We Still See Him
When We Join the Poor We Join God
ľ As ideologies and judgments and rancor have crumbled, we still see Him crouching in the dark places of despair.
ľ As policies and budgets and treaties have come forth still-born, we still see Him with those wallowing in a bed of sickness and regret.
ƒæ As regimes and czars and military forces have waxed and waned, we still see Him digging stubbornly through the trash in the streets for the children we’ve thrown away.
ľ We still see Him in the night.
ľ We still see him in the heat.
ľ We still see him in the filth.
ƒæ We see him with the invisible people that we who live in mansions have forgotten because we’ve confused charity with justice.
ľ Charity is giving our resources to appease our sense of obligation, our sense of responsibility.
ľ Justice is giving ourselves in the pursuit of defending the widow, giving hope to the orphan, standing with those who suffer and this is where we find Him.
ľ We find God where we see suffering and despair, where we see hunger and disease, where we see bondage and oppression; this is where we see Him.
ľ In one sense, Bono is a prophet for our age when he says this, "...the one thing we can all agree is that God is with the vulnerable and poor. God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house... God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives... God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war... God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them."
ľ Tonight, we in the Christian community want to stand with God as He stands with the poorest of the poor.
ƒæ This week we’ve drawn our attention and our resources and our energies to the AIDS orphan pandemic in Africa.
ľ We are partnering tonight with World Vision and their work to give hope where there is despair tonight.
ľ We are joining our hearts with the poor AIDS orphans in Africa tonight and when we join the poor, we join God.
God is Like a Garbage Man, Inviting Us Into the Garbage Dumps of the World
ľ God is Like a Garbage Man, Inviting Us Into the Garbage Dumps of the World
ľ We still see God, salvaging all He can from a hurting world. We still see God calling to us to join Him in His work of redemption.
ƒæ This is a different way to think about God, isn’t it? As a garbage man? As a junk collector?
ľ In America, religious people are more inclined to think of God as a magic Jeanie, dolling out blessings of health and wealth and victory over the mundane.
ľ We are more inclined to think of God as the CEO of brick buildings where people in funny clothes play games to pass the time.
ľ We are more inclined to think of God as a warm and decorative novelty item to be purchased in a Bible book store to make us feel fuzzy on the inside.
ľ But I want to say to you tonight that God is a garbage man.
ƒæ His hands and feet are dirty. His breath stinks. He doesn’t play the social games of politeness.
ƒæ He’ll get mud on the carpet of the living room of your heart-if you let Him in.
ƒæ He’ll embarrass you in front of your neighbors-if you let Him in.
ƒæ He’ll break the rules of safe suburban living-if you let Him in.
ƒæ He’ll get you out doing risky things because the things that He wants takes him to those places our parents warned us not to go to-places like the one I came from.
ƒæ I grew up on the end of a dead-end street with burnt out buildings all around me. A crack house with armed drug dealers guarded the only entrance to my street. I walked to and from high school through a neighborhood where there were 21 homicides the year I graduated. Because of my dad’s involvement with drugs, my family lived on the street for a short period of time.
ƒæ When I went to the University of Michigan, I studied hard. I made the dean’s list semester after semester. I graduated with honors and went to work developing my own business.
ľ As I gained more and more knowledge about the business world, I found it easy to make money and you know what I said? I said, "I deserve this. I earned this. I will never go back to that dead-end crack ally."
ľ With all the suffering I saw in the world, I chose to be an atheist. How could God have allowed me and my family to suffer? Where was God when I suffered?
ľ What I did not realize as an atheist was that God was nearer to me in my suffering then I knew. It was at my lowest points that God carried me.
ľ When I finally realized that God was real, that He did care about me, I began to hunger to know Him and know about what He was doing in the world.
ľ And when this truth hit me, that God is with the poor, I found myself wanting to go back, to spend time with people who suffered. To sit across a table with the homeless, to share a meal with an AIDS victim, to give my money for those who suffer around the world.
ľ We still see Him tonight, doing His work to redeem what the world has thrown away.
The Price is High to Join God in His Work, but the Returns are Even Higher
ľ You know the price to join God in His work is high, but the rewards are even higher.
ľ Have you ever shown up to help someone and ended up paying more then you bargained for?
ƒæ I remember when I still had the "charity" mindset. I was a new Christian and wanted to do some charity work. I joined a group of people who were going downtown to do some outdoor cleaning at a battered women’s shelter.
ƒæ It was the first time I was going back into the messy, dangerous world of the inner city I had escaped from but I thought, "Hey, what’s a couple hours of my time?"
ľ When we got there, instead of finding a lawn that needed to be mowed or bushes that needed trimming, we found a backyard filled with garbage.
ľ There was so much garbage I had no idea where it was all going to go to.
ľ I was a little bit upset because that was not what I bargained for. As we got to work I comforted myself by thinking about the good we were doing for those poor women who I thought would remain faceless to me.
ľ As we scooped up condoms and drug paraphernalia and mattresses and clothes and wine bottles the job really began to get to me and all my Hallmark thoughts went flying out the window. We worked all morning, much longer then I had planned.
ƒæ When lunch came, the director of the center came out, looked over the work as we were hunched over our plates of bologna and chips and I overheard him say these words, "Well, it looks like they’ve done enough to feel good about themselves."
ľ I was angered. Not a "thank you," not a "really appreciate it," not even a "good start!"
ƒæ What I didn’t know is that he was trying to make us mad, and it worked.
ƒæ I shared his words with the rest of the group and our leader. We said, "We’ll show him! We’ll work all afternoon!"
ľ We moved into the house and began cleaning and painting. The sun was baking the poorly ventilated house and our long sleeve shirts and pants we wore for outdoor work were now smucked to every part of our sticky bodies.
ľ At the end of the day as we gathered around the front porch, we gazed in amazement at the progress made in one day.
ľ Just then, the shelter director returned with a woman and her child.
ľ They stepped out of the car and stood on the lawn as the director said, "I have someone here I wanted you to meet. This is Amelia and her son Johny. They will be the first residents in this, our second, house."
ľ Amelia was pretty but way too thin. Her summer dress was faded and her hair was matted. She had bruises on her neck and legs. Johny looked happy with a book in his hand but looking closer he also had tattered clothes, shoes with no laces and a yellowed bruise covering his entire eye.
ƒæ At that moment it hit me-my work wasn’t for me, it was for Amelia and Johny. It didn’t matter if I felt good about it or not, the question was did they have a place to stay and at that point they did not as the other shelter was full.
ľ Charity is about making us feel good, but justice is about getting the job done for those who suffer.
ľ The cost is high, but look what is at stake.
People Matter to God, They Should Matter to Us
ľ People matter to God, they should matter to us. The world sees AIDS orphans as expendable, invisible, faceless-we see them as precious and that is why we are here tonight.
ľ Tonight, we want to work for justice in Africa, to raise money and awareness not to make ourselves feel good but to help get the job done.
ľ It is said that our generation will be marked by the history books for three things. The war on terror, the internet and technology explosion, and what we did or did not do to put the fire out in Africa.
ľ The fire burns in the lives of children like Virginia. What will become of her as a child in the sex brothels in Africa after her mother finally dies of AIDS?
ľ What can we do to put the fire out in her lifetime so that her children need not grow up in hopelessness and despair, waiting for the mother to die?
ľ Will we seek justice for Teddy?
ľ Teddy is one of 12 million AIDS orphans surviving without hope.
ƒæ Teddy, 11, writes this, "My mother and father died [of AIDS]. When my mother told me she was suffering from AIDS, she didn’t tell me how she got it or how to avoid it. I wish she’d told me more about it. When my mother died we suffered so much. There was no food, and there was no one to look after us. We didn’t even have money to buy soap and salt. I tried to be positive, but it was difficult. I missed my mother because I loved her so much. Some neighbours say bad things about us: ’Those children are so poor; they don’t even have relatives. They don’t belong. They don’t have a clan.’ Some people also call us ’AIDS orphans’, and they say that maybe our parents infected us. We don’t say anything. At least no one oppresses us. I don’t go to school. I’d like to go, but I must work at home so my brothers can go to school."
ľ Teddy now lives with her three brothers and sisters and helps to look after three other boys whose parents also died of AIDS-related illnesses.
ľ Teddy says, "I tried to be positive."
ƒæ This week, we’ve proclaimed through our t-shirts, "I’m Positive!" Teddy can’t be positive, but we can because we have the power to do something about Teddy’s plight.
ƒæ We’re positive that something must be done to put the fire out in Africa. We’re positive that we are a part of the solution. We are positive that God cares for the widow and orphan. We are positive that we need to join God in the human garbage heaps redeeming the children who can no longer remain faceless, invisible to us who have so much.
ľ To be fair, however, joining God in His work of redemption does transform us as well.
ƒæ I was transformed that day as I stood before Amelia and Johny. I’ve been transformed in my work to raise money and awareness to fight child sex slavery and the AIDS pandemic.
ƒæ It isn’t easy being transformed. It is costly, it’s painful, it’s process.
ľ So if you ask, "Does it cost to join God?" The answer is, "It costs everything we have because it means we must die to our own wants and desires to become more like the Him the garbage man with dirty feet and a welling heart."
Loving the World Comes from Having God’s Love in Our Lives
ƒæ Loving the World Comes from Having God’s Love in Our Lives
ľ It takes all our money to join God, it takes all our time, it takes all our energy, and it takes all our minds to join God.
ľ The Bible puts it another way, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength."
ľ Charity is easy, love is not.
ƒæ In fact, without first receiving God’s love, it is impossible to love back.
ƒæ We turn inward on ourselves, focusing on our own wants and selfish desires because we haven’t received God’s love.
ľ We lie to those around us and to ourselves. We tear people down to make ourselves feel better through our gossip.
ƒæ We hate, we murder, we lust, we covet. We are empty because the only thing that can overcome the darkness within is God’s love.
ƒæ Melissa, at the age of 4, lives on the outskirts of Nairobi, the largest sub-Saharan slum, bursting at 700,000. When a neighbor offered to buy Melissa ice cream one afternoon, she couldn’t miss the chance. She followed the man who led her to a trash heap used as the slum’s public restroom. Believing sex with a young virgin would cure him of AIDS, the man made Melissa lay down as he covered her mouth with his hand while he raped her in the garbage.
ľ What is it in the heart of humanity that allows us to victimize children for our own pleasure?
ľ What is it in the human heart that could imagine imprisoning others in sex brothels?
ƒæ What is it in the heart that would allow us to continue to sip $4.00 latte’s while 6,500 Africans will die today of a preventable, treatable disease, for lack of drugs we can buy at any drug store?
ľ There is nothing wrong inherently with wealth, but watch out for the deception it can bring.
ƒæ This campus is in one of the wealthiest counties in America and perhaps you are one of the wealthy ones here today. Don’t be ashamed of wealth-just don’t trust it.
ƒæ Wealth can give you a false sense of security because it allows you to think that the world is alright, that you and those around you are alright when in fact the world is not alright and wealth alone can’t fix the problems of our world.
ľ Wealth can help save the 6,500 women, children, and men who will die today in Africa, but it cannot rid the human heart of the darkness that causes the spread of AIDS and the victimization of the poor.
ƒæ Only God’s love can change that.
Recognizing the Darkness is the Key to Letting the Light Shine
ľ I want to end tonight by saying that recognizing the darkness is the key to letting the light shine.
ľ We need to recognize that there is darkness in the world.
ƒæ There is darkness in the child who suffers in the aftermath of her parent’s HIV related death.
ľ There is darkness in the man who dumps his disease into a 4 year old atop a garbage heap.
ƒæ There is darkness in the wealthy that don’t do the good that we can for those who suffer.
ľ There is a dark place within us all.
ľ The Bible says, "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."
ľ Tonight, we can overcome the darkness in the world around us by first overcoming the darkness in the world within us.
ƒæ Recognizing the darkness within us is the key to letting God’s light shine through us.
ľ The light must shine in us and through us if we are going to overcome the darkness.
ľ We still see Him if we look. We see him who works tonight to redeem, to heal, to bring hope.
ľ We still see Him no matter how dark the world has become because He is light.
ľ Tonight, I want to give each of us here the opportunity to see Him, our cosmic garbage collector, our light-His name is Jesus Christ.
ƒæ Not the clean blue-eyed Jesus that’s been neutered and hung on the wall.
ľ Not the safe Jesus who will look the other way as the world goes to hell in a hand basket.
ľ Jesus with dirty feet and calloused hands.
ľ This Jesus is called the light of the world because he exposes our darkness.
ľ Jesus said, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."
ľ He says, whoever follows him will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.
ľ Where do we see Him going? Where are we to follow this Jesus?
ľ We see this Jesus hanging on the cross, that place of suffering and sorrow where He hung and died in order to be near to those who suffer.
ľ Jesus invites us to follow Him to that cross. The place where he bled and died in order to provide a cure for our darkness, in order to take our suffering away.
ľ The picture of Jesus on the cross has been so profound a picture for 2000 years because it is this Jesus mangled with spit and blood running down his face that represents for us just how far the garbage collector would go to cleanse and heal our darkness.
ľ You know, while at a conference in LA, I met a good intentioned man who spent much of his time going into the slums of First Nation Reservations. He described the horrible living conditions, the sicknesses, the dirt floors, the addictions, the lack of resources and education.
ľ Then what he said to me next made me go from an attitude of respect to one of anger. He said, "I feel that what these people need most from Christians is for us to come to where they are, sit where they sit, and identify with their suffering."
ƒæ I said to him, "That’s ridiculous!" I continued, "When I was living in a van, eating cold cereal out of a box, with a drug addicted father in the middle of winter, if you were to come knocking on our van door talking about, ’Can I come in and share your cereal?’ I would have told you exactly where you can go!"
ľ You want to help me, help get my dad off drugs. You want to help me, help get me into a safe and clean home. You want to help me, give me a reason for living, a hope that one day things could be different.
ƒæ Jesus doesn’t just say follow me to the cross, follow me into suffering, follow me into darkness, He also says follow me into the light of life-the light of life.
ľ To follow the way of Jesus means following Him past death. Jesus, the light of the world conquered death by when He rose from the dead.
ľ Because Jesus is alive tonight, we can follow Him past the grave, past sickness and disease and into new life.
ƒæ We don’t merely stand here tonight sending good thoughts to AIDS orphans. We don’t stand here tonight merely wearing black shirts and shouting statistical realities.
ƒæ We stand here tonight in the spirit of Jesus who said, "God’s Spirit is on me; he’s chosen me to preach the Message of good news to the poor, Sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, To set the burdened and battered free, to announce, "This is God’s year to act!" (Lk. 4:18).
ľ We still see Him teaching and healing and freeing. We still see Him shining because He is light and now He invites us to be light in the world as well.
ƒæ Tonight, if you want to follow Jesus’ way, you must first recognize that the darkness is not merely over there, in a far off land, but right here in our hearts.
ƒæ Tonight, if you want to follow Jesus’ way, you must be willing to follow him into a dark world so that others can have hope.
ľ Jesus calls to you now. You, right there in your seat here in this tent, yes you. Jesus is calling you to come and follow Him. He is calling you to receive His light and to shine in this world.
ƒæ If you want to answer His call, in just a moment I’m going to ask you personally respond.
ƒæ In a moment, I’m going to ask you come to the center aisle and pick up one of <
ƒæ Snapping on the light tonight symbolizes your desire to have God’s light shine in your heart. It symbolizes your desire to have God cleanse your darkness through what Jesus did on the cross. It symbolizes your desire to walk past the grave with Jesus and into a resurrection life.
ľ Jesus said he is the light of the world and if we follow Him we will be given the light of life.
ľ The light of life is not only to shine in us but through us and so snapping on the light also symbolizes your desire to be a light of hope for those others in the world as well.
ƒæ Right now, if you want to begin following Jesus and to receive the light of life, I’m going to ask you to slip out of your seat and stand in the center aisle. I’m going to ask you to pick up a light stick and snap on the light.
In the gospel, Jesus removes the moral filth from our lives as well because we too need a trash collector. He takes our sin and he removes it from the curb of our life and from the inside of our house." That same trash collector, who wants to clean up the world we’ve messed up, wants to come and clean up the life we’ve messed up. In fact, if we’re honest, the harder clean up job is to clean up our sin, but that’s what our cosmic trash collector will do with our sin, (remove it as far as from east to west) so we can join his mission.
As tarrying permits, read the following:
IS 1:13-17
"Quit your worship charades.
I can’t stand your trivial religious games:
Monthly conferences, weekly Sabbaths, special meetings-- meetings, meetings, meetings--I can’t stand one more!
Meetings for this, meetings for that. I hate them!
You’ve worn me out!
I’m sick of your religion, religion, religion,
while you go right on sinning.
When you put on your next prayer-performance,
I’ll be looking the other way.
No matter how long or loud or often you pray,
I’ll not be listening.
And do you know why? Because you’ve been tearing
people to pieces, and your hands are bloody.
Go home and wash up.
Clean up your act.
Sweep your lives clean of your evildoings
so I don’t have to look at them any longer.
Say no to wrong.
Learn to do good.
Work for justice.
Help the down-and-out.
Stand up for the homeless.
Go to bat for the defenseless.
