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6. Standing, as Jesus does, with the outcast and oppressed the denigrated and afflicted, seeking peace and justice with or without the support of others;
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One of the central parts of Jesus ministry in the Gospels is his focus on justice for the least powerful members of society. He lived at a time when the religious and political leaders of his community experienced great prosperity, while the ordinary people struggled to survive under the burden of high taxes. Like Micah, Isaiah, Amos, and so many of the Old Testament prophets before him, Jesus was deeply upset by the unfairness of this system.
While it is sometimes (too often) overlooked by preachers, social and economic justice is mentioned more them 2,000 times throughout the Bible. After faith in God, it is Jesus favorite topic in his parables and other teachings. If you claim to be a follower of God, but haven't picked up on this point, you've missed something vital.
Jesus doesn't flinch from this point either. In Luke 6:17-26 he says:
‘Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.
‘Blessed are you who are hungry now,
for you will be filled.
So God clearly has compassion for the poor, but there's more. Unlike Matthew's Gospel, which sticks exclusively to the blessings, Luke's account also lists some woes:
‘But woe to you who are rich,
for you have received your consolation.
‘Woe to you who are full now,
for you will be hungry.
Woe to you who are rich? Those are shocking words, especially to American Christians who like to equate wealth with our religious devotion. Why should Jesus say something so harsh? Does he mean wealthy people who are obsessed with their wealth? Does he mean just those who have gotten wealthy through ruthless or dishonest means?
It's easy to try to spiritualize those words away, with this and with other parables. The best example of this kind of creative interpretation is found in the parable of the camel and the eye of a needle found in Matthew 19:24, Mark 10:25, and Luke 18:25. Jesus says that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.
Interpreters have tried to make this parable easier on the wealthy for years by suggesting that the 'eye of the needle' is actually the name of a city gate in Jerusalem, or that the 'needle' mentioned is actually a special kind of needle with a very large eye, or that the word translated 'camel' is actually a mistranslation of the word for a slender rope.
All of those sound reasonable, and give the wealthy a much better shot, but there are no shortage of articles demonstrating that all of these explanations are wishful thinking. Jesus really was talking about something that is completely impossible. He wanted to drive home the importance of the idea that God cares for the survival rights of the poor far more than for the property rights of the wealthy.
You can find the same imperative in the story of Lazarus and the Rich Man as well. The rich man doesn't end out in torment because he was dishonest, or immoral, or cruel. His offense is simply that he is wealthy, and there was a poor man at his gate, and he never did anything to help.
There is an overwhelming movement to care for the poor and the helpless. It's not a call that lets separate them out so that we can care only for those we deem "deserving". The Gospels are much more basic than that. Simply put, poverty and injustice are intolerable in God's sight. If we really are God's people, they will be intolerable to us too.
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