Chapter 2: Our Calling
2. Our Calling : Justice and the Works of Mercy
To work for God’s peaceable kingdom means to strive for his justice. What does this justice demand of us? It demands that we put love of God and love of neighbor into practice.
Love of neighbor means a life wholly dedicated to service. This is the opposite of all selfish pursuits, including a focus on one’s personal salvation. We live in church community because we must concern ourselves with the need of the whole world. We each acknowledge our share in humanity’s guilt and suffering, and we must respond through a life devoted to love. “Whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them; for this is the law and the prophets.”
Love of neighbor means doing the works of mercy commanded by Christ: giving food to the hungry and water to the thirsty, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, giving alms to the poor, and visiting the sick and those in prison. “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.” Like the early Christians, we see piety as false unless it is proved authentic through deeds of social justice.
Love of neighbor means that we keep an open door. The blessings of a life of brotherly and sisterly community are available to all people, rich or poor, skilled or unskilled, who are called to go this way of discipleship with us.
Love of neighbor leads us to give up all private property, the root of so much injustice and violence. Christ teaches his followers to reject mammon – the desire for and the power of possessions. He warns, “How difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” He saw into the heart of the rich young man whom he loved and told him: “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”
Mammon is the enemy of love. It drives some to build up individual fortunes while millions lead lives of misery. As a force within economic systems, it breeds exploitation, fraud, materialism, injustice, and war.
All that serves mammon opposes the rule of God. A person who keeps anything for himself disregards Jesus’ commandment to his followers to give up their private property. He has taken something intended by God for the use of all and claimed it for himself.
In obedience to Christ, we trust in God for everything, including our material needs. None of us owns anything personally, and our communal property belongs not to us as a group but to the cause of Christ in church community.1 In this, we follow the example of Christ and his itinerant community of disciples, who kept a common purse.
Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.
Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? …And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. ... Therefore do not be anxious, saying, “What shall we eat?” or “What shall we drink?” or “What shall we wear?” For the Gentiles seek all these things; and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well.
Love of neighbor demands that we stand with the mistreated, the voiceless, and the oppressed. We are bound to confront public and private wrong boldly with the authority of the gospel, just as Jesus did. He himself was born in poverty and died the death of a criminal. His kingdom is especially for the poor and lowly, and he promises that when he returns, the last will be first and the first will be last.
Jesus declares: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” We are called to help him in his work of redemption, bringing justice to victory.
* This online version of Foundations is for reference only. For the authoritative version, see the print edition.
