ought not desensitize us from the conditions which God has blessed us
to overcome. Don't ever feel than in making
it we have now escaped it. The church
becomes an opiate when we ignore the cries of those around us and those who are
in our very midst.
Such a religion, said Dr.
King, is of no earthly good. As we consider our theme, I suggest to you that
while we celebrate Dr. King's leadership in the Civil Rights movement, his gift
to the church was not the movement itself but, in the midst of the movement,
the church rediscovered her calling to be a missional church. Amen. A church
sent to transform the world in which we live. Martin gave to the church a renewed
social consciousness, challenging us to be a prophetic voice in a time when
people and our society were in need of social and spiritual transformation.
In this parable of the Good
Samaritan, it is Christ calling his church to be involved with life wherever we
encounter it. The Samaritan is us. The Samaritan found and picked up this
beaten person, took him to an inn, and the text says, "The Samaritan cared
for him there." It was a hands-on ministry. The Samaritan then gave the
innkeeper resources to continue the care and rehabilitation of this beaten man.
In urban ministry there are
three kinds of ministries. God does not call any one church to save its
neighborhood by itself. God does not call anyone person to do it all. God just
calls us to discern the voice of the Spirit. It is the Spirit who directs
church ministry. We've got to focus on doing what we do best and what the Lord
leads us as a congregation to do, not doing ministry because the church down
the road is doing it.
There are three kinds of
ministries that every church ought to embrace as part of holistic urban
ministry. There are three kinds of ministries in this text. Two which are
present, one which could be argued on the basis of sanctified imagination.
There is crisis ministry.
Crisis ministry is the Samaritan finding the beaten man, tending to his wounds,
and taking him to an inn. Crisis ministry is there in the short term, designed
to provide immediate help. Crisis ministry is feeding the hungry. Crisis
ministry is providing shelter for someone who comes to your church saying,
"I don't have any place to go." Crisis ministry does not address the
cause of the crisis, it just addresses the crisis. It is short term. It is a
bandage kind of ministry.
Then there's transitional
ministry. Give a person a fish, and you make them dependent upon you. Teach a
person how to fish, and you equip them to live independently. Transitional
ministry in this text is when the church (Samaritan)
took this man to the inn and invested something for his rehabilitation. The inn
became a place empowering him to get back on his feet. Transitional ministry
empowers individuals to re-enter life.
Transitional ministry might
be a career counseling and training ministry for a person who has become unemployed.
Transitional ministry is when you help a person who has been battered and
abused, with the resources perhaps through counseling, or housing and job
training, enabling them to leave an abusive situation and move on with their
life. That’s transitional ministry.
Been then the toughest
ministry of all is transformational ministry. Transformational ministry deals
with the systemic causes of our problem. Transformational ministry carries the
voice of the prophetic. The Civil Rights Movement was a transformational kind
of ministry. It was a ministry that crucified its prophets. Dr. King died
because God was using him to transform a society and was elevating his
prophetic voice to the stage of world events.
Transformational ministry is
a ministry in which people are committed to the long haul of making the crooked
places straight and working so that justice flows like a mighty river.
Transformational ministry in
this text would have been if the Samaritan had said, "You know there is
something wrong with this road. This road is dangerous to travel. People are
getting mugged and jacked on this road. We need to go to the Jewish Sanhedrin
-- the city council, the mayor, the police department, the block club -- and
organize a community town hall meeting to deal with the problems of this
road!"
Yes, "A charge to keep
I have, A God to glorify, A never-dying soul to save, And fit it for the sky.
To serve this present age, My calling to fulfill, O may it all my powers engage
to do my Master's will!"