by Dr. Lani Wilson

Good day, prayer and fasting faithful. May is already here, and we are deep into the middle of the second quarter of the year! Time really does not stand still, does it? And we cannot either…

Again, another word for us to consider that baffled me: Amass. Nope. It is NOT used at all in the NT, at least not in English, but it is used in the Hebrew Bible. Isn’t that interesting? The Hebrew Bible used it 95% of the time in terms of material riches and wealth. Jesus talked a lot about the economic state of being rich. We recall a few of His parables.

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “I tell you the truth, it will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven! Again I say, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a person to enter into the kingdom of God.”
Mathew 19:23-24 (NET)

Then he told them this story: “The farm of a certain rich man produced a terrific crop. He talked to himself: ‘What can I do? My barn isn’t big enough for this harvest.’ Then he said, ‘Here’s what I’ll do: I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger ones. Then I’ll gather in all my grain and goods, and I’ll say to myself, Self, you’ve done well! You’ve got it made and can now retire. Take it easy and have the time of your life!’ Just then God showed up and said, ‘Fool! Tonight you die. And your barnful of goods-who gets it?’ That’s what happens when you fill your barn with Self and not with God.”
Luke 12:16-22 (TMB)

And, of course, there is the classic story of the young rich man.

“If you want to give it all you’ve got,” Jesus replied, “go sell your possessions; give everything to the poor. All your wealth will then be in heaven. Then come follow me.” That was the last thing the young man expected to hear. And so, crestfallen, he walked away. He was holding on tight to a lot of things, and he couldn’t bear to let go. As he watched him go, Jesus told his disciples, “Do you have any idea how difficult it is for the rich to enter God’s kingdom?
Mathew 19:21-23 (TMB)

Every Christian, regardless of denomination (or non-denomination, nowadays), knows this stories, and we get it, right? Jesus is talking about greed, not necessarily the fact that there are rich and poor. From this we can surmise that there will always be rich and poor, and it is the behavior of the rich toward the poor that is important. Funny: Jesus never really talked about the response of the poor toward the rich. We know that Jesus chose Jewish commoners for the most part to be in the first cohort of His followers. But He also chose Mathew (Levi), the tax collector, who we assume had more money than most because he was corrupt in his tax collecting duties. Jesus’ earliest followers were a disparate group, not just economically, but also probably in temperament, talent, and other human personality differences. They were all Jews but were collected from different parts of Palestine, from different settings. We might conclude that it was a heterogeneous bunch living in a deeply stratified and codified culture. So what role and response did (and do) the poor have in society other than “they would always be with us?”

When Jesus was at Bethany, a guest of Simon the Leper, a woman came up to him as he was eating dinner and anointed him with a bottle of very expensive perfume. When the disciples saw what was happening, they were furious. “That’s criminal! This could have been sold for a lot and the money handed out to the poor.” When Jesus realized what was going on, he intervened. “Why are you giving this woman a hard time? She has just done something wonderfully significant for me. You will have the poor with you every day for the rest of your lives, but not me. When she poured this perfume on my body, what she really did was anoint me for burial. You can be sure that wherever in the whole world the Message is preached, what she has just done is going to be remembered and admired.”
Mathew 26:6-13 (TMB)

Does this mean that Jesus had opinions about what kind of people the rich and the poor were? One was better than the other? Society should be upended and everybody have the same portion of everything? What was Jesus’ stance on amassing wealth or goods? The deeper and hundreds of years old debate regarding whether Jesus knew He was the Son of God prior to His public ministry is one we will not roll into today. But we can pray that we get a fuller understanding of how The Christ viewed societal disparities, a contemporary topic of pronounced concern for the church now.

Matthew 23:8-12 suggests that Jesus sought to forestall and eliminate a hierarchy of decision-making within his community, that it was to be characterized by a non-hierarchical mode of governance. One objection to this construal is the claim that Jesus’ saying cited above speaks not of the elimination of stratified roles, but only of their reversal. John Elliott claims that “reversion is the inversion of existing positions of status rather the eradication of stratification altogether,” that Jesus (and Paul) “understood the reversal of status not as the elimination of status but as the inversion and relativizing of status.”23 What “relativizing” means is not clear, but it could be understood to mean reducing differences between status levels. This understanding is strengthened because Elliott maintains that “conventional differences” such as economic disparities were “relativized,” in the sense that “the differences no longer determined who had direct access to God.”24 If this were true, it means that all members of the church had equality of opportunity in access to God. Economic disparities and other differences no longer stood in the way of reaching God. If Elliott is right, one important dimension of equality characterized the church: equality of opportunity to be God’s children.
Beed, C., & Beed, C. (2015). Governance Egalitarianism in Jesus’ teaching. Anglican Theological Review, 97(4), pgs. 595-596

The authors pose the argument that Jesus used a “governance egalitarian” model of functioning groups. It is up to the individual to be persuaded of this argument one way or the other. For our purposes two ideas from this article may be germane for our purposes:

• Jesus did tell us that there would be status-reversal in God’s kingdom and here on earth or as the authors state, “the ultimate and the interim.”

Deductions of governance egalitarianism in the Jesus movement are sometimes derived from the idea of status reversal that features so prominently in Jesus’ teaching, and that has been described as one of the core themes of biblical faith.4 The claim is that Jesus advocated status reversal in his community, that renunciation of status is a model Jesus presents to the world, thereby creating a community in which people were treated equally, without discrimination between them.
Ibid., pg. 589-590

It is very clear in Mark 10:42-25 what Jesus meant in terms of His position on status in God’s kingdom. After His horrific death and Resurrection, these words must have echoed in the disciples’ minds like thunder.

So Jesus called them and said to them, “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be salve of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”
TMB

• The second important point that we can take from this article might be that The Nazarene commanded an “openness to all” of His followers.

Since membership of the church was open to all, this is a sign of all-encompassment, an illustration of equality of opportunity, and of all-inclusiveness. In the same way, the greater the degree of egalitarian governance and the lesser of hierarchical division within an organization, the greater the opportunity for intimacy between members, the greater the chance of forming a spirit of solidarity among them. This consideration applies as much to the present day as to first-century Palestine.
Ibid., pg. 601

If there is a reversal of status in the new community, God’s kingdom that Jesus was preparing us for, then why didn’t Jesus just go a step further and proclaim that having a lot of anything, money or stuff, was bad? Or that not amassing financial or material wealth was good? Was and is Jesus a Socialist? A Communist? Did He have an economic agenda? We might have to say, “no” to the former queries. However, we can establish that everyone had a role in this new community of Believers. And we have to remember that He laid the foundation for this new community before He went to the Cross and rose from the dead. The disciples just didn’t get it because they probably expected the Jewish Messiah-King who would re-establish the greatness of David’s kingship. Then, the poor would reclaim and amass all the material and political fortune they had relinquished because of their disobedience, both from the Roman occupiers and the Pharisaic elite, and, of course, the wealthy would get more. As The Christ heaved His last bloody breaths on the Cross, we can imagine the disciples’ worst nightmare being realized: No kingship for us; back to oppression, death, and impoverished subjugation.

Somewhere, we missed something that might shed light on Who Jesus was and His status when He was talking about all these rich versus poor people.

Someone out of the crowd, said, “teacher, order my brother to give me a fair share of the family inheritance.” He replied, “Mister, what makes you think it’s any of my business to be a judge or mediator for you?” Speaking to the people, he went on, “Take care! Protect yourself against the least bit of greed. Life is not defined by what you have, even when you have a lot.”
Luke 12:13-24 (TMB)

In the NET translation of this passage, there is a superscript note (NET Note #34) that might tell us more about what Jesus wanted us to realize about His mission on the planet.

But Jesus³³ said to him, “Man,³⁴ who made me a judge or arbitrator between you two?”³⁵
Luke 12: 14 (NET)

NET Note #34 says, “tn This term of address can be harsh or gentle depending on the context (BDAG 82 s.v.ἄνθρωπος 8). Here it is a rebuke” (Ibid). In other words, we can see Jesus turning around and hollering back, “Dude! Why are you getting me involved in your petty squabble with your own brother about stuff?!” It is not surprising that someone would expect Jesus to mediate a dispute. After all, that was one of the important functions of Jewish leaders in His day: To resolve and arbitrate socio-civic issues according to The Law and determine penance. I can even see Jesus invisibly prodding the man to blurt out his request just so He can ”holla back” and “make it plain” (à la Pastor E), “I did NOT come to parse your material trivia. I am much bigger than that.”

We don’t have to buy into the entire Beed & Beed article on the labor issues of Jesus’ day and what kind of society He may or may not have been trying to establish. Our view is much closer and more personal than that, and it is being acted out in the church-at-large today: The Prosperity Gospel. At least on the surface, we shake our heads and “tsk-tsk” when the topic is raised from the pulpit on Sundays. All the while, many of us are scrambling for tickets for the next mega gathering of one of the many Black and/or White Prosperity Gospel preachers who roll through the Coliseum, deep in the heart of one of the neediest communities in California, East Oakland.

Jabez was a better man than his brothers, a man of honor. His mother had named him Jabez (Oh, the pain!), saying, "A painful birth! I bore him in great pain!" Jabez prayed to the God of Israel: "Bless me, O bless me! Give me land, large tracts of land. And provide your personal protection-don’t let evil hurt me." God gave him what he asked.
I Chronicles 4:9-10 (TMB)

Bruce Wilkinson’s The Prayer of Jabez: Breaking through to the Blessed Life was a block bluster book published in 2000. Although he talked about the secondary effect of receiving an “enlarged territory” of ministry, the primary effect was not so intangible. In fact, it was clearly a prosperity gospel---for the new Millennium.

Wilkinson argues that most Christians have simply not expected enough from the Creator of the Universe. He encourages his readers to "have faith in an extraordinary, miraculous God" and "step out to act on that faith." He stresses that this confidence must be rooted in total dependence on God, rather than in any strength of our own. He downplays native ability and talent, insisting that God uses "ordinary people." And he insists we must pray for God's agenda. Where the trouble occurs, and where Spurgeon's 130-year-old take on Jabez is instructive, is in Wilkinson's one-sided portrayal of what "God's agenda"—or in Jabez's words, the "blessing indeed"—might look like. On this score, we never get very far from the sales-motivational hype of the back cover. Throughout the book, Wilkinson continues to talk about the Christian life in terms of "unclaimed blessings," like money in a forgotten account just waiting to be collected by the person bold enough to step up and ask for it. Granted, this is not the prosperity gospel of recent decades. Wilkinson ties "blessing indeed" to greater effectiveness in ministry. The deal is, you pray for God to "enlarge your life" so that you can, in turn, "make a greater impact for Him." Then, "as your [ministry] opportunities expand, your ability and resources supernaturally increase, too."
Chris Armstrong, “Spurgeon on Jabez: What history’s most prolific preacher said, in 1871, about the Prayer of Jabez,” Christianity Today, August 1, 2002

Not to sound completely jaded but, really?! Is this the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Is this what Christians should amass? That the reward we get for praying to the Creator of the universe is more “land, large tracts of land?” Is this what Christianity, at least in America, gives us? Are we surprised that millions of people are supporting a Presidential candidate who promises to make “us great again” by building walls? Denying millions of citizens the vote? Bringing back jobs from poorer countries long since outdated, outmoded, and irrelevant in a global, digital economy to untrained, uneducated, soon-to-be-the-minority, lower class White Americans? And what about the rest of us? Is this the gospel of The Nazarene, The Christ, the Son of God?

IS THIS HIM?

Jesus told us that He is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” Whenever He talked about the poor or the maimed or the physically damaged or the psychologically afflicted or the outcast or the despised, He talked about bringing them to Himself, bringing them closer to God, bringing them back into the fold of human kindness and warmth as reflected in the love of God shared by all of us. Just as He took on their afflictions and brought them to Himself, so, too, we much take on their afflictions and bring them to ourselves through His Gospel, through His message, through His life. That’s what we must amass: God’s people. And the whole world belongs to God. In this way we amass the ultimate Christian gift: We regain ourselves, our souls – in Christ.

Jesus, keep us close to Your heart. Thank You for all your patience unto us. Bring us and keep us in the fold of Your grace. It’s a mad, cruel world out there, again…seems like it’s been awhile since we had some sense of wholeness, of sheer decency. Keep us in Your care, in Your sight, in Your view because we get lost very easily. Bless our tiny efforts that loom so large in our eyes, and keep us focused on who You are, not what we need. If we do that, then what we need becomes all we have, and You fill us to the brim.

Kingdom come.
Kingdom come.
Kingdom here.

Already.
All ready.
All are ready.

Come, kingdom, come.

Amen.