So today is Blog Action Day – and whilst I haven't really had time to be able to work on a post, I felt I should contribute something. The point of it all is to raise awareness and hype around the issue of poverty – to get talking about it, to get thinking about stuff that we can do, to get fighting poverty together.
What I'm going to say next is fairly obvious, but needs saying, and needs taking seriously: As followers of Jesus, we have a God for whom poverty and oppression are the top priority. And so it should also be our top priority.
Here's a prophetic word to the Church today.
I hate all your show and pretense—
the hypocrisy of your religious festivals and solemn assemblies.
I will not accept your burnt offerings and grain offerings.
I won’t even notice all your choice peace offerings.
Away with your noisy hymns of praise!
I will not listen to the music of your harps.
Instead, I want to see a mighty flood of justice,
an endless river of righteous living.
- Amos 5:21-24
Spoken to a people of God who were obsessed with their worship, obsessed with spiritual purity – and God says "Forget that – forget your worship services, forget your cleanness, but let cleansing justice flow like a river".
Spoken to a people of God who had cried out in the midst of their poverty and oppression in Egypt – and who were liberated by the God who saved. But their main building to worship this God of the Poor was built on the backs of slaves. Sounding at all familiar?
We need to make the poor, the marginalised, those in need our top priority. How can we truly worship a God who saves if we aren't engaged in liberation ourselves? Can we really call ourselves Christ-ians if we aren't engaged in the world-healing, peacemaking, poverty-busting that he gave his whole life to?
Wake up. Get out of the building and onto the streets. And let justice flow like a river.
