From Shane Claiborne's Irresistible Revolution:
"When we get to heaven, we will be separated into those sheep and goats Jesus talks about in Matthew 25 based on how we cared for the least among us. I'm just not convinced that Jesus is going to say 'When I was hungry, you gave a check to the United Way and they fed me', or, 'When I was naked, you donated clothes to the Salvation Army and they clothed me.' Jesus is not seeking distant acts of charity. He seeks concrete acts of love: "you fed me...you visited me in prison...you welcomed me into your home...you clothed me."
"It is much more comfortable to depersonalize the poor so we don't feel responsible for the catastrophic human failure that results in someone sleeping on the street while people have spare bedrooms in their homes."
"And Jesus did not set up a program but modeled a way of living that incarnated the reign of God, a community in which people are reconciled and our debts are forgiven just as we forgive our debtors (all economic words). That reign did not spread through organizational establishments or structural systems. It spread like disease- through touch, through breath, through life. It spread through people infected by love."
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1 comments:
Brooke,
Thanks for the reminder that any act can be a mission. It's easy to distance ourselves from the rest of the world, but so much better for us all when we remember, "there, but for the Grace of God..."
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