i ♥ revolution. . .

“The King will say, ‘I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'”

You’re not looking, are you?

I’ll admit it. . . neither was I. The hungry, the thirsty, the poor—I didn’t see any of them.

Because I wasn’t looking.

But here they are. We can choose to look away. And it’s easy for us, isn’t it? It’s easy because we’re isolated. We have no contact with any of them. We can’t touch them, hear them, see them.

They don’t exist to us.

But they do exist. Stop looking away.

There they are. We’re ignoring them, and they’re dying. Do you see her? She’s three years old. She’s drinking water that is killing her. She will not survive another sip.

How can we sit here, watch her die, and not do anything?

Do you believe Jesus was a social revolutionary? Do you believe He called us to see God differently? If so, don’t you think He’s calling us right now to follow Him in a radical way?

Have you ever looked at the way He lived and studied His actions?

From the outset, Jesus healed the sick, associated with undesirables and ate with social outcasts. These social categories—the sick, the poor, and public sinners—were despised groups, marginalised because their own society believed God had marginalised them, regarded literally as “outlaws” (undermining by their lives and presence the observance of the Law). By associating with sinners (meaning not simply those who occasionally broke the law, but those who broke it in a flagrant and systematic way), Jesus was consorting with the “wicked”. He didn’t wait for them to repent and change before he sat down to eat with them (challenging the authority of the Law of Moses) and even more scandalously he starts to let these excluded groups know that God has a special love for them.
~John Battle, Member of Parliament for Leeds West

What about this?

How will you react? Did you catch what Battle said? “He didn’t wait for them to repent and change before he sat down to eat with them.” If Christ didn’t demand that they change before He shared their company, why do we?

Christ told us to follow Him. In doing so, we must live like Him. We must do the very things He would do were He to set foot on earth in the 21st century.

He is setting foot in this century, isn’t He? If we are His hands and feet, He has certainly taken steps in this generation. So are we going to live like Him? Are we going to be the social revolutionaries He called us to be?

Are we going to change the world?

“The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'”