The Sacred Echo


09/05/2010 - Take Care of My People



When I was a first year student at Dallas Seminary one of the courses I took was called Survey of Ministries. It was a field education course designed to get you off campus and out into the real world to see what was going on spiritually in and around the Dallas metroplex.

And I can remember attending a rather formal Roman Catholic mass, visiting a lively healing service at a Pentecostal assembly, and worshipping with a warm Messianic Jewish community on the Sabbath. It was a fascinating experience.

I also remember spending a very interesting day visiting Chaplain Ray's International Prison Ministry. And at lunch time I sat down with a sweet man named Floyd Hamilton. Floyd was in his 70's at the time and it was clear that he loved Jesus. He was a soft spoken, gentle man who was part of Chaplain Ray's ministry to those behind bars.

So I was bit shocked when Floyd told me that growing up he was good friends with Bonnie & Clyde who were also from the Dallas area. In fact, his younger brother Ray was their get away driver before he was arrested and electrocuted back in 1935.

Floyd himself had been arrested a few times and even sent to Alcatraz, the maximum security prison located on an island in the San Francisco Bay. In fact, back in 1943 he told me that he along with three other inmates escaped from the rock. Only a handful of prisoners had ever pulled that off and none successfully.

Unfortunately, Floyd was not the greatest swimmer so instead of crossing the bay he hid in a cave for three days until he finally got cold and hungry enough to climb back into the prison through the very same window from which he had jumped. I'll never forget my conversation with Floyd Hamilton and the power of Jesus to change a life.

I'll also never forget another assignment that I had with my Survey of Ministries course. It was an optional assignment. You didn't have to do it, but I wanted to.

The assignment was to spend 24 hours on the streets of Dallas with nothing but a toothbrush and four dollars in your pocket. In other words, live like a homeless person for 24 hours and see what it feels like. It was kind of a bizarre assignment, not the kind you want to tell your mother about, but the adventure appealed to me. So I convinced my friend, Dan, to join me on the streets and on a sunny Saturday afternoon in early December we left our dormitory and walked down into the center of Dallas.

We hadn't showered for a few days and hadn't shaved for a week and tried to dress the part as best we could and then we just hung out. We sat on the sidewalk, laid down on park benches, rummaged through trash cans, picked coins out of fountains, and did things that just made people uncomfortable. In fact, after a while people would cross the street when they saw us coming.

And I can remember feeling odd and out of place and looked down upon and there were times when I wanted to take off the disguise and shout, "Don't be afraid. I'm not going to hurt you. I'm not homeless. I'm a seminary student. Really I am!" It was hard after awhile.

When we started out that afternoon it was about 70 degrees and the sun was shining brightly, but then a cold front came through and before the night was over the temperature had dropped into 40's and it began to rain. And we had to sleep outside. That was part of the assignment.

So we searched through a dumpster and pulled out a couple of big sheets of cardboard and dragged them over to a nearby playground where we laid one down on the asphalt for a mattress and the other one on top of us for a blanket and froze that night. I don't think we slept a wink.

We got up early that next morning walked into a church service where everybody just stared at us or ignored us and then after that we counted the minutes until our 24 hours were up and we could walk back to our dorm, take a hot shower, eat a good meal, and crawl into a soft bed.

That 24 hour experience taught me more about the plight of the homeless than any book or course could ever have. In fact, I did the same assignment again in the spring, only this time I stayed overnight in a rescue mission. That's a whole other story, but that experience led to an opportunity for me to serve in that rescue mission the next year and get better acquainted with the depth of human need in the inner city.

This morning we continue our series called The Sacred Echo: Exploring the Mystery of Prayer with a look at one of the loudest echoes we find in Scripture. In the second teaching of this series we said the loudest echo we hear in Scripture is the echo from God that says, "I love you. I love you. I love you." I think that's the most important sacred echo that any of us can hear from God.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life, John 3:16.

Or as the apostle Paul put it in Romans 8:38-39, For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The love that God has for us is the most important, most powerful, most transforming echo we can ever hear. But a close second to that echo is the love, care, and concern that we have for others, especially the most vulnerable in our midst. That's a huge theme in Scripture.

If you have a Bible turn with me to John 21 and Jesus' conversation with the apostle Peter. After having breakfast on the beach with his disciples, Jesus takes Peter aside and restores their relationship that had been damaged when Peter had denied Jesus three times the night before his crucifixion. So three times Jesus asks Peter the same question to restore the relationship.

Look at John 21:15-17 , When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon son of John, do you truly love me more than these?" "Yes, Lord," he said, "you know that I love you." Jesus said, "Feed my lambs." 16Again Jesus said, "Simon son of John, do you truly love me?"He answered, "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you." Jesus said, "Take care of my sheep." 17The third time he said to him, "Simon son of John, do you love me?" Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, "Do you love me?" He said, "Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you." Jesus said, "Feed my sheep."

Notice how these two sacred echoes are connected by Jesus. Three times Jesus asks Peter, "Do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me?" And Peter says, "Yes Lord, you know I do. You know I love you. You know all things." Peter sounds exasperated because he is.

But Jesus is determined to make a point. He responds by saying, "Feed my lambs. Take care of my sheep. Feed my sheep." What's his point? His point is that if we love Jesus we will take care of others. We will take care of the sheep and the lambs that God loves. And who are they? I think they represent every one that God created.

It's just another way of expressing the greatest commandment found in Mark 12:29-31, 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' 31The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these."

God's ridiculous, unconditional, undeserved love for us was always intended to have a response and that response is for us to demonstrate our love for God by loving and caring for others. And God's sheep, God's lambs include the most vulnerable people in our society, the one's Jesus calls "the least of these." That sacred echo is found all through Scripture and we can't ignore it if we want to fulfill the great commandment and become fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ.

A few summers ago I read a book that really helped me understand that. It was the best selling book by Jim Wallis called God's Politics. Jim Wallis is the editor of Sojourners magazine and is a leading evangelical voice in our culture. In the book Wallis tells the story of his first encounter with God's view of the poor. He was in his first year of seminary when he and a group of fellow students decided to look up every verse in the Bible that dealt with the poor and the oppressed.

And so together they scoured the Old and the New Testament to find every single reference to wealth and poverty, injustice and oppression, to see how God's people are to respond to these things.

He was shocked to discover that there are several thousand verses in the Bible that talk about the poor and God's response to injustice. He found out that it was the second most prominent theme in the Old Testament next to idolatry and the two were often linked together. In the New Testament he discovered that one out of every sixteen verses is about the poor or the subject of money. One out of every ten verses in the first three gospels and in the book of Luke alone it's one out every seven.

Later he and his friends sat around in a circle and talked about how those subjects were treated in the churches where they grew up. And not one of them could remember even one sermon taught on the poor in any of their home churches. In the Bible, the poor were everywhere, but in their churches they were nowhere to be found.

Then they decided to do what became for them a life changing experiment. One guy took an old Bible and a new pair of scissors and began the long process of literally cutting out every single biblical text about the poor.

It took him a very long time. He cut out almost everything that the Hebrew prophets had to say about how nations, rulers, and all of us are instructed to treat the poor. Much of the Psalms disappeared, where God is often seen as the defender and deliverer of the oppressed. All the references to the Hebrew year of Jubilee had to be cut out. The year of Jubilee was to be observed every fifty years when a great "leveling" of society was to occur setting slaves free, canceling debts, and redistributing land back to its rightful owners, but Israel never observed it.

When he got to the New Testament he started with Mary's Song where she says that Jesus will bring down rulers from their thrones, lift up the humble, fill the hungry with good things, and send the rich away empty. He cut out Jesus' first sermon in Luke 4 where he says, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor." The Sermon on the Mount, especially the Beatitudes, got sliced and diced. The account of the early church in Acts had to go. Many of the words of Paul and the writings of the apostle John who said that we don't have the love of God in us unless we open our hearts to the needy got chopped out.

When his friend was finally done with his dissection, the old Bible would hardly hold together. It was literally falling apart in his hands. They had created a Bible full of holes, a literal holy Bible. And Wallis writes, "I began taking that damaged and fragile Bible out with me whenever I preached. I'd hold it up high above American churches and say, 'Brothers and sisters, this is our American Bible. It's full of holes.'"

"I still have that old Bible full of holes. It serves as a constant reminder to me of how you can miss so much, even when it's right in front of your eyes. I learned in my little home church that we can really love the Bible, believe we are basing our lives on the Bible, and yet completely miss some of the Bible's most central themes."

I read that story about five years ago and immediately realized that I was one of those people who really loved the Bible and was basing my life on the Bible, but was in danger of missing the point of God's incredible love and identification with "the least of these." It was then that I began making changes in my own life and we began making changes at Valley View to become more proactive in helping those who are struggling and caring for God's sheep and God's lambs.

For years we had been doing Operation Christmas Child and I love how a simple shoebox can transform the life of a child with the good news of the gospel. And, of course, we'll be doing that again this year. But that's across the ocean. And we wanted to start doing things locally as well. So we held a baby shower for a pregnancy center called Birthright, then a Thanksgiving Dinner at Partners for Families, then a Christmas Party at the Laurel House Abuse Shelter, and multiple cookouts and dinners for the Forteniters.

Then we began the perpetual food drive for PACS in Phoenixville and the food pantry in Schwenksville, started collecting clothes and all kinds of stuff for Genny and the homeless shelter in Norristown, raking leaves and doing all kind of projects for the Old Mill Bible Camp in Coatesville, supplying computers and books and desks for inner city schools in Camden and Philadelphia, and baby kits for moms in Liberia, and eye glasses for people in Malawi, and bicycles for Pedals for Progress, and blood for the Red Cross, and the Beautiful Day and on and on and on.

The needs are, of course, endless. But anywhere there's a need there's Jesus identifying himself with the least of these. And that's what drives us. Serving, caring, and loving others is serving, caring, and loving Jesus. That's a powerful sacred echo in the life of every Christ follower.

I often think of Jesus words in Matthew 25:34-40, Then the King will say to those on his right, "Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.' 37"Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you?39When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?' 40"The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.'"

My wife, Jennifer, is reading a book right now written by Mother Teresa called Where There is Love, There is God. And in the book Mother Teresa writes these words, "Jesus makes himself the hungry one, the naked one, the homeless one, the sick one, the one in prison, the lonely one, the unwanted one, and says, 'You did it to me.' He is hungry for our love, and this is the hunger of our poor people. This is the hunger that you and I must find. It may be in our own home.

"There are many, many people - old people, crippled people, mental people, people who have no one, nobody to love them - they are hungry for love. And maybe that kind of hunger is in your own home, your own family, maybe there is an old person in your family, maybe there is a sick person in your family, have you ever thought that you can show your love for God by simply giving a smile, maybe just giving a glass of water, maybe just sitting there and talking for a little while. It is not how much we do, but how much love we put in the doing. It is not how much we give, but how much love we put in the giving. We can do no great things, only small things with great love."