I TURNED AND THE HOMELESS MAN WAS GONE... -Part THREE -

David Watson shares the insight of an Indian Christian in his ‘I believe in Evangelism’ ‘People are no longer converted to a doctrine. They can only be attracted to a way of life they see as a practical alternative to the values and assumptions of our competitive, alienated, materialistic society. We have been presenting Christianity (the system) and not Christ the person … We have to present to the world a living Christ, fresh, always life-giving and nourishing …’

In this charismatic age we need to be reminded that the charisma, the charm of our loving Saviour was not found in solitude or absent union with His Father; it was in His joining and sharing with the oppressed, the alienated, and those living without hope. P.T. Forsyth says that we are ‘potential Christs’ in the sense that Christ grows in us and rouses our faith to action.

He is our example: We are not to live isolated from the world’s suffering in some monastic fashion of seeking participation with deity. We must not let our love for God cause us to neglect our duty to love the poor. If we love God we must also love our neighbour. Our Gospel compels us to live completely, this is to communicate a Gospel which corresponds to people’s felt needs. And in doing so we need to cry loudly the public shame in which we share for not having done more.

While many question whether the plight of the homeless is the result of the politician's inability to mobilise, or the result of social scientists' inability to programme, it is no less the Christian's shame for not recalling the words 'As you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.' (Matthew 25: 40 RSV)

Christians must also assume the additional responsibility to cry out loudly about all blatant social injustice we meet, and we meeet a great deal of it. Offering Christian hope, as worthy as that is, while remaining silent on the cause of injustice is what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called 'cheap grace'. God seeks both the salvation and the individual and the healing of His total creation. We must seek it out so that God can 'execute righteousness and judgement for all who are oppressed.'

Elton Trueblood warns that 'one of the insidious dangers of any religion is spiritualism', and indeed many demonstrate a satisfaction with a sense of arrival, becoming 'satisfied with what goes on in a place of worship with no real worry about poverty adjacent to it'. Trueblood goes on to say, in 'The New Man For Our Time', I cannot be wholly saved unless my brother is saved because, in the unforgettable words of John Donne, 'I am involved in mankind'. Ours is the total involvement of being in God's salvation plan for man, for all men, and, for the salvationist, this means perhaps most especially the unloved.

We must remember that, while all Christians are conscripted to serve as soldiers of Jesus Christ, the Salvationist is called to a very special duty. Eberhard Arnold shared these words at a worship meeting in Rhon Bruderhof, 2 October 1934: 'What it amounts to is a clash between two opposing goals. One goal is to seek the lowly people, the minorities, the handicapped ... the prisoners ... They are the degraded, the enslaved, the exploited, the weak, the poorest of the poor.' Clearly we canot be all things to all people. Our call is to find Jesus and to serve Him in this latter group.
MY LIFE MUST BE CHRIST'S BROKEN BREAD, MY LOVE HIS OUTPOURED WINE...





Sven Ljungholm
SA Soldier
Exeter Temple Corps, UK