Jesus
on Community Outreach
Stephen
Terry
Commentary
on the July 30, 2016 Sabbath School Lesson
“After these things had
been done, the leaders came to me and said, ‘The people of Israel, including
the priests and the Levites, have not kept themselves separate from the
neighboring peoples with their detestable practices, like those of the
Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites, Ammonites, Moabites, Egyptians and
Amorites. They have taken some of their daughters as wives for themselves and
their sons, and have mingled the holy race with the peoples around them. And
the leaders and officials have led the way in this unfaithfulness.’” Ezra
9:1-2, NIV
Many years ago, an inner-city church[i] decided they needed to do
something about the aging demographic in their parish. The elderly church
members looked around them and noticed that few young adults were attending,
and even worse, when the children came forward for the weekly Children’s Story,
fewer and fewer filtered out of the pews and toddled down to hear the story.
Something needed to be done, or the church would die out, perhaps as soon as
those in the elderly majority were resting in their graves. But what? Could
those who had long ago been concerned about life as they were today about their
aged aches and pains and their regimen of medical appointments and prescription
medications still understand what needed to be done?
Some thought that remodeling the church to make it more
attractive to young couples would be the solution. Spending a great deal of
money to remodel spaces and improve the sound system, they found that a few did
really appreciate the changes, but the church membership continued to dwindle,
so the elderly board members began to cast about for other solutions.
Eventually it was agreed that the answer might be hiring a youth minister. To
be sure some were opposed and felt that a younger person leading the youth would
bring peppier music into the worship service. Fearing this, they felt it would
be tantamount to handing Satan the key to the church. Nonetheless, the vote was
carried and the youth pastor was called for an interview. At that interview,
the split between those who were alarmed over the possibility of musical
changes, and those who were desirous of making the church more appealing to a
younger generation became apparent. One old saint even went so far as to say he
only wanted the church to remain until he died and did not care if it came to
an end after that. To his credit, the young man interviewed accepted the
position on the vote of the majority of the board anyway, but this was only the
beginning and over time the real reason for the deep division over his hiring
became apparent.
Recognizing while most of the elderly church members
commuted to the church each week from areas outside the church’s neighborhood,
even driving by other churches of the same denomination to get there, he saw in
contrast there were many young families in the economically depressed area in the immediate
neighborhood with lots of small children who lived in single parent homes or
with grandparents. Some of those children were struggling to survive in crack
houses and lived mostly on the streets. He began a door-to-door neighborhood
effort to see who lived where and what their needs were. In meeting with these
people, it was discovered that the church had so little contact with them in
the past that had it disappeared tomorrow, it would not be missed. They barely
even knew what happened inside its doors.
In response, the youth minister began organizing social
activities and inviting the neighbors to meals and Christian block parties
where they could meet church members and get
acquainted. He also began Friday night youth social times to get the teenagers
and their siblings off of the streets when the danger was the greatest.
Admittedly, this was somewhat shocking for Seventh-day Adventists who were used
to huddling at home on Friday nights. But this perhaps more than any other
aspect of his ministry paid big dividends, not only for soul winning, but for
saving lives as well. The children learned when things became dangerous at home
or on the streets, they had a place of refuge, somewhere where the hurting could
stop. But then the whole outreach became unraveled as the most fundamental
illness of the church came to the surface and created an unsurmountable
barrier. Not long after, the youth pastor moved on and the great work that had
been done fizzled away.
The young man wanted to take the children of the neighborhood
and the children of the church on a church sponsored camping trip where the young
people of the church could be examples to the rest as they played and worshipped
together, each drawing closer to Jesus as a result. However, not even one church
family would allow their child to go and mix with the children from the neighborhood.
Stating that they feared for the deleterious influence of the neighborhood children,
they refused to support the program. Nonetheless, to their credit, the church
board continued their support, and it took place with only the non-church
children. It was a success, with the adults in charge reporting that the
children were better behaved than any other youth group they had chaperoned in
the past. But this break in the relationship between the church and the
neighborhood did not go unnoticed and the parents of the children feeling that
their children were ostracized by the church became less willing to participate
in the outreach programs.
How did this happen? Through subsequent discussions
about the incident, it was discovered that some, like Ezra in our passage at
the top of the page, saw the church as primarily a means to keep the rest of
the world at bay. It was to be a defensive castle, and all must man the
ramparts to keep the nastiness of the world outside its walls. Never mind that
every bit of the nastiness that exists outside the church also exists inside,
only hidden. Even the image of keeping evil at bay was more important than
interacting with the community. Some feel that when they enter the doors of the
church that something magical happens and bricks and mortar become a very real
barrier against everything that might offend them. Jesus revealed this is not
so.[ii] In fact, we seem to have
made this kind of thinking a wall against fulfilling the very thing Jesus told
us to do.[iii] Some appear willing to
cede the entire world to the Devil and his minions as long as they can maintain
the illusion of safety in the church. But it is only an illusion. A third of
heaven went awry in the great rebellion that sent Satan plummeting to earth.[iv] Do we think that if
heaven itself was not immune to the insurrection that institutions of human
devising somehow would be? Concern for this is what may lay behind Ezra’s
account, but the war in heaven that could have easily resulted in destroying
all of the rebels, did not. There may be a lesson in that for all of us.
Righteousness is not righteousness if it is not tempered with compassion and
grace.
In spite of the prohibitions against marrying those who
were not Israelites, Salmon married Rahab, the Canaanite prostitute from
Jericho. Boaz also married Ruth from Moab.[v] Both nations were under a
ban from joining with the Israelites, but in both cases that ban was ignored. Perhaps the most important thing to remember
from these examples is that both women contributed their DNA to the line that
produced not only King David and King Solomon, but also the Messiah. Of course
this begs the question of what might have happened if these men had not married
foreigners. Some might speculate this or that, but the bottom line is that God
did not punish these individuals nor did He exclude them from the congregation
for intermarrying. If anything, a very strong case might be made that He blessed
them and honored them.
Perhaps the real issue here is not the intermarrying,
but the strength of one’s relationship with God. If we think about it, we
surround ourselves with walls not when we are strong, but when we are weak.
Therefore we may be witnessing to the weakness of our faith and by implication
the weakness of our God when we avoid, out of fear, engagement with the world
filled with the very people He wishes to save. At one time, God used the lesson
of food to teach Peter that all of mankind was important to Him.[vi] Food may also teach us something
about our desire to sequester ourselves away from the world. Paul told us it
was the one whose faith was weak that avoided meat and ate only vegetables.[vii] While some may wish to
take Peter’s experience and make it about diet instead of outreach, Peter did
not see it that way. We can err in the other direction by making Paul’s
statement solely about diet as well. But if we see it as metaphor, then Paul is
telling us that instituting practices that create barriers between us and
others that do not have gateways of compassion through those barriers will
neither protect us nor fulfill the great commission we have been called to
follow.
We are all sinners,[viii] and perhaps that makes
it easy to look around us and see only evil knocking at our door. Then out of a
desire to protect ourselves or others, we become like Don Quixote, tilting at
every windmill in an effort to overcome every evil. It is not in our power to
do so, and we run the very real risk of filling our lives with negativity, and
harming our ability to witness about God’s love to others when we seek to
battle against them instead of for them. Even if others are wrong in what they
may have done, when we war against them over it, we may be shutting the door
forever to our influence for good. God may have brought them into our lives to
give us the opportunity to pour love and not negativity into their hurting
hearts. How sad if we miss the blessing of giving them healing instead of pain.
How much better if we tear down the wall of self-righteousness we have erected
to protect ourselves from harm. God will make everything right without our fuss
if we only trust Him to work it all out.
