I am not Jesus, nor any other messianic figure for that matter. That might seem like somewhat of a no brainer but subconsciously I feel like it has taken me a long time to get there. I may still only be fully there on my best days. We as the middle class, protestant church in the West, or maybe it’s fairer to say, “I” as the…church, have a chequered past of misunderstanding my role. I cannot save anyone. I cannot rescue or fix or redeem even myself never mind anyone else. Those roles belong to Jesus, and He’s really good at them. The problem is, this “messiah complex”, this belief that it’s my job to save, is at best arrogant, annoying and off putting to the world around me but to those stuck in cycles of poverty it is utterly destructive. When I attempt to play God in the lives of the poor it only serves to compound their poverty and to further blind my eyes to my own faults and failings.

I would never for a second have said I was attempting to play God or anything like it. I don’t even believe in my heart that I wanted to but for a long time poverty for me was an issue. Was a thing that needed to be understood, broken apart and resolved; spot the engineer. It was a problem and I like problems, they feel like puzzles needing to be solved but poverty isn’t an issue or a problem that can be neatly resolved. Poverty is at its core a series of broken relationships. It is the sum total of all the small (and big) ways that we fail to view ourselves and one another rightly. Poverty is the marring of our God given, uniquely significant identities into the belief that some people are of less value than others. This is painfully obvious in the evils of racism or sexism or the horrors of human trafficking but it is way less obvious, way more subtly present when we approach the poor as problems to be solved. When we carry the unspoken mantra of “you are broken and I (unbroken) am here to fix you”.

In the last 10 years more than anything else I have realised that I am broken. I have areas of my identity wrapped in the cords of poverty and to be brutally honest I need “the poor” to show me that. I have needed the grace and the mercy and the unconditional acceptance of those society most quickly disregards to show me my own poverty. Jean Vanier, founder of the l’Arche communities for the physically and mentally disabled across the world, puts it this way

“People come to l’Arche to serve the needy. They only stay if they have discovered that they themselves are the needy, and that the good news is announced by Jesus to the poor, not to those who serve the poor.”

The role of the church, my role, as I see it is not to fix or even serve the poor so much as it is to embrace the seemingly broken people in our communities and in doing so embrace the broken parts in me so that together we might create the kind of space where Jesus, the fixer and healer, gets to have his way. For me that’s hard; I want to serve, I want to help but recently I am realising that often times my most significant acts of service are the times I am willing to humble myself enough to be served.

I recently had the privilege of sitting with an elderly Syrian gentleman seeking asylum in our city. He told me of how the night he was delivered a Storehouse Christmas hamper was the absolute highlight of his time in our country. I felt a since of “messianic” pride. I was quickly humbled. It wasn’t the boot load of groceries and treats or even the smiles and kindness of the deliverers that stirred his heart. It was their willingness to come in to his home, to sit in his living room and to receive what he could offer by way of refreshment that impacted him deeply. Their humility to be served gave him back the dignity of being hospitable. In the willingness to embrace one another, differences were put aside, poverty and riches were forgotten and a space was created were Jesus could enter in. Both parties, in some small ways, became a little less broken.

I am not Jesus but I am wrestling with what incarnational living looks like when we are not He. I’m not entirely sure but I wonder if it might sit in the empowering places of asking for help, of being vulnerable with the supposed poor? In the holy places of embrace.

Marathon Training Update
Runs this week – 1
Miles covered – 3.76
Average speed – 8.17 min/mi