Discipleship
February 4, 2021
Scripture Reading:
1 Corinthians 9:16-23
If I proclaim the gospel, this gives me no ground for boasting, for an obligation is laid on me, and woe betide me if I do not proclaim the gospel! For if I do this of my own will, I have a reward; but if not of my own will, I am entrusted with a commission. What then is my reward? Just this: that in my proclamation I may make the gospel free of charge, so as not to make full use of my rights in the gospel. –1 Corinthians
If we proclaim the gospel, we will do well to know it to the best of our ability. The gospels include Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but they are implanted amid the history of God’s acts in the world both before Jesus and after the resurrection. Understanding these four books requires a good knowledge of that history. Some of it is quoted in the gospels. Being aware of the worldview held, both in the life of Jesus and in the church’s development, is also helpful. Studying the worldviews since the Bible was compiled shows us how the world can redirect the teachings of Christ—identifying that in history provides a means for our understanding of how our worldview is affecting our faith practices today.
My genealogy work for most of the families I trace has me now scouring records from the 1600 and 1700 hundreds in the United States. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were the time wedged between the Document of Discovery*and Manifest Destiny** that set down God’s blessings on displacing the New World’s indigenous people. Black slaves began to be imported into the New World in 1619. I knew that one of my great grandfathers was a captain in the Confederacy and a slave owner in the mid-1800s. I have been surprised at how many of my ancestors living here before the Revolutionary War were slave owners, too. Our Constitution’s original language provides that enslaved blacks in a state would be counted as three-fifths of a person to determine a state’s allocated seats in Congress. Enslaved blacks were only included because the states that had many slaves wanted more representation. The 3/5th designation was deemed enough to be counted but not to vote.
We can look back on this history with dismay, but, I fear, we are as blind as my relatives were to how we are treating others in our world today. We wonder how anyone could support such actions based on Christ’s teaching, but we do not see how some of our efforts today cannot be justified by the teachings of Jesus. How can we give people long sentences for minor crimes to support for-profit prisons? How can we close voting places and force people to travel long distances to vote because they are from minority groups? How can we contract Medicaid management to for-profit companies whose whole idea of managed care is to provide the minimum health care necessary to increase their profits? How can we support a minimum wage that forces people into poverty, requiring them to access food stamps, childcare subsidies, and Medicaid to survive? These services are not welfare. They are wage supplements for thriving big businesses. How can we say we welcome strangers when we take refugees’ children away from them and hold refugees in horrible conditions also provided by for-profit businesses? Many of the refugees fleeing to the USA are Christians.
When was the last time we people proclaiming the gospel read the Sermon on the Mount or Matthew 25?
Prayer: Lord, take off our blinders and help us see the destruction we are creating for your children throughout the world by our actions of greed and lust for power. Amen.
* A Papal Bull (decree) that stated that any land not inhabited by Christians was available to be “discovered,” claimed, and exploited by Christian rulers see more at https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/spotlight-primary-source/doctrine-discovery-1493
** the 19th-century doctrine or belief that the expansion of the US throughout the American continents was both justified and inevitable.
All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights are reserved.