Chapter 2: The Spirit, the Kingdom and Jubilee Justice: A Gospel Relevant to the Poor

"There was not a needy person among them." But there will be no poor among you."

Is our gospel powerful enough to deal with the problem of poverty? Can it stop the horror of oppression?

John Perkins describes the American church as preaching a gospel "that accommodates itself to racism and bigotry." Lee Harper describes Mississippi Christianity this way: "For injustice ran deep and cloaked itself well among those things [the church] that appeared just." I describes much of American Christianity as an unholy mixture of spirituality and ethnocentrism/oppression or a syncretistic blend of the Christianity and the American trinity.

Without the Spirit, the Kingdom and Jubilee justice as a part of the gospel we preach and practice, the American trinity floods in and corrupts the church. Without the Spirit, the Kingdom and Jubilee justice, we do not have a gospel that is powerful enough to meet the needs of the oppressed poor. The relevant Scripture: the Messianic passages from Isaiah, Luke 4:18-19 and Romans 14:17.
Chapter Two

What does good news to the poor look like? It builds on John 3:16, but it must also include Luke 4:18-19. Good news to the poor begins with a personal sin, personal salvation gospel based on the cross and resurrection, but it must also include the kingdom of God as Jubilee justice for the poor. To my knowledge, no theologian has ever tied the Holy Spirit, the kingdom of God and Jubilee justice in one holistic package---a package different from but as important as the cross and resurrection package. Billy Graham (Transformation, Jan/Feb., 1989) wrote the following when he was about 70 years old, but without any elaboration, not even a reference to any Scriptures:

"I have come to see in deeper ways the implications of my faith. . . . I can no longer proclaim the Cross and the Resurrection without proclaiming the whole message of the Kingdom [of God] which is justice for all." Acts 8:12 and 28:23 and 31 reveal that Philip and Paul preached a two-pronged gospel: "[Paul] preached the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ."

What happens if we don't preach the second half of the gospel? History teaches us some terrible lessons.

1. The Puritans attempted to be a godly and biblical people and in many ways they were. But they did not understand that justice and shalom applied to all peoples. They saw themselves as God's chosen people---chosen to set up a Christian nation on these shores. But there was more than a touch of biblical ignorance, arrogance and ethnocentrism in their sense of chosenness. And they conveniently forgot that someone else already owned this land---Indians and God. After a period of relative harmony with Native Americans, as Puritans numbers grew and they needed more land, ethnic conflict developed. Increasingly, the Puritans saw the surrounding tribes as heathen, as Canaanites, standing in the way of God's will.

When large numbers of Indians died from disease, Puritans saw this as the hand of God eliminating the heathen from their midst. A religiously legitimated ethnocentrism soon led to acts of oppression---the killing of whole villages, men, women and children, and the offering of bounties for the scalps of Indians. Incomplete biblical truth or more accurately, heresy, had tragic consequences; the Puritans who saw themselves as chosen instruments of God became instruments of evil. They also set in motion the ethnocentric and oppressive pattern that became part and parcel of much of the rest of American history. What was missing from their understanding of the preaching and practice of the gospel? Are we in 2014 still committing the same error? See G.E. Thomas, "Puritans, Indians, and the Concept of Race," The New England Quarterly, March, 1975.

2. The Afrikaners did much the same thing in South Africa. During the time when they governed, most evil Afrikaners attended church. They zealously kept the Sabbath day holy. Public TV opened with Bible reading and prayer (to what God?). Abortion and pornography were low compared to the United States. Sounds like paradise? But at the same time that they manifested this religious spirit [reread Isaiah 58], they treated their fellow Africans as inferior human beings. Their religiously legitimated ethnocentrism led to vicious and ruthless acts of oppression. What was missing from the Afrikaner understanding and practice of the gospel?

3. The American South---the Bible Belt; ethnocentrism/racism and oppression ran wild during the eras of slavery and segregation, and during today's unjust mass incarceration of young black and Hispanic males and our massive racial wealth gap. Far too often, Christians and churches were a part of the problem, not a part of the solution. What was missing from these bible-believing, born again evangelicals understanding and practice of the gospel?

4. The Pentecostal movement. One more sad event in American church history needs to be recounted. John Dawson describes the origins of American Pentecostalism in his fine book Healing America's Wounds:

"The [1906] Azusa St. Revival was a modern Pentecost in which the outpoured Spirit broke the barriers to true Christian unity. Racial division, America's greatest problem, was swept away. The huge dirt-floor barn that housed William Seymor's [Afro American] church attracted scores of ethnic groups from their separate enclaves across Los Angeles. . . . [Then racism enters] This sincere and loving man---Seymor's friend---was afflicted with the blindness of his generation. He admired the Ku Klux Klan and believed that the besetting sin of humanity was racial mixing. . . . After denouncing Seymor, he continues his ministry, preaching against racial mixing and proclaiming the baptism of the Holy Spirit. . . . Pentecostalism divided into two groups. one black and one white, between 1908 and 1914. Glossolia became the new emphasis. . . . and God's true purpose went down the memory hole.

A flawed church that preaches and practices a partial gospel leaves a spiritual vacuum. Evil rushed in to fill that vacuum. What was missing from the Pentecostal brand of the gospel?

5. In Rwanda, supposedly the most Christian nation in Africa (8 out of 10 profess to be Christian), ethnic conflict exploded between and Tutsi and the Hutu. The cross and resurrection were preached; evangelism was widespread. The Holy Spirit was present in a Protestant continuous revival and in a charismatic Catholic revival. Seemingly, Rwanda was deeply Christian.

Some ruthless politicians fanned the existing embers of ethnocentrism which then exploded into a forest fire that ravaged the land. The Christian church had not erected any reconciliation or justice barriers which could stop the raging fires of bitterness and hatred. Flawed colonialism Western Christianity played a major part. Tragically many Christians engaged in the numerous murders and many Christians were murdered. Serious flaws in the understanding and practice of the gospel can lead to fatal consequences.

From these five tragic case studies, it should be very obvious that we need to revisit the Bible and find what has been missing in our brand of the gospel. In my opinion, what has been missing is the Holy Spirit empowering the church to incarnate the kingdom of God as reconciliation and justice, especially among the oppressed poor.

Luke, chapter four, can help us at this point. There are four key concepts in Luke 4:18-19: the Spirit, the poor, the oppressed and Jubilee justice. The poor are the central focus of this passage; any gospel that does not make the poor central in its ministry is not biblical. In Luke the poor are the economically poor. In the Scriptures, the primary, but not the only cause, of poverty is oppression. But the phrase "to release the oppressed" is not found in the quoted Isaiah 61 passage. Jesus adds it from Isaiah 58:6; he goes out of his way to make sure that freeing people from the bondage of oppression is part of the NT gospel. Oppression means to crush, humiliate, animalize, impoverish, enslave and kill. Too often misguided American Christians have engaged in oppression instead of stopping oppression.

How do biblical Christians deal with poverty and oppression. One effective biblical way in to do Jubilee justice. The goal of Jubilee justice: "There shall be no poor among you." The method: cancel debts, free slaves and return lost land to the original family. Jubilee justice stops lifelong or even generational systems of oppression. Jubilee justice also provides the resources for self-sufficiency, for the development of a community---the return of the land. The phrase "the year of the Lord's favor" refers to the OT Jubilee. If justice is done for the poor, then the conditions for shalom in a community are established. If poverty and oppression are sharply reduced, if justice is done and shalom begun, the the kingdom of God is present. When Jesus finished reading from Isaiah 61, he uttered these significant words: "Today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing." Paraphrased Jesus said that the kingdom of God has arrived; not get busy doing Jubilee justice, doing works of justice.

Pastor Graham Cray has nailed this sentiment in this powerful one-liner: "The agenda of the kingdom of God is justice; the dynamic of the kingdom of God is the Holy Spirit." Meditate on and memorize this one.

But Jesus is not done. There is one more major sin that needs to be addressed. After Jesus finished sermon A, he was well received. After Jesus finished sermon B, the same Jews tried to eliminate him, on the spot. At this time the Jews had corrupted their original high calling---to bring into the world the Messiah who would minister to all ethnos, all peoples, all nations. But instead of remaining a servant people, the Jews now saw themselves as a superior people---superior to the heathen, unclean Gentiles.

Jesus recounted and interpreted two familiar OT stories: Elijah was sent to a starving Gentile; he ignored starving Hebrew widows. Elisha was sent to heal a Gentile leper, not to any of the Hebrew lepers. This interpretation---that God equally loved the Gentiles---enraged the Nazareth Jews; to them this was heresy. When Jesus pointed pointed out their religiously based ethnocentrism, they tried to kill him by throwing him over a cliff.

In Luke 9, we find Jesus condemning the ethnocentrism of his own disciples. In the first verses of chapter 9, Jesus gives his disciple his power and authority to heal the sick, cast out demons and preach the kingdom. Great, nothing can go wrong with this arrangement, can it" Yes, and it was almost tragic. 9:51 describes a trip from Galilee to Jerusalem through Samaria. Walking took about three days, so Jesus and his disciples had to stay overnight in Samaria. When a Samaritan village refused to let them stay overnight because they were despised Jews, James and John were incensed. They wanted to misuse their new found power and authority to destroy the whole Samaritan village---pull a Sodom and Gomorrah! Jesus strongly rebuked them, using the same word that is found in verse 42 when Jesus rebuked an evil spirit.

The Jesus seized the teaching moment; a short time later Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan. We are to love our ethnic neighbors, not destroy them. Love and justice should control our use of power, not an evil attempts to maintain our ethnic superiority.

So early on in his ministry, Jesus directly addressed both ethnocentrism and oppression---the two social sins that most bible-believing evangelicals do not address; in fact two social evils that American evangelicals often commit. We often send out missionaries who are spiritual and ethnocentric; a terribly tragic combination. Ethnocentrism was a continuing problem in the NT church. Jesus and Paul opposed it vigorously and pushed hard for reconciliation.

Why do the oppressed poor need the gospel of the Spirit, the kingdom of God and justice? Without it, Isaiah 61 describes the state of the oppressed poor as:

a spirit of despair; a pile of ashes; a state of mourning

How destructive can ethnocentrism and oppression get? How much human damage can they do? According to the Scriptures and Jesus, an unbelievable amount of damage to individuals and communities. So why have ethnocentrism and oppression been left out of white evangelical theology? Could it be that by avoiding oppression it is then easy to put the blame for social problems on the victim; find flaws and dysfunction in the victim so whites then have no guilt? What do you think the problem is?

According to Exodus 6:1-8, God speaks to Moses and very specifically says that he will deliver the children of Israel from the slave bondage to the Egyptians. In Exodus 6:9, we find Israel's response to God's promise (RSV): "Moses spoke thus to the people of Israel, but they did not listen to Moses, because of their broken spirit and cruel bondage." Exodus 6:9 from The Message: "But when Moses delivered this message to the Israelites, they didn't even hear him---they were that beaten down in spirit by the harsh slave conditions."

Severe lifelong or even generational ethnocentrism and oppression can so break the human spirit that the promises of God seem empty. Apparently in Exodus 6:9, the large majority of the people, not just a few individuals, were crushed in their spirits. I summarize the generational impact of systems of oppression as:

1. physical death ranging from individuals death to genocide
2. psychological death as in broken or crushed in spirit
3. social death when cultural values and social institutions are shattered thereby preventing their normal functioning including the breakup of the basic institutions of marriage and family.

This sounds like some analyses of America's inner cities. Cornel West asserts that the number one crisis is a spirit of despair, a lack of hope, a void of meaning. Quite literally, many urban youth live by this philosophy: "Eat, drink and seduce, for tomorrow I will likely die or go to prison."

Orlando Patterson, Harvard historical sociologist, argues that the gender relations crisis (marriage and family, male and female) is a major crisis ravaging not only the poor but all classes in the Afro American community. Tensions and conflict, high rates of divorce, low rates of marriage, lack of marriageable black males, makes for high rates of alienation and isolation. See Patterson's Rituals of Blood and Slavery and Social Death.

Michelle Alexander in her book The New Jim Crow describes how unjust mass incarceration devastates inner city families and communities. Thomas Shapiro in his book The Hidden Cost of Being African American reveals how the massive racial wealth gap does much the same.

After the Holocaust, many Jews could no longer believe in a God who would stand idly by and let genocide happen. They became secular Jews, but a strange thing happened. They kept a strong sense of social justice; the majority of the 1000 northern volunteers for the 1964 Freedom Summer campaign were secular Jews. Since God, or better yet God's church, wasn't acting to end segregation, these secular Jews played the role of gods and committed themselves to assist Mississippi blacks break down evil, legal segregation.

Obviously, it will take a massive effort by the church to solve the above crises. Recent research (Divided by Faith) shows that the typical white middle class evangelical does not understand these crises nor do they care deeply enough to respond. Instead they blame the victim---the poor and oppressed. They are not acting as God's agents to stop oppression and to do justice, in part, because they are the oppressors and benefit from the status quo. They will engage in charity from time to time, but little justice. I am grateful for every exception to this rule, but we must be clear that these are exceptions.

It will require justice to bestow on the oppressed poor a crown of beauty to replace the pile of ashes.

It will require justice to provide the oil of gladness to replace a state of mourning.

It will require justice to clothe the oppressed poor with a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.