Preaching, Politics & Partiality.
- –food - nutrition programs for kids before and after school;
- –thirst - working condition for migrant farm workers, and sweatshops;
- –strangers - immigration and welcoming ‘foreigners’ to the US (I’m not talking about the Minute Men Patrol), or human trafficking, or the global economic realities that create international migration of workers;
- –clothing - the distribution of resources, the materialism of our society, my desire for new shoes, clothes, etc. all of the time;
- –the sick - affordable healthcare and the rise of medical costs;
- –prisoners - when was the last time I “visited” someone in jail, even more, do I have a Christian worldview about the criminal justice system, or the public prison, I mean school, system that dooms more Latino & Black children to drop-out than to graduate, let alone even go to college.
I’m being challenged to rethink my own approach to politics in light of Jesus’ life, his death & his resurrection.
Then I preached Tuesday night at Deep from Ephesians 2 about Jesus and culture. It made me cry - for two reasons. I realize how significant and urgent the good news of the gospel is for my students to know Jesus authority to lead us in this crazy, often divided, multi-ethnic world. And I cried when I got home realizing how - despite Jesus’ act of breaking down the dividing wall - how threatening the shadow of that wall of ethnic hostility still is in our world, even or especially in the church.
And now tonight, I preparing the Bible study for my guys from 2 Deep (Man, I love getting together with these guys.) We’re going through the book of James. Tonight we’re studying from the beginning of chapter 2 about favoritism and partiality. My head is spinning, or more accurately, my heart is wrestling with God about how to really live out this gospel of no-favoritism in our world that is so divided on so many fronts.
In the midst of the whirlwind of conviction that is being stirred in me, I find hope from James that indeed “mercy does triumph over judgment.” May God’s great mercy triumph over my preaching, my political agenda, and my pre-judgments, prejudices, and partiality.