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I love to teach about social justice. I was very fortunate to be converted among evangelical Quakers, and from the outset we were visiting shut-ins and feeding the hungry and going to the local orphanage. I didn’t realize that, as a Christian, there was anything optional in these practices. I’ve known no other kind of Christianity. I spent the first twelve years of my Christian life scheduled to pass out food or to go to the city jail several times every week.
 We’ve said in our fellowship that we need the poor. Often when middle-class folks come to our church in Anaheim, and I start talking about "needing the poor," I can see people looking at their spouses saying, "What do I need the poor for?" I tell them that, for one thing, giving a part of your life, some portion of your time and resources to people who are socially marginalized, is central to your growth. I say, "You may have come to this church with all kinds of problems—you may be an angry person, or have alcohol problems, or you may just be a materialistic consumer, focused on getting ahead. Whatever it is you’re struggling with, if you care for and serve the poor, you will find some of your own healing in the process.
"Often folks will come up afterwards and ask, "Is that what this church does, serve the poor?" I say, "Yes." They say, "Well, do you have to do that to go to church here?" I tell them, "No, you don’t have to—but it’s your privilege… and it may become your passion if you start doing it." Not everybody does, but most people in our church do. People come to me—some of whom have been Christians for twenty or thirty years—and they have never crossed that threshold. They never went out into a neighborhood, never stood in a dangerous place and sucked it up and said "Oh God, oh God" and knocked on a door and gave somebody some food. Later, they would often come back with tears in their eyes and say, "Thank you for insisting that we go."
What It’s All About
There are some basic things you ought to know about the Christian life. There are some things you ought to do: You ought to be nice to your neighbors and treat your spouse and children well. You ought to keep your bodies reasonably clean, and your minds, and maybe your garage, as well. You ought to try to make a productive living. You ought to grow in the grace of God. You ought to learn how to pray. But at the end of the day, it’s really not about those things. Those things are the passageway; they’re not the room. This present order of things is not "It." What’s coming is It. Some folks, God bless them, are going to stand before God empty-handed, because they never served him. After they did a little ushering or had been on a committee or two, they thought they had fulfilled their obligation to the church, and as an institution they probably had. But they didn’t fulfill their obligation to the founder of the Church. They have been called to serve him all their lives long, with all their heart and mind and soul and strength.
Jesus came to this world and issued a mandate for justice. And though there continues to be injustice in the world, now, there will be a day when the trumpet will sound, with a great shout from heaven, and Jesus Christ, King of kings, will set everything right—every economic injustice, every ethnic dispute, every wrong that has ever been done, because Jesus is the standard. Every painful thing, every abusive act, every sinful deed, everything done in the dark will be brought into the Light. On that day, we will rejoice to be part of what he has done in bringing the kingdom will of his Father to earth. And in this period between the cross and the Second Coming, we are to "occupy" until he comes. We are to be productively involved in bringing justice to all.
Jesus’ Ministry
Jesus, in the declaration concerning his mission, showed us that there was both a spiritual and a social implication to his visit. In his inauguration speech in Luke 4, which is a restatement of Isaiah 61, he says that he has been filled with the Spirit for a purpose: to bring good news to the poor. And when he left and commissioned us, he commissioned us to his ministry. Every now and then in a meeting like this I will get someone who comes up to me and says, "Pray for me, that I’ll discover my ministry." I’ll say, "I don’t have to pray for that. There is only one ministry available, and it is the ministry of Jesus. There has never been any other. But you can participate in his. And if you will enter into his ministry, that’s where the joy is."
Jesus has come to set at liberty the oppressed and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. Now this term, "the acceptable year of the Lord," refers to the year of Jubilee in which debts are remitted, slaves are freed, land is redistributed. Jesus Christ proclaims in this paragraph that it is established now for all time. Part of what that means for us today is that we can participate in not just a "hand out" but a "hand up". We can train people, help people to enter into life. I’m not saying that every poor person you meet is going to become a middle-class citizen—but I am saying that they probably can have a more productive existence after they meet you, if you go with the Gospel.
Keeping It All Together
Jesus fulfilled his ministry by both word and deed, things he said and things he did. In Matthew 4:23-25, it says, "Jesus went about Galilee, preach-ing and teaching and healing and delivering." Word and works. One without the other is incomplete. It’s both. To say "God loves you" and not do any deeds of love is incomplete. It was an evidential kingdom: Jesus proclaimed the word of the Lord and did the deeds of the Lord, and everybody said, "Whoa! This is hot! This is a teaching, and with power!" They saw the demons come out. They saw the blind eyes see. They saw the lame walk, and they heard the Gospel of redemption and the call of God through Jesus Christ himself, to come and repent and to enter into the kingdom, a kingdom that is "already" and "not-yet."
Jesus is fulfilling Old Testament prophecy about the Messiah that was to come. Psalms 84:14 tells us that it is a kingdom where righteousness and justice is the foundation of the throne, ruled by a king who says, "Let justice roll down like water and righteousness like an ever flowing stream (Amos 5:24)" and who upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. To misuse or oppress the poor is to set yourself up for judgment. God will take up the cause of the poor; God himself will vindicate. God himself will bring things to the proper end. If you are going to hear anything this week, let it be that.
Seeing With New Eyes
In Matthew 9:35-36, Jesus sees the people as "harassed and helpless," and I want you to know that those words as translated in the NIV are pretty weak; they don’t do justice to the Greek words. They are violent words: the people are held down! Pinned to the ground! Jesus is talking about people abused by humankind. He looked out over the city of Jerusalem, and he wept with compassion. He said they were like sheep without a shepherd; they had no one to protect them, no one to feed them, care for them, and look after them.
Now, so many of us have come through a Christian ministry that has told us, "God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life." It’s been an entry point through which you move toward an improved quality of life. "You can have a better marriage, your children will obey you, you can drive a nicer car, upward mobility is part of the package." Not all of that is completely wrong—but I’m just saying that it doesn’t do justice to the Bible. It’s not about the accumulation of things. It’s not even about having the greatest marriage on earth. I mean, my wife got me! Can you imagine how bad she must have been as a child to pay that kind of price! We’ve just had our fortieth anniversary; she’s had to live with me all that time! We’ve had a wonderful time together, but it hasn’t been because we’ve been able to meet every need each other has, or been perfect. We have good hearts, and we know how to repent!
An Early Lesson
I hadn’t been a Christian more than six weeks, and I loved Sunday School. The guy who had led me to the Lord was teaching a class, and I loved to go to it. One day, I was driving to church with my family, and I saw a person with a flat tire. I thought, "Gee, I wish I had time to stop for them, but I’ve got to get down to the church building and get the chairs arranged for Sunday School." So I went on by and got the chairs arranged for Sunday School, and all the adults came in and sat down in the chairs but the teacher wasn’t there. We waited five, ten, fifteen, twenty-five minutes. The class was only forty-five minutes long. About twenty-five minutes after the hour, he comes in with grease all over his hands. "Forgive me, you all," he said, "I had to stop and help somebody with a flat tire!" That day he taught me one of the greatest lessons I ever learned as a Christian. Are you hearing me? "I had to stop. A man needed help." We didn’t have time for the lesson that morning, but he didn’t need to say anything after that. I got on board that day. There were other times that God has spoken to me about the poor, but I got on board that day. For the first time I understood the priority of just helping people, whatever the situation.
Discipleship requires obedience. In Matthew 21, obedience results in justice. Jesus says, "Not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the Kingdom, only those who do the will of the Father in Heaven." Doing is the thing. Faith, James says, is proven by your deeds. Evidential Christianity. At the end of the day, it’s all about obedience. It’s not enough to say, "Lord, Lord." You’ve got to act. Now not everybody is called to the "front lines" of work with the poor. But everyone is called to participate.
God’s Kind of Church
Folks, the world knows what this is supposed to look like. Years ago in New York City, I got into a taxi cab with an Iranian taxi driver, who could hardly speak English. I tried to explain to him where I wanted to go, and as he was pulling his car out of the parking place, he almost got hit by a van that on its side had a sign reading The Pentecostal Church. He got real upset and said, "That guy’s drunk." I said, "No, he’s a Pentecostal. Drunk in the spirit, maybe, but not with wine." He asked, "Do you know about church?" I said, "Well, I know a little bit about it; what do you know?" It was a long trip from one end of Manhattan to the other, and all the way down he told me one horror story after another that he’d heard about the church. He knew about the pastor that ran off with the choir master's wife, the couple that had burned the church down and collected the insurance—every horrible thing you could imagine. We finally get to where we were going, I paid him, and as we’re standing there on the landing I gave him an extra-large tip. He got a suspicious look in his eyes—he’d been around, you know. I said, "Answer me this one question." Now keep in mind, I’m planning on witnessing to him. "If there was a God and he had a church, what would it be like?" He sat there for awhile making up his mind to play or not. Finally he sighed and said, "Well, if there was a God and he had a church—they would care for the poor, heal the sick, and they wouldn’t charge you money to teach you the Book." I turned around and it was like an explosion in my chest. "Oh, God." I just cried, I couldn’t help it. I thought, "Oh Lord, they know. The world knows what it’s supposed to be like. The only ones that don’t know are the Church."
When you joined the kingdom, you expected to be used of God. I’ve talked to thousands of people, and almost everybody has said, "When I signed up, I knew that caring for the poor was part of it—I just kind of got weaned off of it, because no one else was doing it." Folks, I’m not saying, "Do some-thing heroic." I’m not saying, "Take on some high standard, sell everything you have and go." Now, if Jesus tells you that, that’s different. But I’m not saying that. I’m just saying, participate. Give some portion of what you have—time, energy, money, on a regular basis—to this purpose, to redeeming people, to caring for people. Share your heart and life with somebody that’s not easy to sit in the same car with. Are you hearing me? That’s where you’ll really see the kingdom of God.
The Late John Wimber was the spiritual leader of 700 Vineyard churches worldwide and the founding pastor of the Anaheim Vineyard in southern California.
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