FOR THE LEAST OF THESE

Who Are the “Little Ones”?

“Be careful not to look down on these little ones,” Jesus said to His disciples in Matthew 18:10.

Who are the “little ones” of whom Jesus speaks? They are, as His behaviour illustrates, the weak, unlearned and untrained, wounded and vulnerable.

Why are these “little ones” so important? Because, as Jesus explains, “. . . Their angels in heaven always see the face of My Father.” (Matthew 18:10)

Because the angels of these “little ones” see the face of God, we should not look down on them. Instead, we should cherish these “little ones” with tenderness only the Holy Spirit can motivate. Jesus says the “little ones” are the weak and unlearned, wounded and vulnerable: the broken-hearted, the sick, the lonely, the marginalised, the misunderstood, the mentally-ill, the divorced, the alcoholic, the homeless, the drug addict…. They are all around us. The church needs to take the words of Jesus seriuosly and not look down on the ‘little ones’ as one day we will have to give an account to God for our behaviour towards them.

May we be moved by Jesus’ Spirit of truth to cherish the “little ones” of all generations. Why? Because their angels in heaven see the face of the Father.

Here is a copy of an email I received from Brandt yesterday….. God is true to his word and really shows up when we reach out to those who hold a special place is his heart – the poor, the homeless, the vulnerable, the weak, the rejected, the lost and the un-acceptable. Brandt was recently arrested out side the church at Lakeland as he ministered to the homeless and poor who weren’t allowed inside…….

 From Brandt:

‘Something has happened here in Lakeland Florida that is a little difficult to explain. After my arrest and trying to continue not just to minister to, but befriend and meet the needs of the beautiful folk we have met here, our little potluck community parties started to get a little too big to hold in my bus in the walmart parking lot (which is conveniently located across the street from Ignited Church). The night I got arrested, some kids from Tampa drove down and worshiped with Max and James in the bus, and slowly every night it got bigger.

Pastor Adam Mayfield of Journey Church, and Rev. Fr. Wade Fahnestock of First Christian Church joined our little shindig on the friday night after my release, along with some of our homeless brothers and sisters and a few kids we met at the “outpouring”. It was amazing to see all of these different personalities come together in union. It truly started to look like the Kingdom of God. Pastor Adam then told us that we could park the bus at his church office. Journey Church rents the office from a local baptist so he told me that he wasnt sure if they would take issue with us being here, but we could park and meet until they did lol. We eventually met the youth pastor and pastor of the local baptist church and they loved what we were doing and reassured us that our being there was ok. Then it just started to get chaotic.

People would just show up. The homeless in the camps near Ignited came alive. God started to truly work on their hearts and they began to come around every day. Its started with three smelly kids on a bus, and now I just cant even explain what its beginning to become. After the we made the front page of The Ledger explaining where we were meeting every night, people started to show up. Tons of people, driving hours and even flying in to be a part of this, whatever “this” is. 

Just yesterday I was being interviewed by a fellow and he was asking how we get funded for what we do. It just so happens some guy drove up to the church office, told me that God was on our side and he told him to give me this (this being a wad of cash). James told the guy asking us about our finances, “It just shows up, thats how”. And its been like that every since. About twenty minutes after that happened, an elderly couple walked up asking everyone for me. They told me that they were from Lexington Kentucky and have been walking around from church to church asking for help with a hotel room and the churches told them to ask me. These big churches sending them to ole homeless brandt; luckily God knows our needs and continues to supply them. Needless to say, there has been small but beautiful miracles everyday.

Stories of great injustice, stories of wonderful acts of God, stories from the rich and the poor and everyone in between are to be found in this little office. Firemen and college students, middle age and middle class folks, families with five kids; they all are just showing up due to the urge of the spirit and a newspaper article. We are family. In Matthew 12 Jesus asked, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” Then He pointed at His disciples and said, “These are my mothers and brothers. Anyone who does the will of My father in Heaven is My brother and sister and brother.” We truly are family. People are bring all they have to be shared among everyone. When the spirit moves, there is no rich, poor, homeless, etc. God see no class lines, nationality, race, economic status. He sees right into the heart of the broken and recognizes a child; a reflection of Himself, made in His image and likeness, fearfully and wonderfully made.

Everyone is welcomed to come and everyone is welcomed to share, whether that be a tuna casserole (homemade or “rescued” from the trash), or a story, whether beautiful or heartbreaking. We have been having wonderful community potlucks at six, and then amazing spontaneous worship after (because we have no music that we don’t make up from the songs of our hearts), and then candlelight bible studies. Its lead by no man, and everyone’s input is just as valuable and encouraged. We just talk and discuss and laugh and sing and love for hours. The Spirit of God is our only leader. The “homeless” call me pastor and I chuckle at such ridiculous claims

This morning the City of Lakeland showed up knocking on the door of the office and told of a complaint that they received about the bus being parked. They insisted that it was a commercial vehicle (which in reality its a registered and insured mobile home), and that I was breaking zoning laws. What we found out is that a nearby church has a daycare and the homeless that spend their time became a concern, which we completely understand. Hate, but understand. That last few hours we have been telling our wood dwelling brothers and sisters not to come to the office, and that we were seeking God and looking into a place to move the bus and our amazing community shindigs that God has continually attended faithfully. To be quite honest, I cant expect this sort of thing not to happen, and its pretty amusing because we truly are starting to see a resemblance to the “early church”. We have no place to rest our heads. God is moving, yet we are continually on the run. As Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 6 – “We are well known, but we are treated as unknown. Our hearts ache, but we ALWAYS have joy. We are poor, but we give spiritual riches to others. We own nothing, and yet we have everything“. Welcome to the ridiculously offbeat family of God.

I continue to thank you for your prayers and support. There are a million things that we could use to continue to minister to the needs of this community and the broken people in it, but mainly and most importantly, your prayers are most valuable. God has been leading us from the beginning, and this is just a part of the plan. If you feel God calling you to come and be a part of “this”, we would love nothing more.

As I mentioned earlier, there was a beautiful family with five adorable kids that showed up two nights ago with beans and rice and more smiles then we thought we would be able to contain. It seemed like what we were missing, after all Jesus had a thing for children. As they ate in the hallway, the kids continued to spill rice onto the carpet and then on top of it all, step on the rice accidentally and smush it into the carpet. Being the ridiculous clean freak I am, I spazzed. It was then that God showed me that this “revival of sorts” was a “dirty carpet revival”. That He is not only spilling rice on the carpets of the comfortable, but smushing it in. Carpets aren’t for good looks, their for foot traffic. Forget the hot burning coal, we want smushed ricey carpets. Thank you Lord for all of your love. Become a part of what God is doing, in spirit and in truth.’

Shane Claiborne’s lateat book ‘Jesus for President’ is is a radical manifesto to awaken the Christian political imagination, reminding us that our ultimate hope lies not in partisan political options but in Jesus and the incarnation of the peculiar politic of the church as a people “set apart” from this world.

In what can be termed lyrical theology, Jesus for President poetically weaves together words and images to sing (rather than dictate) its message. It is a collaboration of Shane Claiborne’s writing and stories, Chris Haw’s reflections and research, and art and design.

Drawing upon the work of biblical theologians, the lessons of church history, and the examples of modern-day saints and ordinary radicals, Jesus for President stirs the imagination of what the Church could look like if it placed its faith in Jesus instead of Caesar.

A fresh look at Christianity and empire, Jesus for President transcends questions of “Should I vote or not?” and “Which candidate?” by thinking creatively about the fundamental issues of faith and allegiance. It’s written for those who seek to follow Jesus, rediscover the spirit of the early church, and incarnate the Kingdom of God.

Shane talking about ‘Jesus for President’

Go Jesus!

Jesus was great. He cared about the ‘little people’ the weak, the uneducated, the outcast, the lonely and broken. He really couldn’t stand the ‘religious’ folk – the Pharisees, who appeared to have it altogether and walked all over the little people. The way they talked down to them and devalued them because they seemed so unimportant. He hated the way they behaved then and He still does hate the way ‘religious folk’ in church create their own man made rules and insist things are done their way at the expense of the weak and those on the edge who have no way of reaching their mark of acceptability. He hates the way the religious folk have their own little friendship circles which are closely guarded to stop undesirables getting in. He hates the way the religious folk lord it over, step over, step on and ignore the plight of the little people – today.

It’s just as bad if not worse in your average church today. Yes it’s more subtle but it’s as rife as ever. The rich, educated, middle-classes have the power and the wealth and the say so at the expense of the poor, uneducated and outcast. They claim to ‘see’ but are blind which can be seen by their actions. It’s all made to look completely acceptable. Everyone is ‘nice’ to those on the edge, they are polite and offer to pray etc but don’t include those kind of people in their social circles and don’t give them any value or worth. Jesus said people who call themselves ‘christian’ but show little or no compassion for the widow,the fatherless, the outcast, the lonely and ignored, the poor, the homeless and the desperate were not really in his Kingdom at all. (Matt 25:31-46.)

 If Jesus stepped into your average church today I believe he would shout at those who profess to be his and  live self centred, moral, upright and outwardly ‘good’ lives but refuse to make any sacrifice for their brother in need. Refuse to show any real compassion or love for the  lost, the poor and marginalised. Not only that but they pile heavy burdens on the ‘little people’ with their rules and expectations which they can’t ever hope to meet. These expectations keep the poor and marginalised folk out of church and give a bad example of what God is like.

‘Poverty is neither nice nor pleasant. Nobody truly wants to be poor. We all want to move away from poverty. And still…. God loves the poor in a special way. Jesus did not say ‘Happy are those who serve the poor,’ but ‘Happy are the poor.’ Being poor is what Jesus invites us to, and that is much, much harder than serving the poor. The unnoticed, unspectacular, unpraised life in solidarity with people who cannot give anything which makes us feel important is far from attractive.

 It’s the way to poverty.

 Not an easy way, but God’s way, the way of the cross.’ – Jean Vanier, L’Arche Community.

When you look at powerful moves of God in the past they often start through a preacher who had a heart for the poor, or they start in a run down area where there is a concentration of poorer folk. Wesley, the famous preacher and revivalist believed in Gods partiality towards the poor:

…..almost to the point of prejudice-He [Jesus] ignored all those who are high and mighty and wealthy in the world in favor of the weak and meek and lowly. He did this even in the moral sphere, ignoring the just for sinners, and in the spiritual sphere, formally ignor­ing Israel for the Gentiles. It was to the latter group and not the for­mer that He found Himself called. It was among the latter and not the former that He expected to find the eyes and ears that God had opened, and therefore the men of good-pleasure of Luke 2:14.

Jackie Pullinger who works with drug addicts in Hong Kong believes that God has a special place in his heart for the poor and shows up powerfully in their lives to defend their cause – which is entirely biblical. It is so clear from reading the Bible that care and compassion for the poor naturally overflows from the heart of anyone whose life has been transformed by the Holy Spirit. If we ask God he will show us a way to reach out and serve the poor around us. There are so many opportunities in every community for outreach to the poor and marginalised.Just befriending one person whom you would not normally socilaise with and including them in your life would make Gods heart sing. If every Christian took the time to really study what the Bible has to say concerning Gods partiality towards the poor we could very soon have a revival in our churches. (more…)

The Bible contains more than 300 verses on the poor, social justice, and God’s deep concern for both. This page contains a wide sample of them, and some reflections will very likely feel a good deal of resistance (possibly at first manifesting itself as indifference). Churches in the west have departed strongly from Biblical values in these areas, and even created a rationalization– “prosperity theology”– for rejecting them. It takes time and reflection to get past this misteaching.
But try to get past the resistance. Spiritual growth doesn’t come from what goes down easily, or what we like to hear and read. It comes from what’s different, and even difficult.
It’s not a topic you hear preached on in any depth – well not in my experience. concern for the plight of the poor and social justice is very close to God’s heart and something as Christians we need to take very seriously – as there are grave consequences if we don’t.

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