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Jamie McIntosh is executive director of International Justice Mission Canada. The following is
excerpted from the plenary speech he gave at Missions Fest Vancouver January
10.
WE’RE going to go on a bit of a journey, a journey of justice for the broken. It’s a painful journey; quite frankly, it’s one that I wouldn’t invite anyone to go on lightly, because what it requires is that you become
broken bread and poured out wine . . .
What we see is that, as we engage in the struggles that matter, God somehow
breaks through with his kingdom in our own hearts and our own minds, and frees
us from the suffocating air of self-interest in which we imprison ourselves.
Lazarus the beggar
I was thinking about this the other day, about how Jesus tells us the story
about the rich man and Lazarus the beggar, who was begging outside of the
gates. He was just pleading for a bit of food, for some scraps. He’s so weak and helpless in his estate that he can’t even fend off the street dogs, that come and lick at his wounds.
Here we have the unnamed rich man, living in opulence; he was sitting in a
privileged position. And he is not rebuked for his affluence – but he is rebuked for his apathy. He thought that he was protecting himself,
and perhaps his family, by having these iron gates to keep [the poor] out, and
away from him – distanced from his possessions, distanced from his face. He felt that he was
perhaps at some higher level.
Yet Christ had come down, and come near to all of us in our brokenness. And this
nameless man was too attached to everything in his life to realize that this
gate, [which] kept others out, was imprisoning him on the inside . . .
I think that God wants to call us to something deeper; to fight for a wreath
that is imperishable: the glory of the kingdom of God, breaking through time.
We have an opportunity here, to open ourselves up to the brokenness of this
world, and see God’s light of healing break through.
Not because we possess it in and of ourselves, but that it’s reflecting and refracting his glory and his love for the least of these – for the wounded and the broken.
The amazing thing is that when we allow ourselves to be broken, and to fill up
with the fellowship of the sufferings of Christ, we get to know him a little
bit more intimately.
God in our midst
Jesus tells us that, in one sense, as we have done to the least of these – the naked, the hungry, the poor and the dispossessed, the imprisoned and the
oppressed – we have done it unto him. But inasmuch as we have left it undone, we have failed
to encounter the living God in our midst.
I don’t know about you, friends, but I want to invest the years of my life in a
struggle that matters . . .
I believe that Jesus calls us to attend to the weightier matters of the law;
justice, mercy, faithfulness. And sometimes we get caught up like the
Pharisees, you know, in our religious duties – or going to services, and enjoying the things that we have. We need to remember
the poor, we need to remember the broken, we need to remember the afflicted.
Modern day slavery: it’s a situation that, if you told me maybe 10 years ago, that if you said, “think about slavery, what comes to your mind?” I’m sure that into my mind would have flashed an image that I had seen in a
textbook: a drawing of black slaves who had been ripped out of Africa to work
in the deep U.S. South, in a cotton plantation.
But friends, as a present reality, it is a disease that has reemerged in this
day, that is consuming more lives at this moment than it did in the entire 400
years of the transatlantic slavery movement . . .
If we look at Luke 4 . . . “Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, after contending with the
devil – and news about him spread throughout the whole countryside. He taught in their
synagogues, and everyone praised him.”
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It says, “He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he
went to the synagogue, as was his custom. When he stood up to read, the scroll
of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him . . .”
I think you should pay attention to this. I don’t think its happenstance or circumstance, that the scroll would be at this
particular passage.
Good news to the poor
Jesus reads these words: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has appointed me to preach good news
to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery
of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed and proclaim the year of the
Lord’s favour.”
Whether we look at the New Testament passages about Christ’s ministry, or whether we listen to all that is required of us from Micah 6:8 – “but to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with our God” – we see that justice has a pretty high ranking in God’s kingdom. The Lord loves justice and hates oppression . . .
Isaiah 59 speaks of a day when the people of God turned their backs on God, and
oppression was running rampant. We see that when the good do nothing, evil and destruction seep in . . . Edmund
Burke put it this way: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
Well, I believe that people of good will long to rise up, long to do something,
to engage in the greater struggles of our day. We are seeing the body of Christ
begin to arise – arise against the evils of modern day slavery.
Care for one
Friends, if there are 27 million people in bonded labour in our day, but there
are 33 million Canadians, then all that it takes is for at least one of us to
care for one of our neighbours trapped in this situation of abuse, for it to
begin to make a difference . . . .
Slavery today is controlled by the authority of violence. It is no less abusive
and pernicious than the slavery of the Israelites at the hands of the
Egyptians. And if God cared in that day enough to raise up a deliverer, to
raise up Moses, to set the captives free, then in our day, I believe that he
wants to use the body of Christ to care for these people . . .
When the good do nothing, when the church just sits back and just enjoys what we
have, and forgets about the broken and the vulnerable in our world, then the
enemy has a field day – and the innocent become the prey. Justice is driven back, righteousness stands back at a distance, truth stumbles
in the streets, and whoever shuns evil becomes a prey . . .
One person put it this way: what we need to do is kick at the darkness until it
bleeds daylight.
February 2010
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