That's nearly a quarter of Tucson.
As Seeds begins to think about what it means to love our neighbors, one of the first questions that comes up is: what does it actually look like to be a neighbor?
The following is a powerful excerpt from a book called 7 by Jen Hatmaker. She discusses the incredible generosity of the early church in comparison with some of the disparities we see today. She prefaces it with the idea of balancing the "feast" and the "fast" in our faith; that we feast on the precious mercy of Christ, on His blessing over our lives. Yet we also fast as we understand that we are not our own, that everything we are is God's.
Without further ado:
Without further ado:
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At some point, the church stopped living the Bible and decided just to study it, culling the feast parts and whitewashing the fast parts. We are addicted to the buffet, skillfully discarding the costly discipleship required after consuming. The feast is supposed to sustain the fast, but we go back for seconds and thirds and fourths, stuffed to the brim and fat with inactivity. All this is for me. My goodness, my blessings, my privileges, my happiness, my success. Just one more plate.
Not so with the early church who stunned their Roman neighbors and leaders with generosity, curbing their own appetites for the mission of Jesus. They constantly practiced self-denial to alleviate human misery. In the Shepard of Hermas, a well-respected Christian literary work in the early 100s, believers were instructed to fast one day a week [to provide a meal for the hungry]...
In the early 200s, Tertullian reported that Christians had a voluntary common fund they contributed to monthly. That fund was used to support widows, the disabled, orphans, the sick, the elderly, shipwrecked sailors, prisoners, teachers, burials for the poor, and even the release of slaves.
The difference between Romans and Christians on charity was widely recognized by unbelievers. The pagan satirist Lucian (130-200 c.e.) mocked Christian kindness: "The earnestness with which the people of this religion help one another in their needs is incredible. They spare themselves nothing for this end. Their first lawgiver put it into their heads that they were all brethren."
These Christians did not limit their assistance to members of their own subculture either. The Emperor Julian, who attempted to lead the Roman Empire back to paganism, was frustrated by the superior compassion shown by the Christians, especially when it came to intervention for the suffering. He famously declared: "The impious Galileans relieve both their own poor and ours...It is shameful that ours should be so destitute of our assistance."
What would the early church think if they walked into some of our buildings today, looked through our church Web sites, talked to an average attender? Would they be so confused? Would they wonder why we all had empty bedrooms and uneaten food in our trash cans? Would they regard our hoarded wealth with shock? Would they observe orphan statistics with disbelief since Christians outnumber orphans 7 to 1? Would they be stunned most of us don't feed the hungry, visit the prisoner, care for the sick, or protect the widow? Would they see the spending on church buildings and ourselves as extravagantly wasteful while twenty-five thousand people die every day from starvation?
I think they'd barely recognize us as brothers and sisters. If we told them church is on Sundays and we have an awesome band, this would be perplexing. I believe we'd receive dumbfounded stares if we discussed "church shopping" because enough people don't say hello when we walk in the lobby one hour a week. If they found out one-sixth of the earth's population claimed to be Christians, I'm not sure they could reconcile the suffering happening on our watch while we're living in excess. They'd wonder if we had read the Bible or worry it had been tampered with since their time.
But listen Early Church, we have a monthly event called Mocha Chicks. We have choir practice every Wednesday. We organize retreats with door prizes. We're raising three million dollars for an outdoor amphitheater. We have catchy T-shirts. We don't smoke or say the F word. We go to Bible study every semester. ("And then what, American Church?") Well, we go to another one. We're learning so much.
I think the early church would cover their heads with ashes and grieve over the dilution of Jesus' beautiful church vision. We've taken His Plan A for mercy to an injured lost planet and neutered it to clever sermon series and Stitch-and-Chat in the Fellowship Hall, serving the saved. If the modern church held to its biblical definition, we would become the answer to all that ails society. We wouldn't have to baby-talk and cajole and coax people into our sanctuaries through witty mailers and strategic ads; they'd be running to us. The local church would be the heartbeat of the city, undeniable by our staunchest critics.
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As Seeds considers being a neighbor, let us consider living out the generosity of our faith. What does it really look like to live with less so that our neighbors may have enough? What does it look like to trust God for what we need and to be free in sharing the rest? We want to avoid being an organization that gives out of our excess, but rather we want to be a people who genuinely come alongside the under-resourced, understand them, grow in loving them, and cultivate community alongside them. Let us pray earnestly about how we might do this!
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