Matthew 10:7-8
As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment. 8
Bert (name changed) lived on the streets, slept in parks and under bridges in Copenhagen for more than 30 years; today he has his own room in a halfway house run by The United Methodist Church, and he is healthier and happier than he has been for several years. Knud (name changed) a former cruise-line chef, started drinking, and then lost his job, dropped out of the system, and lived for several years with a woman who sold her body. When she died, he had no one, no social security number, he simply didn’t exist, and he was seriously ill. One day he came to the UMC Centralmission in Copenhagen, and one of our pastors took care of him and helped him to get his identity back. He got a social security number and was able to go to the hospital for treatment. Today, Knud cooks in the church for the homeless people several days a week.
Our neighborhoods are full of broken people. Some of them are clearly visible on the streets, others are hidden behind closed doors. In our finest hours we stop and make an effort to help. Most of the time, just as any other pastor or teacher, we look the other way, we stride by, we are too busy, and we don’t really care.
And yet, we are sent out into the world, like Christ once sent his disciples, to bring the wholeness of the kingdom, health, life, restoration, and goodness. According to Matthew, Jesus emphasizes the Jewish people as the primary receivers of this good news; however, from other Gospel passages we know that Jesus put no restrictions on his message. The kingdom of heaven was indeed open to all without any restrictions or exceptions, and the disciples were called to share freely. Wholeness was offered for free without any payment from us, however, the Gospel tells us that Christ paid the highest price to make this possible.
There is no doubt that Jesus expects obedience from his followers in this, and his judgment falls hard on us—you saw a hungry man, and you felt no pain in your stomach; you saw a line of refugees hoping to be allowed to stay in your country, and you slept well that night; you saw broken people, but your heart was not broken by their pain.
As a bishop, I have visited the mission of the Puno UMC in a slum area next to the city dump of Quezon City in the Philippines. We were a group of leaders, pastors, and bishops encountering people who literally have to
fight to keep their life together, parents who struggle to feed their children. They live off the dumpsite— one of their few sources of income is to clean and dry dirty plastic and sell it. Afterward, we went back to our luxury hotel, had a nice dinner, and continued our meetings.
Peter once proclaimed on behalf of the other disciples, that they thought Jesus was the Christ, the son of the living God (Matthew 16:16), but they had no idea what it meant. And when Jesus began to share what that would imply for him—that he was heading for Jerusalem to be denied, arrested, tortured, and killed, but would rise on the third day—the disciples couldn’t stomach it. But Jesus continued…. “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” (Matthew 16:24)
What does it mean to be entrusted with the Gospel and the reality of wholeness? And what does it mean to be a Christian and a United Methodist taking this Gospel of wholeness out into a hurting world? I wonder if those of us living in the rich western world are really able to find the answer. To us, the only logical consequence of Jesus’ challenge is chaos, which implies that only those who have nothing to lose are
really able to follow him.
It appears that many of us, who say we want to be followers of Christ, feel it is enough to readily accept that Jesus loves us, that he listens to our prayers, and everything else that makes us feel good. We are perfectly happy settling for what Dietrich Bonhoeffer referred to as cheap grace, meaning grace without discipleship.
When Jesus calls us to follow, he is ultimately calling us to come and die with him. Following Jesus literally means to lay aside everything, to submit everything to him, our weaknesses and our strengths, our wealth—all of our stuff.
Bonhoeffer declared that the church’s first step must be to get rid of all its possessions. Of course this suggestion must be dismissed as naive and eccentric, and it has been by many who studied Bonhoeffer. But if your child is starving, then you might have a different perspective. What does it imply to deny ourselves and take up our cross and follow Christ as a denomination?
It is not about a nice report and a flashy video presentation; Jesus is talking about wholeness, transformed lives; a new way of thinking, new values, and a new lifestyle. He was saying we need to die from ourselves, we need to let go of our comfortable lives and live a new life.
The mighty organism we call the church with its rich history, theology, worship, and testimony is like a great pyramid turned upside down. Christ’s intention was that the single person’s distress should be at its focal point. Every song, prayer, bishop, sacrament, and sermon should focus on that individual person in need. The distress of every single human being has a dominant priority for the living God. If we fail at this one point, we fail in all, as we are only truly the church when we exist for others.
One of the ways in which Jesus’ call to discipleship changes our perception is well expressed in the call for our denomination to be in “ministry with the poor.” We are not in ministry for the poor, we are in ministry WITH the poor. No one should be the object of our charity—we are all God’s children sharing this beautiful world, with all its resources. We are all loved by the same living God who revealed himself in this world through his son Jesus Christ, who hardly owned anything—he didn’t own his own house, was marginalized, suffered, and died—but who conquered all evil powers of this world, including the evil power of poverty.
Christ has called us to bring wholeness to our ministry. We should not only share the Gospel,food, water, healthcare, medicine, community,and education with the poor—we must address and even fight the dynamics and demonic system that create and sustain poverty.
We dare not offer bread in Christ’s name without addressing the very dynamics in the political and economic systems that brutalize human beings to an extent beyond our imagination. Through the final decade of John Wesley’s ministry he issued a series of warnings that the increasing tendency of Methodists to retain wealth instead of sharing it with those in need correlated directly with a decline in their spiritual growth and in the progress of the revival. Wesley suggests a correlation between engagement with the poor and spiritual growth.
Today we struggle with this perception. We put personal spirituality in an antithetical relationship with concern for social ministry.
Yet it says in our Book of Discipline—and I suspect this one of being inspired by the Holy Spirit: “We proclaim no personal gospel that fails to express itself in relevant social concerns; we proclaim no social gospel that does not include the personal transformation of sinners.” (¶ 101) This creative tension signifies Methodism. This is our DNA. If it doesn’t, we are something else. Lord have mercy on us.
As Colin Morris said in his book Include Me Out, “If there is still time left for Methodism, it can only be stirred into action if the power is connected between the two poles: Christ’s love and human suffering, if we feel the full effect of the strength of the first and the monstrosity of the latter.” Jesus sent out his disciples to proclaim and to live his gospel of wholeness. And he said “If any want to become my followers let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” Lord, we want to follow you—have mercy on us!
Bishop Christian Alsted, The Nordic & Baltic area
