A science fiction story is told about a planet which earth was attempting to colonize. This was a harsh planet with terrible weather and hostile inhabitants. Earth’s best men and women were gathered into teams and sent to do the job. Expedition after expedition came home broken, each one having failed.
Finally a new manager was charged with the responsibility of making the colonization work. But something surprising happened. This new executive did not look for the strongest and most qualified people he could find to send for establishing this colony. Instead, he went to the waterfronts, to the slums, to the darkest places on earth and got together a contingent of thieves, prostitutes, indigents, and sent them off to this harsh planet. And, quite remarkably, where the able had failed, the disabled succeeded.
Why? Well, for several reasons. First of all, they already had learned to survive in a hostile environment. Second, they had no place to go but up. (1)
The Pharisees grumbled about the kind of people who came to hear Jesus. Those who gathered around the Master were uneducated persons who had little use for pomp and circumstance in religion. The Sadducees and Pharisees held them in contempt. They regarded Jesus’ followers as the scum of the earth fishermen, tax‑collectors, prostitutes. It particularly galled the Pharisees when Jesus said that these persons of low social stature would go into the kingdom of God before they, the religious elite, would. This was a bizarre teaching to many of Jesus’ listeners. Yet Jesus made it clear that this was the heart of the Gospel.
“When you give a luncheon or dinner,” he says in today’s lesson, “do not invite your friends, your brothers or sisters, your relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”
Obviously Jesus had never been to a Church Growth seminar. One of the major tenets of the modern church growth movement has been that successful churches, like successful businesses, should choose a target audience, preferably a homogeneous audience where everyone pretty much fits the same demographic.
For example, in his best-selling book, The Purpose Driven Church, Rick Warren, the Senior Pastor at Saddleback Church in southern California, writes about their “target market.” He writes: “Our Target: Saddleback Sam. He is well educated. He likes his job. He likes where he lives. Health and fitness are high priorities for him and his family.
“He’d rather be in a large group than a small one. He is skeptical of ‘organized’ religion. He likes contemporary music. He thinks he is enjoying life more than he did five years ago. He is self-satisfied, even smug, about his station in life . . .”
That’s the kind of person Saddleback Church is geared up to reach. And what church wouldn’t want members like that? Good job, strong family, healthy, well-educated gather enough people in that demographic and your church is going to be extremely successful as the world terms success.
Now, to be fair, Saddleback Church is also the home of the Celebrate Recovery movement that reaches out to those who have hurts, destructive habits and self-defeating hang-ups. But still, I have yet to meet a church growth advocate whose target audience is “the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind . . .”
Yet those are the people whom Jesus told us to target. Those are the people Jesus himself targeted.
On one occasion he declared, “I have come to seek and save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10). And on another occasion he declared, “The well have no need for a physician, but those who are sick” (Mark 2:17)
When he stood up to preach his first sermon he announced his mission: “He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor; He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed” (Luke 4:18, RSV).
It is ironic, don’t you think, that this is where Jesus placed his emphasis the poor, the blind, those who were oppressed and captives and yet these are the last people on earth that the average church is geared up to reach?
As one author has put it: “Church culture in North America is a [mere] vestige of the original Christian movement, an institutional expression of religion that is in part a civil religion and in part a club where religious people can hang out with other people whose politics, world-view, and lifestyle match theirs.” (2)
That description of the church hits the nail squarely on the thumb. We want to be around people who are like us. That’s only natural, but it does not make it Christian.
The Rev. Bob Stump tells about camping with his family. He says that one of his favorite parts of camping is sitting by the camp fire late into the evening. Its circle of light provides a wonderful setting for quiet conversation and warm fellowship.
“Most of the other campers have their fires, too,” he notes. “They sit and have quiet conversation and warm fellowship in their own private circles of light. Rarely do the campers leave their circles of light and venture out into the darkness. And almost never do they venture from their own circles of light to invade another circle. Each camping group is content in its own circle of light, safe from the darkness and secluded from outsiders in its own exclusive fellowship.” (3)
What a wonderful metaphor for the average church, “content in its own circle of light, safe from the darkness and secluded from outsiders in its own exclusive fellowship.”
“When you give a luncheon or dinner,” says the Master, “do not invite your friends, your brothers or sisters, your relatives, or your rich neighbors . . . when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed.”
What is the Master saying to us in this strange teaching? Is he not saying, first of all, that the church is the one institution in our society that does not exist for the benefit of its own members? Yes, it’s natural to want to be around people who are like us, but Christ wants us to do something that is very unnatural reach out to those who may not be like us, but who need us.
Larry Sarver tells about the days when he was a police officer. He notes that as an officer he was required to respond to several traffic accidents, some of them with very severe injuries. He noticed that at the scene of those accidents there were three groups of people, each with a different response toward those involved in the accident.
The first group was the bystanders and onlookers. They were curious and watched to see what happened but had little active involvement.
The second group was the police officers, of whom he was one. The response of the police was to investigate the cause of the accident, assign blame, and give out appropriate warnings and punishments.
The third group was the paramedics. They are the people usually most welcomed by those involved in the accident. The paramedics could care less whose fault the accident was and they did not engage in lecturing about bad driving habits. Their response was to help those who were hurt. They bandaged wounds, freed trapped people, and gave words of encouragement.
Three groups, notes Larry Sarver one is uninvolved, one is assigning blame and assessing punishment, and one is bandaging wounds, freeing trapped people, and giving words of encouragement. (4)
Now many people in every society like to be mere spectators. Their mantra is, “I don’t want to get involved.” They’re useless and unworthy of our consideration.
The scribes and the Pharisees whom Jesus confronted saw themselves as the police assigning blame and assessing punishment. They were quick to criticize those who violated the Law of Moses and dealt out punishment where they felt it justified. They even tried to police Jesus. Notice how this chapter begins: “One Sabbath, when Jesus went to eat in the house of a prominent Pharisee, he was being carefully watched . . .” He was being watched to catch him doing something wrong. And when Jesus refused to conform to the religious leaders’ understanding of what is lawful, it was they who assigned him the cruel punishment of the cross.
They loved being the police. Such behavior is not confined to the synagogue, of course. It can happen and often does happen in the church.
David Kinnaman of the Barna Group reports that unchurched people often have the perception that if they go to a church for help, they will be judged rather than being helped. (5)
Dan Kimball wrote a book sometime back titled, They Like Jesus But Not the Church. In his book Kimball focused on the perception in today’s culture by many young people that church people have the tendency to be judgmental. This critical spirit becomes a turn-off in any attempt to reach young people for Christ.
In Larry Sarvers’s metaphor of spectators, police and paramedics, the scribes and Pharisees saw themselves as police, enforcers of the Law.
Jesus, however, wants his followers to identify, not with the police, but with the paramedics bandaging wounds, freeing trapped people, and giving words of encouragement. The church is the one institution in our society that does not exist for the benefit of its own members. Jesus is very clear on this point. We are to be his body reaching out to those in need.
There is one thing more we need to see, however. Reaching out is not easy. It is much easier to be a spectator or to sit back and pass judgment on others than it is to get our hands dirty seeking to minister to the needs of others. But that is not what Jesus wants from us. He wants us to reach out to those “who cannot pay us back.”
Pastor Don Friesen tells a wonderful story about a children’s worker named April McClure. April teaches a Wednesday Bible study for boys and girls in her church.
One day a nine-year-old boy named Brandon turned up for April’s class. Immediately she could see he was going to be a troublemaker. Within 30 seconds of entering the room, he had pulled a chair out from under a girl, punched the only other boy in the class in the arm, and used a four-letter word rarely heard in that church.
Brandon’s family history was not a pretty one. His father was in jail for the third time. He had been abused by his mother, who was no longer allowed to see him, and so he was living with his grandmother. She worked afternoons and evenings. The woman who provided childcare for him while the grandmother worked was not available until 6 p.m. The principal of Brandon’s grade school had heard that April’s Bible study lasted until 7:30, and so, for at least one night a week, Brandon would not be on his own for three hours.
Imagine being a children’s teacher and having Brandon in your class. Imagine him constantly changing the subject to talk about things that he had heard from his 20-year-old uncle about girls. Think about listening with apprehension as he told the other children stories he had heard about his father in jail.
April McClure did her best to reach out to Brandon. She set him right next to her in the Bible class and she let him help with passing out papers when he behaved himself. She helped him try to control his anger, to keep him from striking out at other children.
Even during recreational times, though, Brandon acted up, hitting and pinching the other children. During music, he goofed around and carried on conversations; during meal time, he was an absolute terror throwing food, spitting at people, and making the little kids cry.
April and the other leaders didn’t know what to do. They secretly hoped that his grandmother would make other arrangements for him. The other kids missed an occasional Wednesday but not Brandon. He was there every single week.
After about seven months of this, however, April noticed a change in Brandon. He started giving her a hug when he left for the evening with his babysitter. One day, she saw him in the grocery store, and he ran up to her, and pulled her over to meet his grandmother who was one of the cashiers. April told her pastor about this rare breakthrough and her pastor reported that the same thing had happened to her.
Another woman who was his substitute teacher at school reported that Brandon had introduced her to the class on the day she subbed like this: “Mrs. Leman goes to my church with me on Wednesday nights.”
“One day toward the end of the school year, the Bible study class was discussing hospitality, and the teacher asked the kids to think about the place where they felt most secure, most at home. Some said their bedrooms, or some other place in their homes. One kid mentioned the playroom at his grandpa’s house. When it came to Brandon, he said, ‘Man, I’ve lived in a million places.’ They all laughed and waited for him to go on. He asked, ‘You mean the place where we feel happy and safe?’ The teacher said yes. ‘Oh,’ he said matter-of-factly, ‘That’s right here in my church.’” (6)
My friend, that’s what Jesus wants for every person in this world rich and poor, seeing and sightless, athlete and physically disabled. He wants them to find a safe place, a secure, happy place in his family. He doesn’t want anyone to feel left out.
Friends, I have to tell you most churches don’t really want people who have problems. Why? People who have problems sometimes cause problems. Like Brandon when he first came to April’s Bible Study. Yet these are the persons for whom God’s heart aches. And these are the people whom he has called us to reach out to.
“When you give a luncheon or dinner,” says the Master to his church, “do not invite your friends, your brothers or sisters, your relatives, or your rich neighbors . . . when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed.”
1. Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water (New York: Bantam Books, 1980).
2. Reggie McNeal, The Present Future: Six Tough Questions for the Church (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003).
3. Tim Zingale, http://www.sermoncentral.com/sermons/mountain-faith-tim-zingale-sermon-on-transfiguration-88525.asp?page=2.
4. http://www.sermoncentral.com/sermons/the-3-things-needed-for-reaching-the-lost-larry-sarver-sermon-on-evangelism-how-to-49316.asp
5. David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons, UNChristian (Baker Books, 2007), p. 181.
6. http://www.ottawamennonite.ca/sermons/impractical.htm.
