Inverted Values

“Looking at his [Jesus’] disciples, he said: ‘Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil because of the Son of Man.
Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their ancestors treated the prophets.
But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort. Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.
But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone slaps you on the cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. Give to everyone who asks you and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you.
If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you’” (Luke 6:20-38).
We Christians like to talk about love and for good reason. God is love. God loved the world that he gave Jesus. We are to show the world we are God’s people by our love. But all too often our love falls short of being godly love. God’s love opened himself to neediness. He did not give out of his excess, because he gave himself. He calls us to do likewise, but instead we try to love without becoming needy, and by doing so we fail to love at all.
Love by definition is a giving of myself. As God shares his love with us in and through Christ, just as Christ himself receives his life from the Father so do we. We can keep giving of ourselves, knowing that we are always relying on God every second of every day. When Jesus wanted to explain the meaning of his life and death to his people, he gave us a meal in which we feast on him because we need him to live and to love.
This is why God calls his people to more than mere charity. Charity usually comes from the standpoint that supposedly the one giving it has all her needs met, so why not help others who have need. But when you love you will be driven into need yourself. Likewise, charity and pity often go hand in hand. Out of pity we show, in the words of Arthur C. McGill, “contempt for those who are in need” and express “smug superiority in those who feel it.” But McGill goes on to say, “the Christian does not nourish the poor because he feels sorry for them. How can he feel sorry for weakness and need when these are his own essential condition and when these are the necessary conditions for the joy of receiving?” For McGill, “the love to which Jesus calls us is never the removal of need but the companion of need.”
In the above passage from the Gospel of Luke, Jesus reveals how inverted the values of our world have become. We pride ourselves as people who need nothing. We are rich, strong, and healthy, having forgotten Jesus’ caution, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick” (Luke 5:31). Love begins with need and ends with need, which is precisely how Jesus conquered death by transforming it into another “occasion for God to nourish us anew” (McGill).
In America we strive to remove need from our lives. We send the physically needy away to homes. We setup institutions and structures to deal with the materially needy in our communities. We read about needy communities close by or far away from us and come up with seemingly easy solutions that should help them if they ever bothered to make something of themselves like we have. We surround ourselves with people who need nothing from us, and that’s the way we like it. But in doing so, perhaps we have not listened to our Savior who has called us to take up his cross and follow him. When we shirk his cross because of the neediness it brings, then what credit is that to us? For Jesus says it is only by giving that we receive anything at all.