Evangelism and Justice – by Mark H. Rich
Read George R. Hunsberger’s Essay, “Full Disclosure: Justice and Evangelism Together”
Read Laurie Hartzell’s Essay, “Evangelism And Justice”
The false dualism
Over 23 years of ordained ministry I’ve picked up a bad habit (but only one!). I assume that in any new ministry site I come to the people there have basically never really heard the gospel of Jesus Christ. I know, I know, it’s kind of unfair and juvenile – as assumptions often tend to be – but I have to tell you that it’s also proven uncannily accurate time and again. What we have come to call the gospel is so stunted from the real thing, such a narrow version that it can hardly be termed even a facsimile.
One of the perennial false dualisms produced by our modern versions of church and gospel is the dualism between evangelism and justice, as if there were really an antagonism or even a choice between the two. The church as a voluntary association of like-minded (and usually like-skinned) individuals who subscribe to the same religious ideology has to turn evangelism into the attraction of more such individuals and their inculturation into the same ideology. It takes those who are already alike and seeks to make them more alike.
The meaning and miracle of agapē
So the agapē-love of the gospel is transmuted into mere friendship (and a rather attenuated friendship at that). Friendship is based on the social, cultural, and often ethnic similarity of individuals. Friends like each other in large part because they are alike. Agapē takes place miraculously between unlike partners, who love each other with much less of the expectation of likeness and therefore the need for reciprocity.
In this modern middle-class model of what we call church, doing justice is not actually necessary because the church does not essentially step outside its own culture of narcissism. A pastor who is gifted at evangelism recently stated to me without embarrassment how he didn’t care about “social justice”, and I don’t think that statement was at all influenced by Glenn Beck’s idiocy. It’s just the logic of church now – and again, I mainly mean white middle-class global North church.
The one thing that partially redeems this narcissism is that advanced global capitalism ensures that modern life can be spiritually and emotionally nasty and meaningless in a wide variety of ways. In the face of the shallowness, rootlessness, and meaninglessness of the life of production and consumption, the church’s evangelism, however selfish its motives and effects, is indeed some kind of agapē. The church nonetheless gives people a community, an identity, and some moral compass that the society often denies them.
Acknowledging what we do not know and need to learn
So let us disregard any suggestions of shame now. It’s easier and perhaps even fairer to acknowledge that the white churches of the global North just don’t know the gospel very well.
Jesus of Nazareth did evangelism and justice at the same time. Out of a plethora of examples let me choose just two. The first seems a bit strange because Jesus is deliberately uniting two groups who don’t seem to be obviously connected, tax collectors and ‘sinners’, whatever that word may mean. “As he was walking along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, ‘Follow me.’ And he got up and followed him. And as he sat at dinner in Levi’s house, many tax collectors and sinners were also sitting with Jesus and his disciples– for there were many who followed him. When the scribes of the Pharisees saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, they said to his disciples, ‘Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?’” (Mark 2:14-16). I leave out the Lord’s answer to them, in order to focus us on their question, because that is also our question.
Because of the crazy times in which we live, our minds tend to assume ‘sex’ when we hear the word ‘sinner’. This is not the primary reference in the gospels. The sinners are the debtors, the clients/victims of the tax collectors. (Some of those sinners would have been prostitutes, forced into prostitution by the tax collectors to pay off some man’s debts. Yes, there’s sex there, but strictly in the interest of tax slavery.) Jesus’ business with these people, his evangelism to them, is the jubilee that he proclaimed at the very first words of his public ministry (Mark 1:15; Matthew 3:15; Luke 4:18f). This release of debts was the very sum and substance of the dinner conversation on that evening! Jesus was actually carrying out the “fulfillment of all righteousness” that Mt. 3:15 promised. (Brief digression: in order to understand Mt 3:15 you’ll have to look into the Greek original; every translation in every language I’ve looked at misses the point entirely on this verse.[1] We modern Christians really are not serious about believing Jesus’ words.)
The second example is again the jubilee, but now as enacted within Jesus’ group of disciples. After the debacle in Mark 10 with the rich man, Jesus remarks how hard it is for the rich to enter the reign of God. “Peter began to say to him, ‘Look, we have released everything and followed you.’ Jesus said, ‘Truly I tell you, there is no one who has released house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age – houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields with persecutions – and in the age to come eternal life’” (my translation and emphases). The jubilee is enacted among the Lord’s disciples by releasing all their possessions and receiving them again from each other, so that all things are shared among them except their spouses.
Radical sharing as a sign of the new creation
As Jesus and his disciples knew and practiced, justice or righteousness begins not only at home but with homes – the homes and goods of the disciples themselves. This radical sharing is the very substance of the gospel, the new righteousness, the new creation, the new life. So in the gospel of Jesus Christ evangelism and justice are one and the same.
But let us note that ‘evangelism’ here no longer means what we said it is above. We are now at the opposite of the voluntary association of like-minded individuals. We have come to the divinely-called community of Christ-minded brothers and sisters who share all things together. In this community the good news is justice and justice is the good news.
One final note: for us to begin to hear again this gospel and to become re-evangelized into Christ’s righteousness, we modern Christians will have to believe differently. We probably do about as much believing about Jesus and in Jesus as Christians have ever done. There will probably be as many hymns of praise to him and as many divine titles ascribed to him and as many prayers sent up to him this coming Easter as there have ever been. But we don’t actually believe him very much, and especially when he is talking to us about possessions. The most fundamental theological question facing us Christians now is not about the authority of the Bible or the authority of the pope, but the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
In Jesus Christ our possessions are no longer ours, but God’s for the good of all. In this evil age when the wealthy are saved and coddled and the poor are thrown away, no one needs to hear and believe this good news more than us Christians. The world cannot possibly hear and believe this if we Christians won’t.
[1] If your NT Greek is lacking, Richard Horsley’s Jesus and the Spiral of Violence and Michael Crosby’s House of Disciples are both very helpful. Indeed, they’re helpful even if your NT Greek is great!
Read George R. Hunsberger’s Essay, “Full Disclosure: Justice and Evangelism Together”
Read Laurie Hartzell’s Essay, “Evangelism And Justice”