Christian Reflection and Prayer

I am not a visionary. I claim to
be a practical idealist. The religion
of nonviolence is not meant merely
for the rishis and saints. It is meant
for the common people as well.
Nonviolence is the law of our species
as violence is the law of the brute.
The spirit lies dormant in the brute
and he knows no law but that of
physical might. The dignity of man
requires obedience to a higher law-to
the strength of the spirit...

The rishis who discovered the law of
nonviolence in the midst of violence
were greater geniuses than Newton.
They were themselves known the use
of arms, they realized their uselessness,
and taught a weary world that its
salvation lay not through violence but
through nonviolence.

By M. K. Gandhi.

Scripture:

“Whatever you do to the least of these,
you do to Me.” (Matthew 25:40)

(The following is a portion taken from a
sermon given by Tony Campolo titled
"The Gospel of King Jesus".
What do think about what he said?)

How many of us take the words of Jesus
seriously? Sell what you have. Give to the
poor. Show mercy. Do you really think we
should love our enemies? Jesus said,
“Love your enemies,” didn’t He?

You think that this is radical stuff, that it’s
dangerous stuff. It’s about time we face the
fact that Jesus never played it safe. It’s
about time that we realize that they didn’t
put Him on the cross because He said nice
things, but because He said dangerous
things. Dangerous things include loving your
enemies, forgiving those who have hurt you,
forgiving those who made life hard for you.
Are you ready to take the words of Jesus,
the teachings of Jesus seriously? A people
that would do that are kingdom people.

The second thing is that they are people
who will be able to find Jesus in those who
are called the least of these. In the twenty
fifth chapter of Matthew, He says, “Whatever
you do to the least of these, you do to Me.
” Are you able to find Jesus in the least of
these?

A friend of mine is a pastor of a church in
the Midwest. It’s an inner city church, and
they run a soup kitchen every day of the week.
The people in the soup kitchen started coming
to worship on Sunday. It’s a very a wealthy
and prestigious church, and one of the deacons
of the church said, “Pastor, I think we need to
have a separate service for those people. You
know, they are dirty and smelly and I think we
need a separate service for them.”

And my friend said, “I don’t think so, because
I believe everybody should have a chance to
meet Jesus face to face.”

The deacon said, “I believe that, too, but can’t
we have a separate service?”

He said, “I’m not talking about them, I’m
talking about you.”

When you look into the face of those who are
in need, if you are filled with the presence of
Christ, if you have surrendered to Christ, if
Christ is a living presence in you, when you look
into their faces, you will see Jesus staring back
at you, and you won’t be saying in the depths of
your being, whatever I do to this person, I do to
Him.

Andrew Young, the onetime mayor of Atlanta,
Georgia, decided to dress up in raggedy clothes,
go out on the streets, and be homeless for three
days to see and experience what the homeless
experience. The people on his staff said, “It’ll
never work. They’ll recognize you. You’re so well
known they’ll recognize you. It won’t work.
” Three days later, he came back and they asked
him, “Well, how did it go? Did people recognize
you?”

And with great sadness, Andrew Young said,
“Nobody recognized me because nobody looks
into the faces of the homeless.”

I look at my own life and I think of how I also
turned the other way. I don’t want to see them,
I don’t want to confront them, I don’t want to meet
them, and Jesus encourages us that, if you don’t
want to meet them and love them and minister to
them, don’t think you can have a relationship with
Me. “Whatever you do to the least of these, you
do to Me.”

The famous architect, Frank Lloyd Wright,
designed some unusual buildings. On a
university campus in Florida stands a library
designed by Wright with an extremely low
ceiling, so low that if you are six feet tall and
not careful, you keep bumping your head. A
man who was having this trouble asked why
Frank Lloyd Wright had designed such a
building. "This was a characteristic of his
architecture because he hated tall people,"
A teacher explained.

Reflection:

How typical this is.
You try to cut the other fellow down to your
size. You make him fit into your mold.
Husbands and wives, parents and children
and friends, remaking each other. This is
the kind of love we express by taking the
other and using him and carving him and
shaping him into what we think he ought to
be. But this is not the kind of love which the
New Testament calls agape love: The
unconditional love that is for the other, the
love that affirms the life of the other, the
love that rejoices in the difference in the other.